Eunice Kim, staff writer
Sophomore Scott Senior was ecstatic after Josh Finkel, who studied under retired vocal teacher Joel D. Pressman offered him a business card and a chance to try out for “Monkey Mind”, a North Hollywood musical production. Senior went to the Academy for New Musical Theatre to audition and got the role of Brandon McIntyre, the love interest of protagonist Lacy Phillips.

“[I really liked the part] because it was, I believe, the biggest part in the show. There are only two male parts, Lacy’s father and me, and the rest are all females, even the protagonist. However, I’m the male leader in the musical,” Senior said.

“Monkey Mind” is a term used in Buddhism to describe a very disturbed mind. Lacy Phillips, a girl who couldn’t control her monkey mind, learns to control it by meeting McIntyre and his aunt and vocal teacher, Jeanie McIntyre. In this musical, Senior was thrilled to work for an original play that offered him pay. However, he was most eager to work with all the familiar faces as his cast members.

“Kayley Stallings, who played the role of Phillips, and I worked together at the Morgan Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica. [Working with familiar crew members] made [the musical] a little less awkward,” Senior said.

Senior has been involved with theatre arts ever since he was in the fourth grade. Though Senior has been working on his stage acting for several years, his biggest flaw would be the “stoicness and lack of diversity in his body language while on stage”.

“[I want to improve] the physicality of my acting. Sometimes I find myself doing the same gesture seven or eight times in a scene. I would like to work on knowing what to do with my body at different times to match the scene,” Senior said.

Senior stated that because of his weakness in physicality, his worst performance was when Phillip’s father went to hospital. Senior said that his body language was slow compared to the scene because of the lack of practice. However, in the scene when Phillip’s father was having a heart attack, he states that he showed his emotion really well.

“The fact that my best performance and my worst paralleled with each other was odd,” Senior said.

Around December this year, Senior will be performing “Beauty and the Beast” at the Morgan Wixson Theatre, in which Senior will play the part of the beast.