Spectacularly, a whole week has gone by in the blink of an eye. Time is already flying. But I guess it’s just further proof of the saying “Time flies when you’re having fun!” Fun indeed is being had.
The class schedule was pretty much the same as last week. Monday we had Alexander technique, clown, and acting with Jenny, followed by rehearsal with Phil. Tuesday was acting with Debbie, pure voice with George, and text with James. With Debbie we worked on the directions aspect of Chekhov work. The direction I found most interesting was the side. Basically we pretended like we had a massive ear on one side of our body and then had to carry on a conversation with someone. Each person seemed distracted but like they were trying to look like they were engaged in the conversation. What I found so interesting about this was it was an oddly comfortable state for me. I realized this is because I constantly listen to all that is going on around me when I’m in a room of people. I eavesdrop, I watch other groups of people, I take in the whole room. While sometimes this is good and I can learn a lot about various things through this behavior, I realized during this exercise that it also means I am not giving the people I am with my full attention. Definitely an intriguing thing to keep in mind going forward.
James was enlightening as always. He very nearly articulated what it is about theatre that makes me love it so much. I wish I had captured his words verbatim but here’s an approximation:
“At some point in your life you give up and smash your dreams for another person and something else then enters the room. That’s why we do plays – we watch someone give something up and something else enters the room and it’s real and it changes people. That’s why we do theatre, it changes people.”
That “something else” is clearly intangible and a little mystical but it’s true and I can’t think of a better way to explain it. When you see truly good theatre, theatre that moves you deeply, there is something else in the room besides some strangers and a cast of actors. There’s an energy (or something resembling energy) that everyone in the space experiences together.
Lest you should worry I’m turning into a complete hippy, we talked about tangible things as well. Our discussion focused mainly on the importance of words, continuing his theme from previous classes. James preaches that words give us a revelation of the character, we see what’s on the inside on the outside through their words. To stress the importance of words, we had to read our speeches slowly and clearly. (I was reminded from someone’s choice of monologue how wonderful the wooing monologue from Henry V is. My favorite line is: “but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or rather, the sun, and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.” I just think that’s lovely…) This allowed the words to do all the work, rather than putting on our “actor” voices and acting really hard to convey meaning. Whenever we started to slip into our actor voices, he would stop us and talk to us about normal, everyday things and then take us right back into our speeches. Combining the importance of a real human-being character and speaking in a normal voice, James placed an empty chair in front of me and told me to imagine a friend of mine was sitting in it. I then had to have a conversation with my friend, even though the class couldn’t “hear” the answers. Ok, fine, easy enough. Lots of imagination and a little creativity. Then, he had me pretend I was looking at myself in the chair. “Ok,” he said, “talk to yourself.” I froze. I had no idea what to say. What do you say to yourself when you’re sitting across from you and there are 12 additional pairs of eyes on you? I started just reminding myself to do things, going over my mental to-do list. James quickly stopped me as I struggled more and more to find things to say. After telling me to stop bossing myself around (truly a window inside my head…), he began speaking about how you at your most ordinary is you at your most poetic and relatable. You at your most ordinary is who we want to see on stage because that is a human, that is relatable. He continued by saying that actors are intensely creative artists. I paraphrase, but he said, “Actors are deeply creative because we don’t have a piano to smash or a paint brush to throw around, we only have ourselves. We are our only tools.” I’ve never thought of myself as an artistic person, nor would I ever think of myself at my most ordinary as being extraordinary. There was something about those two ideas and the vehemence with which he expressed them that triggered something in me and made me really emotional. I thought I was a crazy person until I talked to other people in my group and found out they had been feeling the same way. It’s certainly going to be an enlightening semester with James…
With Wednesday came applied voice with Stevie, historical dance with Diana, physical theatre with Yorgos, and rehearsal with Phil. In historical dance we were racing against the clock to learn as many dances as we could before our dance night with the Bs. In an hour and 15 minutes, we learned 2 and 1/2 dances. It was a bit of an overload of information, but I don’t mind. It’s such a fun class and I love learning all these dances. If I try and explain what we did in Yorgos’ class I will absolutely sound like a hippy. Written word won’t do it justice. If you’re genuinely curious, Skype me. I’ll explain. Basically we had a big dance party for an hour and a quarter.
