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.