Thursday, October 16

MOVEMENT
One of our home-study assignments has been the "Cunningham Big Back Stretch". I haven't mentioned it because it's a multi-step stretch and I'm not sure that I can properly explain it without demonstrating it. But I figured I should mention it. So there you are.

We worked on our Capoeira kicks today. Our Capoeira workshop is next week, so we've got to get whipped into shape before then. Those kicks take a lot out of me.

We've also started doing some exercises that are related to Viewpoints. My professor was in the very first Viewpoints class that Mary Overlie ever taught (Anne Bogart was one of her classmates). We're doing this thing where everyone walks around the room with the idea that they're standing on an imaginary grid and have to make 90-degree turns... Like most of my classwork, it's hard to explain, but it's pretty neat.


VOICE
We had our destructuring (tremoring) exam today. I can't think of anything that I did wrong, so I assume I did well on it. But I guess I'll find out sooner or later.

We started focusing on "r" sounds (the "ruh" as in "red" or "right"). My tongue is doing the correct thing during it (pointed toward the back of my aveloar ridge and flicking backward), but I'm worried that I'm using my lips in the sound creation (which you're not supposed to). I spent some time tonight saying words that start with "r" sounds while smiling, to make certain that my lips were not involved. Hopefully, that will help.


ACTING
We did exercises as a group to begin class, which I was glad about. They really do help to instill the idea of ensemble while simultaneously putting us into contact with our creative centers. I dig them.

I had an etude with Thrill today that I thought went particularly well. Our scene ended up being about a couple who had just moved into their first home. And while I've had etudes in the past that I thought were more interesting, dramatic, or fun, I think this one had more honesty in it.

The goal of an etude is to get to a state of "I Am", where you are no longer acting, but truly living. The reason I think I hit "I Am" today is that after the exercise ended, I couldn't remember half of what happened or why it happened; it had just happened. I didn't force anything, I didn't create anything, I just lived it. It was neat.

The other etudes today all got pretty heavy. Two-Shots-Up started crying in one when All-The-Way was apologizing for an unknown accident. D-Train tried to cheer up Iceman after the death of his mother with a clarinet that he bought for $5 (which turned out to be broken). Killer was moving out of The Pro's apartment after a bad break-up. And then O.D. was trying to comfort Big Show when a dinner party he was planning brought up the pain of his friend's death.

Our professor said today that if a scene feels like it's dragging on for too long, it's usually not because people aren't picking up their cues, but rather because they're not following their impulses. He also said that the most important gift for an actor to have is the possibility to completely adopt the life of someone else (a point that was raised after Big Show mirrored O.D.'s body language and physical state exactly while in an etude).

Tomorrow, we have an "etude exam" (although I'm not really sure if etudes are something that you can have an exam on... but then, I'm just a student here). A couple of our other professors are probably going to show up to watch, which of course will be a bit nerve-inducing. I hope we can all do as well as we've been doing all this week. There has been a lot of really good work in the last few days, and I'd love to be able to keep it up.


ANALYSIS
I don't think I understand The Wild Duck, but I've decided that I like it. It's quite the reverse of A Doll House (strange, as they were both written by Ibsen), where the play shows how destructive lies can be and how important it is that truth come out. In The Wild Duck, lies are what save people, and truth is a negative, destructive force.

Our paper analyzing the action of The Wild Duck is due next week. And for Tuesday we're reading Joe Turner's Come and Gone by August Wilson.


MOVEMENT TUTORIAL
It wasn't really a tutorial, but I'm going to call it one. It was a mid-semester review with my professor to discuss my progress in the class. She says she can tell that I've been working hard, and says I've already made improvements with my alignment. But, because I'm flexible, she says I hyper-extend body parts a great deal (particularly my spine).

She says the biggest things that I have to work on are my form and my kinesthetic awareness (knowledge of where my body is in space). While my flexibility will help me with some things when we get into tumbling (she says she thinks I'll be able to do some bends and flips well), my lack of form and awareness will prevent me from doing others (she predicts that handstands are going to be difficult for me, as they require your body to be in a single plane in space, and I won't be able to feel whether I'm in one or not).