Grad School: Week 2

This has been the first official week of classes. I’ll just do a brief summary of what’s been going on in each.

ACTING

A lot of attention is spent on cold reading exercises. This involves two people at a table working on text that we’ve never seen. Everyone’s had a few minutes to look over the text, and then, some kind of “wrench” is thrown into the scene: passing a ball of clay to the partner on an operative word, playing a game of chess/checkers by moving a piece on the operative word, exploring a partner’s face with your hands during the lines. This requires a lot of dexterity to manage the text, maintaining connection with the partner, and abiding by the demands of the particular “wrench.”

We’re also learning about the acting business in various spurts. I’ve come in knowing a bit about some major LORT Theatres, but there’s a lot more to digest.

VOICE

The two sessions we’ve had in voice have been all about alignment and relaxation. We’ve done a lot of floor work with a tennis ball – it’s a strange mix of intense pain and release. On Thursday, we did a TON of sun salutations (a yoga sequence). There’s not much else to report.

SPEECH

For voice, we’re learning about alignment, relaxation, and the kinesthetic awareness of our bodies to engage the muscles that need to be engaged. For speech, we’re learning more about how our instrument is used to produce certain sounds. It’s the groundwork for “costuming” our voice with accents and dialects (that’s not quite the right word, I’m sure, but that’s kind of how I’m seeing the distinction).

Right now, we’re learning basic IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet), which will lead us to General American, Standard British (RP), and some other things. I’ve got to have Sonnet 29 memorized by Wednesday.

COMBAT

We learned a short unarmed fight sequence that focused on wide upper body punches/blocks, lower body kicks/blocks, and some mid-torso work (knee kicks/blocks). We used mixed martial arts (think unarmed fights in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) for this. Our assignment was to work on the fight with a partner and do them cleanly (and as slowly as we needed) to a piece of music. I think my fight went okay – things got a little sloppier when we presented it to the class with music, but all in all, I’m enjoying the combat stuff. This is the one area I’ve been most concerned about, but so far, it hasn’t been too bad.

We’ve also begun basic, basic rapier work.

ENSEMBLE BUILDING

This is a required thing for all grad students, but interested undergrads can join in. We’re doing a combination of Viewpoints and Suzuki training. It’s expanding our aperture of awareness so that a whole room of 20 actors can jump in the air and land (quietly) simultaneously. There’s a LOT more to it than this. Suzuki is “Japanese ballet on steroids.” That’s about all that I can say about this for now.

HOT L BALTIMORE REHEARSALS

Oh yeah, I'm playing Bill Lewis! We open at the end of September.

We’ve spent a few days doing table work and figuring out what’s really going on. This is a play about family, except we’re all on the “island of misfit toys,” according to our director (which is quite fitting). We’ve started to do some open viewpoints on our rehearsal set. The first time we did that, the director played part of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album, which dropped two months before the events of the play.

On Friday, we spent the whole day watching YouTube videos: speeches from the Lanford Wilson memorial (from Jeff Daniels, Bobby Cannavale, and Craig Wright), an episode of All in the Family, Amtrak train commercials, and some other odds 'n ends from the 70s.

The costume designer wants me to keep the mustache. I'll share pictures, I'm sure.

We’re in the middle of blocking right now. It’s tedious. I’ve got a tough part—there’s a lot of “multi-tasking” and business to do. I’m operating a hotel switchboard, and the phone rings a lot. I need to get off book as soon as humanly possible too. But now, it’s bed time!

I have to go to bed.

Grad School - Week 1

First Year Acting Intensive

This past week the dream team of ’13 spent 45+ hours working on ensemble building, acting, and orientation for school. We covered the course work for a standard “Acting for Non-Majors” in five days. It was a strange combo of playing the games (involving some kind of degree of improv, usually) with learning the what/how/why behind it (the “why” being something you would rarely tell students when you teach it to them).

I won’t get into details, because that would simply take too long, and I don’t want this to become something that’s too prescriptive or a day by day breakdown. Committing to that would be impossible.

