Wednesday, September 10

MOVEMENT
We've moved further into our breathing and relaxation work. We've also started doing stretches that my body does NOT like, so I have to modify things. There's something wrong with my hip socket/groin region. Whenever I put my legs into a "butterfly" position, I have pain.

VOICE
We continued work on consonants. We also learned a new tremor, which involves putting your hands in the air. "The Pro" found it in a major way, which was especially great because he's had difficulty with finding previous tremors. We have a test in this class on Friday over a lecture from last week, but it's been so long that I'm not sure I even remember what the lecture was about anymore. Eek! Must go over notes...

ACTING
"Big Show" and I did an etude that was pretty successful. The dialogue was:
Big Show: I have to tell you something.
Me: Okay, but can you look in the other room first? I keep thinking there's someone behind that door.
Big Show: There's no one there.
Me: Okay. What did you want to tell me?

Lame lines, I know, but it turned into something nice. "All The Way" and "Iceman" had a really great exchange as well, that actually made me sort of emotional.

We've been working on physical memory, so we started sharing pieces we've been working on of doing actions without objects. It's sort of like miming, except you're trying to remember the sensations of dealing with objects instead of resorting to pantomime conventions. I presented a piece based on putting in my contact lenses. I think I did pretty well, but my professor has asked me (and a few other classmates) to find different pieces, as he thinks too many of us picked events that took place in a bathroom. He has suggested trying an activity that we don't do on a daily basis, like baking a cake or repairing a bicycle chain. I have no idea what I'm going to do... Oh well.

Tuesday, September 9

MOVEMENT
Every person had a huge bamboo stick, and we had to try to create a free-standing teepee-like structure out of them. It didn't work well. We did, however, manage to have it supported by about two people at one point, had a classmate crawl underneath it, and then were able to remove the sticks one by one without the whole thing tumbling down on her. I'm sure we'll get better the more we practice. We also began doing floor work concentrating on our breathing (which was rather similar to some of the work we've done in voice class).

VOICE
We started learning IPA today. It's a sort of phonetic alphabet that teaches you how to pronounce words. We're starting with a Standard American dialect, and all the sounds that come with it. It was really quite neat. I already knew a good amount about voiced and unvoiced consonants from a project I did in undergrad, but had never gotten information about where in the mouth sounds are supposed to be formed. Apparently, most people say their "s" and "z" sounds in a non-neutral way, causing them to sound less clear than they could (or should, in the case of actors). Luckily, I say those correctly. But I have a problem that it seems no one else in my class has: I've apparently been forming words that start with the letter "l" incorrectly my entire life (my tongue touches my teeth much in the way it would if you were saying "th". It's supposed to be on the ridge on the roof of your mouth, like it is when you say a "d" sound -- strangely, my tongue is in the right place if L is in the middle of the word, like in "Angela").

ACTING
We continued our studies of physical memory. Our homework assignment is to study one of our daily actions tonight (about 1-2 minutes in length) and do it in class tomorrow without the objects. So tonight, I practiced putting on eyeliner (from a pot, with a brush) with and without the objects. I think I've got it down, right down to the angles I lean into the mirror and the moments when I stick my tongue out of my mouth for no defensible reason.

ANALYSIS
In preparation for today's class, we had to read A Flea in Her Ear adapted by Greg Leamming, and Backwards & Forwards by David Ball. We had a conversation regarding cause and effect in plays. To be honest, I was confused for half of it. I kept asking questions, but I think that just confused me further. I think I think too much. We have a paper due in a week regarding what the action of Oedipus Rex is. We have to choose a verb as the action, and then write a paper defending the choice in every way possible. We weren't given parameters in the form of page or word count, so I'm a little nervous that mine will end up being either the shortest or the longest in the class (knowing me, the longest is more likely). Hopefully it'll go alright.

Quotations: Volume 2

Here are some of the educational, inspirational, and humorous quotations from my classes this week:


"An artist cannot really be an artist without money." ~ Movement professor

"For me, its like, there is a God. When you feel all that release at once." ~ Voice professor

Acting professor: Were you thinking about the secret?
"Thrill": No. In my mind, I was like, "Big booty hoes, bump wit' it."

