Wednesday, November 19

Movement
Today, the males and females of the class were separated. The males went off to work with some trainer for agility training or something... I'm unclear on it. And the women? (Warning: Brace yourself, boys.) We learned stretches and exercises that will help alleviate the pain of cramps. No, I'm not kidding.


Voice
I noticed today that I'm not fully giving over to the Standing Tremor, and that I'm very aware of what my body is doing. I have a need to correct my own balance (hence why I don't really need a spotter). I checked with my voice professor, and she says that's perfectly alright, as I'm getting the release that I need anyway. Excellent.


Acting
We have officially been assigned scenes for our showing. We'll be doing the scenes in quite the same way that we've been doing text etudes (recording neutrally, deleting, and then following impulses) instead of doing them as scenes are normally done (with blocking, memorizing, and rehearsing). We're using 8 scenes from Late: A Cowboy Song by Sarah Ruhl (which you can find in this anthology). In ALL of the scenes, the male is playing Crick and the female is playing Mary.

Our scene pairings are (note: numbers do not coincide with ACTUAL scene numbers, but rather are our order):

1: O.D. & Two-Shots Up
2: Thrill & Me
2A: Wifey (she's doing a 1-person etude)
3: Killer & All-The-Way
4: Iceman & Two-Shots-Up
5: Big Show & All-the-Way
6: The Pro & Wifey
7: D-Train & Me

The reason that Wifey is doing a 1-person etude is so that things are more "even", as all the other females are doing 2 scenes. But since all the males are doing 1 scene, is that really "even"?

Part of me thinks the girls are being over-worked, or that the boys are being gypped. But then I remembered that in most theatrical works, the ratios are quite the opposite (with men having to play many roles while women don't get enough to do). I guess having a situation with things going the opposite way for once won't hurt anyone.

I'm actually really excited about both of the scenes I'm doing. The one I have with Thrill is where Mary tells Crick that she thinks she's pregnant, and he says they should get married. The scene I have with D-Train is where Crick threatens Mary with a baseball bat, and she ends up taking their child and leaving him. I'm pretty excited about them. I'm also glad to have been paired with Thrill & D-Train, as I've worked a lot with both of them in etudes, and I feel comfortable with each of them in this sort of exercise.



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This is the last week of Wilder! Wilder! Wilder!. Our strike is on Sunday. And then Tuesday is the first day of rehearsals for both The Imaginary Invalid (in which I'm understudying Béline) and The Winter's Tale (in which I'm understudying Paulina). It's all coming so fast!

Also, after Thanksgiving, we start having our "showings", which are like open classes that our professors, peers, and donors are all invited to attend. It's incredibly intimidating. Especially because our Acting showing (which we're doing these Scene Etudes for) is also counting as our Final Exam. YIKES!

I can't believe we're this close to the end of the semester already. It feels like everything in life has been moving at warp speed over the last several weeks. I hope I can continue to move with it for just a little while longer.

~A~