Friday, January 29

ROY HART WORKSHOP
We came in today with a few lines of memorized text in order to play a version of "God/Creature". This time, the "master/god" was doing movement stuff. The "creature/slave" had to mimic the movements, and let their voice follow the movement. We'd played something similar in Movement class before, and we generally have fun doing it. I was partnered with Killer, which is always nice. We're a good pairing for movement whatnot (although, technically, I guess this qualifies as "voice whatnot", but still).

We went low AND high today, which was fun. We went up to high notes saying "Eat the apple, my dear" in an evil witch voice, followed by evil laughter.

I hit a C3 (the C an octave below middle C) and a D6 (a "high D"), and All-The-Way pointed out that I have a 4-octave range. Really cool. Now, mind you, When I hit the notes at either end of my range, they are not pretty notes. It's like gargling on one end and shrieking on the other. I can really only *sing* from like the F3 (the F below middle C) to somewhere around A6 ("high A"). But it's still neat.



FILM WORKSHOP
The Film Workshop is this weekend, but my class is unfortunately mostly unable to participate, due to Machinal rehearsal conflicts. Today, O.D. and I attended the first part of the workshop with all the 1st-Year students.

We talked for awhile with the film professor about the differences between film acting and theatre acting. She says she thinks that on film, actors are responsible for less of the story. In some ways, this is a luxury. We talked about the difference between depth and breadth in acting.

We did an exercise in which we had to come up with a story from our own lives to tell to a partner on camera, and we had to come up with a backstory and a reason to tell our stories (Acting Professoressa would've approved: basically, we were creating a "Need").

I was paired with 1st-Year JMM. We were filmed sitting next to each other on cubes. He told me his story, and my job was just to listen and react. After his story, film professor said that she thought we were looking at each other too much and weren't open enough. We tried to come up with a reason to look outward more, so I suggested that maybe we were seated on a bus bench. Then I told my story, and 1st-Year JMM listened and reacted. The second time, we didn't look at each other enough, and it seemed alienating.

Also, I told my story with a lot of energy and movement (which is how I tell stories in real life), and it doesn't look right on film. Good to know that I have to tone myself down for film realism (in other words, "real" things don't look real... so I have to become a "reel" version of "real"... or something like that).

It was cool, and I learned from it. I wish we could do more of the workshop. Oh well.


MACHINAL
Tonight was the first night where we worked on a scene I was in! So exciting.

It was the hospital scene, in which I play the nurse. The Director had already given me some homework:

1. Get together with Big Show to discuss the relationship between the nurse (me) and the doctor (him).
2. Look into New York and New Jersey dialects for the nurse.
3. Be "officious". (I had to look it up, so I figured I'd give you a link to the definition.)

Luckily, we've been working on a general New York dialect in Voice class, so I was already familiar with the direction to make my shifts. There are a couple of words that I guessed on (the vowels in "swallow" and "solids"), and a few I made some choices on (making "getting along" into "getting g-along", "brought you" into "broughtcha", "what your" into "whatcha", "different" into "diff'ren'" etc.). Voice Professor attended the rehearsal, and she said all my shifts sounded fine to her.

Our Director really made me feel like my character was important and worth delving into, which I greatly appreciated, as she's only in one scene and could be easily ignored. We just sat in chairs and read the scene. We talked about the point-of-view from each character onto each other one, their backgrounds, their prior relationships, their actions... It was awesome. It made me feel like I'm fully armed to go into the scene now, whereas I don't think I really was before (although I was trying). I'm confident.

And the best thing is, I feel like after that rehearsal, I'm looking at the entire play with new eyes. This is not the play I thought it was when I came into rehearsals. I liked the story that I'd been telling in my head, but I think I like this one even better.

I'm really excited about this show. If rehearsals keep going the way they did tonight, it's going to be a "Can't Miss" kind of show. :)