Tuesday, February 23

VOICE
We started with a warm-up, which was nice.

Then, on to New York dialect. We worked on some sentences that were proving difficult for various people in their scenes, and then everyone in the class recited them.

MOVEMENT
We started with the Pavane. My primary partner for it is Iceman, which is awesome. I don’t get to work with Iceman nearly enough. But aside from that, well, the Pavane isn’t a terribly exciting dance. It’s not very difficult, and it moves very slowly. I think we’re doing it for a sense of the style of the period, and the opportunity to find how to be individual in a period style while doing choreography.
After that, we moved on to our Restoration monologues. Eventually, they will be filled with very specific actions with our props. They’re packed with so many actions that Movement Professor calls them “Stuffed Turkeys”.
The monologue I am working on is from The Rover (or The Banish'd Cavaliers)" by Aphra Behn (one of the first female professional playwrights). I'm playing Angellica Bianca. Here's a description of the scene:

"Angellica Bianca, a famous courtesan, experiences love for the first time by falling for the philandering cavalier Willmore. In this scene, brandishing a pistol which she holds to his breast, she expresses her anger and sense of betrayal after having found him paying court to another woman."

And here's the monologue:

You said you loved me.
And at that instant I gave you my heart.
I'd pride enough and love enough to think
That it could raise thy soul above the vulgar
Nay, make you all soul too, and soft and constant.
Why did you lie and cheapen me? Alas,
I thought all men were born to be my slaves,
And wore my power like lightning in my eyes;
But when love held the mirror, that cruel glass
Reflected all the weakness of my soul;
My pride was turned to a submissive passion
And so I bowed, which I ne'er did before
To anyone or anything but heaven.
I thought that I had won you and that you
Would value me the higher for my folly.
But now I see you gave me no more than dog lust,
Made me your spaniel bitch; and so I fell
Like a long-worshipped idol at the last
Perceived a fraud, a cheat, a bauble. Why
Didst thou destroy my too long fancied power?
Why didst thou give me oaths? Why didst thou kneel
And make me soft? Why, why didst thou enslave me?
Ah, sir, ah, sir, I yet had been content
To wear my chains with vanity and joy,
Hadst thou not broke those vows that put them on.

Now, originally the character I was creating for myself for this unit was COMPLETELY different, but it wasn't going to work with this monologue. So I changed some things.

Originally, my dog was a chihuahua, and my name was "Lady Buttermuffin".

Now my dog is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and my lace is Venetian Needle Point Plat. I think my name is going to be "Madame Felicia Featherotica".

Movement Professor took us through a series of questions that we were supposed to answer with our characters in mind. It was something like:
- looking at your lace, come up with four adjectives to describe it. Then, find a way to turn those adjectives into adverbs. (e.g. 'wild' => 'wildly')
- You (as your character) are walking through a garden and you come across an object. What sort of object is it?
- The object that you have found in the garden: what sort of condition is it in? (describe in one word)
- You come to a wall. Do you try to get over it? Do you ignore it and go back? Do you look for another way around?
- What is your [character’s] favorite color?
- If you (as your character) were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?
- Walking through the garden, you find a broken tea cup. What do you do?
- When you dream, are your dreams “fantastical”, “everyday”, or “frustratingly boring”?
- Look at the picture of the dog you’ve chosen. What is the dog’s favorite thing to do?

Then she led us through how we were to use the answers.
- The adverbs you’ve come up with, the animal you chose, and the things the dog likes to do are all descriptive of the way the character moves.
- The object you find and the condition you find it in inform the character’s point of view.
- The way you deal with the wall shows how ambitious the character is.
- The favorite color of the character shows their feelings on sex. (If magenta is one end of the scale and cold blue is on the other, like temperature.)
- The way you deal with the broken tea cup shows how you think about death.

(I don’t remember what the dreams mean.)
Our homework is to come up with counter-point movement with our fans/snuffboxes/handkerchiefs for the first couple of sentences in our monologues. It’s okay for movement to be literal. The movement must not happen at the same time text is happening. We have to treat them as two separate languages, and we can only use one at a time to communicate.
Movement Professor said that if at any point during the time that we’re doing this work you feel bored, that you should stop. She says that actors are good at continuing to do things that they find boring for very long periods of time, but that it’s not actually beneficial to do that. If you’re bored, it’s probably because you’re frustrated or angry about something, so you should figure out what the problem is and try to solve it. And then find a way to make what you’re doing fun and interesting.

ACTING
Big Show and I did our Richard III scene again. I feel like every time we do it, I’ve gone too far in one direction or the other. One day the note is that I need to fight more, and the next day my note is that I’m fighting too much. One day I’m too aggressive, and the next I’m too passive. It’s frustrating. Acting Professoressa says we’re getting closer, but I feel like I just can’t nail down where the lines are in this scene.
I’m looking forward to the comedy scenes… I feel like they’ll be more fun to work on somehow.

MACHINAL
We did a slow work-through of the show. The Director seems to be pretty happy with where we are. I tried out some new things for The Nurse, and he seemed to like them. So that’s good. Tomorrow is our run for the crew. Tech week is upon us.