"Playing with your niece is one thing. Escaping from a rapist is another." ~ Acting Professor

"We will never discuss a theme in this class. Themes are nouns. Themes are unplayable. We're looking for the verbs. The action." ~ Textual Analysis professor

"I'll go with you to La Boheme, but you have to promise me she won't die." ~ Acting professor quoting his English teacher

"What feels natural to you now might just be a habit." ~ Voice professor

"Thrill": Do you wear the blazer all day? Like in the car and everything? Or do you put it on right before you walk in?"
Acting professor: First of all, I sleep in it.

"Killer": I think it's just that I don't eat apples that often.
"Big Show": But if we were discussing masturbation, it'd be easy for you.
(on the physical memory exercise we did in Acting class)

"The scariest thing to me is when an actor eats a generic apple even when the apple is real." ~ Acting professor

Acting professor: [O.D.] looks like he enjoys eating apples, right?
"O.D.": *taking a bite* I really like apples.

"Activity is great, but passivity can be beautiful." ~ Acting professor

Acting professor: What did you want to do in that exercise.
"The Pro": I wanted to leave.
Acting professor: Leave the room?
"The Pro": Yeah, leave. Leave the program.
Acting professor: Excellent.
"The Pro": Excellent?! I need an apple!

"I've got buckets of that stuff." ~ "The Pro", on what he did in the exercise that he thought was unsuccessful

"The only forbidden thing in this exercise is to forbid." ~ Acting professor

"Don't say 'I think' or 'I feel'. I don't care what you think or how you feel. I care about what you can prove in the text." ~ Textual Analysis professor

Friday, September 5

Today was phenomenal.

All 1st-year classes were canceled in favor of a field trip (across the street) to the the Ringling museums. Yes, Ringling like the circus.

The owners of the estate were John and Mabel Ringling, who had a great deal of money thanks to the circus, railroads, and oil. They loved the arts, and had a huge mansion and an extensive art collection, which they housed in a museum. There are also other exhibits on the grounds that are impressive, such as a scale model of a circus the most intricate and massive representation of anything that I have ever seen. It was mind-blowing.

Of course, it was class related.

Our assignment for Movement class:

"Look for a painting with a narrative or story that you want to step into."

For Acting class:

Try to look for examples of ease, beauty, form, and entirety. And also look for qualities of floating, flying, molding, and radiating.


Easily my favorite thing in the collection is The Blue Madonna by Carlo Dolci. My voice professor and "Big Show" also feel a strong connection with it. It's not a large painting, and it's sort of shoved into the corner of a small room, but it's so powerful that you can't help but look at it.



Not really the same online, but maybe you see what I mean.

I also enjoyed another Carlo Dolci work called Saint John the Evangelist Writing the Book of Revelation.




Sadly, I don't think they're good pieces for my Movement class assignment. I think I'm going to go with The Judgement of Paris by Lodovico David.

(bad photograph, I know... but it's the best I could find online)

Anyway.

We had a conversation with the professors sitting on the deck of the Ringling mansion (called the "Ca' d'Zan", or "house of John") at the end of the day to wrap up. I think the best thing I learned all day was this:

The difference between madness and passion is purpose.

Glean from that what you will.

~A~

P.S. If you'd like to check out more of the Ringling collection online, you can do it here.

Thursday, September 4

In voice class today, I FOUND my tremors in a major way! As I said before, tremoring involves putting your body into certain positions that cause it to tremble. I finally had a good tremor when we tried a pelvic tremor position last week. Today, I found a tremor in EVERY POSITION I ATTEMPTED. It was SO COOL. My body literally started leaping off the ground.

My voice professor said that whereas often people will just sort of shake, my body responds with "waves of tremor", and that I shouldn't be afraid of it. My head lifted off the ground spontaneously several times, as did my feet at times. It's hard to explain what it's like, but it's awesome. I feel like I'm learning new things about my body every time we do it.


