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!

Baldwin, Fairy Queen, Inkling Pub, and Grand Maester Pycelle

So ends Day 6 of my Oxford adventure and Day 3 of classes/tutorials! And there is SO MUCH to tell!

Soooo first, my group! Following Saturday's placement auditions, our teachers set to work for hours  determining which students would be working on which plays and with which teachers. On Sunday afternoon, I learned that I was put into the Baldwin group that was to work on "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Twelfth Night," and Carol Churchill plays. I was pretty happy (especially about Carol Churchill's controversial, modern plays!), but what made me most excited was that 7 of the 15 people in my group were people I had hung out with on Saturday! What were the chances?! We were all so excited and together welcomed the other 8 students into our friend group.

Sunday afternoon was also our first masterclass. Pippa Nixon, a young British actress, who has worked many times with the Royal Shakespeare Company, led a class on Audition Techniques. As actors, she said, if we don't make it to fame and fortune but manage to become working actors, we will spend 2/3 of our lives in auditions and only 1/3 in rehearsals/productions. She was honest, entertaining, encouraging, inspiring, and very knowledgable!  Ms. Nixon began our work here with BADA on a high note!

Sunday night we had a formal drink party and three course dinner in the Harry Potter-like dining hall! We all dressed up, had Pimms (a famous, beloved fruity British drink; I even had a few sips) and then had a beautiful, candlelit dinner! Below are some pics from the evening with my new friend.

Me and Libby <3

Niru, my next door neighbor!

Libby, me, and Sarah

Bright and early Monday morning we began classes. We have a Shakespeare acting class, a Physical Theatre class, a Voice class, and Modern acting class, each 1 hour and 45 minutes. My favorite class so far is definitely Physical Theatre! We play a lot of the same games I played in my Physical Theatre classes at Richmond but with little changes. It's crazy how these simply, fun theatre games exist on both sides of the big pond! 

On Tuesday, we were assigned roles in our Shakespeare class. My audition the previous day had not gone over so well. My teacher, an extremely qualified but VERY scary man, did not agree with my interpretation of my Joan of Arc monologue. Needless to say, I was very nervous to hear about casting even though I knew we would all get at least one pretty strong role to work on. I was given the roles of Hippolyta in Act I Scene I and Titania in Act II Scenes I and II of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I am feeling pretty good about it!! Titania is the fairy queen and a very strong woman with very long, poetic monologues which I am very excited to work on!

Tuesday night I went to some pubs with my friends. We eventually ended up at the Eagle and Child, a pub where the Inklings, a group of writers including Tolkien and CS Lewis, used to meet to discuss their literary ideas. It was such a neat pub!

                                           

The Eagle and Child

Me and my friend Sarah who told me about this pub

On Wednesdays at BADA, we take a break from our usual 4 classes a day schedule and take time for private tutorials and for masterclasses. Today, I met with my Modern Acting teacher, Zoe Waites, and discussed how to go about choosing modern monologues for auditions. I also met with my voice teacher, John Tucker. In our voice classes, we are focusing specifically on vocal techniques for acting, but today in my private tutorial, I got to work with him on singing technique. I only had 20 minutes with him, but the exercises he had me do were so fantastic!! 

Lastly, we had a masterclass today with Julian Glover who plays Grand Maester Pycelle in Game of Thrones and has made a huge name for himself in theatre, film, and television. What an honor it was to be in such an accomplished actor's presence! All 90 students met up with him behind Addison's Walk in a large field surrounded by trees and one very curious tree sculpture (pic below). Such a beautiful, inspiring space to work in! We focused on Act III Scene II of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," a HUGE crowd scene in which Brutus first convinces the people that him and his friends had to kill Caesar for the good of Rome; but then, by the scene's end, Mark Antony manages to completely reverse the crowd's opinion of the assassination, leaving the Romans to go murder the conspirators. Julian Glover talked about how remarkable this scene is and of the genius Shakespeare 

was in writing it, and he then randomly gave out roles/lines and we ultimately did the entire scene there in the grassy field. As the crowd, we yelled in protest, then cried over Caesar's body, then rallied in mutiny against the conspirators. 90 of us actors bringing this crowd scene to life in a natural, not theatrical, space. It felt so real! It was such an incredible experience with such an incredible actor as the director! 

The field where we had the masterclass

Wow, just now realizing how long this post is. Did not I intend to post such thorough updates like this but hey, I shouldn't have expected anything less from myself! Haha!

Well that's all for now! More to come soon! :)

CHEERS from Oxford!!

I MADE IT!!

I am currently lying on my bed in my gorgeously old room in Oxford. Check it out!!

I landed in the UK at 7:10AM yesterday morning (although it still felt like 2:10AM to me), went through customs (which took nearly an hour UGH), and finally got to my ride that was taking me from the airport to Oxford about an hour away. Other than the long wait at customs, my flights went smoothly and I got to Oxford in all four pieces (me, my big suitcase, and 2 carry-ons)! My experience with customs was, however, brightened by the fact that a little girl in line, maybe 6 or 7 years old, was wearing a Richmond Spiders sweatshirt. It definitely made me smile. #spidersaroundtheworld

Once I arrived, I was first led to the BADA office, where I was given an info packet, and then led to my room. I am still not sure what the section of Magdalen College I am living in is called but we all have come up with a variety of guesses based on how we have heard our British instructors pronounce it. Those pronunciations include "Sir Swiggles," "St. Smithies," and "Smith Swiggins" among others. Thus, GOAL #1 at Oxford: learn the real name of my dorm haha!

