The Anniversary Show

CLASSES
Audition:
The 'B' folks did their Shakespeare monologues. Next week I'll be doing mine. Yikes. At least I know it solidly. Now I've got to do more of the homework. Grokking, parsing, physical exploration, etc.


Movement:
We did a fun and challenging warm-up. Skipping rope. Then skipping a foot at a time, kicking the other forward. Then backwards. Then skipping a foot at a time backwards. And so on. Pretty challenging. I didn't get very far with the skipping, but I got it to work for a step or two at a time. The same with the double jumps, which I'd never done before -- or not in twenty or more years. Then we had George and a person from the class hold a single rope, and we'd jump in, hop three times, then jump out. Then twice. Then once. Then with people going in together from both sides. 3,2,1 again. Just before or after staring with people going in from both sides I stepped out. My right knee felt a little queasy, but I thought it would only be for a few minutes. Instead it started bothering me more. I ended up icing it for the rest of the class.

[One year ago, 2/19/2005, I broke my right leg, the following morning had surgery during which the right knee was opened up. It took this to make me cautious.]

After the warming up we started the exercise with the curved spine character work, with four people going. It was fascinating to watch. One thing I noted was that even when the actor felt they were over the top the commitment to the physical form created a character which was compelling. This is cool stuff.


Tutorials (John):
John worked with Trina and I. It was frustrating I had to accommodate the twitchy knee as we started getting into some really fun physical scoring. We worked for an hour and I had a great time, and did some things I'd never tried before. Very much in that whole pelvic acting range, not exclusively, but the tart seasoning it can bring to the Bard's work. We worked for nearly an hour.


Acting/Verse/Text (John and Hal):
We ran scenes. God, my classmates are doing amazing things. Even when they think they suck. Trina and I did more of what we'd started with John during the tutorial. We got quite a bit of time with Hal today, as he arrived early and joined in for the last half of our tutorial as well.


OBSERVATIONS/CLICKS
I backed off when I first hurt my knee, giving it a very good chance of healing quickly. This is new for me. It is an obvious thing, to stop when you're hurt and prevent aggravating the injury. It is a hellishly hard thing for me to do. That whole, "I'm not going to fucking give up or whimp out." attitude.

If I'd kept going and really aggravated the knee I would have likely had to leave. Then I would have missed the exercise in Movement, seeing how what feels like going over the top is not, and can help to create a real character. We are maybe too afraid of caricature. I would have also missed working as Petruccio with Kate. The sensual and bawdy physicality of that scene is not something I ever in my wildest imaginings thought I'd be able to do. Reactions, laughs and gasps, from my classmates indicated otherwise. More cool.

It is amazing what we can do. I'm continually surprised by the rest of the ensemble, to the point where I expect them all to surprise me all the time. Yet it is still hard to accept I can do things which I think amazing. "Truly trying." "The quality of the attempt." All these things we keep putting ourselves through. We keep finding little pots at the end of the rainbows.