Tuesday, February 3

We were back to a normal class schedule today after a week of workshops. To be completely honest, I miss the workshops. They were a lot of fun. But now it's time to get back to the rest of my training.


Movement
We're going into our unit focusing on alignment for the next two weeks This is to help us learn a way to align ourselves and prepare for physical characterization transformation (externally). We're also focusing on combining the alignment with Fitzmaurice Voicework. And it's also to prepare us for easeful tumbling and acrobatics (our next unit) by learning more about our own anatomies and how to move at ease on a subtle level (with will make it easier to make corrections to form, and will allow us to take greater risks).


Voice
Still working on IPA stuff.

I seriously, SERIOUSLY do not understand that whole "honest/father" thing I wrote about yesterday. Luckily, it seems that I'm not alone in that. Most of my classmates are equally confused, which is somewhat reassuring.

Today we learned four new IPA vowels. The tricky thing is that they're actually technically all the same sound, but they have different markings. The sound? "Uh".

You might already know one of the indicators of this, which is a "schwa" (ə). This is used on unstressed syllables (like the first vowel in "apartment", the middle of "grenadine", or the end of "sofa"). The second is a "hut" (ʌ), which is the same thing but for stressed syllables (like the first in "hugging", the middle of "alumni", or the end of "corrupt").

The other two are used if the "uh" sound is followed by an "r". If it's stressed or one-syllable (like "girl", "unfurl", or "earnest"), then it's one symbol (ɜː), and if it's unstressed (like "lighter", "evergreen", or "other") then it's another (cannot find symbol).

So our homework for tonight is to find 2 examples of each of those (which I just realized that I accidentally did while writing this blog post... I'm awesome) and IPA them.


Acting
Our Movement Professor is going to start attending our Tuesday Acting classes, and today was her first day coming.

In our scene work, we've started to discuss making things repeatable (as they would need to be if you were actually in a show). The idea is that whatever "choices" you would make need to be justified through inner-technique. If you record your given circumstances in a way that involves them, then they will become inevitablilies. Therefore, you will not be making choices while acting, but rather the choices will be making themselves.

Our Acting Professor says that perhaps the worst crime of translation that has ever been committed in the world of theatre was the title of one of Stanislavski's books. The English title is "Building a Character", which my professor says is something that Stanislavski fought against. He wanted actors to be organic. The proper title should be something like "Growing a Character" or "Creating a Character". The idea of building or constructing anything is a mistake.

O.D. and I did a little snippet of our scene, but it didn't go particularly well today. Not having rehearsal costumes screwed things up a bit. Additionally, my Movement Professor said that my alignment was way off (more than usual), and that I'm going to be limited as an actor until I can fix it. So I guess I'm really going to have to work in the next couple of weeks.


Analysis
Our professor is still out of town, so someone who works for the Rep theatre ran our class today. She was really great, and we took on the next chunk of King Lear pretty slowly, reading it aloud (hey, when you've got a classroom full of actors, you might as well use them).