Tuesday, September 22

VOICE
We began by doing pitch exploration, from the bottoms of our ranges to the tops of our ranges (I think Voice Professor called it a "pitch ladder" at one point, but I might have made that up just now), just trying to notice things about our voices. We paid attention to the gaps in the pitches, when we have jaw tension, when we're straining the larynx, etc. Voice Professor advised that we not let our gaze shift upwards, as it often leads to your head going back and down (as opposed to the goal of "freely forward and up").

Voice Professor warned me that I need to watch out for facial tension, particularly in my upper register.

After that, we did "silent screaming", and then voiced our screaming. When I do this sort of scream, I have a lot of "uvular trill". It's kind of bizarre sounding, but Voice Professor said it's good.

Our homework for the night is to try to figure out what the differences are between "screaming", "hollering", and "singing" vocally. (I didn't ask if we should think about "yelling" or "shouting" or any other possibly confused verbs.)


MOVEMENT
We did a lot of toning exercises today. Movement Professor kept encouraging us by mentioning all the things we were doing to help our bodies for the future. And now, I'm going to give you a quotation several days ahead of time, because it was so entertaining.

"Up and two, and down and two. And up and two, and down and two. And miniskirts and two, and shorts and two. And briefs and two, and speedo and two. And catsuit and two, and scuba-gear and two."

We worked on contact improv with text again, but this time we used our poetry text instead of Shakespeare monologues. It was so much easier! And extremely fun and exciting. My partner was Big Show, and we ended up finding some great moments of communion.


ACTING
We spent today working on Andromache. I worked over the weekend on memorizing my lines. I don't have them down perfectly yet, but I think I did okay considering how much I have to remember. Here are some of the notes I got from Acting Professoressa:

- Be careful about playing the quality of the word instead of the intention behind it.
- Hold onto need in the opening monologue.
- Keep focused on the "other" (which, in that monologue, refers to "areopagites" in the audience... which is tricky, since no one is actually there yet) unless experiencing moments of pure discovery.
- When reciting lists, don't know that you're going to say the next thing in the list.
- Stop smiling unnecessarily or accidentally.
- Don't play a point of view; have a point of view and share it.
- Make sure to send and land all lines.
- Don't play emotions; just focus on changing the minds of the areopagites. Get them on your side.
- Every time Hermione comes near the shrine, warn her in a non-verbal way to get away.
- Use the vowel in the word "alive".
- In the sentence, "I'm not going to crawl to you", avoid hitting the word "not". Instead, hit the word "crawl".

I'm meeting with Acting Professoressa for another private rehearsal over my lunch break on Friday to work on my opening monologue more.