You might not have heard yet, but we are in the midst of a pandemic. I am a drama major, which has become an increasingly irresponsible life decision. But hey, I’m all about following my heart. I’d follow my heart right off a cliff.

Anyway, if you’re unfamiliar, drama majors put on a play for their senior capstone project, and I had been slated to act in a play called Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang, which was scheduled to perform in April of 2021. It’s a very funny play, my part included a Maggie Smith impression and a blue sequin gown, I was very excited for the show, its cancellation certainly dashed my hopes and dreams, honestly I don’t think I’ve fully processed it yet, I’m just kind of numb to everything at this point, blah blah blah, woe is me, so on and so forth.

So now you may be asking yourself well okay, Jane, how are you getting your degree then, if you can’t do your play? WELL, WELL, WELL. Enter the new Drama Senior Seminar: Solo Performance. Not only am I responsible for a final 30-minute-virtual-extravaganza-one-woman-show, but I have weekly video assignments that require a lot of self-taping. Our first assignment was to tell our “life story” in 5 minutes or less. And boy, oh boy, did I tap into the dark corner of my brain that is intimately familiar with the lifestyle of the modern day storyteller– the YouTuber. For a brief moment I considered a classic “Draw My Life” approach, but even I couldn’t bring myself to stoop so low.

Here are the tools and techniques I’ve taken up, thus far, in the legitimate pursuit of my degree in dramatic arts:

• A tripod
• A RING LIGHT (which I purchased with my own Real Human Money)
• Sharp! Quick! Funny! Cuts!
• *cHaNgiNg tHe AnGLe fOr cOmEdiC EfFecT*
• A ~curated~ area of my room to use as a backdrop
• did I mention that I bought a ring light.

I’m *so* excited to be on this journey, and let me know if anyone actually wants me to start uploading these videos to YouTube. Maybe the video-influencer path is right for me. I can just slap some ads on my content and atone for the sins of majoring in a field that has basically been left obsolete in the face of a global health crisis.

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