10/6/09

Tuesday, October 6

ELLA HICKSON & CREW WORKSHOP
In lieu of Voice and Movement today, we had a workshop. It was a discussion with Ella Hickson (the playwright/director of Eight, which some of my classmates will be performing in as part of the Ringling International Arts Festival this week). Ella is 24, as I am, which makes me feel wholly unaccomplished next to her. She also had some of her cast members who traveled from the UK with her be part of her panel as well.

Some key notes I took down:
- Ella has never cast anyone that she hadn't already met, seen perform, or heard about from a friend/colleague.
- She recommends keeping an eye out for people who are not going into acting/theatre professionally, but who are good "social secretaries" (the kinds of people who like to look good, throw parties, and invite people to things), because they're going to help you make excellent connections (and they might make great producers in the future).
- Try to control your Google hits. If you can get a lot of positive reviews of yourself online, it's going to help you. (The first thing she does after auditioning people is go back home and Google them.)
- Ella's key to the way the industry works: "Lie, and make friends."
- Be proactive. Write letters to every agent around saying, "Come and see me in this show I'm doing." Even if they don't come, they won't think any less of you, and it might impress upon them how badly you want a chance.
- Go to every show you can.
- Sell yourself. You are your own business.
- Don't go meet a big wig of some theatre if you have never seen a show at that theatre.

The cast also advised us of what companies and theatres we should look at while we're studying abroad in London in May (oh my God, I'm going to be in London in May!!!). They said that while we're there, we should try to attend workshops, and that we shouldn't rule out the possibility of auditioning (or even making our own work). They also said not to do a British dialect if we do audition there (as Ella put it, "There's no point to you impersonating what they already have two billion of").


ACTING
We ran the three shows and then got notes. Acting Professoressa says that The Greeks are a crash course in technique, and that we should expect a lot of notes on details. The details are what make us pros, and they make a huge difference.

I'm really proud of the fact that I DIDN'T get notes on some of the things I usually get notes on (things like "playing the problem" or not being likable enough). But I still got a heaping share of them.

- Be unable to say "Troy" without bursting with pride.
- Link everything within each beat.
- Play the need; play the beats. At each new beat, plug back into need.
- Stop paraphrasing.
- At the line, "I am merely pleasant", be pleasant.
- THERE IS NO ROOM FOR PAUSING WHEN TRYING TO SAVE SON'S LIFE! (Acting Professoressa said that it's even stronger than just regular linking.)
- Stop hitting the words "not" and "don't" (a huge habit of mine, apparently).
- And then a couple of specific notes in which I made the wrong word in the sentence operative.

And the hardest note? As Andromache, I say goodbye to my son, telling him that I'm going to die so that he can live. Acting Professoressa wants me to spend some time trying to really understand the concept of loss, particularly loss regarding someone/something that I'm responsible for. She asked if I'd ever had a pet die, but I really haven't (unless you count a goldfish when I was 4...).

I also got a note in Helen today. Apparently I did a "funny walk", and I shouldn't. (I honestly don't even remember doing it... so I guess I just have to be conscious of where my body is in space.)


MYSTERY PLAYS
We got further with blocking the 2nd Act/play, Ghost Children, and then we reviewed everything we've blocked so far.

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