In Textual Analysis today I argued with the professor a bit, but in a healthy way, I think. He stated that everything Oedipus does within the course of the play (just what the plot covers, not the whole myth) stems from his attempts to be a good leader. I disagreed, and pointed out several examples from the text that I thought illustrated him serving his own needs, curiosity, and self-preservation as opposed to the betterment of his kingdom. My professor didn't subscribe to my theory, and said we'd discuss it more next time. *sigh*


Our tech call was canceled tonight so that the first years could attend a play. Last year, an MFA directing student cut and directed a 45-minute, 6-actor version of Romeo & Juliet. It was very well received, and so they've decided to re-mount it and tour it around to area high schools for the next two weeks. It was cut really excellently, highlighting all the vital scenes and allowing the important plot points to shine through. Of course, it's always strange to see a cut version of a play when you are familiar with the full-length text ("but... they cut Juliet's monologue! I LOVE that monologue!"), but I enjoyed what they did with it. It was a neat production.

It was nice being able to see some of the 2nd-years act, as I hadn't seen any of them perform before tonight. They did a wonderful job. It made me hopeful for my future in this program. :)


~A~

Wednesday, September 3

There are so many things that I should be doing, but I just haven't had time to do. Like pick up a package from the post office that my brother sent me. Or take my car into the shop, as the "Check Engine" light has been on for a week and a half... But whenever I have free time, either it's at night (when those places are closed), or I'm so tired that I just want to go home.

I don't even mentally want to go through everything I did today...

I got to school at 8:15am so that I could practice handball exercises with "The Pro" before class. I was scheduled to be at school until 9:00pm (although I got out a little early).

Nothing earth-shattering happened in my first two classes...

At lunch, my class had our first ever "Group Therapy" session. Yes, we have group therapy. We have a meeting during lunch every two weeks with a lovely psychologist (I think that's her title) in order to be able to sort out tensions and issues within the class (either things that need to be worked out with each other, or just stress about the program). It's actually kind of a genius plan to have that built in to our first year.

We spent the first one in pairs, with each person telling a partner a story about an event that shaped the person they've become. Then we rejoined the group, and the listener shared the story with everyone. It was sort of great, as it gave us more insight into each other. I really enjoyed it. I'm anxious to see where these sessions go from here.


In Acting, we were supposed to imagine what it is to eat an apple. Every sense that you use, every motion you go through... And then we were supposed to eat an imaginary apple, envisioning as much as we could about it, and trying to eat it realistically.

After we had finished our imaginary apples, our professor brought out a bag filled with an assortment of apples, and asked us to each take one. We then ate the apples, noticing the differences between what we had done in the exercise, and what it was like to eat an actual corporeal fruit.

Once we had all finished our apples -- surprise! -- we had to mime imaginary apples once more.

I have to say, of the three apples I "ate" today, the first one was by far the most delicious.


Half of my class was called in to do tech tonight. Boring stuff, actually. Like sorting hardwear, peeling tape off of floors and re-laying it, and moving large pieces of plywood. But it did give me an opportunity to hang out with "Big Show", "D-Train", "Iceman", "Wifey", and "Two Shots Up", which was nice. While sorting hardware, the boys and I started telling jokes, and turned it into something more entertaining than it should have been.


When I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was my homework for tomorrow. I've done most of it (I still have a little reading left to do, and my only hypothesis on Oedipus' first decision is "he decides to make his business public", but I think that's wrong...).

I think I'm going to bring my handballs to school early tomorrow and hope someone wants to play catch with me. I'm getting better at catching, but I have horrible aim when throwing. Wish me luck.

~A~

Tuesday, September 2

It was another long day for me. Classes from 9:00am-12:00pm, student rep meeting over my lunch break, classes from 1:00pm-5:30pm, dinner break, and then tech call from 6:30pm-9:00pm.

MOVEMENT
We got our tests back from last week. It was pass/fail (thank goodness), and I passed. There were a lot of positive notes on my test (things like "GOOD!", "Yes!" and "very good observation from book"), but the word "Why?" appeared a lot (we had a short amount of time to take the test, so I guess I wasn't as complete in my answers as I should have been).

