Friday, October 30

VOICE
Voice Professor recommends that we get off-book for our Portia monologue as much as possible over the weekend, as our exam is next week. While getting off-book, we have to memorize our scoring as well as the actual text.


MOVEMENT
Movement Professor is back! We showed her the jazz routine that we had been working on with Dance Instructor while she was gone. She seemed excited about it, and I think she's going to continue working with us on it.

Man, one day back in ballet was all it took to make my core muscles a little sore again. Crazy stuff.


MOVEMENT TUTORIAL
I had a mid-semester conference with Movement Professor over my lunch break. We talked about my frustrations during our stretching unit. I think she and I are both glad to be past that. She seems pretty happy with my progress in ballet work, and I am, too. Ballet is fun.

She showed me what I was doing wrong with my 2nd-Position tondu (or however you spell that). I was putting my leg too far back. So that's an easy fix. Also, I'm going too low in my pliés right now, but I can fix that, too.


ACTING
Two-Shots-Up gave a presentation about the Booth family as part of The Great Actor Series. Junius Brutus Booth was the father of Junius Brutus Booth Jr., Edwin Booth, and John Wilkes Booth (who, of course, became more well-known for assassinating President Lincoln than for his acting). Edwin Booth was a brilliant and famous actor, but it was hard for him to find work after his brother went nuts. Interesting stuff.

We had all read the first chapter of Playing Shakespeare by John Barton, and discussed his concept of The Two Traditions. We also discussed the pros and cons of contemporizing Shakespeare.

After that was our Rhetoric lesson. Here's a list of rhetorical devices from one of our many hand-outs.

BUILDS
Straight Builds
Shared Builds

COMPARE & CONTRAST
Antithesis
Oxymoron
Paradox

DOUBLE ENTENDRE
Pun
Bawdy

FOCUS
Asides
Soliloquies

IMAGERY
Simile
Metaphor
Apostrophe
Personification

REPETITION
Beginning
Ending
Length

RHYME
Rhyme
Half-Rhyme
Historic Rhyme
End Rhyme

SOUND
Alliteration
Assonance
Onomatopoeia


We went through explanations of all of these, as well as several examples. After that, Acting Professoressa passed around a basket with quotations from various Shakespearean plays, and we all got to pick a couple out, and then try to identify the devices present in that text. It was fun.

A couple more things that we discussed that weren't on that sheet:

- "Thou" was a less formal address than "You". It's important to note when characters switch back and forth between the two. (like Lady Capulet does in Romeo and Juliet, III, v)

- Choose against making questions rhetorical. It's not very active, and therefore not useful in persuasion. It's better to make them real questions.


Acting Professoressa has asked us to try to be off-book with our sonnets by Tuesday.