Thursday was singing with Caryll, combat with Jonathan, and text with James, followed by rehearsal. I’m really loving singing. I actually look forward to my two singing classes. Caryll is very patient and kind. We each got assigned our own individual songs and she played through them as we recorded them. This weekend I have to learn my Elizabethan song. My neighbors should be quite, quite pleased. Combat was great fun. We got to hold our swords and daggers and practice some basic choreography. I can now stab, cut the head, groin, arms and shoulders, and defend myself against said moves. It all involved lots of lunging and arm movements. I’m a little sore… I think I need to get myself to the gym a bit more : P And, of course, I have a page full of notes from James’ class… This time he had each person stand in the center of the room and we all had to say words that described them. (An intimidating exercise in theory but people were incredibly complimentary and it was a nice warm and fuzzy feeling. There was no reason to be scared.) After we all had gone, he explained the point. Everyone had pointed out our qualities. You can’t actively act qualities. A person just is how they are. If you have any hope of making a character seem like a real human, you have to think about their qualities. But, again, you can’t act those qualities because then you will seem fake and very showy. “Character is the ordinariness of the inside and you have to see your character from the inside.” Definitely food for thought about getting at the depth of whatever character you’re playing.
And now I’ll take a pause from our regularly scheduled class overview to tell you about rehearsals. Rehearsals have been very fun this week. We’ve been doing scene work which means that the speaking roles have been divvied up and you don’t always get something to work on. Nonetheless, it’s been good to watch others work and Phil is diligent about throwing you in as a lady-in-waiting or a duke so that you get to participate in the scene even if you’re not speaking. We work slowly through each beat, discovering how staging and dialogue helps uncover even more in Shakespeare’s language. The scene I have a big part in will rehearse on Monday and I’m looking forward to that.
Today we had pure movement with Yuri, RP with George, and singing. I am loving singing in our small little choir. It’s such fun and definitely training my ear well.
I HAVEN’T EVEN TALKED ABOUT DANCE NIGHT.
On Thursday, we had social dance night with the Bs. (Bs are the second year students in the three year program.) At 6:00pm, we gathered in one of the bigger studios with Diana and she led us in the various dances we have learned. Bs would ask us Ss to dance and off we went! Most of us (including the Bs!) required a few reminders of steps but it was fine because Diana was calling out the steps to us as we went. We all laughed and giggled and danced the night away. We even learned two new dances all together, there, on the spot. One is called the Scottish Dance and the other was an Irish step dance. I was beaming ear to ear. It was great. It was Diana’s birthday so after we had danced all the dances we knew, we retired to the neighborhood pub to celebrate with Diana. (Please keep in mind Diana is probably in her mid-late 50s. A tall, petite, elegant lady who has clearly been a dancer all her life.) As I looked around the corner of the pub we were crammed in, I couldn’t help but smile. First, how un-American to go to the pub with your teacher after a day of classes. But more than that I realized what a unique situation we are all in regardless of what country we’re in. How lucky we are to be surrounded by such a large group of people who are willing to stay 3 hours after normal classes end to dance historical dances. I guess such is the life of drama school students… You’re constantly surrounded by people crazy enough to love theatre as much as you do.
I’m happy the weekend is here but already itching to get back into the studios to keep learning. I have plenty of material to go over this weekend but I’m also going to try to get to some museums and maybe see a show. We shall see!
I’ll leave you with this rehearsal candid my friend Michael took. If this picture doesn’t scream “drama school,” I don’t know what else could.
Missing everyone but still having a blast! Until next time…
Cheers!!