One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go!

Having never performed in front of an audience before can be nerve racking, even if it is not a large one. Performing every night in Tuesdays with Morrie I think gave me a lot of confidence which helped me perform with Petra. I finally mastered the lines this morning and practicing with Petra went the smoothest it had ever gone before. The class enjoyed our performance but I'm not sure if Gabi and Stephanie did... Stephanie had Petra and I run through several exercise to help us react to each others presence and tone of voice. she turned the lights off in the room and had us run through the play but listening to the words and each others ton of voice. This exercise really helped me notice Petra's tone and voice. Never had I thought to react to her voice in this way. Tee next exercise had me change my tactics to be angry and then seduce Petra, these tactics really helped me to break out of my comfort zone and live in the moment of the scene.

por que?

Poor Stephanie, she was sick today so class was cancelled. Petra and I ran our scene with Gabi so we could gain insights from her in order to be ready on thursday when we performed it for Stephanie and the class. Petra and I have really come far with our scene. We are almost completely off book and have come up with actions to match the dialogue of the play. I think it is rather good and matches the script very closely but not having the whole script, I do not know if this is the case.

No mask club this week, alas, but it does give me ample time to work on my play cards and journals that I need to complete for this course.

Round One, Fight!

Presentations are today, Petra and I dodged the bullet on going today which is good since neither of our schedules match very well so we haven't had many opportunities to practice. I hope that I will have ample time this weekend to rehearse with her, in between shows of Tuesdays with Morrie of course. Three groups presented two and each did scenes from a play. Each group did a good job presenting their objectives and tactics. Stephanie gave them critics and insights on how each group could improve their performances, like using better entrances and exits, energy, tone of voice, and movement. from what was covered I hope to use these tactics and knowledge in our scene.

The scene we are going over is the last chapter of the play Proof. I haven't read it but from what little I've read from the script it seems to be an interesting play.

5 Senses, 6 If You See Dead People

Most of the lecture in class today was taken up by Stephanie explaining sensory recall and the class playing memory recall games. Sensory recall is about the brain storing memories of a certain event--taste of a food, smell of smoke at a birthday party, feeling sad when your boyfriend or girlfriend dumped you--and then you recalling those actions and sensations you felt at those hieghtend moments of your life as you perform on stage to bring out a more believable performance. the game we played involved touch and memory recall, eight people sat and closed their eyes while eight other students touched the sitting students to see of they could guess by touch who they where. I found this very challenging since Stephanie and Gabi decided to play a trick on me and both stick one of their hands in the palms of my hands. After the game we did yoga / relaxation exercises which I found rather relieving, I never knew yoga could be so fun.

Are assignment for class, other then work on your scenes / memorize lines, is to feel a blade of grass and look at a sunset - this is to capture the look and feel of the environment in hope of recalling it later.

Grass -- The grass was wet and smooth, almost like silk or butter. The color was a vibrant green and when broken smelled like... well, earth or grass. The grass felt prickly when touched against my hand. The blade wasn't very long, only about two inches in height at most.

Sunset -- bright orange and yellows mixed with red colored the sky as the sun set against the provo skyline late one September evening. The clouds were non existent which helped my view of the skyline. The air was calm and cold. The scene reminded me of the sunsets back home in Florida.

This is Your Captain Speaking...

Let me start off this journal entry by saying how amazing Richie's mask club was. He directed Boeing Boeing, and it was phenomenal. the acting performed by the three actresses was amazing from the way they carried themselves to the mannerisms adopted by each one. Especially the voice inflection adopted by ashley to perform her german speaking character. WoW is all I have to say.

Today is the day in class when Holly and I present our skit if you will of tactics and objectives. We've been practicing for the past couple of days; first we tried to figure out what we would do. We decided to do a piece about a brother and sister fighting but after numerous run throughs and a lot of help from Danielle and Gabi, Holy and I decided to change our scene completely and go with a more fresh and contemporary scene--a creepy man stalking freshman at the Cannon Center.

I played the creepy man and holly the venerable yet determined freshman girl. The scene was a big hit with the class and I thought both of us did a great job without tactics and objectives. my tactics being to touch, seduce, and please; just to name a few. My overall object was love or solace which may or may not have worked. My entrance was a stealthy walk about her and my exit was to see another girl, off stage, and try and hit on her--hence me needing to leave the stage.

This exercise taught me that acting is hard. I did not feel at easy nor comfortable in the role I was given and it was really only 30 minutes before class started did Holly and I get the rhythm of the scene down where both of us felt comfortable. My feelings towards acting did not improve when Stephanie asked me to role play a scene with victory regarding tactics where I was an airplane pilot. the scene didn't go to badly but I didn't feel very good about performing it. towards the end of class the discussion of sensory recall came up and stephanie informed us about storing memories to recall those actions and sensations we felt at those heightened moments of our lives latter when we act.

At the end of class Stephanie handed out assignments on who are partners where to be for our scene assignment. I am paired with Petra, a sweet girl from the Ukraine majoring in animation. It should be interesting to see how we both act and what talents we can learn from each other.

Entrance and Exit

Todays class was build around the idea of entrances and exits. I learned that depending on how you enter the stage, from right to left, or left to right, can mark the tone of the show and infer meaning to the audience. In America we read left to right, therefore when an actor enters the stage from the left wing it is more pleasing to the audience and denotes a heroic character or tells the audience that an action is about to happen. In contrast when a character enters from the right wing of the stage the message sent to the audience is one of danger and confusion.

In order to practice entrance and exits, Stephanie broke each student up into groups of two to practice with a scene partner an exercise to be presented in class next time. I was assigned the lovely Holly M. to practice with. While meeting with her outside of class we each picked our own tactics and objectives we wanted to accomplish for the scene.

Rain or Shine the Mail Always come Through

TOday in class we learned about object exercises, which are exercises that incorporate our physical environment in small pieces while we act so we can learn the specificity that comes with a character's environment. Today I presented my object exercise which was centered around a slice of my life, revealing who I am as an individual. I donned my everyday uniform as a mail character and then presented how I organize the mail in a particular situation.

I thought that I had messed up in sorting the mail yet the class claimed it made it more natural because in every day life mistakes happy. Little did I know that life is messy. I feel like sometimes we have the tendency to slip into the mode of thought where we believe that a performance, because it is a "performance". Yet a true performance reveals human nature and humans are rarely perfect, exception to Jesus. I find it really interesting that what I find to be good acting is being blown away. There is an almost simplicity and organic feeling to just being oneself in a situation that I actually find a particular bit of comfort in.