DAY 8

Another hysterical morning with Greg in Improvisation class. We played our usual games and learned a few new ones as well. As much crap as Greg gives us as we fail miserably during these games, he always gives us the most inspirational talks in the last half of class. He gave us a list of improv rules, including always making eye contact, trusting your partner, always adapting to changes/never denying information from your partner, being truthful, never physically fighting (which I think is kind of funny... he's obviously had problems with this in the past?), and knowing that there are exceptions to every rule.

We then had Advanced Techniques with Hal, who continued to work with us on "imaginary centers." Today we added a technique for playing mentally disturbed, which involves imagining the center far in the distance and giving it a strong magnetic quality. Watching Hal and my classmates focus their eyes this way, they certainly looked deranged, so I think it was a pretty good trick.

Our final class was Shakespeare with Hisa. I got to do my monologue, which was from All's Well That Ends Well. She showed me an even better Helena monologue two scenes after my selection that I will work on for next class. She also gave me the note that while it's great that I can speak Shakespeare in my own natural speech pattern, it would be better if I could draw out and elongate my words to match the heightened language with vocal emotional release, instead of my own quick, clipped pace of speech.

DAY 7

Today we had Karen's Audition class all morning, in which we got our roles for The Three Sisters that we will be rehearsing over the next four weeks. I've been cast as Irina, who is the ingénue of the sisters. I've never really played the ingénue before because I usually play the quirky/funny/outsider character (which is why I initially read for Natasha), so I'm excited to try something new and challenging... mostly because I have the worst time crying on command and this girl cries every other line. We had a discussion about the play based off of the research we had done over the weekend, and Karen tried to break us of the habit of starting any statement with "I think" or "I feel." I had no idea I started phrases that way, so it was a hard one to break. We read through the first act and will continue on to the second next class. Our big challenge is to find multiple and conflicting emotions in each speech, instead of just playing sad, happy, or angry.

Our next class was Camera with Scott. We are doing a scene from Girl, Interrupted and shot a couple practice runs of it. Scott recommended a great website to us, which is www.script-o-rama.com, and in it are hundreds of film and television scripts you can download for free. We had to replace one of our characters as one of our classmates had to drop the program, so the reading was a little awkward. The playback was also the first time I have really seen myself on film close up... wow. Are my cheeks really that big?

Finally we had Shakespeare with Hisa. There wasn't time for everyone to present their monologues but I learned so much just from watching others go. Overall, the challenge for us with this heightened language is connecting the sometimes foreign words to original thought, instead of "acting" and then reciting pretty words. We need to have the thought, need the language, and thus think, act, and speak all at once. Not as easy as it sounds. She also uses a great phrase which is "Fresh mint it!" meaning in a monologue, you have to keep coming up with fresh new thoughts and reasons to keep speaking instead of just waiting for the person to respond or marching off stage all together.

DAY 6- Week 2

I have a distinct feeling that any day with an Improvisation class with Greg is going to be my favorite day. I just laugh so hard the entire time. Again we were with both groups, playing large group games and then discussing how conflict and empathy on stage make for interesting entertainment. We played the "frantically name six of a category while a water bottle is being passed back to you" game again, and still no one was able to get all of them. We also played a game where you have to say a word that begins with whatever was the last letter of the word you were just given while sticking to a certain rhythm. He described improv as being "a playwright on your feet"- you create your own plot and circumstances; the team has to be able to play along with you.

We then had Rehearsal class with Karen, in which we had "callbacks" for The Three Sisters. I read for Natasha, and I am finding that my bad nervous habit is to read too quickly. It is interesting to see a group of really fine actors be called out on their bad nervous habits- we all have a distinct one we are now aware of and are trying to break. Even with my overly-speedy initial read I think it went well. We find out our cast list tomorrow. Not that there isn't any thing at stake here (again, please hire me SCR), but it is funny how seriously we all get about it when you label it "auditions"- even for a play that we will never perform. Also, we got to practice our audition schmoozing tactics: "Is there anything you would like me to know before I begin? ... Thank you, that adjustment was so helpful... Would you like to see it another way? ... Thanks so much, I really appreciate you calling me in to read... It looks like a very exciting project." Consider yourself schmoozed.

