Friday, January 15

No Movement class for me today, because Movement Professor was working with partnering pairs.


VOICE
The final day of our week-long exam. We ended up on stage in trios improvising lines based off of Cowboy Mouth. When I said my text, Voice Professor said it was great, but had me repeat it louder (she said it was good for the small theatre that we were in, but for the sake of the exercise she wanted me to do it as though we were in the large theatre).

At the end of class, Voice Professor said that we all got "A"s on our exam. Go team '11!

Voice Professor mentioned that Paul Meier, the dialectician whose book we study from, is doing online group workshops for dialects during his sabbatical via webcam for only $40. I'm seriously considering signing up.
http://www.paulmeier.com/workshops.html



ACTING
Acting Professoressa wants us all to observe the actor playing Galileo in the Rep right now, and pay attention to his sense of economy. He doesn't push or force anything. He doesn't mess about. He doesn't do anything for the sake of doing. Everything he does is grounded, simple, and real. She wants us to incorporate that into our Shakespeare work, and stop feeling like we have to be doing something in order for it to be interesting.

Working on monologues, it was mentioned that the verb "to enlighten" enters most monologues as a "Doing" at some point in time.

My favorite note that I took of the day:
These are not Shakespeare's words; these are YOUR words. They are the character's words, and you are the character.

We discussed how actors who are less experienced tend to jump on anger in scenes, because it is easier and more accessible than many other things that characters go through (even love). Our job is to NOT jump on it, but to make every emotion real.


Next week, we're probably going to...

Tuesday: more monologue work
Wednesday: tablework for Shakespeare scenes
Thursday: end monologue work and tablework for scenes
Friday: class canceled (Acting Professoressa is flying out of town Thursday night. It's recruitment season!)



Our Shakespeare scenes are:

1. All's Well That Ends Well; I, iii
Lines 128 - end of scene
Duchess: Wifey
Helena: Two-Shots-Up

2. Julius Caesar; IV, iii
Lines 1-123
Cassius: O.D.
Brutus: D-Train

3. Richard III; IV, iv
Lines 197-431, with internal cuts
Richard: Big Show
Elizabeth: Angela

4. Measure for Measure; II, iv
Angelo: Iceman
Isabella: Newbie

5. Othello; IV, ii
Othello: Thrill
Desdemona: All-The-Way
Emilia: Wifey
Iago: Killer
Roderigo: D-Train