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Pat Downey

Ms. Doyle

Fundamentals Of Acting

15 October 2020

Acting Response Paper 1

The play Pipeline features many wonderful performances by actors and terrific direction.

Particularly, Tasha Lawrence as Laurie, was a terrific performance that was very memorable and

powerful. In the third scene of the play, where the audience is introduced to Laurie, is a good

example of the greatness of the performance. Throughout, the scene Lawrence uses several well

made tactics and, vocal and physical decisions to enhance her performance.

In scene three, Laurie and Nya discuss the horrors are their students behavior in class. In

this particular scene the goal is to communicate their frustration at the insanity they have to deal

with on a day to day basis. Tasha Laurence uses the tactic of anger for her part in communicating

her frustration. She enters the stage and exclaims, “fucking fifth period” in a very angry way. She

then begins to rant, about how her students are behaving. I think anger is a very appropriate way

to communicate this goal. In many instances throughout the scene she curses, which typically is

done with extreme emotion. Given the message of the lines, anger is clearly the extreme emotion

that the playwright, Dominique Morisseau, indented for her character to have during this scene.

In addition to anger, Tasha Lawrence also adds in the fact her character is fed up as a tactic. She

refers to the fact her face got cut by the family of a failing student in a way that indicates she is
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tired of the job, and how it has affected her. Through these tactics she lets the audience know

what she is thinking and allows them into her mind set.

Tactics are not the only tool she uses to give power to her performance, her physicality

also drives her point home. Multiple times during the scene she begins to use hand gestures

while talking. For instance, during the line “from ninth grade to tenth grade to twelfth, I’ll outlast

them all” she moves her hand in a staggering motion to indicate the counting of the grades.

Additionally, she use her hand gestures to aid her tactic of anger. Throughout the scene, she is

eating strawberries from Tupperware using a fork. When she is talking and getting angrier she

starts to violently stab the strawberries and eat them. Physicality is highly important to her tactics

at this point, because if she is speaker her lines in angry way and just stands there, her message is

lost and the audience gets bored. However, when she starts stabbing the strawberries and using

different hand gestures, the audience is able to believe that this character is mad and fed up with

her whole situation. Most of all physical movement keeps the audiences interest. There is a rule

in improv that actors should try to move around the stage, as opposed to just two actors talking at

each other. This rule of “avoiding talking heads”, as it is called, translates well into a scripted

play, and keeping the audiences attention.

In addition to physical choices, Tasha Lawrence uses several vocal choices throughout

the scene to communicate her goal affectively. Particularly, she uses the volume of her voice to

allow the audience know that her character is upset. In her entrance to the scene, mentioned

above, she yells her line. Given popular stories about the stress levels in public school teachers, it

is perfectly believable that Laurie would be this angry after a frustrating class. Her vocal level

fluctuates throughout the scene, giving a calm passive aggressive tone at certain portions, then
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ramping up to yelling about the insanity that is her students behavior. The vocal volume is very

believable because many people have had stressful situations at work. Relatability allows a great

amount of believability to a character.

If there is one problem I do have with the performance and that is the exit. As Laurie

leaves the stage she stops and puts her hand on the door and turns around briefly to say the line

“this is my den, you know”. I found it out of place and reminded me that I was watching a play. I

think my problem mainly has to do with the delivery of the line that it felt a forced. Maybe this

has to do with the playwright, maybe it has to do with the actor. However, I would have cut that

line because it does not really add anything to the story, performance or the character. Something

about the way she delivered the line reminded me of an amateur community theatre actor or a

parody of a play like this with exaggerated acting on television. However, despite this one line, I

still found the rest of the performance to be captivating.

In conclusion, Tasha Lawrence gives a wonderful performance as Laurie in Pipeline.

Through the use of an anger tactic she lets the audience into the mind of the character and how

she perceives her chaotic work environment. Through the use of physicality she keeps the

audiences attention and provides a little bit of humor along the way. Using multiple vocal

decisions her tactic of anger is fulfilled and amplified for the viewers understanding. Although,

one instance was a little out of place and lacked believability, her performance was still a delight

for the audience to see. Tasha Lawrence’s training as an actress is utilized to completion with her

performance as Laurie, and the audience appreciated it with multiple laughs at humorous

moments and attentiveness at her character’s struggle with her students behavior. To summarize,

the performance was highly entertaining and moving.