Friday, October 10

This has been the roughest week since I've been here, and it has had very little to do with actual classwork. It looks like the composition of my class may be changing, and I feel like the metaphorical wind was knocked out of me. I won't write more than that until I have all the facts, but I'm upset for multiple reasons.


MOVEMENT
We've been working on this "big back stretch", and at one point, you have to rotate something or other. I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be rotating. I think my professor was frustrated because I asked the same question more than once, but it was because I didn't understand her first answer.

I have many flaws as a student, but I think that one of my strengths is that I care about comprehension. I want to make sure that I'm actually learning things, and not just sitting back and nodding. This is especially true now that I'm in grad school. Sometimes I worry that my classmates dislike my inquisitive nature. Maybe I'm being selfish by taking up class time with all of my questions. At the same time, I'm here to learn and I'm going to make sure that I do. I just have to hope that it doesn't interfere with anyone else's learning.


VOICE
The tremors of the day were Pelvic and Dying Cockroach (we did it again so that my professor could make sure that she had time to observe all of us). I think I've noticed that my tremors are particularly violent when I'm stressed or upset. Today my Pelvic tremor was so strong that I knocked the wind out of myself (literally, not metaphorically), and that I started coughing at another point. I spent most of the allotted tremoring time just resting. I also used the time to write a letter to someone in order to get some of my emotions from the day out of myself.

We continued work on our Rib Swing. I'm worried that I may have done something wrong, as my intercostal muscles (the ones that cover your ribs) started cramping up in an incredibly painful way in the middle of my acting class. I didn't even know that intercostals COULD cramp. I have to ask my professors next week if they think that was related.


ACTING
We spent the first hour of class arguing. I wish I could sugarcoat it and call it a healthy discussion, but I'm not sure that it was. It seems that there are a few different philosophies floating around in my class regarding how class time should be spent, how an ensemble works, and how to resolve issues. Last week, I felt us take strides toward becoming an ensemble, and this week I felt everything falling apart. I honestly care for and respect everyone in my class as an individual, but we're not a cohesive group yet. I hope that we can become one.

We spent the second half of class doing our new etudes that begin silently. Big Show and Thrill had one that felt true, and it gave me a little bit of hope for us. Maybe we can overcome our problems if we try to relate to each other as artists first and as peers second.

D-Train and Two-Shots-Up finally broke the "make-out taboo" today (meaning that today was the first time that two people kissed in a scene). I'm glad that barrier has been broken down. Maybe now we'll be a little more free and less restricted. After all, once you have license to kiss someone or kill them (which happened yesterday) in an etude, everything else is pretty much automatically on the table.

I did two etudes with All-The-Way. Our professor commented that our second etude seemed to accomplish what we couldn't in our first. It was an extension of the same relationship (we had a "sister" bond), but we followed our impulses better the second time around. I totally held back an impulse to speak in the first etude, which temporarily stopped the scene dead in its tracks from the perspective of the audience.

Following your first impulse sounds like such an easy problem to fix, but it's really not. Society crushes that out of us in childhood. You're not supposed to say the first thing that comes into your head. You're not supposed to kiss someone or punch someone just because you feel like it. We live in a world that encourages a certain level of self-censorship. As actors, we have to fight against those rules. But when you're in your 20s or 30s, they're completely ingrained in you. Trying to change those teachings in order to produce truth on stage is easier said than done.



Thank goodness we have some time off now. I think we all need to cool down for a bit, and come back to our problems with a little distance on Tuesday.


All good things,

~A~