Samuel Vidal Flanagan, Grade 11
UWC Dilijan
When I was little, I wanted to be an actor. It inspired me. I found it fascinating that you could portray someone else's emotions and pretend to be them, whether they were real or imaginary, to the extent that an audience believed it. Acting is the materialization of empathy, of literally putting yourself in another's place, but also an opportunity to know yourself better. A perfect example of this is the experience I had at UWC, in my Spanish literature class, when we were asked to write a short script impersonating Amir and Hassan from 'The Kite Runner'.
We had read 'The Kite Runner' for class, as part of the course. It is a truly amazing book in which Kalled Hosseini tells the story of the lives of two young boys, starting in pre-war Afghanistan and going all the way to the United States in the early 2000s. The book is able to convey many different emotions. It isn't a 'sad' or a 'happy' book, but at the same time, it is one of the saddest and happiest books I've read. After doing so, we spent a couple of weeks analysing it, exploring the message he conveys and the way he does it. We also explored the relationships between the characters, which led our teacher to suggest the activity I mentioned before, in which our task was, to write a small script extending the argument Amir and Hassan have early in the book.
My classmate and I got together after school one evening and developed the script. I played Amir. This was an opportunity to really understand what it felt like to be him and his relationship with Hassan, at least to a certain extent. I approached my interpretation thinking that, to do it properly, I shouldn't pretend to be him, but rather, I should believe that I am him, to the extent that I feel his pain, his joy and his fears. This way of acting is suggested by William Layton, who is a drama theorist, actor and director. He proposed that to do this, you should use memories of things that have happened to you, and apply them to the situation you are meant to act. This made me feel even closer to Amir because, although I recognise that I haven't been through a fraction of what happened to him, I found something in my life that made me feel the way that he did. This made me realize how easy it would've been for what happened to him, to have happened to me.
My classmates also wrote their scripts, and it was interesting and thought-provoking to see them in place of Amir or Hassan as well. Again, seeing my classmates made me think about the fact that what happened to Amir and Hassan could've happened to any of them. My classmates' feelings were similar, if not the same, to those which they felt. I could see them in their situation. This idea was accentuated by the fact that we all come from different backgrounds, both physically and socio-economically. I remember this activity for being an unconventional learning method and for the thoughts it provoked in me.
We had read 'The Kite Runner' for class, as part of the course. It is a truly amazing book in which Kalled Hosseini tells the story of the lives of two young boys, starting in pre-war Afghanistan and going all the way to the United States in the early 2000s. The book is able to convey many different emotions. It isn't a 'sad' or a 'happy' book, but at the same time, it is one of the saddest and happiest books I've read. After doing so, we spent a couple of weeks analysing it, exploring the message he conveys and the way he does it. We also explored the relationships between the characters, which led our teacher to suggest the activity I mentioned before, in which our task was, to write a small script extending the argument Amir and Hassan have early in the book.
My classmate and I got together after school one evening and developed the script. I played Amir. This was an opportunity to really understand what it felt like to be him and his relationship with Hassan, at least to a certain extent. I approached my interpretation thinking that, to do it properly, I shouldn't pretend to be him, but rather, I should believe that I am him, to the extent that I feel his pain, his joy and his fears. This way of acting is suggested by William Layton, who is a drama theorist, actor and director. He proposed that to do this, you should use memories of things that have happened to you, and apply them to the situation you are meant to act. This made me feel even closer to Amir because, although I recognise that I haven't been through a fraction of what happened to him, I found something in my life that made me feel the way that he did. This made me realize how easy it would've been for what happened to him, to have happened to me.
My classmates also wrote their scripts, and it was interesting and thought-provoking to see them in place of Amir or Hassan as well. Again, seeing my classmates made me think about the fact that what happened to Amir and Hassan could've happened to any of them. My classmates' feelings were similar, if not the same, to those which they felt. I could see them in their situation. This idea was accentuated by the fact that we all come from different backgrounds, both physically and socio-economically. I remember this activity for being an unconventional learning method and for the thoughts it provoked in me.
www.unitedworldwide.co