My name is Colby Bean, I was born and raised in maine. I live in a town called Hartland, its a small town so there is really nothing to do, when i was younger I used to play sports but the only one i really got into was basketball but the problem with only playing one sport is that you only play for a few months out of the year. So I decided that I had to find something to do for the seven to eight months that I wasn’t playing basketball. So in decided to start watching movies, I started with some classics like The Wizard Of OZ and Back To The Future, among others.
Then i moved on to some more modern movies like the first two Spiderman movies, and i remember being really interested in how they made them, lucky for me I had the two disk collectors edition so there was plenty of documentaries and special features so I could watch how the movie was made, from how the did the stunts to the actors audition and then how the actors prepared for the role. At that point in time I decided thats what I want to do when I got older, I wanted to be an actor.
From then on I started watching movies every chance I could, I would watch the movie then I would watch how they made it and then i would watch the movie again but this time with the director and cast commentary, so that I could hear first time what they went through to make the movie, hearing how much fun everyone had making the movie made me want to become an actor even more. So at that time I was in 4th grade I think and my school started to do this program in the summer called readers theater.
Readers theater for anyone who was in first through fourth grade and it was about two months long and what you did was you worked with everyone to put on a play, and throughout the two months you would build sets, make costumes and create a music score to go along with the play. I remember I could not wait to be a part of it, so i sign up and everyone that goes auditions for a part unless you want to be part of the band, so the play the decided to do is Pandoras Box, so I audition and I get the part of the narrator, I was so happy because the narrator got the most lines and never left the stage.
And I had such a fun time doing that but the problem was i would be in fifth grade next year so I couldn’t do readers theater again, but I could be a volunteer and help the kids put on the play, kind of a director role which was fun so I did that for 3 years. But the best part of being in middle school was I found out that Mrs. Neal put on a play with the fifth and sixth graders in the beginning of the year. Mrs. Neal was the seventh grade english teacher and the director of the middle school and high school show choirs, but she also was a theater actress who starred in a lot of the plays at lakewood theater.
At that time I didn’t not know the impact Mrs. Neal would have on me. So my fifth grade year the play that that she was putting on was Pinocchio which made me really happy because I watched that movie a lot when I was little, going on to the audition I knew that since I was pretty much the youngest that I wouldn’t get a major part because there was a lot more people who had more experience than me. So when i found out i was cast as The Coachman i was really excited because i knew he was a big part of the story because he owned pleasure island and was responsible for turning Pinocchio and the other boys into donkeys.
So after that year i audition for the play that Mrs. Neal put on my sixth grade year which happened to be Alladin and i got a couple of parts in that. But my Seventh grade year i was looking to do something new so i decide to audition for show choirs because I liked musicals and thought it would be like one. So I ended up making that and it was real fun because anything with Mrs. Neal was fun, we ended up taking first in states, which was cool because Mrs. Neal had been getting first for her middle school show choir’s for a while, and it made me realize that someday I want to be part of a musical .
I ended up making it the next year as well and we won first again. But during those two years I discovered a movie that would change my look on acting from then on, the movie i discovered was Titanic. Titanic became my favorite movie so I bought the three disk collectors edition which had hours upon hours of how the movie was made and what really got me was the set, I could not believe that the had a scale replica of the titanic built to film and sink it, that made me realize that I wanted to be a film actor, to work on big sets like that and to do my own stunts.
So in seventh grade I did my last play and that was about the time I started to care what people thought of me and if they judged me, so I stopped doing plays and drama because those where the kids that everyone made fun of. But when I got to high school I got real nervous because we had to have a fine arts credit and I didn’t know what to do because I didn’t want to take any of drama classes and I didn’t want to take art. But at the end of my sophomore year the drama teacher left and he was replaced with Mrs.
Neal who would start my junior year, so I decided that I would take acting with her because I loved her classes and I had loved to be in the plays that she did, so I decided why not take acting. So I took her acting course but there was one problem I still cared what people thought about me so when I had to perform stuff in front of our class I would get really nervous and would be up there a really long time before I got started.
So the end of the year came and I some how got my credit, I was real relieved that it was over because I wouldnt have to anything like that again. But for some reason I decided to take acting again my senior year, and I don’t know what happened that summer but i stopped caring what people thought and when it came time to do things in front of the class I could do it so much easier than the year and I dont know why. But I have a feeling that it was because of Mrs.
Neal she always pushed everyone to do better and to take risks, and I feel like without Mrs. Neal I wouldn’t be applying to get my bachelors in acting for film, I would just be someone with a dream of being actor who never tried to make my dream come true. I really don’t know what I would do if I never got the courage to try and this make my dream happen because this is the only job that has ever appealed to me everything else just seems boring compared to the thrill of acting. So I really hope you consider me for acceptance.
