Thursday, April 8

Acting class was canceled today.

VOICE
I practiced a ton last night (including going to the grocery store and keeping in dialect the whole time). I feel ready for this exam finally.

In class, for some reason, I started saying the word "leave" incorrectly in my scene, which I've never done before. The reason that's especially ridiculous? 'Leave' does not shift. It's exactly the same in Irish as in American. I'm just dumb sometimes.


MOVEMENT

We're continuing working with our small groups in Commedia stuff.

As it turns out, Pedrolino, Columbina, and Vittoria are not easy characters to incorporate into the same scene. The hardest part is that I'm still figuring out my OWN character, and I don't have a solid grasp on what the other characters are at all. I hope we figure it out better soon...

Wednesday, April 7

Happy birthday Iceman!!!



VOICE
Practice, practice, practice. We'll be ready for our Irish exam before you know it.


MOVEMENT
We worked on the Pavane. We haven't done it in a while, so it wasn't particularly great. It's just not a terribly exciting dance to do, to be honest. I wouldn't mind if we never did it again.


ACTING

More Shakespeare scenes...

Acting Professoressa has asked us to e-mail her with our preferences on which of our Shakespeare scenes we'd like to do in the showing. I can't believe the showings are coming up already. Time flies.

Tuesday, April 6

VOICE
We went over our Irish scenes more.

Currently, the sound that troubles me the most is the vowel of words like "hut" that switches to the vowel of "wood". Luckily, Iceman and Killer are doing well, and they're my scene partners, so that helps me a lot.

The other hard shift sucks because of how often it comes up. The word "it" shifts to sounds like "ut". It comes up a lot more often than I thought it would. (As evidenced by the three instances in this paragraph.)

In my car when I'm listening to the radio, I try to recite the lyrics of pop songs making all the shifts of the Irish dialect. I have particularly enjoyed doing this to the song "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha (apparently the $ is pronounced like an S... I won't go into how much that bothers me). It helps me a lot, and makes me feel like I have a good handle on the dialect shifts.


MOVEMENT
We lifted weights at the top of class. I started this year with 3-pound weights. Then I started using both 3-pound weights in one hand for certain lifts (so, really 6-pounds). I recently switched to 5-pound weights, but they're not hard for me, since I was essentially working with 6-pounds before. So now I grab a 3 and a 5 with each hand, to give me make-shift 8-pound weights. :) It makes me feel strong.

We worked on our Commedia characters in small groups. My group is me (Vittoria), All-The-Way (Pedrolino), and Wifey (Columbina). Our homework is to come up with scenarios that involve those characters.


ACTING
Newbie and I met with Acting Professoressa over our lunch break to work on Twelfth Night. We're adding an element into the scene: Newbie desperately wants to touch me, and I desperately want to avoid her touching me..., while still appearing polite.

So the big things I have to work on are:
- be polite, so that Olivia won't report to Orsino that I've been rude in any way.
- stop the touching... in a polite way
- be a BOY (I'm playing a character who is pretending to be a boy... and I have to get away with it.)


During class, I worked with D-Train on our All's Well That Ends Well scene. I think it's going pretty well. It's kind of a silly scene, but it's fun to work on.


KING JOHN
We had our final performance of King John, and it went exceptionally well. I'm proud to have worked on this show. I wish we could do it again. :)

The 2nd Blogger of '11

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that one of my classmates has decided to start blogging about our upcoming abroad program.

"Wifey" (aka Lindsay) is now writing at Lindsay Sees London. So check her out!

Quotations: Volume 53

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

(Disclaimer: quotations are often taken out of context and may not accurately reflect the way they were originally intended)


"Touch not the goods."
- Acting Professoressa, to O.D. and Thrill during their Two Noble Kinsmen scene

"Is there going to be pot luck? I'm afraid of Jesus and pot luck."
- Voice Professor, about an upcoming event, after explaining that she couldn't sleep after watching a documentary about the Shroud of Turin

"That was in my goth days... I had a leather jacket and a studded bra."
- Voice Professor, on being in a Salem Witch Trials historic exhibit production

"Okay. Silence. You may begin...(silence) Cat sound! (awkwardly stifled laughter from group) Sorry, I couldn't resist."
- Acting Professoressa, right before Angela and Newbie restarted their All's Well That Ends Well scene, after she had explained that Sir Toby and Sir Andrew might cause a ruckus offstage including cat noises.

