DAY 11- Week Three

This morning we had Improvisation with Greg. We played the "frantically name six of an item before the water bottle gets passed back to you" game, and finally, three weeks later, I got caught with the bottle. Name six of what, you ask? The last few weeks it's been things like movies featuring animals as main characters, musicals with one word titles, names of American first ladies. But the six items I was to name? "Restaurants that serve primarily chicken." For those of you who don't know me, my family owns and operates Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. I am literally a third generation KFC kid. I swear I could not name one other chicken restaurant. In my defense, we never frequented the competition when I was growing up. El Pollo Loco? Didn't go until I was 18. Fortunately, we played another game so I could try to redeem myself. Our new task was to speak for a solid minute about some fictional topic he assigned us as if we were a leading expert at a conference. This was much easier for me and everyone was able to complete the minute with very funny success.

In Karen's rehearsal class we continued with our The Three Sisters rehearsal. Our current assignment is to go through the script with literal colors (pencils, crayons, what have you) to designate each thought with its own emotion. We are also continuing to discuss how to negotiate with directors and other actors via what Karen calls "self-defense acting." This involves backing up all opinions about your character with proof from the text, examples from previous productions, or famous articles or books. There's nothing worse than getting direction or notes from another actor, however, ahem, well-meaning they may be, and part of the negotiation is the tact to sometimes say "That's interesting..." and walk away, and to sometimes defend your choices until you get what you want.

In Hal's Advanced Techniques class, we talked about objectives. While it's a pretty basic idea in acting, it's sometimes easy to bypass for that very reason. The more specific an action verb can be, the easier time you will having picking tactics as to how you will complete that specific action to get what you want or need.