{"id":2032,"date":"2016-03-15T21:05:32","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T21:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=2032"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:56:48","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:56:48","slug":"intro-to-acting-professor-jessie-mills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2016\/03\/15\/intro-to-acting-professor-jessie-mills\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Make &#8216;Em Laugh&#8221;\u2014Intro to Acting with Professor Jessie Mills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Steve Charles<\/em>\u2014In my 20 years\u00a0working at Wabash I\u2019ve sat in on\u00a0several courses\u00a0I\u00a0wish I\u2019d been able\u00a0to take when I was a student.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t expect Introduction to Acting to be one of them.<\/p>\n<p>But photographing Professor Jessie Mills&#8217; class last week as she put her students\u00a0through a series of acting exercises in the &#8220;comedy technique&#8221; module, I realized these guys were getting practice at something I sorely needed when I was a student. Something I&#8217;m sadly lacking in even now: the ability to clearly, accurately, and confidently express myself\u00a0in public using humor, one of the most powerful means of doing so.<\/p>\n<p>As Professor Mills put it, &#8220;the students\u00a0learn the specificities and nuances of comedy technique.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They\u00a0learn how to marry authentic expression with technical craft and, more importantly,\u00a0the tools necessary to make an audience laugh.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And even though you can see many of them are pushed well outside of their comfort zones, they seem to genuinely enjoy learning something that will serve them in practically any field they choose.<\/p>\n<p>That will make them better advocates for those they care for, for those causes they believe in.<\/p>\n<p>As Andrea James \u201989 put it in a recent visit to Wabash,\u00a0&#8220;Comedy is about telling a certain kind of truth that can\u2019t be told in any other format.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Outside of the classroom, these tools promote self-expression, awareness and confidence,&#8221; Mills says. &#8220;They\u00a0strengthen skills in collaboration,\u00a0empathy and\u00a0critical thinking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And watching students learn them made for some of the most fun I&#8217;ve ever had photographing at Wabash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Charles\u2014In my 20 years\u00a0working at Wabash I\u2019ve sat in on\u00a0several courses\u00a0I\u00a0wish I\u2019d been able\u00a0to take when I was a student. I didn\u2019t expect Introduction to Acting to be one of them. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":2050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-works-in-progress","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2016\/03\/acting-class-8-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2032"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2168,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions\/2168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}