Erica’s Self-Portrait

One Response to Erica’s Self-Portrait

1. keithmerlinanne says:

   September 23, 2013 at 12:43 am

   Observing live performances always enable audiences to dive into the depth of a character during the show itself. In this case, I had the opportunity to analyze the idea that Erica herself wished to convey about her own persona. Her main focuses in the act included the involvement in both science and baking. As two seemingly opposing interests, science and baking seemed to be difficult subjects to fuse into one coherent performance. However, as the act progressed. Erica showed aspects of baking which seemed to actually resemble the study of sciences and all things logical as well. It was time. As a very organized person, Erica’s concept of time melded both sciences and baking into a homogeneous act.
   The sciences, being very specially and logically oriented provided a superficial and obvious awareness to the importance of time and organization, while baking subtly melded into the show by showing the audience the equal important of time and organization in the preparation of delicious cupcakes. As the performance dove deeper into time and the ability of Erica to fuse both her studies and her hobbies into one act, the audience could start to observe the little perks that characterize Erica herself. Her crossed legs, as an example, gave the proper impersonation of a polite girl with respectful upbringings. And finally, the use of a small stage, as opposed to the vast offerings of the room, characterized Erica as a reserved girl whose ideal performance highlighter her inclination towards a cozy comfort zone.

   As opposed to Erica’s familiar performance, I decided to approach the self-portrait challenge to a more unusual and quasi-superficial level: my name. Essentially, one’s name is the most obvious and shallow interpretation of a portrait, but unluckily enough (or perhaps luckily), I was able to host a performance based solely on my name: Keith Merlin Anne Briel Guevarra Ilagan. Through some fortunate series of events, my name just so happened to hold different meanings and stories and through that, I was able to decorate the name plates accordingly. Keith was initially meant to be Kaith, but being born in Italy, my parents thought Keith was the ideal spelling for the American equivalent Kaith. Merlin is the actual fusion of my parents names Berlinda and Melo, but is coincidentally spelt as Merlin, the wizard. Anne is the only feminine aspect of my first name and also the name of a great British queen. The list goes on with Briel being my confirmation name and etc.

   The idea behind my performance was to convey the presence of a story behind my seemingly quirky name. The reason why many times people mistake my name is due to the fact that they themselves lack the knowledge behind each name. As time will pass, I do hope people will be more aware f my name, but if not, they at least have a feel of what actually lies behind my name(s), all six of them.

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