Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Theatre Tuesdays and Thursdays

Tuesdays and Thursdays are my theatre-only days at school. This semester I'm taking voice lessons and Acting IV. So basically, it's always fun filled.

Voice lessons were just preparing my songs for my performance tech class and for future auditions (we have a mainstage musical and summer theatre musicals coming up). Acting was an exercise day. We all came prepared with an entrance. We had to find a play where an actor enters and does action before speaking--which, sadly, is harder to find in contemporary plays than you'd think. So we got to use the amazing materials of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Eugene Ionesco, and Ibsen. Not that we couldn't use others, but this is what most of the works were from.

I chose the maid from The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco. It was a lot of fun to play a scene with no words, because there's so much you can say without speaking. And then, when you finally say the line it has so much meaning behind it, and an audience is already connected with your character. A very useful lesson. We also did an exercise where we folded a towel the way our mother's would. Acting Professor told us afterwards," We feel like we know our mothers best, and that's how we should feel about every character we perform."

Rehearsal was a lot of fun today. My director decided we had settled into a rythm and were no longer listening and making new choices, so she had us do a run through with overdramatic choices and encouraged us to try all the things we were afraid were to ridiculous to put in the show. Of course that got us listening. There was a lot of great communication today and some new character relationship developments that I'm interested to build on in tonight's rehearsal. We're supposed to get to use the set today!! I'm very excited about that.

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