Tuesday, February 10

Hello to all prospective students of my grad school! I understand that some people have been directed to this blog by my professors. If you have any questions (seriously, anything... no matter how random), by all means, email me. I usually respond to emails as soon as I get them. angelaacts(at)gmail.com


Movement
Today our alignment work focused on our arms. We did one thing that made most people's hands tingle. And we've now learned The Fish, which is a tremoring position that we hadn't learned in Voice class (it's seems like it's a position that requires supervision; I can see how someone could get injured if they weren't being careful).


Voice
We spent the day doing self-testing. The words we're practicing with seem to be getting progressively more difficult. The words I messed up today were "arrow" (I used a schwa with r-coloring, when I should've used a linking-r because it's intervocalic) and "jury" (for the middle vowel, I used the one in the word "stir". It's actually supposed to be the vowel in the word "would").

We briefly discussed when to use "liquid-u" sounds (which is when you say a "y"-ish sound before a "u"). The general rule is to use liquid-u sounds after the letters "t", "d", "n", and sometimes "l" (hence why "Tuesday", "duty", and "new" have them, but "crew" doesn't).

We also discussed the regional substitution of the "sit" vowel for the "met" vowel. For example, in some parts of the country, "pin" and "pen" sound the same (also "tin/ten", "tint/tent"). It happens in words that are spelled with "en" and "em". For example, one of my classmates used the "sit" substitution in the word "September". If you have that substitution, it's something that you have to pay special attention to when learning lines (I suppose "attention" and "when" are good examples, actually).

Tonight our homework is to review the vowels of "all", "honest", and "fathers".


Student Rep
My student rep meeting today was when I was informed that my professors now know about my blog. *waves to Analysis Professor* Luckily, they don't plan to sue me. :) But I did get a couple of "Don't you dare put that on your blog!" comments during the day.


Acting
We discussed how important it is to be fully accepting of the character you're playing. If you can find a way to love the character, that is 90% of your success.

Our professor also said not to keep your foot on the break in your acting unless you're doing film work.

When recording our lines (which is sort of like memorizing them... but not), it's important to keep openness through the chest, a sense of expansion, and to continue to send and land with the voice. If you do this as you're putting the lines into your brain, you will continue to do it with those things in mind during the scene without having to focus on them.

My scene with O.D. went pretty well, I thought. We ended up doing far more of the scene than we had anticipated (3 pages more than we had recorded, in fact... but the lines just started saying themselves).

Our Movement Professor attended class today. She let me know that I was locking my knees from the moment I stepped on stage. It's still really difficult for me to neither lock my knees nor bend them. I feel a little unstable (which is probably because I'm not connecting my psoas muscles through my body properly). But I'm working on it.

I was told to record keeping my hands away from my face, and without tensing my hands. At the moment, I'm not recording enough ease. I was also given the note that I need to be more comfortable in my costume (I thought I was comfortable in it... but apparently it's not reading that way). I also need to make sure I'm sending and landing all my lines (which is not always easy to do when you're in an intimate scene).


Analysis
We discussed Act 4, Scene vi of King Lear, which was the scene that we had researched, dissected, summarized, and paraphrased for class today. Our Analysis Professor refers to it as being "the most meta-theatrical scene in all of Shakespeare." In the Elizabethan era, most scenery was created through descriptive language, as opposed to actual sets. In this scene, a man (Edgar, disguised as Poor Tom of Bedlam) is trying to convince a blind man (Gloucester, his father) that they are on a very high, very dangerous cliff. In actuality, they are on level ground. The scene is therefore written in a way that allows Edgar to fool Gloucester with his description, but allows the audience to understand that they are not, in fact on this imaginary cliff.

We're presenting various aspects of Titus Andronicus on Thursday. I'm in the "Imagery/Mythology" group with All-the-Way, Wifey, and Iceman. And then I have a paper on the action of that play (using the imagery from my research to support it) due Monday.


Understudying
Today was a big milestone for my class; it was the first time that one of us has had to go on for an understudy role. Killer went on for Claude DeAria in The Imaginary Invalid. Several of us went to see it and support him. He did a really terrific job, and made us incredibly proud. CONGRATULATIONS KILLER!

Our Imaginary Invalid understudy run is on Saturday morning at 9am (yeesh... I'm not used to having to act that early in the morning). I know Analysis Professor will be there, and some of the other professors might be as well (as well as donors, classmates, and friends). I'm actually looking forward to it. I think I've got it pretty well down at this point. I think it'll be fun. And getting to act on that stage will be a total thrill.

I'm going to try to see The Winter's Tale again tomorrow. I haven't seen it since opening night, so I really need to.


All good things,

~A~