9/2/08

Tuesday, September 2

It was another long day for me. Classes from 9:00am-12:00pm, student rep meeting over my lunch break, classes from 1:00pm-5:30pm, dinner break, and then tech call from 6:30pm-9:00pm.

MOVEMENT
We got our tests back from last week. It was pass/fail (thank goodness), and I passed. There were a lot of positive notes on my test (things like "GOOD!", "Yes!" and "very good observation from book"), but the word "Why?" appeared a lot (we had a short amount of time to take the test, so I guess I wasn't as complete in my answers as I should have been).

Jumping rope is getting easier. It's still exhausting, but I don't feel like I'm going to die now, so that's good. We did a bit of Suzuki work today, and also began coordination exercises. For awhile we hand to walk around the room balancing a stick vertically in our palms. Then we had to throw handballs towards a partner, looking into the partner's eyes, both throwing and catching one-handed.

Our homework is to continue the handball exercises for 20 minutes with a partner before tomorrow. I'm meeting "The Pro" at school before class to do it then, as we both really just wanted to go home after tech call tonight.


VOICE
I got my voice test back as well. I didn't do tremendously on it, which I guess I had been expecting (not that I did abysmally... just not as well as I would've liked). I got the "destructuring" part just fine, but I really don't understand "restructuring" yet (probably because we haven't done it). Oh well. It's only the first test. And I really need to get this perfectionistic streak out of my system fast, because it won't be possible to keep it up in a couple of months anyhow.

We started doing body-rocking in the style of Roy Hart today. It's hard to explain (as I'm sure I'll say about the majority of things I do in my voice class), but basically you lie down and allow movement to originate in your feet in a way that rocks your entire body. It felt really great, actually. But then we started trying to draw circles with various body parts while rocking, which really just hurt.

We tried a new tremoring position today, but my back didn't like it, so I just went back to the pelvic tremor that worked so well for me last week. And the pelvic tremor? HUGE physical response to it. My entire body shook so violently that parts of it were lifted off the ground, and my breath became entirely spontaneous. It was simultaneously terrifying and THE COOLEST THING EVER.


STUDENT REP MEETING
Not all that thrilling. We began discussions on how to use funds. And we clarified information about our upcoming auditions. (First years don't actually get to be in shows, but we act as understudies for the huge Equity shows.)


ACTING
We began doing "etudes" today. Etudes are like small scenes of acting improvisation. This is NOT the same as improv comedy. It's more like you get a small amount of given circumstances (such as a couple lines of dialogue, a physical position, or a relationship), and you build a scene off of that. It's not meant to be funny (although it occasionally is), but truthful.

Later in the day, "O.D." commented to me that he sensed me take on characteristics of "fear" and "being childlike" more than once in my exercises today. I noticed those qualities in one of my etudes, but not in the other... I don't know. Maybe that's just where my psyche was this afternoon. I just hope those things aren't crutches that I have to work through. Although if they are, I suppose "O.D." deserves my gratitude for pointing them out to me early, so that I can work on fighting them from the start.

We discussed how bewilderment and uncertainty are important for actors, and also how a lot of accidents turn out to be blessings. It was a good class.


ANALYSIS
We had a whole discussion on how people confuse the themes of a play with the action of a play. My professor declared that we're not looking for nouns or statements when describing the action of a play, but rather verbs. So, for example, Hamlet is not "man vs. himself" or "passion and humanity", but would be something more like "avenging". (Okay, that was a horrible example, because I don't think avenging is a good verb... but hopefully you get the idea).

We learned about Praxis/Poesis/Theoria... Although don't ask me to explain them, because I'm still fuzzy on them. We discussed probability and necessity, but I'm still not 100% on what those refer to, either. And then we went into the importance of cause-and-effect, which I think I actually understood.

For homework, we have to do research into some figures from the family of Oedipus. And we also have to determine what the very first choice Oedipus makes (in the play, NOT the myth) is.


TECH CALL
My first assignment was to paint the floor in front of the first row of the small theatre black with "O.D.", and I think we did a pretty great job (although "Iceman" left a footprint in our work later, but meh). Then it was unfolding and refolding legs (curtains), loading flats into a van, and unloading the flats into the scene shop.

The scene shop is a union shop, and it is the BIGGEST FREAKING SHOP I HAVE EVER SEEN. Seriously. I thought I'd seen big shops before, but they were NOTHING like this. It was incredible. It looked like an airplane hangar. So cool.


Anyway. I should probably reread chapters 1&2 of "One Voice" before tomorrow's lecture.

G'night!

~A~

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