This post is dedicated to a magical cookie — pardon me — biscuit that exists here. They are called Digestives. They’re delicious. I have to hide my pack of them from myself or else I’d eat the whole thing in a day. Today, I found a convenient resealable package at Marks and Spencer which meant I could carry them in my bag. Dear Digestives, thank you for getting me through the latter half of the day when my stomach was eating the rest of my body as a snack. And thank you for being my reward to myself for making it through the day. A Digestive (or two, or three, or four…) a day keeps the doctor away! That’s the saying, right?

Today was a much more physical day than our previous days. To begin the day, my group had Applied Voice with our tutor, Stevie. This class will expand on the ideas taught in Pure Voice by George and start applying those concepts to speaking text. After introductions, we looked at the Ophelia speech from act three, scene one of Hamlet. We will continue to work with this speech, learning how to best deliver it keeping in mind the verse, meter, word choice, etc. This sounds very similar to many of the other classes I have described. In some ways it is, in some ways it isn’t. The thing is, all classes are classical text oriented. We use Shakespeare’s writing as a tool to learn these more general concepts about voice, text, and movement. Each class really builds on every other, which should make for a cohesive lesson by the time our 3 months are over.

Once Stevie’s class was over, we went to Historical Dance with Diana. In about 2 weeks time, we have a dance night. On this night, my level (called the S’s – for semester) and the second year of the three year program (called the B’s) will gather in a big studio for an evening of historical dance. B’s will ask S’s to dance and, to anyone peaking in a window, I’m sure it will look like we’ve jumped back a few centuries. With the knowledge that this night is coming up, Diana jumped right into her lesson so we can learn as many dances as possible before the big night. We learned one and a half dances today. It’s very fun and my group learns quite quickly. I very much look forward to our next lesson with Diana.

Next up was Physical Theatre with Yorgos. He’s a beautiful man from Greece who will be teaching us a class basically on being grounded in your movement on stage. More or less he is concerned with getting us comfortable in our own bodies so that when we’re on stage we have the ability to use our bodies to their fullest extent. I’ve heard you sweat a lot in his class and he mentioned the word “workouts” today in his introduction. Hmmm… we’ll see about this…

Lunch, then rehearsal! Today in rehearsal we continued reading the play, moving a bit faster than before but still pausing to discuss meaning, verse, meter, etc. Additionally, we got assigned monologues from the play to be working on by ourselves for the next two weeks. Next week, we will do some scene work from the play and the week after we will rehearse our monologues and then have a little monologue showing for each other on the last day of our working on this project. Our group is really starting to gel together nicely. We had a fun, giggle filled and productive rehearsal with Phil.

Now I’m home and procrastinating doing some research for Phil and Richard II. We were divided into groups and each has something to research. We are functioning as our own dramaturges essentially but in much less detail than a dramaturge would provide. My group is researching the historical facts of the real Richard II and his reign. Shakespeare likes to deviate from the facts occasionally so it’s interesting to learn the truth behind the real king.

I should probably stop procrastinating now and get to work… (after I eat a Digestive of course!)

Until next time 🙂

Cheers!!