Anyway, there are many goals and outcomes of the intensive. But after six days of living in the theatre, the nine of us (and a couple others) are quite close. I don’t know a whole lot about everyone, but we’ve been staring into each others’ eyes, doing cold readings while squeezing a partner’s hand (or exploring their face with our hands). Needless to say, we’re quite an ensemble of such variety. Some of us are movers, and some aren’t. Others of us can sing rock the house. The next 60 weeks of training will be about learning about weaknesses, capitalizing on strengths, and getting “gooder sooner.”

A “trick” that the training requires is to recognize WHY things are working well (or aren’t). We have to learn about the nitty gritty details that can make us efficient, savvy actors. We’re talking about LORT theatres, directors, how Houston works, AEA, non-profit/for-profit, etc. In addition to that, we’ve been doing ab workouts, a kempo P90X video (kicking and punching for an hour), light tumbling, and beginning Suzuki work (which is a giant core and lower body workout). This has been a whirlwind so that we can hit the ground running with an intense shared experience and vocabulary when we officially start classes.

On Friday, we showed the following to faculty, students, and staff:

·         A pair of contrasting monologues (about 2 minutes each)

·         30 Seconds of Standard British

·         A verse and chorus of a song a capella

Afterwards, there was a reception. I talked with some professors, alumni, and undergraduate students (quite a few undergrads have told me they loved my selections over the past couple days). Before we were released, J (the head of our program) held us back and had us rank everyone’s performances (privately). It’s a little nerve-wracking, but it’s a way for J to gauge our sensibilities and tastes.

THEN: FALL SEMESTER AUDITIONS

We had three minutes to present two contrasting monologues and 16 bars of a song (or “Happy Birthday”). It went ok for me. But my Friday night showing went much better. I may have misjudged one of my pieces, but it’s not the end of the world. I don’t think I showed enough of a contrast.

Anyway, I was called back for EVERY SINGLE SHOW this semester:

Zombie Prom

The Trial of Ebeneezer Scrooge

The Hot L Baltimore

Our Lady of 121^st Street

Each call back meant waiting around for a good two hours (at least). I think my callback for The Hot L Baltimore went the best (and that’s what I want to be in anyway). It’s hard to tell. But now, I’m back in educational theatre. There are variables that extend beyond any show (it’s an intricate puzzle to fit everyone in the casting). But it’s safe to say that I’ll be in something. And if that doesn’t work, they’ll configure a small studio show catered to any actors who may be “left out” from substantial casting.

We start classes today.

I’ve got Acting, Voice & Speech, and a TA course (Intro to Theatre with 400 students in a giant lecture hall).

I’m learning LOADS already. I’ve got lots of notes that I’ll sift through, and I’ll sit down and evaluate how my performances/auditions/callbacks went

Annotated Mess

1. Tim's Monster Book of Monologues: A 3-inch binder that is starting to fill quite nicely.

2. A graphed Moleskine with notes from the "Monster Reading List" - opened to notes from Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen.

3. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

4. My Life in Art by Stanislavski (I'm reading this right now)

5. American Theatre - a subscription is on of the "Monster Reading List"

6. A copy of The Crucible, which is part of the spring semester's season at UH.

7. A map of the UH campus. It's big.

8. A stack of monologue selections and a song (taken from #1) I'm working on for the first week o' fun.

9. Stacks of plays I have yet to flip through for monologues. You cannot see how high they're stacked, however.

No. The photo is not candid. I'm not a trained wildlife photographer. These books and papers were given sedatives for the purposes of the photoshoot. Otherwise, they're usually running wild. They're not allowed to wander the kitchen or the bathrooms. Some of them are not mine. But I'm taking care of them for the next week. After the initial "getting to know you spine sniffling," they seem to coexist peacefully. Although the Restoration comedies are pretty uppity and need extra TLC.

I think I might be losing it.

Our orientation/intensive begins on August. 15.