Thursday, April 16

I would like to invite those readers who are in my community to attend our "Showings" in the next several days. Showings are more like "open classes" than "performances". It's just a chance to see the kinds of things that 1st and 2nd year students have been working on in our classes this semester. If you're interested, they are...

Voice Showing (1st & 2nd years)
Friday, April 17
11am-12pm
(Allen Studio, 2nd floor)

Movement Showing (1st & 2nd years)
Wednesday, April 22
10:30am
(Movement Studio, 1st floor)

Acting II Showing (2nd years)
Thursday, April 23
3:30pm-5:00pm
(Allen Studio, 2nd floor)

Acting I Showing (1st years)
Friday, April 24
3pm-5pm
(Cooley Studio, 2nd floor)


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Movement
We started by running our West Side Story stuff. The first time we ran it, my section with O.D. and Big Show went abysmally wrong. I think we've fixed it now... I hope, I hope.

Acting Professor came in, and we began what we will be working on for the final two weeks of class (side note: how did we get to the final two weeks of class so quickly?). We're working with bringing Psychological Gesture and Viewpoints work into the characterizations for our Vonnegut scenes.

Acting Professor led us through a psychological gesture exercise, first working with our characters from Three Sisters as those are fresher to us at the moment. I kept being convinced that I was doing it wrong (despite Acting Professor saying that the only way to do it wrong would be to stop doing anything). It should be interesting to apply it to character work.


Voice
We went into the big theatre to continue our work with intimate scenes. Unfortunately, Killer and I didn't get to work on the mainstage (because we went yesterday). But Voice Professor has assured us that we'll be the first to go next semester (as our Voice training will pick up exactly where we leave off).


Acting
Acting Professor told me to write the following on my blog: Costumes help actors transform. He says he doesn't understand why this isn't obvious to actors. If you are in sweatpants and a t-shirt, you will not be able to fully realize the reality of playing, say, a 1960s actress at a country club (which is my character... I've been doing it in a green rhinestoned cocktail dress and high heels as of late). He recently heard a teacher say that if you put a kid in jeans, he'll act like a kid; if you put a kid in a suit, he'll act differently. The same applies to actors. Your clothing informs you of a lot, consciously and subconsciously.

Yesterday when O.D. and I did our "Find Me a Dream" Vonnegut scene, Acting Professor timed it. He said it was only 8 minutes long (far shy of our 15 minute maximum). It feels so much longer than that, because there's so much life being played out in it. It's really pretty cool actually. We got great comments yesterday (about how at times the space really transforms in our scene, and about how it was a "satisfying artistic experience"), so I was a little nervous about how it would run today.

Acting Professor said that the most successful parts of the scene were when things ran differently than they had before. The less honest parts were when I tried to do something the way I did it yesterday because I knew it had been successful before. He said it was clear that I was perfectly happy to do the scene a completely different way each time, and that I should give myself the freedom to do just that. I raised the issue of consistency, wondering if it was problematic that I have difficulty repeating things from previous performances/rehearsals in a truthful way. He said that the most important thing is to play it truthfully. He says that, whatever might end up happening in the scene, the character I've created is consistent. She might not do the same things every time, but she is always Hildy. Now that I have her in me, I can be free in what I do with her.

The other great piece of feedback that I got today is that Hildy should be more physically aggressive than Andy (O.D.), because we can gather from the text that she is far more sexually experienced. I hadn't put that into the character, and I'm excited to work with that concept tomorrow. I think it'll add a lot to the scene.

Acting Professor also said it's important that Hildy realizes that all the weird, awkward behavior from Andy is a result of him finding her attractive. She needs to know that she has this effect on men. She needs to use it to her advantage.

Man, acting is fun!

(By the by, Acting Professor did a pretty great Marlon Brando impression today that made us laugh.)


Analysis
We discussed In This Corner by Steven Drukman, which is about professional boxer Joe Louis. I really enjoyed the story.

I'd write more about these new plays we're discussing, but it's difficult to explain things out of context, and I assume that the people reading this blog are unfamiliar with most of these new works.


Tech
The show went well, but there was a very small audience, and it was a pretty quiet audience. (Note to audiences: it's okay to cry, laugh, applaud, or otherwise have an emotional response to a play or musical)


Theatre
Tonight was the closing performance of Inventing Van Gogh. I snuck in after I was done with Three Postcards for the night. I only saw the last 20 minutes or so, but it was beautiful. It had grown so much since the opening (and I thought the opening was pretty terrific). I was so pleased for the actors. It was lovely, and the audience loved it. What a great way to end a run.