UC San Diego

My performance of Basilio in Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca was a culmination of my training here at UCSD. This role demanded a depth of heart, vocal tenacity, dynamic physicality, and facility with heightened text—all skills I’ve developed over the past three years.

The comprehensive vocal training has armed me with a voice expressible in a myriad of colors, textures, and sizes. The speech work has freed me from my habits and colloquialisms so that I can intentionally cater my vocal choices to the specific character I’m playing. The classical training has not only given me a technical command of Shakespeare and heightened text, but keystones like sustained and living thought have refined my approach to all text regardless of period or style. And our diverse movement training revealed valuable information about my physical habits, gave me different techniques to break them, and challenged me to stretch my physical imagination.

All of these combined empowered me to rise to the true size and transformational needs of Basilio rather than pulling him down to a pedestrian level. I found a unique vocal and physical quality that embodied his status, age, and mental state, I navigated his large heightened speeches with deftness and specificity, and I employed these techniques to deepen my investment in the given circumstances and emotional landscape of the play. This was the true revelation of my training at UCSD: Rather than being distracted by the more cerebral and practical techniques, they integrated seamlessly into my performance without interfering with my sense of authenticity.