Tuesday, July 22, 2014

A Living Legend, Beautiful Runs, London Calling, and Week 2 Kicks Off

So the second week of classes has begun! And it is a sleepy start after the past few days we have had!

Backtrack to Thursday ~~~~
After tutorials and the amazing masterclass with Julian Glover on Wednesday, Thursday meant classes resumed. However rather than having Voice class that day, we had our first Audition Techniques class with world renowned director, Irina Brown. The class was amazing!! First, she had a bunch of people play out what their WORST audition imaginable would be like. My friends preceded to play out such things as forgetting lines, invading the directors' space, bolting from the room the minute they finished their piece, and bolting from the room mid-piece to go vomit. The exercise was both fun and cathartic to do and to watch! Then three people pretended to actually audition for Irina. Afterwards, she commented on the quality of their entrance, conversation with her, and exit then dissected the performance of the monologue and the monologue's success as an audition piece. Sadly we only have these classes once a week and therefore we probably only have time for everyone to go once. But, it was definitely one of the most insightful periods of time I have spent at BADA so far and I can't wait to perform a monologue for this brilliant woman!

Thursday evening may have taken the prize as the most monumental experience of my entire time at BADA. It was the workshop with John Barton, the greatest teacher of Shakespeare alive and who's tv series, "Playing Shakespeare," I watched entirely in my Acting Shakespeare class as UR.
Now 86 years old, Barton has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company for decades and has taught multiple generations of Shakespearean actors, like Patrick Stewart and Judy Dench how to "play" Shakespeare. He worked with 9 randomly chosen students on sonnets while my group watched and took notes. He is so old and yet still offered such eloquent advice and critiques and even cracked jokes about all the sexual puns in Shakespeare's sonnets. It was an opportunity young actors will, in the near future, never be able to have again. Such a workshop is one of the top experiences students of theatre could only dream of having. And BADA and John Barton made it possible for us. My gratitude cannot be explained.
 
Thursday night I went for a run in the park behind Christ Church college (you know, where they filmed scenes in the Harry Potter films) around 8:30 as the sun was beginning to set. The beauty of this town continues to astound me on a daily basis but this view made me abruptly stop my run and document what I was seeing. Simply stunning!



Friday marked the end of our first week of classes. We only had three of our usually four, so we ended early, getting out at 3:45 rather than 6. Our last class of the day was Shakespeare and we rough blocked all of my Titania scenes in "A Midsummer," or as my teacher, the great John Gorrie likes to call it, "The Dream." It was so fun being onstage acting again. I have barely acted since Ui last November, so to be working on a Shakespeare scene with such an accomplished Shakespeare director like Gorrie really excited me and made me strive to impressive him (especially after my not so great audition I did for him earlier in the week). And it went marvelously! He said in the rehearsal, and I quote, "I am amazed." He was impressed with how well I was able to play the very poetic language in which Titania speaks so early in the rehearsal period. My hard work and determination to improve is already staring to pay off!!

Friday night, I went out with three of my best friends, Libby, Niru, and Anita, to the Turf Tavern (for the second time). Afterwards, we ended up walking around Oxford, down roads we had yet to see and down other roads that had already become very familiar to us after only a week.

Early Saturday morning, I set off on a bus to London with seven friends. We only really had one plan made which was to get tickets and see the show "Holy Warriors" that night at the Globe Theatre.  As a devout planner, going into England's great capital without a day fully planned out was daunting to me and put me a little on edge at times, but ultimately I had an very very lovely time with my friends exploring the Southbank area, and then taking many, many pictures with Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, the show "Holy Warriors" was a great disappoint. It was the world premiere of the play and it told the story of the wars fought over Jerusalem from the 12th century to the present day. For a history buff, I really did find the story interesting, but it was an extremely heavy, complicated, and looong story, and the production was of a very weak caliber as far as the acting, singing (god-awful singing), and certain design elements we concerned. BUT being in the Globe Theatre was magical, just magical! Just getting to be in that space for those hours was worth the money. But, the next time I go to a show at the Globe, let me tell you it will be a Shakespeare play; I'll make sure of that haha! I ended up getting back to Oxford around 1:30AM and was super grateful to sleep in on Sunday!





Sunday was my friend Sarah's 24th Birthday! So, I took her out to lunch at a local restaurant and then took her to Ben's Cookies, to get her a gourmet birthday cookie.

That afternoon, we had our fourth session with a famous, accomplished guest. It was David Leveaux, who most recently directed Orlando Bloom and Phylicia Rashed in "Romeo and Juliet" on Broadway! We had a Q&A session with him rather than a masterclass, so students got to ask him questions about his work on Shakespearean plays, his theatrical work in Tokyo, his theatrical work in communist East Berlin before the wall came down, and about what he looks for in his actors. I could have listened to this man speak for hours. He was so eloquent, so kind, so inspirational, and so informative about the industry we all are entering into. He told us that as doers and makers of theatre "we are in the business of life; all theatre is a resistance against death"............ What a beautiful, inspiring statement
for a bunch of young and eager but frightened actors to chew on and to take with us! It's moments like that Q&A that make me completely certain that my choice to be a working actor is a worthy, bold, beautiful and not simply selfish choice.

After the session, a bunch of us went to the Turf Tavern (for the third time) for Sarah's birthday!

Today, classes resumed bright and early! Modern acting class was great because we did non-contextual scenes in which you are given very general lines and then with a partner must come up with  a specific situation to fit those lines. I laughed our loud to myself when I was handed my non-contextual script. It was the same one I had worked on many times all those years ago at my Act One Theatre School! I am loving how international certain theatre practices seem to be. But, the  highlight of today was Voice class. We were having some crazy breakthroughs! John Tucker, our teacher, is simply incredible. First, I have never had a teacher that brightens up a educational space so much with his contagious laughter, enthusiasm, humor, and wisdom. Second, he is a miracle working when it comes to the voice. He got all of us to open our voices today in a way I never suspected, in a way I never felt possible. It was an emotion class with tears, smiles, laughter, and a lot of Baldwin-group love!

This evening, I took another run in the park behind Christ Church. Yet another beautiful evening surrounded by such a beautiful landscape!



Wow!! SO MUCH INFO! .... Probably should have been studying my Shakespeare lines rather than writing this post but I know the work will only pick up from here, so I figured why not write more blog entries while I still feel I have time to do so! Hope you enjoyed reading my novel! Congrats if you made it this far haha!

1 comment:

  1. What a great experience! You have done so much in such a short period of time :). Can't wait to see what is in store this week. Enjoy and keep posting ... Love and Miss You <3!

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