Plus the DVD that I worked on most of last July and August got a different reception than I had hoped for, even with all the examples that I put in it.
And even when I put it on YouTube to made it easier to see, it was difficult to get people to pay attention to it.
The Drama 8 class at Butte has been an adventure with steps along the path of the Hero's Journey as part of the auto-biography that I'm going to write called Achieving Communion.
I've been documenting a lot of it with video that I've recorded in class and journals that I can use as video logs that describe thoughts along the way for notes to show the progress along the path and the steps I've taken follow the stages of the Hero's Journey.
There were things that I didn't expect before I took the class, the most surprising was how little time I had to talk to the other students about the project, ten minutes or less before class and people quickly left after for places they had to go. It was barely enough to get their attention and not enough to keep it to explain the idea for the video. I had trouble with the DVD player taking so long to load and even when I had a group of people watching it, I ran out of time when Jesse came in to start the class that they didn't get a chance to absorb the ideas in the DVD.
But when Jesse mentioned the Kickstarter project twice in class it helped a lot to give it some legitimacy among the students and made it a lot easier for me the approach them with the offer to join in. Even if he did make a couple of mistakes like on my midterm exam, he had to correct one answer that marked as wrong which was found to be an error that gave me a perfect score on the test because I had watched all the recordings that I had made of the class.
The other mistake was that he promised to give a discount for the students in the class on tickets to the Drama Departments play and that he would train the ticket takers to accept half off the price of one ticket if we brought someone to see it. But when I got there and asked for the discount on Mom's ticket they were confused and had to go ask Jesse about it, so he didn't train them well enough as he had promised.
I certainly learned the truth of that Campbell quote from my experience in the class, since I had always had severe stage fright and anxiety over public speaking but facing those fears allowed me to accomplish my goals for the next step in the Kickstarter project.
Jesse did give some helpful instructions and great advice which allowed me to overcome my fears to get me through performing the monologue. By continuing to focus on deep breathing to relax and meditation to bring yourself back to the present moment, it certainly was a huge asset since in the pressure of doing it live in front of an audience, it was easy to forget to breathe and the deep breathing did calm the nerves.
But the biggest problem I had was trying to project my voice loud enough for all the audience to hear, because that took a lot of breath to do, and I had to keep pausing in order to catch my breath. Then about halfway through, I forgot some of my lines from lack of oxygen and had to take some very long pauses to remember them again. Hopefully I was able to be funny and get the joke about a time machine and a Civil War hooker across.
The advice that Jesse gave also helped with my fear of rejection and asking the people in the class for their attention. I did keep asking myself during the semester "What would a Hero do in this situation?" especially when I got discouraged by the students turning me down and it help give me more determination to keep trying because I knew a Hero would never just give up. That transformation is the essence of moving through the stages of the Hero's Journey and the overcoming of fears to expand the Heroes abilities from facing challenges.
That determination also helped me to take the steps of putting up flyers around the Art building where the students could see them and get their attention so they might get interested in the project
Even so I never did get the hang of doing improv exercises because practicing before hand I could barely handle, but coming up with an idea on the fly was beyond me. When in the Add and Subtract exercise, the only thing I could come up with was chanting at a protest rally for the first time and a preacher doing a sermon to his flock for the second time.
The other thing that I didn't expect when I took the class was a massive drop in my testosterone levels that was a major obstacle to overcome, but being aware of what the symptoms of depression, lack of energy and pain in my extremities was caused by helped some with my attitude for dealing with it, even if it didn't lessen any of the symptoms. Finally taking large doses of Ginko Biloba did a lot balance out the hormone levels and help my brain function better.
But the hardest part of the whole class was having to memorize lines and the Ginko only helped slightly with that. But I kept at it with the determination of a Hero to face the challenge of remembering the lines and that did encourage me to succeed. When we were rehearsing for the final scene, the releasing of tension by our mistakes was the funniest and most enjoyable part.
I liked the final scene more compared to my monologue because it had more action than just telling a joke, since I had to put more passion and desperation in it from being hunted and begging to die a less painful death, which was a more satisfying performance.
It took until the last class before the finals but I did ultimately get one of the students to agree to act in the video for the Kickstarter project. I showed her the DVD that I made and she got up to the clip I put in, where Reese Witherspoon is accepting her Oscar for her role in Walk the Line then she agreed to help with the project when I reminded her about what Jesse said in class about "people being desperate enough for success" and how Reese started just like this when she was an unknown and went to an open audition for The Man in the Moon. Then I told her about the pay scale that I looked up for what they paid members of SAG and she agreed. So I wrote the script and sent it to them.
Jesse had a few inspirational stories that he used as examples of how to discipline yourself in habits that would help you to succeed. Hopefully the rest of the class paid attention to them and could apply them to my offer.
I'm not sure how I'm going to use that footage I shot at the Salmon Festival but I'll probably insert some of the shots of the fish going up the ladder and some of the workers harvesting the eggs from the fish.
So that is pretty good progress through the stages of the Hero's Journey for the last four months, much more than I made in the decade previously. Now onto the next chapter that I outlined last May that covered plans for after taking the class.
When the money from the Kickstarter project is raised then plans for the lessons in My Fair Guru can be implemented like an example of how evolution and stages of development continue from apes to people and then from people to angels .
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