Thus, Week 2 has come to an end, meaning we are officially over the hump with less time til the end than from the beginning. AHHH! Isn't it so crazy how the best experiences go by so quickly while not so great experiences are the ones that seem to last forever.
But enough of such sad thoughts for now!!
Let's rewind back to last Tuesday to begin this tale. It was a such great day in my classes! We started off the day in Modern Acting class during which we were officially assigned roles and scenes that we will be working on for the remainder of the program and that we will be performing on Open Day two Saturdays from now. I was casted as Enid in Scene 7 of Carl Churchill's play "Blue Kettle." The play is about a man named Derek who finds women with long lost sons, meets them, and tells those women he is their long lost sons, even though he is not, in the hope that they will leave him money when they die. I play Derek's very dependent, conflicted girlfriend in a scene in which Derek and Enid are having dinner with one of his fake mothers and that fake mother's husband. The best and most challenging part of this play is the fact that Carl Churchill has purposely replaced certain words with the words "blue" and "kettle" progressively throughout the play. For instance, one of my lines reads, "Kettle that's blue I'm so confused." It seems the line should read something like "Guess that's why I'm so confused." It's up to the actor to decipher the concealed words in order to find the true objectives in the scene. We will begin working on all our modern scenes this week, and I am super excited to face the challenges of this bizarre text!
In Shakespeare class, I got to work on my Titania scene and again received, extremely positive feedback from John Gorrie. I am definitely feeling myself growing as a Shakespearean actress. I can just feel it in my body and hear it in my voice, that I am becoming more comfortable with the language and am now willing to play more and make stronger character choices. It's a great feeling :)
Lastly, (one more thing! I told you Tuesday was a great day!) in Physical Theatre class I took myself WAY out of my comfort zone. We are currently working on a play called "The Chairs" in which an extremely old couple hosts a meeting for a great number of guests for whom they have to keep bringing in chairs. However, the catch is that all the guests are invisible. The actors who play the old couple must bring these invisible, silent guests to life! To practice talking to invisible people, we did an exercise on Tuesday in which one person sat in the center chair surrounded by three other people in their own chairs. The center person had to be in LOVE with the one person, had to utterly RESPECT the second person, and had to HATE with a passion the last person. The three outer people asked the middle person questions and the middle person had to act toward them accordingly, either with extreme love, respect, or hate. Then, at some point, the outer three people went away but the middle person had to continue their conversations and actions with them as if they were still sitting in those chairs. They had become invisible people. In essence, it was an extreme improve game, and out of 15 students, I volunteered myself to be the 4th person in that hot seat. I was terrified. I do NOT do improve. I fear it like the plague. But I did it. I had a great group of three around me to help get me started and to really push me to those three extremes; then, when they left, I kept those conversations going and ultimately got so many laughs!! I was found FUNNY! Like, what?! Hahaha. Afterwards I was so proud of myself for taking that leap, that risk, and was just so happy that I had actually made people laugh without preparation or a script! So yes, Tuesday was a bloody good day!
Wednesday I had a great tutorial with John Gorrie, my Shakespeare teacher, during which we talked about film auditions and how film acting differs from theatre acting. The main thing I took from my tutorial was "When you are rejected as an actor, they are rejecting YOU." When I first heard John say this I found it incredibly pessimistic. I didn't agree. But what I was supposed to get from this statement was actually a very optimistic concept. More times than not, we actors will be rejected not because we aren't talented. We may be just as talented as the actor that actually did get the part. But, ultimately if we don't fit the picture in the directors' minds, especially in film, then we've already lost the part the moment we walk into to the audition room. At the end of the day, John was telling me not to let rejection get me down or let rejection make me question my talent. Just keep auditioning, never stop, and don't doubt yourself. It was a very interesting way of seeing the industry, one that will likely stick with me over my career.
Classes on both Thursday and Friday went really well! We continued to rehearse Midsummer and
Twelfth Night scenes in Shakespeare, did table work (script work) in Modern, and had great fun while learning in both Voice and Physical Theatre.
