Monday, April 20

Reunion
The reunion weekend was a total blast. Tons of people who graduated from the program in the '70s and '80s came back, as well as a few more recent grads. It was neat to talk to them about where they've worked (one guy was telling me about a run of a play he did in Siberia), what they've done (we watched one woman's commercial reel... and I'd actually seen two of the commercials), and their memories of the program.

We looked at old photographs, and they explained what the program used to be like. One woman said that the Rep company member who was her mentor was Deanna Dunagan (who recently won a Tony for her performance in August: Osage County). I saw a picture of a woman I've seen perform on Broadway (Jennifer Smith, who played Kitty in the original cast of The Drowsy Chaperone). I also saw a gorgeous picture of Linda Eder acting in the Rep many years ago. It was really neat.

I just kept thinking about the stories I'll tell people when I come back for a reunion someday. About meeting Brad Oscar and Tony Walton. About the quirks of all of my classmates. About the things I learned and the things I laughed at. Or maybe, instead of telling them, I'll just print out the quotations I've kept such extensive records of. ;)


Acting
There are a few concepts that we've discussed in Acting class lately that I haven't written about, so I thought I'd do that now.

During the end of our Chekhov project, we started doing a new thing... Before we enter a scene and a character, we take five minutes to sit (or lay down) with our eyes closed in an attempt to "lose the body" and "lose the face". The idea behind this is to become a blank slate and lose our habitual patterns of movement and expression in order to be free to create something new for the character. Movement Professor said that when we lose the body, we have the opportunity to "embody the soul."

Acting Professor says that, in the same vein as our five minute meditation, the day of a performance you should take a nap.

The work that we're doing with both Acting Professor & Movement Professor is a combination of Mary Overlie's Viewpoints (Movement Professor was in Mary Overlie's first Viewpoints class, alongside Anne Bogart) and Psychological Gesture. We are using this exploration of multiple techniques as a way to "provide food to the subconscious." We are "finding character, not building it."

We've discussed on multiple occasions how important it is to receive from your partners on stage. If you take all of your impulses from within, you will run out of impulses (and energy). You will end up squeezing things out of yourself until you are empty and your performance is heavy.

Acting Professor says that if at the end of a scene you can remember everything that you did but are vague on your partner's work, it's a very bad sign. Ideally, you should remember exactly what your partner did but have amnesia about your own performance. That means that you were receiving and responding.

The notes given to O.D. and me regarding our most recent run of "Find Me a Dream" were:
- Keep the relay of energy going between the two of us all the time, in a loop. Don't let it drop.
- We need to keep living in the pauses and have uninterrupted life.

My personal notes for the run were:
- I didn't lock my knees at the top of the scene, which is very good. :)
- As soon as I started seducing O.D., my knees locked and my back arched, which is bad.
- I had more vocal life in the scene than Movement Professor had ever heard me have before.
- I used a full range of physical tactics, which is good.
- At my entrance, I should not force one emotion or another. What happened to my character directly before the scene is a given circumstance; the way she's reacting to it is not. Also, how it affected her in the moment is not the same as how it will develop.
- O.D. and I do not need to kiss in the scene. Acting Professor says I was "radiating sexuality", and kissing him was somehow redundant.