Student Profile: SAMSON SYHARATH

This spring, PAC will feature blog profiles of our second-year conservatory students. These students will be graduating in May 2013 and launching their professional acting careers. Here, they share with us their origins, goals, and insights into acting and life as a student at Portland Actors Conservatory.

Samson Syharath
Photo: Owen Carey

Meet SAMSON SYHARATH

PAC: What is your educational background, and where is your hometown?

Samson: I went to Mansfield High School, and then graduated from the University of Arkansas Fort Smith, Fort Smith, Arkansas.

PAC: When did you know you wanted to be an actor and how did you get started acting?

Samson: In college, I took a theatre class and my professor encouraged me to audition for the original play he had created. The rehearsal process brought me closer to the people in my ensemble, closer than I had ever gotten to anyone in my life. After the performance, at the very first curtain call, I felt an energy from both the ensemble and the audience. After the show, strangers would come up to me and tell me how the production had really touched them and changed the way they see things. Acting showed me that I have the power to communicate and really reach out to people.

PAC: How would you describe what you are learning here at PAC?

Samson: I have learned how my body and voice are instruments and how to use my instrument. I’ve learned techniques to get my voice, mind, and body connected and in tune with each other, and most importantly, how to put all the techniques I’ve learned to practice.

Samson (center front) in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Photo: Gary Norman

PAC: What interests or excites you most about acting?

Samson: I would love to be able to reach out to people and change someone’s life. I love making people smile and laugh. I even love making people cry. Being able to feel and connect to human emotions is a joy for me and I would like to share that.

PAC: What scares or challenges you most about acting, and how do you deal with that?

Samson: Trying to connect to a character that I don’t “like” or that I disagree with is a challenge. But I have to realize that the character is that way for a reason. I have to find a perspective that works for me and find out why this character is the way he is.

PAC: What has been your most memorable experience at PAC so far?

Samson: In an acting class, I was so in the moment, so in character, that my actions and voice were so out of character for “Nice Samson” that it scared me. It surprised my scene partner and the entire class. The idea that I could have such power and that I never used it until then was a revelation for me.

Samson (second from left) in A Bright Room Called Day.
Photo: Gary Norman

PAC: What are your plans after graduating from PAC? What do you want to be doing 10 years from now?

Samson: I plan on sticking around Portland for a while and act around town. I hope to get my master's, and teach. As I mentioned, I love reaching out to people and teachers are some of the most underappreciated, yet influential people.

PAC: If you could go back in time to your first day at PAC, what advice would you give your past self?

Samson: Stop worrying. If you do all your work, all that’s left to do is play.

Samson (right) will be onstage in subUrbia in April 2013.
Photo: Owen Carey

Student Profile: JARED BAKER

This spring, PAC will be featuring blog profiles of our second-year conservatory students. These students will be graduating in May 2013 and launching their professional acting careers. Here, they share with us their origins, goals, and insights into acting and life as a student at Portland Actors Conservatory.

Jared Baker
Photo: Owen Carey

Meet JARED BAKER

PAC: What is your educational background, and where is your hometown?

Jared: I went to Riverdale High School and then the University of Wisconsin-Platteville for my B.A. in Theater, and my hometown is Muscoda, WI.

PAC: When did you know you wanted to be an actor and how did you get started acting?

Jared: I didn't start to think of myself being an actor for a living until I was in my third Theater course at UWP and realized that this is what I could and want to do for the rest of my life. I first started acting in a "College for Kids" theater class and ended up getting cast as the mother in the play.

PAC: How would you describe what you are learning here at PAC?

Jared Baker (seated) in A Bright Room Called Day.
Photo: Gary Norman

Jared: At PAC we are learning many different techniques and styles that can be used for acting, but most of all we are learning about ourselves in these classes and what we can do to become better actors.

PAC: What interests or excites you most about acting?

Jared: What I love about acting is when I find out or figure out one of the secrets of the character and then I get to apply it to the lines or action that I have on stage. It's one of those moments where I am able to start creating what the character is thinking or why they are behaving the way they are.

PAC: What scares or challenges you most about acting, and how do you deal with that?

Jared: What challenges me the most in acting is any text in verse because it is what I have had the least experience and work with.  However, after a whole semester of work with it and a lot of guidelines of how to approach the text I feel much more confident in performing verse, but I will always work twice as hard on it just to be comfortable with it.

PAC: What has been your most memorable experience at PAC so far?

