Tuesday, October 20

VOICE
We continued scoring our texts, which included:
- Putting brackets around complete thoughts (full sentences)
- Putting asterisks at the end of verse lines that contain enjambment (which is when there's no punctuation at the end of the line and the thought flows into the next line)
- Putting boxes around antithetical words and connecting the boxes with a line
- Numbering items in lists
- Putting parentheses around parenthetical statements

We also spent some time on inflection, which was a new topic for the day. Here's my chart:

INFLECTION
. (period) = downward
! (exclamation point) = sustained OR upward OR downward
? (question mark) = upward (in Shakespeare)
, (comma) = upward OR sustained
: (colon) = sustained
; (semi-colon) = upward OR sustained
- (dash) = sustained

NOTE: There is no relationship between downward inflection and vocal energy.

Tomorrow we're going to head into operatives. Voice Professor has already warned us that it's going to be a tension-filled lesson.


MOVEMENT
Movement Professor is out of town, so our Waltz/Tap Instructor stepped in for the day to work on ballet with us. We also did some jazz things, including combinations across the floor with different focuses.

I have to say, I really love this dancing stuff. It's so joy-inducing. And even when I'm screwing it up, it still makes me happy. :)


MYSTERY PLAYS
We did a run in front of several 1st-Years who are going to be working crew for us in various capacities. Exciting! It actually went pretty well (and no one seemed more shocked than our director).

Lucy, my lawyer character, really started feeling like a person today. She's growing, and I'm relieved. Amanda, my agent character, is still a little disjointed, but she's getting there.

Voice Professor handed me the following notes:
- "...read about this wreck thing..." - unclear
- "this is buzz" - z more strongly
- Amanda's voice is wonderful! Know that she uses glottal attacks in her "dialect", which sounds exactly right for the character you've created. Your job is to take extra care of your voice since this falls into the "vocal extreme" type category. Great work!
- Excellent use of speech to carve out character + really tell the story
- I'll (this was a note on the vowel sound I used being too Midwestern)
- "You were afraid that your father..." - operative (it's italics)

My notes from the Director were:
- Amanda needs to pick up cues, especially in the first two scenes, and really move things along. (Voice Professor clarified that this is NOT a note about pacing, but just about external cuing).
- Amanda should not get too excited about Burke Denning's treatment
- Lucy needs to help energize scene and move it along


THEATRE
Over the weekend, I had TWO opportunities to see the 3rd-Year Class in action.

On Sunday night, I went to In Progress: The London Monologues. As part of our program, students go to London for 6 weeks to study during the summer after 2nd-Year (which means I'm going in May!). One of the classes we take there is a writing class, in which students end up writing a 20-minute monologue. Five members of the 3rd-year class did a Late Night show to let us see what they've been working on.

The monologues were SO GOOD. Oh, wow. I laughed, I cried, I loved. I am simultaneously excited for and terrified of the writing class in my future. I hope I can write something as interesting, funny, and moving as all of them did so successfully.

The second show was an ensemble piece of interview-theatre that the entire 3rd-Year class compiled/wrote/performed, called Life in the Middle. It was so much fun! I went to the Monday matinee in which the majority of the audience was comprised of middle schoolers (some of whom had been the ones interviewed for the project). It really transported me back to my middle school days (1995-1998, for the record... which suddenly seems not that long ago). I am incredibly proud of them. :)