"I'm helping you with the hand... Noooooo."
- Voice Professor, after doing hand gestures to help Killer with the vowel-shift for the word "no" in Irish dialect

(after noticing that Two-Shots-Up was taking a picture of Angela with her purple/pink streaked April Fools Day hair next to a purple/pink box of tissues)
Voice Professor: Are you taking a picture because she matches the Kleenex box? How ridiculous.
D-Train: Says the woman with Jesus nightmares.
Voice Professor: (in Irish dialect) That's my subconscious, y' [jerk]!

"This is not such a literal moment. This is not 'the atomic weight of uranium is four-hundred-fifty-six.'"
- Acting Professoressa, to D-Train

(after Acting Professoressa said that D-Train had done something in the scene later than she thought he wanted to)
D-Train: (jokingly)So, I should follow my impulses?
Acting Professoressa: Oh, yeah. What a radical f***ing idea...

(when rehearsing Much Ado about Nothing, for which D-Train is stage manager)
D-Train: Take it from...
Angela: Take it from the kiss?
Newbie: Can we take it from the a** slap?
Acting Professoressa: (looks at the clock) Can we take it from the break?
(NOTE: Apparently, Newbie was quoting something that Machinal Stage Manager once said in rehearsal.)

"It smells like sex in here."
- Iceman, improving in character as the drunken jail-keeper in Two Noble Kinsmen

Friday, April 2

VOICE
I finished reading through the Irish scene with both Killer and with Iceman. The dialect is definitely getting less intimidating as I go.

The hardest sound for me to consistently shift is the vowel in "hut", which shifts to the vowel in "wood". I know how to do it, but for some reason I don't always in the moment.


MOVEMENT
We continued exploring the space using our Commedia movement styles. We also worked on the evolution from our Commedia animals to our Commedia types.

We did a full group exploration/improv as the animals that our Commedia types are connected to, and then as the characters themselves. Eventually, we started playing games as the characters (like a variation of soccer, and a version of duck-duck-goose), speaking only in Grammelot.


ACTING
The scenes that went today were Comedy of Errors and Two Noble Kinsmen.

The only notes I took down today:
- Finding a shared perverse sense of humor can be the difference between friends and best friends, or sometimes between best friends and lovers. (I think it was connected to a discussion about the Taming of the Shrew scene.)

Newbie and I will be working on Twelfth Night during tutorial time on Tuesday, and I believe D-Train and I will be doing All's Well That Ends Well Tuesday during class. We're supposed to be off-book for all scenes on Tuesday.

Thursday, April 1

I came in to class today with my hair dyed to have pink and purple streaks. And with bangs.


It was an April Fool's Day prank, of course. (Man, the theatre would have my hide if I did that to my hair! Especially without permission!) I didn't take my hair out until Acting class. So that was fun.


VOICE
We started talking through our scenes. And guess what? I'm not doing NEARLY as badly as I thought I would! Irish is getting a little more intuitive, although it's still not easy. I'm encouraged by this. Which is good, because Voice Professor has decided to move up our exam by a few days.


MOVEMENT
As a side note... On Tuesday, we jumped rope for the first time in AGES, and I felt like I was in the zone. Five minutes of jumping rope barefoot, and I never once tripped or hit myself with the rope. I felt awesome. And five minutes? Didn't feel that bad. But now? My legs are killing me for it. So instead of jumping rope, I did the Daily Dozen alignment exercises.

We had a long discussion on the origins of Commedia, and what we're going to do with it.

Movement Professor says that there are three different forms of comedy: comedy of incongruity, comedy of meanness, and comedy of wit. Commedia is primarily comedy of incongruity (look! a car in the tree!), rarely comedy of meanness (mostly just Brighella), and never comedy of wit.

And we also talked for a while about London. Oh my word, we're going to London!!! AHHH!!!! May 5th cannot come soon enough. (Although that being said, I sure have a lot to do before we go!)


ACTING
D-Train and I did our All's Well That Ends Well scene. Acting Professoressa didn't seem to love it our first time through, when we stuck close to the blocking that we'd done the previous time we'd worked. D-Train suggested that we do it as an etude, and not worry about any of the blocking. When we did, it was SO much more free and real, and so much easier to play the scene. But as a result, Acting Professoressa said that some of the stage pictures were bad, and some of the physical story-telling was being lost. So we're going to have to work to combine the two.

Other notes I got:
- in Diana's final monologue, be less knowing
- more men-vs.-women mentality
- justify behavior to the audience
- keep it fresh
- Diana is not a b****, and she wants the audience to know that
- Point-of-View on Bertram cannot be "You stupid jerk"