November 29

Anthony!

I loved this class. I really did. We shouldn’t pick favorite among professors. So I won’t. But I have? And I did. I’ve learned a whole lot from this class, and I’ve learned about a lot of forms of theatre from you that I truly love. I really, really hope to work with you more in the future. I feel like I have so much to learn from you! Thank you for this awesome experience.

            Caleb

November 27

Gift project party times! This project really stressed me out, and I was sick for most of Thanksgiving break, so my bed-riddled, shivering self didn’t work on it as much as I would have liked to. Jenna is awesome, and I wanted to give her more, but I’m not sure I did a perfect job on this performance. Edward did a great job of doing me, though, and encapsulating me. I was so floored that he went home and learned an entire dance to a song that I do just for this project! It was flattering and I appreciated it. Edward is one of my favorite people.

            I think this is one of the best examples of our class’s growth as an ensemble, though. Everyone was so open to being represented. We all loved it, and laughed together, and enjoyed ourselves in a great, friendly way. A+ go team.

November 15

I got to be a narrator today, which was awesome. We played with music and sound effects, too. I did the three little pigs, and it was a fun experience. It also showed how doubling up on information can have comedic power, but you can’t just double up or it slows down the pace and bores the audience. We pow-wow’d as a group today and figured out what we wanted to do with our myth, which is cool. My plan is to write the script over the break. I’ve also started rehearsals with Paige and Edward on the scene I’m directing that they’re in, which is cool.

November 13

We did a space balancing exercise that I didn’t completely understand. I mean, I understood the rules and what we were supposed to do, but the ideas I was supposed to take away were unclear to me. Hopefully I absorbed some of the purpose despite not completely understanding it, I guess. I’ve got a great group for our project, a bunch of people I respect as actors, and I’m super pumped to work with them. We did a couple of different things regarding our final pieces (notably learning about expectations) and it’s helping us find things we can use when we actually start putting together a final product. I want this performance to be really good, so I hope our group pulls everything together.

            I did really love talking about expectations—I love learning about the rules behind storytelling at the way things work. The most important part of theatre to me is story, and I love to learn about it in different ways.

November 8

Oh my gosh, I am so excited for this project, oh my gosh. I have so many ideas they are bursting from my brain. Watching Robin Hood really cemented what we can do to make this performance awesome, and I’m really pumped to see what everyone pulls together. I’m interested to see how this can be used in a serious way, though—I’m going to try to convince our group to take a non-comedic approach just to see if it’s possible, because that would be awesome. Theseus and the Minotaur is one of my favorite myths, and it’s definitely a tragedy from anyone’s perspective but Theseus’s. Let’s see what we can do!

            Augghh I’m so excited.

November 6

I did not connect with the film character assignment at all. Maybe it was who I picked, but working from real people was not nearly as helpful. Michael Cera was the guy I picked because I think he gets similar roles to what I would play, but I don’t know. Imitating him was not exciting or easy for me. I’m bad at impersonating other humans, which sucks, but it’s definitely something I need to work on. Right now it’s just frustrating. I didn’t really like doing it as him and I didn’t feel like I got much out of it (except maybe how I don’t want to do my piece.) Being him took all of my energy out of the equation and I hated that.

November 1

Watched some other pieces today. It was actually really interesting to see the work everyone did for this project, because all of our performances turned out so different. I am pleased with the results, though, and think everyone found cool ways of expressing their monologue without using words. The most interesting thing for me was when you could see the words reflected in what they did—like, you could always tell when people had gone line by line with their physical pieces, and who had used general beats and ideas, like I had. Neither was particularly better than the other, it was just an interesting dichotomy. I love the word “dichotomy.”

October 30

Movement pieces with our monologues started today. I did mine, and I enjoyed it—I incorporated some mime stuff, some Commedia ideas, and quite a bit of my own personality into something that I think shows a journey. This was actually a much more fun way for me to approach a monologue than writing out beats, which I hate more than anything else in the world, oh my gosh. Having to make a movement piece forces you to see what the ideas behind sections are, even if you find a movement that works before you know what it is, and that’s awesome for me.

