Playing Someone You Are Not

Sarah-Michèle Dugal is a 14-year-old student at la Camaradière. She began taking theater classes here this year and really likes it.

Since she was in elementary school, Sarah-Michèle has never been afraid of talking in front of many people. She is always on stage because of her dance classes and that makes her feel more comfortable while doing a play. She started theater in secondary one, in another school, and now she is performing at la Camaradière.

What Sarah-Michèle likes the most about theater is that she can play a character that is different, that doesn’t look like her. Sometimes, playing a role can make her get over a bad news or event and it really helps her.

According to her, the difficult part in theater is to get into the character and to act the right emotion to make it look realistic. For Sarah-Michèle, it doesn’t matter if she’s playing the main character or a secondary one. It depends on the play and the role of the character. “ Sometimes main characters die in an important moment and sometimes secondary characters play a meaningful part in the story, so the importance of the characters depends on the play” says Sarah-Michèle.

“Before the show it’s always scary, but when it begins, the stress goes away” she says. To practice her lines, Sarah-Michèle has developed few tricks. She starts by reading all of her lines many times.She also reads other characters lines to correct if anyone is wrong. After, she practices with her family and friends to be sure she knows them by heart.

At the beginning of the year, the theater teacher taught the class how to get into the character, how to react in a play, how to warm up before a show and they make pronounciation drills. Now they are preparing for the play. They think about all the settings and stage management. The main thing that Sarah-Michèle learned in theater by now is how to rightly show her reactions while playing.

Written by: Alice Sourine

Edited by: Valeria Claro & Alice Gagnon