Thursday, October 29

THEATRE
I went to see Life in the Middle again this morning, and loved it even more than the first time. Seriously, it's a wonderful show. I was so moved by it. At one point I laughed and had an audience of middle schoolers staring at me as though I were a freak, reminding me perfectly of what it was like to have the pressure to fit in back in my younger days. At another point, I cried, and Big Show put his arm around me... Trust me, Big Show and I would not have gotten along as our middle school selves, but the fact that we can be good friends is I think encouraging when I think about all the snippets of young lives in the show; they will grow up, they will move on, they will do great things, and I hope that they will be able to put their differences aside and be supportive of each other as individuals one day.

I love the class of 2010. I'm so proud of them.


VOICE
We actually didn't have Voice class this morning (morning classes are canceled for 2nd-Years the morning after an Opening Night... THANK GOD), but I never wrote about yesterday's class, so here goes:

Voice Professor's big advice to the eight of us in The Mystery Plays going into Opening Night? Don't be seduced by the audience. Don't play into them. Don't ham it up. Excellent advice, I thought.

After many classes of trying to dissect our Shakespearean texts and identify rhetorical devices, we started discussing how to actually PLAY those choices.

With operatives, you can emphasize them by changing one of three things:
- your pitch
- your rate
- your volume

Voice Professor advised against over-using volume as the method of highlighting operatives. She said the most useful method is pitch-changing.


ACTING
Acting Professoressa had us start off class by taking turns reading aloud this article from the New York Times: Whispers Offstage? Could Be Actor's Next Line.

We talked a little about The Mystery Plays, and Acting Professoressa had a great piece of advice: when giving other actors compliments, try to be specific.

We moved onto discussing and scanning more sonnets. I got a migraine from frustration. When I got to this school, I really loved scansion and thought I had a good handle on it. But between Voice class and Acting class, I'm really confused now.

Our homework is to figure out two sets of actions/needs/"doings" for our sonnets. The first set should be literal, and the second should be sensual. So, for example, if I am literally trying "to persuade", I might be sensually trying "to juice". If I'm literally trying "to calm", I might sensually be trying, "to stroke". If I were literally trying "to persuade", I might be sensually trying "to lick". Things like that. The goal is to be able to change the partner by saying the poem.

Additionally, we are to read the first chapter of Playing Shakespeare by John Barton.

Acting Professoressa also recommended trying to "walk" the sonnet to get a feel for the rhythm and the irregularities of the text. (Someone -- I think it was Killer -- then made a joke about "Dancing with the Sonnets" that was pretty entertaining).


THE MYSTERY PLAYS
It's nice that the show is open now. It feels freer already. I realized yesterday just how much I truly love this show. It's such a great journey to travel through as an actor, and it has such positive messages. I dig it. And our audiences have seemed to love it, too, which is super cool.