Introduction Blog

Hello, I'm Jenna Denomme! I'm a sixteen-year old junior at Cheshire Academy, and am enrolled in the full IB program. I'm a reader, writer, singer, and gamer, who likes fantasy and sci-fi, RPGs, and puny titles (if the title of my blog didn't tell you that). I have a lot of ideas that I haven't gotten too yet, because I'm more of a procrastinator than I should be and less of an optimist that I should be.

...Is this too informal for a school blog? Sorry.

Anyway, here are three facts about me that are relevant to this class.

1. I have performed in one play each year I've been at Cheshire Academy. I was Theodosia (the old wealthy woman) in "Bone-Chiller!", in the ensamble of "Once On This Island", and Theo (the leader of the band No Vacancy) and a teacher at Horace Green in "School of Rock". I will be auditioning for "Les Misérables" in the winter. In middle school, I was also a Munchkin and a citizen of the Emerald City in my school's performance of "The Wizard of Oz".

This is a picture of me from when I preformed in "Once On This Island" here at CA

2. I have seen multiple Broadway plays, starting with "Matilda". In the past five months, I have seen "Hamilton", "Dear Evan Hansen", and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and my family plans on going to see the Broadway revival of "Once On This Island" opening later this year.

A picture my Nonna took of me at "Dear Evan Hansen"

3. I first got into "Hamilton" and "Dear Evan Hansen" thanks to the Internet, and thanks to their fandoms have also fallen in love with two off-Broadway musicals, "Heathers" (a high school musical but with murder) and "Be More Chill" (a high school musical but with a literal chill pill). The YouTube communities for these musicals even inspired me to start a series of animatics (like animation storyboards) for the "Dear Evan Hansen" soundtrack. Currently I've only finished my animatic for the first song, "Anybody Have a Map?", which you can watch on my YouTube channel, "Agent Raven" (yes I'm self advertising in a blog for school, sue me).

The thumbnail for my video

I signed up for this class not just because I love theater, as was shown above. I am fascinated by the art of acting - specifically, how a person can step into the life of a character separate from themselves and yet still make the audience believe that they ARE that person. In addition, different actors can play the same character in different ways, based on subtle things they pick up on in the script or by adding pieces of themselves or similar characters from different works to the performance. While theatre is not my main interest in the arts world, I hope that by taking this class, I can learn not only the history of theatre and how much goes into making a show happen, but also what it's really like to be a serious actor. If anything, the experience with getting into a character's head may help me when doing my own creative writing.