Yesterday it was 65 degrees outside..now it's snowing and we should get 3 inches or so. It's pretty...but winter is over! I'm ready for some sunshine. What's with all this crazy weather?
Wow, so I took sometime off this week because the parental units came up to visit. We had a lot of fun, and I'm really glad they got a chance to come up and hang out. We checked out some of the local restaurants: Flatbranch, Addisons, and Boone Tavern. They bought me an early birthday present of a new phone--woot! It's the new Droid..which is very cool, but honestly I'd never heard of it until now. My roommate tells me that's incredibly sad. I also acquired some new pajama pants which are awesomely comfortable. Thanks dad.
We also got to see the show Playing for Time. It was beautifully done. The Warehouse was the perfect space for it, because it's smaller and it made the experience more intimate. The cast was huge with around 40 people, I think. It's a play about the Holocaust and the lives of the women who were saved by playing in the orchestra for the Nazis' entertainment.
The production had amazing moment to moment work. This means there was quite a bit of the play that focused on action, and not on lines. The action would show more about the character than what they were saying actually revealed. The way a character left or entered a room was especially telling, as well as the way that the characters silently interacted with each other by taking care of each other or alienating someone.
My favorite part of the production was the end. The entire cast came out singing(and this cast was FULL of amazingly talented singers) in character and slowly raised these pictures of real victims to cover their faces. And at the end of the song, they turned them around so the audience couldn't see the faces anymore. It was extremely powerful.
The play also included a projector that showed pictures of places to help the audience understand where the action was taking place, or the names of victims and what they died of. All in all, the production was actually hard to watch. There wasn't a wall between the audience and the story as there would have been had it been performed in a space with a proper proscenium. It was a hard story to tell, and I could tell that it had taken its toll on the actors. They are a very strong bunch, and they did an amazing job.
Lets see, this week as a BFA Theatre Major:
Acting IV: We performed out 'monologues' given to us by Acting Professor R. They went very well. It was mostly for dialect and character purposes, so he wasn't concerned with memorization as much. We were all memorized, but it definitely took the pressure off and let us worry about acting. Every one's dialects sound great, and it was interesting to watch different character interpretations (since we were all playing the same characters). There's a noticeable difference between this acting class and my last one. In this one, I can tell we will be working scenes a lot more, which is always a good experience because you get to try new things. In my last class it was focused on preparing a piece of work and then sharing it with the class, which I also very useful. It's just nice to get to switch it up once and a while and not be doing the same things the same way. That's why I love my school!
Theatre History II: We discussed Waiting for Godot. There was a lot of discussion on the Christian elements of the play, and how Godot can be construed as God. However, Beckett (the playwright) specifically tells us that Godot isn't God, and if he knew who Godot was or what/who the characters were waiting for, he would have said so in the play. All in all, I loved it. A horrible piece to memorize I'm sure, but incredibly fun to perform and see. I would love to see it. History Professor B was telling us that at the end, when the characters say they're going to leave and actually don't move that the audience generally tends to get nervous and sits around waiting for them to leave. And then slowly people get up to leave. And finally everyone clears out, but if you look back in..the actors will still be onstage waiting (in a classic production, I suppose). Very cool. It's a very interesting look at the ways in which we pass our time, only to realize that we haven't actually accomplished much in our lives. Friday's class was cancelled due to Fashion Guest Speakers taking over our room.
I have a lot of reading to do this weekend concerning the plays for our upcoming summer season, as well as for Theatre History this week. I'm auditioning for my first college musical on Monday. HMS Pinafore! It's good experience, especially since I'm in school and it's the perfect place to practice things I've never done.
Except for the inordinate amount of snow outside, I think it will be a good weekend. Productive. And hopefully this next week will be productive as well in preparation for my Spring Break trip to Chicago!
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