Taking stock

My scene partner didn't come to class today, which means that once I find out what's going on with her I'm going to have to rehearse with her over the weekend so we can do the scene Monday. At the same time we're beginning our second scene, and I'm happy to say that I'm going to be working with someone I haven't mentioned yet - let's call her Glasses Girl because of her unusual choices in eyewear (lensless glasses that look like something your Mom wore in the '70s). She's probably my favorite person in the class just on a friend level. We're looking at a Vanya-Yelena scene.

Since we had some extra time in Sam's class we went around the room and took stock of why people had come to the class and what they thought they were getting out of it. The consensus seemed to be that everyone was liking the class and maybe wished that Sam was a little rougher on them. I talked about wanting to work on realism and wanting to get rid of some habits ("staginess" that I wrote about earlier this week) that I thought were keeping me from doing that. As for Sam's style, I like his honesty and bluntness. The fact that his criticism is delivered in a positive way helps of course, it's not as if I've ever left feeling I didn't want to come back to the class. I know that just in these two weeks my voice, body, and mind have become more integrated and my connection to emotion is getting stronger - whether it's through imagination or substitution. These feelings are a result of all the classes complementing each other.

Tonight I went with three of my classmates to a production of Three Sisters put on by an Argentinian company at the Lincoln Center Festival. The play was staged in modern clothes, lasted 90 minutes, and had all the gender roles reversed (men playing the sisters, but as men with no drag) - but it still worked. Oh yeah, and it was in Spanish. The play seemed to want to question our received ideas about gender, and although I wondered at first why that was necessary in this play, I think it worked. Chekhov is all around me.....