Monday, January 5

I am so anxious to get back to classwork, you have no idea.

I went to the school today and did etudes with D-Train, Iceman, and All-The-Way for about an hour, which was pretty great. I've been doing work on my own, but it really isn't the same thing. My creative subconscious needs more room to stretch than my living room allows.

After that I met with Two-Shots-Up (she's understudying Angelique) and the 3rd-year who is understudying Argan to work on Imaginary Invalid scenes. We made it through Act I, and I think we're doing pretty well. I'm still paraphrasing, but it's not nearly as bad as it was even a few days ago. I'm really quite pleased.

The weird thing is trying to recreate someone else's performance in a way that is truthful for me, but also close enough to the original that it wouldn't throw off anything in the play. The actor I'm understudying is really well-trained (she actually graduated from my program a few years ago), and I'm just not up to her skill level yet. I'm just going to do the best I can, and hope that it's sufficient.

I went out with Two-Shots-Up to try to buy shoes for our Ballroom Workshop (which starts on Thursday, I believe), but the store was closed. Just one more thing to do tomorrow, I guess.

For our Acting class, we have a "Character Development" assignment that we'll be working on this semester. It sounds like we'll be adapting characters from literature and creating scenes based on that text. The texts we've been assigned are collections of stories by Kurt Vonnegut called Welcome to the Monkey House and Bagombo Snuff Box. We're supposed to focus on four stories from each one. I've read the ones from Monkey House in a Word document that Killer somehow tracked down. I just got Snuff Box in the mail today, so hopefully I can read those tomorrow. We're supposed to let our professor know which characters we're drawn to.

I had a Movement Tutorial with my professor last week to work on what she calls "The Daily Dozen" alignment exercises. There are some that she has decided I don't need to do because my upper body is already open and released. But some of the ones focusing on my spine and lower body she wants me to do twice a day. They're not strenuous by any means, but it's difficult for me to feel when I'm doing things properly with my spine or psoas muscles right now. It's a challenge.

I just got my Anatomy Coloring Book in the mail that my professor recommended I get. She wants me to start with the spine, followed by the pelvis, and then the femurs. Hopefully it will help me to understand my body better.

I've been watching floral designers on YouTube and reading about it online, as I haven't been able to watch any yet. I'm hoping to see some in person in the next couple of days. I already see a potential problem with my props... I don't want to use real flowers, as that would be very expensive. But fake flowers just don't move the way real ones do (especially since I think I'm going to focus on exotic design, which involves things like puncturing and folding leaves). And I'm not sure of a good way to cut the stems of fake flowers... This could be tricky.

I think I'm also supposed to read The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill for Textual Analysis class before Thursday, but I haven't started it... Whoops. Hopefully I'll be able to do that Wednesday. Wish me luck.

I'm off to do some Chekov exercises, try to move my spine, and read some Vonnegut!

~A~