2nd Day OneLots To Learn

CLASSES:
Movement: Very cool. A good long set warm up exercises. Interesting thing. George talked with me for a few minutes giving a two minute break to the class, and said what I need to work on now is pulling back. Getting back to the idea of not going flat out, as that leaves you nowhere to go, and all the audience sees is the strain. I work to stretch myself physically during the exercises so my 100% level is higher later on, giving me more range to work with. I think George's direction is to habituate myself to working within the range all the time, instead of pushing for the edge. It sounds more fun, and I think it will be a challenging habit to establish. That in itself indicates I need to make the paradigm shift.

Today was a little different. With the Studio Series at Freehold in production space is hard to find, and today our classes were in the theatre at Northwest Actor's Studio. It is fun to work in different spaces. At least I think so, though the area was limited.

Then, and I find this exciting, we started neutral mask work. I said very little as we were starting, as I was trying to focus and push away the tendency to think about the class I took last year. Observations from that class, which might be slightly interesting, would be a block of sorts to learning more. I found the neutral mask work to be very helpful and enjoyable last year, and want to get as much as I can out of it this time.


Stage Combat: Geof is in Washington DC, fight director for a production, so Heidi taught our class. We thought maybe they didn't where we were, and some of us from the class walked around a bit hoping to bump into Geof, as we didn't know he was out of town. It turns out nobody told Heidi stage combat class was starting half an hour earlier this term.

It was all fun stuff, for the sake of being fun and getting us back in the swing of things. Starting with review work for the rapier, then did everything again using our non-dominate hands. Space was tight and the ceiling low, which kept us alert to our surroundings. Then we switched back to dominate hands, picked up daggers, and did some sword and dagger work. I'm thinking of taking the stage combat progression next year, and look forward to more of that work. Fighting with weapons in both hands sounds daunting to me, but I expect to enjoy it. Then we turned in daggers, and did two against one rapier work. Another first, and moved we onto three and four against one, and finally six against two.

A note of interest. Geof was recently designated a Fight Master by the Society of American Fight Directors. This is an honor and recognition, not something you can apply for. He is one of only a dozen. Pretty impressive credentials. We already have great respect and affection for Geof, and we are just pleased.


Speech: Jack is out of town for a show in Portland, so we didn't have class. We didn't know, and waited for him for a while until Don remembered he had Jack's phone number. Little bit of a communications break down -- he and Robin knew the schedule change, but George and the class did not. He'll be back in a couple weeks, and the other classes while Jack is out will be covered by someone else.

OBSERVATIONS/CLICKS:
The feedback from George about not pushing myself so hard on the exercises, I suspect will resonate quite a bit with other work. There is something freeing in it. Like mask work. Some people are creeped out by the masks -- at least initially. Some feel especially vulnerable with them. Not me. I love them. I feel more at ease and somehow safer even though I know my body and it's every movement and aspect is now the focus for the audience.

All we did was shoe (put on) the mask, using the rules of turning away from the audience so you are never seen in a transitional state. My mask felt somewhat wry, and when we turned to look at each other my mask felt like it spoke to me internally. All I saw was the mask and eyes of Kirsten, and I thought "Yummy!" The power of art. That is not a word in my vocabulary, or it wasn't. I really feel like I get out of my skin sometimes, and it is one of the aspects of theatre which I love.

Another thing is the freeing I allow myself in the mask. I should have remembered it from last year much sooner, considering the only feedback I and the instructors had for me was my struggle against making myself smaller. The class feedback was about how huge I was and how I filled the stage. Not simply my size, though it helps. I'm definitely a large fellow but not gigantic in any proportions. Six foot two, is not outside of the big part of of the bell curve, and while I am certainly overweight, I'm not anywhere near the category where it causes people to stop and stare. So the mask lets me easily have a presence that far exceeds my physical size. It is time to stop being bemused by this, and start embracing it and using it in my other work.

I accepted I have a very big and strong presence, though it was the opposite of my self-image. I'm past the stage of resisting my old self-image, or I damn well should be. I know how to use my presence a bit, and am learning to more. Now, I have to let myself do it. Like much of my theatre path, it is generally just letting myself do things. It is at once the easiest and hardest thing in the world for me.