My mentor, Dr. Vincent, wants me to write a short reflection about my experience in the play as a way to do some kind of writing work since I'm not writing a paper this semester. I haven't really thought about what I'm going to do, except that I want to write something and then produce it in the form of a podcast, This American Life style; Dr. Vincent and I talked about this because I have an interest in journalism.

I was talking to Jordan about it earlier, and he suggested mapping out a story. He's done several podcasts in the past, and has found that if you're going for the style of TAL then you need to have a plot and a steady narrative with a story arc in order to keep it interesting. I just need to sit down and think and write about it for a little bit, to hammer out what direction I want to take, what points I want to make, what exactly I want to say, etc.

Off the top of my head, I think I'd like to talk about how I believe that theatre is a wonderful outlet for human creativity. I heard an English professor speak in chapel the other day, and she was talking about how every human life is composed of many stories, many plot points, and, like any work of good literature, is complex; there is not just one message, or one idea being conveyed, but life is composed of variety, in emotion and in experience. Something she said that really resonated with me was that good literature should convey some kind of truth about humanity; that's what I love about theatre. There is something so unique about human beings using their minds and their bodies to convey messages about the reality of the human experience in real space and in real time.

As we close in on the actual performances, I'll be interested to see how the experience changes when we have an audience to convey these messages to. I've been in several plays before, but I've never considered it as a thought project, like I am with "The Dining Room". How do things change when we are not working only with each other's energy, but with the energy of the audience? The whole point of theatre is to perform, so what is there to be learned from the performance that's impossible to do or see without an audience? Obviously, there doesn't seem to be much point in crafting a message to convey if you never have anyone to convey it to. But what am I trying to convey? What is A.R. Gurney trying to convey?