The first week

Sorry about no post yesterday, but I needed some time to digest the first week of classes. The upshot of it all is that I think I have some tools to be a more confident, more self-aware actor after just a few days with these teachers and this group. I don't think I've ever quite been in such an intensive situation where voice, body, and mind were put together before, and I think it's going to help me going forward. The trick is of course to take what I learn here and apply it back home or wherever I may find myself acting in the future. Even though I think I've made strides in the past few years to being a less "heady" actor, I can see now how much I've got to get out of my head and into my imagination, be it through "Adlerian" imagination techniques or substitutions.

In our Voice class yesterday we were working on getting out and controlling our "hah" sounds, with the idea of urgently trying to reach our imaginary partners on the ceiling. Our teacher Dusty McKeelan was talking about how the urgency we put forth in this exercise this might relate to say, doing an audition piece. He said, "Do it for the other person." That is, your real or imaginary scene partner. What a simple way to say it, and yet how true. That is to say, my acting usually gets pretty fussy and mannered when I'm doing a monologue. But of course what's important is the simple actions underneath. I'm only being a little over the top when I say that was an epiphany for me.

I haven't written much about the "Composition" class yet, but I'm enjoying it. Yesterday there was quite a physical part that left me dripping sweat on the floor. It began with an imitative, running-around-the-room part but then went into kind of a slow-motion performance of a fall - also very tiring since we weren't allowed to lie on the floor, but had to stay active even in slow motion. I've wondered if a better name for the class might be "Connection," since that's what a lot of it seems to be about. Like on Monday, a lot of the class was spent in a circle throwing a ball or balls around and saying each others names. The idea is that the names are the text and the connections we make in throwing parallel the connections we'd make onstage. Try it as a prerehearsal exercise or in a class where people don't know each other. We did the same exercise with an Arabic greeting taught to us by our new student ("Language Girl"), who joined the class Thursday. The word, which I don't think I can reproduce here, was a bit hard to say. It was interesting how that changed the exercise into being about getting it right rather than letting it happen.

What a great week, but I'm glad not to go back until Monday.....so much to chew on.