Friday, April 10

Movement
We started a different dance for West Side Story that is going to somehow lead into the other one. Big Show and I are partners. Different pairs have different blocking. For example, some girls do a pencil turn before going into a lift in first position, but I skip the pencil turn and Big Show lifts me in second position (which is apparently a more difficult lift for the guys, but Big Show is super strong).

I finally did the back-walkover move with O.D. and Big Show, and it worked out perfectly. I'm really excited about it.


Voice
We finally put the entire Wood Demon monologue together. Voice Professor gave me two notes on my read of it:

1. more "t" in the "at" of "looking at me"
2. unvoice the "wh" in "When"

As a general note to the class, she said to make sure to "go up for the 'l' in 'sensible' nice and hard."

Our exam is on Tuesday. I'm not worried about it.


Acting
I had a private meeting with Acting Professor to discuss my progress. He said to keep up the good work. He also said that in Act IV, some people are "getting drunk on emotion" and stopping the flow of their impulses, and that I should not allow myself to do that.

Class started with notes from Thursday's run from Movement Professor, which included:

- when the scene changes from one focus of attention to another, do not allow the relay of energy to get dropped
- when silent, you need MORE attention and outward energy
- our heads are falling back in down (instead of "freely forward and up"), especially when sitting in chairs
- more upright carriage without it being tight
- don't get stuck in vocal patterns
- when turning head, don't cut off the response from the body (there should at least be some spiral)

Acting Professor gave one general note... Reach into deeper calm. Prepare in advance. Don't be nervous.

Several 3rd-years came to our run, as well as Voice Professor.

At the end of the run, we got notes. Acting Professor said that I was nervous all through the 1st Act, and halfway through the 4th Act. When I got to the line, "The birds are migrating already. Swans. Or maybe they're geese. Oh, you happy things!", I finally settled into things (he said that was the best it had ever been), and was fine from there on out. He said that I need to know about myself that nerves creep into my work.

I was disappointed that the last run we had of this didn't go as well for me as it had been going (especially since this was the one time we had an audience). But I guess it's just a learning experience. And maybe now I'll be less nervous during our Showing in a couple of weeks.


Tech
I did a lot of sitting around in the dark, aside from prepping food and washing dishes. Big Show is sick and we don't want him to get any of the actors sick, so at the moment I'm doing all of the dish washing and food preparation alone so that he won't contaminate anything with his contagion (Tangent: did I just paraphrase Adriana in Comedy of Errors? That sounded familiar and I'm not quite sure why).

While sitting backstage I read Machinal, which is one of the plays we'll be doing next year. I had seen it before, but never read it. I'm really excited about it.