Thursday, January 27, 2011

In the Land of Women

I've been doing a horrendous job of keeping up with this blog. I really should be updating everyday because I'm in a show, and these are the times to keep a very specific acting journal. Obviously, I need to step up my game.

So, rehearsal this week has been great! I go in every day and have so much fun! I was off book for Act 1 by Monday, but we were still blocking Act 2. By Tuesday we had completed the show! We ran Act 1 off book, and Director B worked through it with us. She corrected some character choices and gave us a lot of things to think about. We did a lot of moment work, meaning that we cleaned up the action between our lines.

She's been pretty hard on the underclassmen about slowing down and having better diction. But they're strong actors, and they're doing a great job of taking her direction and making it work. I'm proud of them for not being completely overwhelmed. I remember when I was in my first show, which was ironically with Director B, and she was really hard on me. She pushes you out of your comfort zone and forces you to make bigger choices. She's specific about interpretation and she gives you the tools to match the upperclassmen. Already, this show has improved so much.

I'm still not completely off book for Act 2. It's so long. Longer than Act 1. It's a very disorienting act for me, because I hardly leave the stage, and sometimes I can't remember what scene I have next, because there are so many time lapses in the play. The scenes don't always flow well, and so it's difficult for me to keep track of where they are. I know once I get it down though, I'll be fine. And I'm working hard to get completely off book! The deadline is tomorrow, but I like to beat the deadline.

I'm having a blast working with such a large cast. I realized, belatedly, that I haven't worked with a large cast since The Laramie Project ! All my casts since then have been 5 people or less. Everyone's doing a great job, and it's been fun to build new relationships on stage and off.

Crew watch is already next Friday! I can't believe it's happening so fast. Time flies when you're in a show. And I've been put in charge of designing the headshot/biography board, so I've been thinking about that a lot too. I have my first major assignment due in Creating Online Media on Tuesday. I have to turn in a mock up design of my website. It's really hard, because there's so many things I want to try that I don't think we'll learn how to code. So I have to keep it simple.

I've also been busy with the off the wall Women Fight Against. It's a combat show that I'm helping to choreograph. I have the large end number, and it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, but my deadline is Saturday so I hope my creative juices start flowing soon. I finished the poster for the upcoming Warehouse show. I need to get it finalized and approved before sending it off to the printers, but I'm well on my way to being stress free on the PR end of things.

Comedy class has been going well. I found a great comedic monologue that really fits my style and I performed it in class last time. I got a great response from it and I think I'll be using it at the Midwest Auditions, and maybe even the next show here. Acting for Film has been very educational as well. We learned last class about creating a relationship with your scene partner, especially when they can't be there. We were given slips of paper that had relationships on them like 'the obnoxious delivery guy' and 'the emo kid' and we had to endow a spot on a wall with those characteristics and deliver a line of dialogue to it. It was a lot of fun.

All in all, there's a lot of things I'm thinking about that I would love to blog about, but I haven't had much time to make them into cohesive ideas that I would feel comfortable sharing. Hopefully the next post will include something of the kind.

No comments:

Post a Comment