We then had Advanced Techniques with Hal, who gave us the idea of the "imaginary center," or the place where a character holds their "emotional and mental headquarters." From this center, which can be anywhere in, on, or around the body, a character trait can be built: Superman might have his in the center of his chest, leading the way with his perfect posture. This imaginary gravitational pull can also be used for more specific purposes, like drunkenness, in which case the center may be moving back and forth in front of you as you struggle to keep focus on it. Obviously, we all ended class having to come down from our fake buzz.

DAY 5

Ah, Friday. We definitely had an "ahhh" kind of morning in our first voice class with Dr. Greg Ungar today. After a quick game of communist tag (that's right) we got to lay on the floor, focusing on breathing and stretching to relieve all tension. Our group got super lucky to relax first thing in the morning before rushing off to all of our other (more stress-inducing) classes. Greg teaches the Fitzmaurice approach to opening the voice, which I have had the pleasure of studying with Ben Mathes at USD. It was a great way to start off our last day of week one.

Next we had Audition class with Joanne, who gave us feedback on our monologue selection. For most of us, it was a simple "No!" or "No way!" or "Get rid of it." I loved her honesty. She told me the Equivocation piece was interesting but not long enough. She then had us stand up so she could appraise us physically, and gave us each the age range we should be auditioning for. She gave me mid-twenties, possibly younger with my hair in a pony tail.

We ended the day with a longer Advanced Techniques class with Hal with both groups combined, all twenty-seven of us adopting different qualities as instructed. Our improv exercise was to go up in pairs and do a mock job interview, with both the interview-er and -ee picking different qualities and creating scenarios on the spot.

DAY 4

This morning we had our first Audition class with Joanne Denaut, casting director at South Coast Rep. She literally makes the casting decisions for every show at this theatre, so I was pretty nervous going in, obviously wanting to make a good impression. I'm so excited for this class, especially because I will be making the rounds of MFA auditions this academic year and need to be prepared for such potentially life-altering audition decisions. Just thinking about what monologue I should pick for my UCI audition makes me sweat, so it will be great have such an expert opinion about what to choose. She asked us all what we would do with our lives if acting was suddenly no longer an option, making the point that our other interests support our acting, and our acting supports our other interests. We all performed our monologues for her (my current one is from Equivocation by Bill Cain) and I am interested to see what she has to say about them tomorrow.

In our camera class, Scott gave us some scenes to try reading aloud to see if we are interested in working on them to eventually do on camera. We all read about two and all ended up picking the ones he originally suggested, of course. A few other women and I will be working on a scene from Girl, Interrupted which I have never seen but plan on reading over the weekend. Everyone was somewhat cast to type, and I got crazy girl. Of course!

In Karen's Rehearsal class, we did cold read auditions for Chekhov's The Three Sisters, which, naturally, of his most famous plays, is the one I'm completely unfamiliar with. We will be working on this play over the next four weeks, working through an entire rehearsal process without ever actually performing it. I read for Olga, at first way too quickly, and Karen had to slow me down. I later read again for Irina, and after doing one of her speeches, Karen told me that I read too naturalistically/modern/one-note-y. I completely agree that I need to work on that, and, as she puts it, "add more colors" to my vocal range onstage. We have callbacks on Monday, and will be coming back having read and researched the play with a character picked out and ready to show off.

