Wednesday, October 22

CAPOEIRA WORKSHOP
We started learning take-down moves. I ended up getting incredibly dizzy and having to stop. It's a very weird feeling to be sitting on the floor, yet still feeling like you're about to fall down. Not cool. Also, my whole body hurts. I don't think I was built for Capoeira. :(


MOVEMENT
We spent pretty much the entire class period discussing our readings from Blink. The gist of the conversation: We all have an abilit to sense truth, but we ignore it because we've been trained to trust the scientific and the analytic. As actors, we need to return to those gut reactions, as nine times out of ten they will create things that are truthful.

We also discussed the importance of not letting one performance bleed into the next. You can't expect that you're going to get the same thing from your scene partner tonight that you had last night. You can't force that connection to remain the same. You will either be thrown off when you get something different, or you will be pushing the entire time in order to manufacture what you had before.


GROUP THERAPY
Every once in awhile, I feel like the resident freak of my class. It might be because of my big tremors, my frequent hiccoughs, people looking at me like I have two heads when I ask questions... It happens. And though most of the time I'm comfortable being exactly who I am, there are times when I feel like I'm in high school all over again, and I'm not really sure how I'd have to mold myself to fit in.

Today was definitely one of those days. I felt like the odd man out. Worse than that, actually. I felt like the alien.

I tried to voice some concerns that I had in group therapy, but the responses that I got just made me feel even less comfortable than I was going into the meeting. And at the end, there were so many things that I really needed to say, but didn't have time for. In the ten minute break between therapy and class, I did everything I could to release my aggression, but I was upset for the rest of the day. To be honest, I'm still upset.


ACTING
Class was short today, and it felt less complete than normal. There were a few etudes done, but nothing earth-shattering (or at least, not foot-licking level).


THEATRE
The reason we were released from Acting early was so that we could see the 2nd-Years performing "The Greeks" (a project for Acting II where they are directed in scenes from Greek plays... This year, they were The Trojan Women and Agamemnon. It was clear that they were being done more for educational purposes than for entertainment value. There were some great moments, and there were some weak ones. But it sounds like "The Greeks" are that way every year. To their credit, I think that the 2nd-Years were probably doing what they were asked to do to the best of their abilities; some were just more comfortable doing that than others.


TECH CALL
D-Train, Thrill, Big Show, Killer, Iceman, and I were chosen to stay after the show to work on tech stuff. We had to load a big van with the set pieces and props from "The Greeks", and then unpack them in the props storage facility. It was all that difficult; just annoying.



I'm going to stay up a bit longer to work on my Wild Duck paper. I have virtually nothing done so far, and it's due Friday. As is our paper for Movement class on observing couples both in life and in television. Terrific.