Friday evening, we had a BADA only barbecue on the lawns outside the beautiful New Building on campus. We ate good food and watched our peers play croquet. I personally spent most of the time taking pictures with all the great people I had met and gotten close to over the first half of the program, seen below. It was a really lovely evening with great company!
Sarah, Me, Charly
Meagan, Sarah, Libby, Me
Oh Michael
Cordelia
Cecily
Niru
Jack, Me, Matt, Jameson
Adrian
Erica
Friday night, I went out with a group of friends to a very elegant pub called The House. We all got drinks (I got virgin strawberry coladas) and talked for an hour and a half before heading back to bed in preparation for Saturday.
Tess, Me, Anita, Niru
Saturday was a day we had all been waiting for: the day trip to Stratford Upon Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare and home of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The day began strong with the most beautiful ride through the English countryside. From Oxford to Stratford, we passed through nearly a dozen tiny 13th to 15th century, picturesque villages surrounded my lush green hills and a pale blue sky. We arrived in Stratford around 12:30 and went straight to Trinity Church, a Parrish church from the 1200s, where Shakespeare is buried. Irina Brown, my Audition Techniques teacher, took us to the church and first gave us a summary of Shakespeare's life from being born in Stratford to being buried in Stratford. She then succeeded in getting me a bit emotional. She talked about how actors, writers, theatergoers, and literature lovers have voyaged to Shakespeare's grave for centuries. It has become a pilgrimage for many, a must-do in their lives. And as I approached the grave, outlined in a thin blue rope and marked with a small sign, otherwise quite inconspicuous on the stone floor of the church, I felt a surge of emotion. I can't really put it into words. I guess, I feel that without this man's contributions to the art of theatre, I would not be who I am today and the art of theatre, this art of LIFE that we love and practice would not be the same. Maybe those are too strong of statements, but then and now, still, I feel that they are strong but, in many respects, true. It was an experience and feeling I will never forget.
Trinity Church
Shakespeare's grave
My friends and I then ate lunch at The Dirty Duck, a pub whose real name is actually The Black Swan but is widely known as the former. The Dirty Duck is where all Royal Shakespeare Company actors have gone to eat for decades, and their headshots grace the walls. Who knows! Maybe some day one my BADA friends or even my own pictures may dawn the walls of the Dirty Duck! :P
After lunch, we toured Shakespeare's birthplace as well as his new house where he lived with his family and eventually died. The highlight of the tours were the gardens at the new house. The flowers were so beautiful, and the amazing sculptures depicting some of Shakespeare's most famous plays and texts were a stunning addition to the lands he once owned.
Shakespeare's birthplace
Gardens at the New House
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Inside New House
All 90 of us convened at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to see Henry IV Part II put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production was simply incredible. Shakespeare plays in general are incredibly challenging to play and to convey to an audience, but his histories are probably the most challenging. It was a spectacular piece of theatre presented by a beyond talented cast whom I desire to emulate in my career. Watching them makes me want to perform in more Shakespeare plays...Who knows! Stratford, you may not have seen the last of me! Haha :P
On Sunday, we got to have a Q&A session with Paola Dionisotti and Jim Hooper who both starred in the production of Henry IV Part II that we had seen the previous night. (Side note: Paola was in an episode of Game of Thrones. She was one of the "judges" questioning Baelish after Lysa's death and she comforted Sansa after Sansa opened up about her identity and about how Baelish has helped her. #GOTlove) Jim and Paola have worked as professional actors for decades and have performed hundreds (actually probably over a thousand) of times on the RSC stage. They were both extremely entertaining and knowledgable guests! I took a lot of great notes and laughed a lot. It was a really good session and was such a treat and honor to get to personally hear from two such great actors right after seeing them perform!
If you can't tell, I am enjoying myself immensely. It still doesn't seem real sometimes that I am here. It's been a fairy tale (well a very challenging, exhausting but great one) so far, and I can't wait to see where the story goes from here over the next two weeks!
Stay tuned for the epic sequels in my saga!
Coming Soon to a PC or Mac near you! (hopefully! I will really try!)
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