After unpacking and a little shopping on High Street, we all had drinks on the Cloisters Lawn seen below and then ate in the Great Hall (pics to come). I met a TON of people last night and even more this morning!

This morning I had my placement audition. I again did my Joan of Arc monologue and thought it went really well. Tomorrow, the groups and plays each group will be working on will be posted. I am super anxious and excited. After the audition, I teamed up with six other students who had auditioned around the same time as me (only one of which I had met preciously) and we spent most of the day together!! We went to the parks around Christ Church, to the Thames River, to The Bear (a pub from year 1242) for lunch where I had great fish and chips, to Bodleian Library, to a pub in a back ally way for dinner call The Turf, and finally, we took a walk around Addison's Walk on our campus and found a beautiful pond around which we sat and talked.

Christ Church

Bodleian Library

Turf Tavern

Pond on Addison's Walk

  ***Interesting side note: we were talking about ethnicities at dinner and I had my friends guess mine and their guesses were, without much/any hesitation, Spanish, Latino, and something Mediterranean. I found that pretty cool! Haha :P

Today has been great and has really settled the good deal of nerves I had yesterday. I'm starting to know my way around and have met a lot of great people. I only hope some of them are in my group. Tomorrow will tell! Fingers crossed!!

Ready to Go!

ONLY NINE MORE DAYS!!!

Tomorrow, we leave for Myrtle Beach, and, from there, I will be flying to London next Thursday. Finally it seems that I have reached an end to my crazy packing venture, and tomorrow morning I will be saying goodbye to my home for 7 weeks. I am getting SO EXCITED! As I gather all my Oxford paperwork, continuously recite my Joan of Arc monologue for my placement audition, and double check that I have not forgotten to pack anything, it is becoming more and more real.

When I arrive in Oxford,  I hope to post pictures of the town, Magdalen College, and my dorm room, so stay tuned later next week for those pictures and more written posts. I am really looking forward to sharing my experiences with you! :)

My Harry Potter Fantasy, The Windy City, and The End to a Torturous 15 Days

On March 31, 2014, I received this email. 

After 15 days of waiting (which felt like FOREVER!), the feeling of nauseating anticipation turned into exhilarating relief and pure joy! I had been accepted. My audition had earned me a spot at the prestigious BADA summer program for actors, 18 and older, serious about their careers on stage and/or screen.

Upon starting my sophomore year at UR, I began looking into theatre internships I could do over the summer. I strongly felt that I needed to see the inner workings of a theatre company and start making possible connections for my future. However, I quickly realized that what I honestly wanted to do over the summer, what I reeeeally felt I could put my heart and soul into, did not involve sitting at a desk or getting people coffee or simply observing actors, designers, directors, administrative coordinators, marketers, etc. I wanted to learn by doing, and I wanted to learn more about what I hope to be doing in my future. What I really wanted to do was further my craft by participating in a summer conservatory program.

Then came the research! The very first thing I Google-searched was "summer acting conservatory at Oxford." Ever since I learned about the Harry Potter movies being filmed at Oxford (aka since I was 8 years old), I have dreamed of studying at Oxford. However, as I got older, I realized the impracticality of my going to a university in another country, so the once semi-reachable dream become an unlikely fantasy. UNTIL that fateful Google search!  BADA MIDSUMMER IN OXFORD appeared as the first result. Over the next hour, I devoured every inch of the British American Drama Academy website, learning about the program, the classes, the alumni, the faculty, eeeeverything. I knew this was the program I wanted to put all my effort into. This was the program I would fight for!

On March 15th, my mom and I traveled to Northwestern University in Chicago for my audition. I had prepared a Catherine Connolly monologue from The Laramie Project and a Joan of Arc monologue from Henry VI Part I.  Walter Schoen, my Shakespeare professor at UR, had recommended the Joan monologue since it is a very rarely done piece from a very rarely performed play as well as a strong, complex monologue. Ian Wooldridge, the Dean of Bada, led my audition (#yikes). It was my first audition outside of high school and college auditions, so I was SUPER nervous. I had no idea what to expect! And, even though I love Shakespeare, I hadn't had that much experience performing his work. But Mr. Wooldridge and the two women assisting him were so so nice! They were very supportive and made me feel very welcome and comfortable. Upon leaving the audition, I had felt that I had done all I could have done. I felt that I had gotten a good response from Mr. Wooldridge, and whether I had gotten in or not, I had really enjoyed and learned from the experience. No regrets!

But, waiting for the response was torture. I just wanted to know either way! And, lo and behold, a little over two weeks later the torture was over, and the result was overwhelming. I wasn't rejected; I wasn't on the waiting list; I had gotten in! I screamed; I teared up; I jumped about my dorm room like a fool!

You know, sometimes I still can't believe it. My unreachable fantasy is coming true. I CANNOT thank my parents enough for letting me go to Chicago for the audition and letting me have this once in a lifetime opportunity.

I leave in 26 days (yes, I am diligently counting), and I am sooooo excited (can't ya tell?!)!  :D