Jumping rope is getting easier. It's still exhausting, but I don't feel like I'm going to die now, so that's good. We did a bit of Suzuki work today, and also began coordination exercises. For awhile we hand to walk around the room balancing a stick vertically in our palms. Then we had to throw handballs towards a partner, looking into the partner's eyes, both throwing and catching one-handed.

Our homework is to continue the handball exercises for 20 minutes with a partner before tomorrow. I'm meeting "The Pro" at school before class to do it then, as we both really just wanted to go home after tech call tonight.


VOICE
I got my voice test back as well. I didn't do tremendously on it, which I guess I had been expecting (not that I did abysmally... just not as well as I would've liked). I got the "destructuring" part just fine, but I really don't understand "restructuring" yet (probably because we haven't done it). Oh well. It's only the first test. And I really need to get this perfectionistic streak out of my system fast, because it won't be possible to keep it up in a couple of months anyhow.

We started doing body-rocking in the style of Roy Hart today. It's hard to explain (as I'm sure I'll say about the majority of things I do in my voice class), but basically you lie down and allow movement to originate in your feet in a way that rocks your entire body. It felt really great, actually. But then we started trying to draw circles with various body parts while rocking, which really just hurt.

We tried a new tremoring position today, but my back didn't like it, so I just went back to the pelvic tremor that worked so well for me last week. And the pelvic tremor? HUGE physical response to it. My entire body shook so violently that parts of it were lifted off the ground, and my breath became entirely spontaneous. It was simultaneously terrifying and THE COOLEST THING EVER.


STUDENT REP MEETING
Not all that thrilling. We began discussions on how to use funds. And we clarified information about our upcoming auditions. (First years don't actually get to be in shows, but we act as understudies for the huge Equity shows.)


ACTING
We began doing "etudes" today. Etudes are like small scenes of acting improvisation. This is NOT the same as improv comedy. It's more like you get a small amount of given circumstances (such as a couple lines of dialogue, a physical position, or a relationship), and you build a scene off of that. It's not meant to be funny (although it occasionally is), but truthful.

Later in the day, "O.D." commented to me that he sensed me take on characteristics of "fear" and "being childlike" more than once in my exercises today. I noticed those qualities in one of my etudes, but not in the other... I don't know. Maybe that's just where my psyche was this afternoon. I just hope those things aren't crutches that I have to work through. Although if they are, I suppose "O.D." deserves my gratitude for pointing them out to me early, so that I can work on fighting them from the start.

We discussed how bewilderment and uncertainty are important for actors, and also how a lot of accidents turn out to be blessings. It was a good class.


ANALYSIS
We had a whole discussion on how people confuse the themes of a play with the action of a play. My professor declared that we're not looking for nouns or statements when describing the action of a play, but rather verbs. So, for example, Hamlet is not "man vs. himself" or "passion and humanity", but would be something more like "avenging". (Okay, that was a horrible example, because I don't think avenging is a good verb... but hopefully you get the idea).

We learned about Praxis/Poesis/Theoria... Although don't ask me to explain them, because I'm still fuzzy on them. We discussed probability and necessity, but I'm still not 100% on what those refer to, either. And then we went into the importance of cause-and-effect, which I think I actually understood.

For homework, we have to do research into some figures from the family of Oedipus. And we also have to determine what the very first choice Oedipus makes (in the play, NOT the myth) is.


TECH CALL
My first assignment was to paint the floor in front of the first row of the small theatre black with "O.D.", and I think we did a pretty great job (although "Iceman" left a footprint in our work later, but meh). Then it was unfolding and refolding legs (curtains), loading flats into a van, and unloading the flats into the scene shop.

The scene shop is a union shop, and it is the BIGGEST FREAKING SHOP I HAVE EVER SEEN. Seriously. I thought I'd seen big shops before, but they were NOTHING like this. It was incredible. It looked like an airplane hangar. So cool.


Anyway. I should probably reread chapters 1&2 of "One Voice" before tomorrow's lecture.

G'night!

~A~