Acting Training Journal XVI: 3/24/15

Acting Training Journal XVI: 3/24/15

Don saw our scene today. Since he re-edited it, I had re-interperted my character as being not quite such a nasty man. He pointed out this is drama and that in drama, mean nasty people work better, so he modded my emotional context to me being a dominant player type again. This necessitated changing our blocking to show more assertiveness/aggressiveness on my part, to heighten the drama of the scene. It's quite out of my ordinary emotional range, because while I'm capable and skilled at confrontation, I really am not used to being the intentional prick like my character, much less being so clearly in the moral wrong. I also tend to self blame, which this guy doesn't seem to have a lick of. 

Acting Training Journal XV: 3/19/15

Acting Training Journal XV: 3/19/15

More good practice on our scene. The good news is that we are nearly "off script" in terms of learning our lines and the blocking. Rather enjoying being at that state. I'm noticing the lines are easier to remember paired with the blocking (I'm a combination style learner). I also am noticing that there are a few parts where i need to shift where my emotions are, to make the scene better. It's tricky work, putting the right emotional subtext in the right places.

Acting Journal XIV: 3/17/15

Acting Journal XIV: 3/17/15

Did some more work on the scene today. I had noticed that i have an tendency to do too much blocking during acting practice this entire semester. For example while doing an open scene for beat training, I tired to turn it into a fully blocked fight sequence. I mentioned this to my acting partner, who agreed that the amount of blocking we did on our scene last week, was in fact, quite excessive, so we agreed to cut all but the essentials out. Which in all honesty, is a relief. Kinda a touchy feely scene, and i don't want things to get weird.

Acting Journal XII: 3/12/15

Acting Journal XII: 3/12/15

Don gave Kendall and I a rather severe "edit" of our scene. Basically it cuts out the entire ending, after Kendall's character, Celia, catches mine lying. It also cuts out quite a bit of the middle where my guy is making excuses. I feel that this changes the tone of the whole scene, as it naturally makes Kendall as Celia more confident, and in control by the end, and leaves with my character James on the receiving end of some "just desserts". It also seems to make my guy feel less "slimey". In this edit, he seems to have shifted from the guy cheating on his wife with mistress #27, and on this one, he feels more "guilty" and conflicted for what he's done (a lot of my more cunning "pickup/deflection" lines have been dropped). My new interpretation of this character assumes that he loves his wife, and his mistress, but realizes that he's made an awful, stupid mistake on his lie, and tells Celia, in order to not have it blow up in his face later. He seems like the guy who want's his cake, and to eat it too. Very insecure, although that was a feature of the way he was prior to the edits as well.

Acting Journal XII: 2/11/15

Had my first full "practice" outside of class with Kendall today. I felt my sense of my character's emotions resonate and grow stronger. We also practiced standing while delivering the lines, and strengthening our eye contact/emotional connection, as we grew more comfortable with the roles. It definitely seems like my character is emotionally redirecting Kendall's, so that he can manipulate her into more sex, as well as not "fessing up" to either of their spouses. I've noticed that my character is the first to accuse Kendall's of wrongdoing, as a distraction from his actual evil deeds. Seems to be the element to play up on here.

Acting Journal XI: 2/10/15

Acting Journal XI: 2/10/15

Today was my first day of "actual" practice with Kendall on our scripted scene. As we had not had an "edit" of our scripted scene, the first thing we did, was to read through it a few times, and discuss what could/could not go. What we decided to try, was "cropping" out parts from the middle of some lines. As such, long lines like "I told you not to expect me any earlier, I had a meeting" became shorter, as in "I told you, I had a meeting" As we went through the play, line by line, I generally got a greater sense of my character, it seemed like he was a bit of a player, who flattered and deceived women to get them to sleep with him. I felt as if, this was NOT his first time cheating on his wife, and that he was bored/leery of continuing this relationship. Don, my acting professor, seemed to agree that my character was a predator.

Acting Journal X: Self-critique of the open scene

Acting Journal X: Self-critique of the open scene

For my partner, Jorge and I , the "final touch" on our open scene was a little rougher than we would have liked. The night before, we had been forced to cancel our last practice session at the last moment. While we had practiced hard for the scene, that left us slightly more nervous than we wanted come performance time. In the actual performance of the scene, I noted that I got right into it- the training had paid off. However, it wasn't the best version of the material that I had done. I noticed that my emotional work, while adequate lacked the "punch" and synchronization, that our best practices had possessed. Considering that we had a rough around-the-edges practice schedule, I feel that overall, I did both what I needed to, and something that I could be proud of.

Dance Training Journal 15: 3/9/15

Dance Training Journal 15: 3/9/15

Today's class was lead by my classmates, Mahela, Mackenzie, and Shaneka. (not sure if I spelled them right). Their overall theme for this class was "storytelling through motion". Their goals for the class were:

* To teach expression of character through movement and motion.

* To express emotion inspired by imagery.

* To tell a story through movement, not through facial expressions.

They also told us, that our focus today should be to focus on ourselves, rather than on working/responding to others. 

Our opening exercise was "wizards, giants, and goblins". It was basically group rock, paper, scissors where wizards beat goblins, giants beat wizards, and goblins beat giants. Each of the two groups was to select a type, and act it out while making a sound to indicate what they were. "shazam", "ho, ho, ho," and "heeheehee". 

It played rather well. In addition to using the improv motions to act a fantasy character, the getting in the other group's heads, and playing off of their actions was very helpful, and not something we normally do in this class.

Our next major activity, was to act out traversing through 10 different landscapes, ranging from deserts, forests, underwater etc.... While doing so, I noted a large variety in the responses to the same environment, between my classmates and I. On my part, it felt rather nice, to be able to act out some of my favorite environments, like walking through the woods, in a improvisation setting. I felt my mindset shift moods based on where I was pretending to be.

We then went through various "animals" in act-throughs. This was fun, as it allowed me to get very silly with some of them. For example, i went crazy on the ostrich, and not only ran, chased classmates, but buried my head in the sand at one point. I felt i was able to instantly immerse myself in these animal characters, and that doing so was a lot of fun.

I struggled a little more on the colors segment. The colors they chose were more like teal/lavender, and not only am i a more auditory/body kinethsetic learner to begin with, but when i react to colors, i almost always do so more strongly with warm, bright primal colors, like deep reds, yellows and blues.

This carried over into the group ensemble work, where despite using the other elements adressed today strongly, I made no realistic attempt to Incorporated color into my work. My Pinocchio performance of struggling against strings, before cutting free, for example, used many other facets of storytelling, but color was not one of them.