Thursday, September 18

I've been a bit of a basket-case the last couple of days. I hope it goes away soon.

MOVEMENT
We spent most of the day in a lecture, and it was pretty awesome. I learned that I might be on the border of having "low tonicity", which means your body is too loose (and, thus, too weak). We had to draw pictures of our bodies. Our homework for tonight is to identify our kinesthetic sense (physical awareness) and determine which parts of our bodies we're more and less aware of.

VOICE
I had such a violent tremor today that my knee whacked into my nose and I had to stop... Yeah, I thought I'd write that down so you could all imagine how that could've possibly happened, and then have a good laugh at it. It was just as improbable and ridiculous as you imagined.

I think we've all got our consonants pretty well locked up now. We have a test tomorrow, and I'm not worried in the least. I know I understand it. And that's a really great feeling.


ACTING
We're doing exercises involving changing our perceptions of spaces and situations. I was pretty frustrated about the whole thing until today. Some people can look at a wall and justify that it's "the sky" (because of the shadows, and the way the florescent lights shine on it) or "a city" (because of the grid lines), or a hillside (because of the texture and the color). They can see things in the wall and make it mutate in their minds. I can't do that.

When I look at a chair, I see a chair... tables are tables, bookcases are bookcases...

What I CAN do, is look at a wall and TREAT it like a hillside. Or I can visualize a sky. I can't create an ocean out of the wall, but I can look at a wall and see an ocean. I can imagine. I can pretend. Today, my professor told me that my way is perfectly fine, and will achieve the same result. So now I'm a lot less stressed about it.

One of my classmates did a really great exercise involving walking into a space with the idea that it was our Voice studio before the final exam (he was actually just walking into the performance area of our Acting studio). The rest of us weren't told what his concept of the space was before he walked in, but we all knew. Something about it really resonated with me. He didn't perform. He didn't try to illustrate the space. He just lived it. He was doing the sorts of things that he would do that are marvelously idiosyncratic and specific to him (like stretching his leg out while eating an apple), and completely ignoring the audience (he faced upstage for a good chunk of it). And it was captivating.

I guess it reminded me why we're here. We have to get back to basics and stop trying to perform or impress. We have to learn how to live on stage, not just act on it.

Killer did a physical memory exercise of changing the lamp in a Source-4 (changing the light bulb in a stage lighting instrument).

I did my physical memory exercise of making a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I've been working on it really hard for the past week, and I was nervous to show it to people. I think it went pretty well, though. In my nerves, I think I made my actions so precise that they were cartoon-y and mime-like, but my classmates could identify everything that I'd done, so I was glad for that. I think I'm going to keep working on that one in my spare time, just for my own satisfaction. No idea what my next exercise will be...


ANALYSIS
We're not allowed to use words like Tell, Ask, Inquire, Enter, Request, Talk, Banter, Open, Speak, Point Out, or Reveal when discussing the action of a play. Why? Because those words aren't "playable" from the standpoint of an actor. When a messenger comes in and you say he's there "to tell Hecuba about her daughter", you have to ask yourself "but WHY is he telling Hecuba about her daughter?" so that you can come up with a more workable verb.

Our homework is to go back to the text of Women of Troy and see how the thought goes through the whole play, how the diction helps to define it further, and determine what the action of the play is. This is complicated, as I seem to have misplaced my copy of the play. I grabbed the wrong book to take to class today (we have two skinny books with blue covers), and now I can't find the one I needed. Drat. Oh well. We don't have class again until Tuesday, so worst case scenario, I can probably just get a new copy before then.


TECH
We got our tech assignments, and I'm stoked. The 1st-years tech the shows that the 2nd-years act in. I'm going to be on deck crew for Wilder, Wilder, Wilder, box office for Blur and Miss Julie, and Assistant Stage Manager for the musical Three Postcards. I'm so geeked for the ASM gig! I have experience with ASM-ing both a musical and an opera, so I was hoping that I'd get to ASM this musical. I think it's a good way of putting my skills to use.