Tuesday, November 18

Movement
We did our movement monologues to a piece of "romantic music". It was interesting, but I just keep realizing how this movement experimentation is messing with my favored methods of text memorization. I know all the lines in my piece, but because we're trying not to assign meaning to them, I can't remember the order that they go in for the life of me. *sigh*

We used our handballs for more activities today. I'm not entirely certain as to what we're learning with them at this point, to be honest. I just keep trucking along and hope that it'll all make sense to me later.

We did some more of our alignment work, and it turns out I've been doing one of our things completely wrong in my home study. So now I have something new to work on.


Voice
Our voice professor gave us some notes about our Acting test from last week. She made some comments that applied to the whole group about breathing, sending and landing lines, and not falling off voice. Individually, my notes were that I was off-voice for my entire first etude with Two-Shots-Up, and that I did a great job in my etude with Thrill (except for the line "let me see", which she thinks was mostly because I didn't know what to do with the line).

We did more of the standing tremor. My professor has recommended that I modify it because of my history with back issues. So I will never go into a full standing tremor (which requires that your arms be raised above your head and causes your back to arch).


Acting
Something awesomely exciting happened for the first time in my acting class today...

We read from scripts!

I know, I know. It seems strange that I've been here for 3 months and this is the first time we're dealing with scripts. But I'm glad we've done everything that we've done. And now having a script to work with seems somehow liberating. Real given circumstances! Text that means something! Characters! It's all so exciting!!!

I think there are 6 scenes in total, all of which are between one man and one woman. Since my class is currently 7 men and 4 women, one of the scenes will be done twice, and 3 of the women will have to do more than one scene.

I'm actually kinda hoping that I end up being the female who only does one scene, just because rehearsals for BOTH of the plays I'm understudying start on Tuesday. I haven't started memorizing lines for one of them, and I've made very little headway on the other... So only having to memorize one scene for Acting class instead of two would be a blessing to me right now. We'll see what happens.


Homework
Analysis class was canceled (because of how awesomely we nailed Anna Christie on Thursday), so my group met to work on our stuff with Something You Did. One of our group members hadn't had time to read it yet, so we ended up reading it aloud so that she could discuss it with the rest of us. We're not really sure how we're supposed to present it, but luckily another group is going Thursday. Hopefully, we'll be able to gauge what we should do based on what they do, and we'll have it all figured out by Tuesday.


Tech
Three (3!) of the props I'm in charge of broke tonight during Wilder! Wilder! Wilder! Seriously, what are the odds of that?

One of them technically broke on Saturday, which is an embroidery hoop. We replaced it with a new hoop on Sunday, but it's much larger and problematic as a result. Today before the scene, the hoop popped off the embroidery. I managed to get it back on backstage by myself (note: those things are REALLY FREAKING HARD to put on!). But despite my best efforts, it came apart in the actress' hands on stage at the very end of the scene. DRAT!

Then there's a suitcase where the hinge somehow broke (I examined it, and I'm pretty sure that we can repair it with a hammer... the stage manager said she'd have people take care of it).

Lastly, there's a large stick that holds a piece of chalk, which the "stage manager" (a character that Thornton Wilder includes in some of his plays) uses to draw the outline of a room on the stage. I replaced the chalk today, as the last stick was getting low. But when I was putting it back into storage after the show, it was clear that the chalk had broken into several pieces somehow during the show. Hopefully it didn't cause any problems tonight. I'll just have to replace it again before tomorrow.