            I’m using this in the future, and no one can stop me.

October 25

Type casting! This was fun, but most of what I got back I expected. Things like “nice guy” and “sweet kid.” “Awkward best friend/love interest” etc. These are things that I figured I’d play, so it’s nice to know I imagine my type to be what others see, too. Lots of people said I made them feel welcome/safe and that I was easy to listen to as myself, so that was sweet. It was basically split down the middle on whether I’m personality or character actor, in their opinion, and that’s kind of awesome because it implies flexibility, in my opinion. I do enjoy using myself as a character model, but I also love playing strange people who are completely different.

I also think it had something to do with wearing Connor’s clothes. Plaid makes me look lovable.

October 23

I’m a dad in the Fantasticks. I mean, that’s cool, but I’m not sure how I feel about playing age. And by that I mean, I know that I’m terrible at it. I don’t have a lot to say about today, but I’m also really exhausted and worn out from auditions, so I’ll be back with a vengeance in my Thursday journal.

October 18

I am nervous, I am a bundle of nerves. Look at these nerves, there is a bundle of them. My audition isn’t until tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean I’m not on the edge of my seat, oh my gosh. I’m not even particularly attached to any of the shows in next semester’s season, but. Who knows. We’ll see how it goes.

            I’ve enjoyed working on my monologue with animals. It’s really helped my beats. Hopefully that translates when I go to audition. Phew. Honestly I’d be cool if I didn’t get cast this semester, but it’s always worth it to audition, in my opinion.

October 16

Doing opposite animals is haaaarrrrd. I had to do my hippo in class, and it’s stressful and difficult and strenuous, because he is so different from the way I carry myself, even as a human version. Hippos are also huge jerks, and I like to think I am not a huge jerk.

            I’ve worked a little on the animals I want to incorporate into my monologue, but I haven’t really settled on a third one yet. Probably some sort of yippy dog. Like a Chihuahua! Actually, that’s perfect, and I am going with that. Thanks, journal.

October 11

Oh, god. Tossing the ball during the combination ended up being a serious exercise in futility for way too long. We have people in our class who legitimately have hand-eye coordination biological problems (And I’m not being funny. We do.) but it wasn’t even mostly their fault. Some of us just really suck at catching and throwing. Once we were able to choose how to do it, though, we started passing to people we knew needed to be passed to and throwing to people we knew could handle it. Eventually we got through it, but geez. That was stressful.

            We did the animal scenes today, and that was awesome. I seriously love doing the giraffe. It makes me so happy, and using my body in weird ways is something I love to do. I can turn my arms pretty much all the way around, so I can imitate the direction of their front leg joints, and I’m probably too proud of myself for that. Our scene was a really good way of showing how animal traits can be transferred to human characters and situations, and something about it definitely clicked.

October 9

Copying these over to here again now. Awesome.

            I love working with the tennis balls during the rhythm exercises. It’s fun. It took a little coordination, though, and I’m pretty sure we all lost a ball at least once. It was neat to see how we could all work together to achieve a single rhythm. (I also felt special and important, as I was the only person assigned to the last beat of the sequence.)

            We got to show our animals some, which I had a tremendous amount of fun doing. I love being a baby giraffe! The hippo was harder, but I haven’t had the chance to really study it yet since I chose it in class with you today. Then, Connor and I had to use a stuffed animal to be a giraffe trying to climb some rocks. Instead, he ended up stumbling and falling, and after eating a little he fell asleep. It was probably the most adorable thing anyone in that room had ever seen, sorry about it.

            Clarissa’s animal is loud. I love Jenna’s squirrel! That’s definitely something I can use.

October 4, 2012

The zoo! It was fun. I studied a turkey and a tortoise (turkey and turtle!) and it was an interesting experience. First of all, getting to do something in nature was really refreshing. I spend about twelve hours a day in that theatre building and usually go straight from there to my house, where I do homework, eat, watch some TV shows, and go to sleep. I’ve been eating really bad and not getting enough exercise, so I’m gaining weight—which is dangerous and I hate it. I wish I had more chances to work out, but I keep telling myself I will work out as soon as Three Sisters is over.