Jared: My most memorable experience at PAC would have to be when we did the Auditions at the end of the first year.  It was the enjoyment of being able to show off all the hard work that we had been doing that semester and using all the tools we learned over the year.

Jared (second from left) will appear in subUrbia this April.
Photo: Owen Carey.

PAC: What are your plans after graduating from PAC? What do you want to be doing 10 years from now?

Jared: After I graduate from PAC I will be moving back to the Midwest and will be trying to establish myself in Chicago. In 10 years I hope to be busy acting in the theaters in Chicago and possibly doing some teaching.

PAC: If you could go back in time to your first day at PAC, what advice would you give your past self?

Jared: If I could tell myself something on Day 1 at PAC it would be: There is no right answer and just let it rip.

Student Profile: LEXI DESCHENE

This spring, PAC will be featuring blog profiles of our second-year conservatory students. These students will be graduating in May 2013 and launching their professional acting careers. Here, they share with us their origins, goals, and insights into acting and life as a student at Portland Actors Conservatory.

Lexi Deschene
Photo: Owen Carey

Meet LEXI DESCHENE

PAC: What is your educational background and where is your hometown?

Lexi: I graduated from Pinkerton Academy in my hometown of Derry, New Hampshire, in 2009. I knew I wanted a college experience that would completely immerse me in theatre, but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for until I saw a notice for PAC interviews being held in Boston.

PAC: When did you know you wanted to be an actor and how did you get started acting?

Lexi: I don't come from a particularly creative family, and I'm certainly the only performer, but I think they realized I wanted to be an actor before I even knew what that meant. I do have an aunt that is very boisterous and theatrical, and whenever she'd babysit me, I'd bounce around singing to her Leslie Gore albums and the soundtracks of my animated movies. Eventually, I decided that I was Belle. And Pocahontas. And Esmeralda. I was basically on board with any brunette Disney could throw at me. I was too young to recognize that as the early stages of "acting," but my parents decided it would be a good idea to steer me in the direction of theatre, and my first show was "Cinderella" at the age of eight; not a brunette, but still in the Disney neighborhood. Eventually my aunt began managing a theatre that housed national tours, and she would get me front-row tickets to every single show that came through, even the ones I was probably a little young for. I'm sure my parents were thrilled with my obsession with Rizzo in "Grease" halfway through elementary school. Even so, nobody ever tried to keep me away from theatre, and by the time I was old enough to realize that a career in this field would take serious effort, I was too in love with it to give it a second thought.

PAC: How would you describe what you are learning here at PAC?

Catherine Ross and Lexi Deschene in A Bright Room Called Day
Photo: Gary Norman

Lexi: There are hundreds of different keys you can use to unlock the door to a character. Each teacher at PAC is dedicated to providing you with as many keys as possible, each focusing on the ones they believe to be most helpful, and you're given room to find exactly which ones fit your particular lock.

PAC: What interests or excites you most about acting?

Lexi: Actors have the special ability to sample as many lives as we can during our time on earth. I live out situations I would never find myself in offstage, and I'm introduced to hidden, undeveloped aspects of my own self when I surrender to the thoughts and emotions of characters I play. Even the roles I believe to be the furthest away from who I am are able to touch a spark of truth inside of me that I may never have acknowledged otherwise, and I have a richer life experience because of it.

PAC: What scares or challenges you most about acting, and how do you deal with that?

Lexi: There are shields we develop as we move through the world that defend us from emotional vulnerability; it's both a blessing and a curse to learn that the most vital part of a truthful performance is accessibility to the "negative" emotions we try to save ourselves from. Making the choice to lower my shields is always scary and challenging, but the outcome is never disappointing. The only way to affect an audience is to allow yourself to be affected.

PAC: What has been your most memorable experience at PAC so far?

Lexi: Watching last year's graduating class perform their final show was really special to me; it shifted my frame of mind from "look at everything they learned" to "look at everything I'm learning," and inspired me to refocus and aspire to the level of performance I saw them reach, both as individuals and as an ensemble. 

PAC: What are your plans after graduating from PAC? What do you want to be doing 10 years from now?

Lexi: After completing the program at PAC, I'd like to go home and earn a BFA from Emerson College in Boston, where I hope to build a career as an actor.

PAC: If you could go back in time to your first day at PAC, what advice would you give your past self?

LEXI: Give yourself time to find your key. Some things will speak to you and some things won't, but just like your characters, there's a spark of truth in all of it.

Lexi Deschene (Center) in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Photo: Gary Norman