SETC IS Whatever YOU Make It

This was my first ever SETC Convention. Well, to tell the truth, it was the first convention I’d been to that was about theater. When we drove into our hotel in Atlanta, after our six-hour car drive, I realized the sheer size of the thing I had stepped into. Our seniors tried to tell us what’d be like. We had meetings on where to register, how to dress, what job contact was like, they laid everything out with a quiet solemnity of the experienced.

I remember, the first thing I realized were how many workshops they had. When you are standing in line, there are giant electric signs that scroll through the activities taking place in the generically named conference rooms. The pages scrolled in pixeled  blips through page after page of theater workshops: Suszuki Movement and Acting, Creating Realistic Characters, Playwrights, Silicone Make-Up, How to Build an Effective Resume and Portfolio. I even picked out a workshop on building armor by the time I got to the check-in counter.

In our rooms later that night, after watching an arial silks interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, we one by one drifted off to sleep or circled our workshops for the morning session. I planned to take a resume and portfolio class first to help with my last minute resume edits. As I feel asleep between to twin sheets of marsh-mellowy fluff, I dreaded and dreamed of the next day.
Okay, it wasn’t all that scary. The workshops were as different as siblings, all from the same family, but nothing alike. I took the portfolio class, which reaffirmed my need for more resume material and that I did have the right sized portfolio. The classroom was cold, and the class was taught by three wildly different teachers, but I learned how to make an awesome resume. I took a silicone make-up class next, which was very self-indulgent of me because I probably will never actually work with the stuff, but that’s the great thing about SETC. You can take classes just because you want to learn something.
The acting workshops I took later on in the conference became my favorites. I watched each teacher, and I’ve said it before, but they really were all incredibly different. I loved each class. I think one of the best things I learned was the different places people hold tension during monologues. The forehead and shoulders seemed to be most common in the students the teacher worked with. She transformed monologues by simply reminding them not to furrow their forehead, or to release their shoulders. I took her card at the end of the session. The Suszuki movement class was intense and the teacher a force of nature, but it made me look at the discipline of acting in a whole new light.
I will say, however, that more than the shock of a new place (which is normal after two months in Jackson Mississippi) is the terrifying face of job contact. I waited day and a half to build up the courage to actually go down to the lower level to just look at it. It was as scary as I thought it would be… at first. As you talk to people and see other students walk by with pristine resumes and portfolios obese with awesomeness, well as a freshman I felt like I had a safe margin of failure. That sounds bad, I knew I probably would not get a job, if only because of my inexperience, and that was somehow comforting. I still four or five awesome interviews, even if nothing came of them now, I’ve made some great contacts.
SETC really is whatever you make it. I made friends across the USA, writers, techies, and actors alike. I learned how to make a silicone scar, build a portfolio, construct a realistic character, and, and I don’t even know everything I learned. Somethings I won’t be able to say out loud because I don’t know I’ve learned them, but I have. I have taken so much from SETC. It’s something every theater major ought to do, whatever class level. I’ll be going next year and I’m already excited!
JC

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