Check up on me. Ask me if I’m working out so I feel guilty for not.

October 2, 2012

Zoo is on Thursday! I’m so excited. We did more monologue things today. I think? I’m blanking on what we did specifically. While I try to remember, I’ll talk about Commedia.

Thank you so much for working with us! Getting to learn the characters from the ground-up is super awesome and worthwhile. I love working with the battatio, and I’m excited to be better at all of these lazzi.

Oh yeah!  Rhythm and Tempo. First of all, I called that you were going to pick me to do the eighth beat by myself. I don’t know how I knew, I just sensed it. I felt special.

This was an interesting challenge, because I’ve never had a problem with rhythm, but I DO have a problem with hand-eye coordination. So.

I liked that you talked about character playlists because I always do that, always always. Every character has a playlist I listen to before each show. 

September 27, 2012

I was absent again today. I really didn’t mean to, I promise it’s not because I don’t like your class. College is hard.

We’re going to the zoo next week, though, that should be awesome! And I talked to some people and they said you did some stuff with bungee cords for tension and talked about power. Sounds interesting! I’m sorry I missed it.

September 25, 2012

Seeing Suzanne reading her monologue in all those different places was funny and made an interesting point. I hate performing outside, though, and it was definitely the worst for being able to hear her. Ray has had to give me the note to use more vocal energy (an embarrassing note to get at this stage of my acting development) though, to my defense, it was more of an energy problem rather than a vocal one. Also something that I need to address but more circumstantial than a problem that’s at the core of my acting.

Interesting fact: my jazz dance class and this class are sort of working together to give me better control of my body. The stuff in here is helping in Jazz and the stuff in there is helping in here. It’s awesome. I wish I could feel more of a growth, though.

Sometimes I feel like I’m letting Ray down in this show. Like he expected something different out of me, and I don’t understand what, or how to do it. It’s just silly actor insecurities, though. 

September 20th, 2012

Putting the elements into my monologue had mixed results. Adding water gave me some cool ideas with pitch, and the idea of a fire growing and gradually getting bigger helped me with pacing, but my monologue had basically no place for earth (or maybe I just have no place for earth, it really is my weakest element) and air wasn’t super useful in this case, but maybe it will be later.

The rubber band thing was awesome—making it into a story was really fun. Our group made ours into a western comedy, and it was one of the most fun things we’ve done in this class so far. I definitely would like more opportunities to do performance-like things in class using the stuff we’re learning. That always helps me the best, since I’m super goal-oriented. Same with dance; if I’m learning a combination for a song, I’m more likely to practice the steps every day than I would be to do a random exercise. 

September 18, 2012

 We moved like the elements! I was terribly bad at earth—Earth is not my element at all—but wind was so much fun. I started thinking about wind and personifying it in ways  I haven’t before. I thought of myself as one gust of wind, one wind-person, and when I was by myself I was a gentle breeze, playing through windows and over smells. When I collected in a large group with other wind-people though, the power was exhilarating. As a huge group we had so much power, the ability to move and destroy and rampage! It wasn’t malicious, though, and it wasn’t sad to separate from the group, just different. If the wind had that power all the time, we’d be in real trouble.

Water I was already suspicious of because we had to do that in the journey of the neutral mask with Thomas, and that was an awful, awful experience. I know I learned a lot, but doing the journey was stressful for all of us and we all felt like we were doing something really, really wrong…we saw him do it, and he did a good job, but if that was the payoff than it wasn’t something I felt like I wanted to invest my time in, really.

Fire was a lot of fun, though. Crackling and popping with my body was entertaining. I know you said no other group had ever made noise like that, but I never made noise the whole time and it kind of aggravated me when the other people in the class did. Maybe it was okay, but I felt like it defeated the purpose. If you have noise to help you, you can be lazy with your body and people will still understand.