Wednesday, September 9

VOICE
We spent the day on forward placement and head resonance, which has proven tricky for me thus far in my training. I talked to Voice Professor a little after class. I think that I lose all my forward placement when I try to prepare my vocal support and body resonance. Since those things come relatively easily for me, I asked if I could try skipping over those parts of the warm-up for a little bit to see if it helped. She said that at this point in the training, we can begin to start tailoring things to our own needs, so I can go ahead and experiment with it. I hope it will help. I've noticed that I have more forward placement in daily life than I do in class, so it's not impossible... it's just a challenge.

Next week, Voice Professor is going to demonstrate using a Neti Pot for the class. Most people seem to be familiar with the concept, but I've never done it. I'll let you know how that goes.


MOVEMENT
Our class is STRONG, man. We did really difficult stretching stuff today for a good 45 minutes of class, and that was post jumping rope. We're pretty awesome.

Little Bears again! Today I was paired with O.D., whom I've never worked with before with this stuff. I'm not as strong as most people in my class, so he can't grab onto my body the way he occasionally does with other classmates (koala-style), and he's not as flexible as I am, so we can't just tumble in tandem like I occasionally do with other classmates. It took a little bit of time before we found a common movement language, but we got there.


ACTING
We started the process of blocking Andromache. The tricky part of this? The first 2+ pages is me alone on a platform delivering an exposition-y monologue to the "areopagites" (a jury of people, who are unwittingly played by the first few rows of audience members). Because the scene is just me, I was alone on stage while Acting Professoressa and my ten classmates sat in the audience of the theatre. A little bit weird for me. After working for about an hour (and only getting through about half the monologue), we took a break, and when we returned we skipped ahead in the script to a place where other characters started entering the stage. Thank goodness. Acting Professoressa said that she and I will meet another time to finish working on the monologue.

Andromache has a really different feel to it than Electra. In Electra, the chorus is a group of Electra's loyal supporters. In Andromache, there are women who are slaves like Andromache (Newbie & Two-Shots-Up), and the others are soldiers. In Electra, people go on offense, but Andromache is mostly about defense (at least, for me it is). I'm pretty stoked about both of them.

We're going to begin blocking Helen tomorrow. Yay!