DAY 3

This morning we had our first Improvisation class with Greg Atkins. I. laughed. so. hard. Coincidentally, it's not even a comedy improv class, but rather general improvisation skills for the actor. He taught us a few improv games, which we completely failed at, which gave him a ton of material with which to mock us. My favorite: We had to stand in a circle passing around a bottle of water, and whenever he said stop, the person caught holding the bottle had to name eight of a certain item (vegetables that aren't green; candy bars that don't have nuts) before the bottle made it around the circle back to them. Of course, under pressure, it becomes infinitely more difficult to categorize common information. The whole point was that if this kind of pressure can stump you, what happens when "hundred dollar bills are being burned" on a film set and you need to step up and say your one line? After the game he gave us a great talk about relationships, professional and personal, and how those connections are all that matters in this business.

In our Shakespeare class, Hisa gave us more information about verse, prose, and syllables than I could wrap my mind around in an hour and a half. This is probably common knowledge, but my favorite tidbit is that (generally speaking) higher status people speak in verse, and lower class people speak in prose. She gave us a bunch of great handouts, and I'll type out a guideline for operative words at the bottom of this post.

Hal's Advanced Techniques class was a continuation of the "qualities" that we worked on last time and a few new ones- staccato and legato. He has a great phrase for using these qualities physically in a character: He "infuses" the quality to maintain the physical feeling while focusing on the dialogue or task at hand.

So, here we are midweek of week one. I leave you with this list, courtesy of Hisa Takakuwa and A Noise Within Theatre (of which she is a founding artistic member):

GUIDELINES FOR IDENTIFYING OPERATIVE WORDS & IMAGE WORDS:

1. Stress not the negative. "No" and "not" are almost never operative. The operative word is, instead, the word that is being negated. Example: "Go not till you here from me." "I love thee not; therefore pursue me not."

2. Verbs of being are never operative. The operative words are the words that explain the kind or quality of being. Example: "I am happy." "He is my brother."

3. Avoid stressing pronouns whenever it is possible to do so ("he", "she", "it", etc). Whenever there is any alternative that makes sense, use it. This includes possessive pronouns ("his", "her", etc).

4. Possessive nouns are never less important than the word they posses Example: "My father's house."

5. Articles ("a", "an", "the"), prepositions ("to", "from", "on", etc) and conjunctions ("and", "but", "or", etc) are never operative. They contain no images, but serve to show the relationships between the images. Find the word with the images.

6. Adjectives and adverbs are treated as part of the noun or verb they modify. The key operative word is the noun or verb, with the adjective or adverb incorporated in the image as a modifier.

7. An image that is repeated is not operative. What is operative is any new quality that is added in the repetition. This is called repetitive contrast. Stress the new information.

DAY 2

Yesterday program director Karen Hensel gave us a two-page scene with no real content to memorize to perform in class today with our assigned partner. The dialogue was not particularly enlightening, but she gave us each a circumstance ("It's a horror film... It's a romantic comedy... You were roommates and it ended badly") and we had to make it work. We all performed our scenes and they were all vastly different, and then bam: She gave us about five minutes to come up with a new scenario and perform them again. Like yesterday, her whole point was that the actor has the power over the words (not the other way around) and we need to be able to control them in any possible way in case a director or casting person asks us to make a change in a split second.

Our next class was film, which thoroughly frightened me because I have no experience in it. Not only am I inexperienced, I am baffled: Just weep/fall in love/laugh/scream/whatever immediately after they slap that clapboard in your face? No warm-up? No scene partner? Nothing? It sounds awful. Fortunately, our instructor, Scott Reiniger, seems like a very patient guy.

Our final class of the day was Shakespeare, taught by Hisa Takakuwa. I also have no experience being in Shakespeare productions, but I am very familiar (Thanks, English 280) and have seen some great productions at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in London, and in New York, so I feel much more comfortable in this arena despite my inexperience. Hisa told us that there are two rules to doing Shakespeare well: 1. Being specific and 2. Being present. Without those two things, it becomes boring, and even if it's well-spoken, it's not "lived" and puts us all to sleep.

Day 2 left me a little overwhelmed by my own lack of experience, but excited to hopefully speed up the learning curve over the course of this summer.