A Full Plate for Thanksgiving

I thank the pilgrims…
I’m so glad Thanksgiving is finally here. While things are still going well, I’m in need of some time away. My classes are great and I’m getting involved in a lot of various performance opportunities. My living situation is up in the air; I’m considering looking for a new place to live but nothing is definite. Other than that, things are ok. Here’s what’s been happening…

This radio broadcast is presented to you by…
Latest endeavor: I auditioned for a radio drama ensemble called “For Your Listening Pleasure”. It’s a troupe at school directed by an undergraduate directing student. There are seven actors involved, and we will be working to produce a series of five radio drama episodes throughout the year. The first one is called “Suspense” – it’s a series that ran on the radio from 1942 to 1962, presenting nearly 900 episodes. We had our first read through last night. In this episode I’m playing the lead part of Helen Brant, originally read for by Anne Baxter. It’s so much fun to do. Because you are reading, there’s no memorization and very little rehearsal needed. The way the performance works is we, the actors, will be at microphones behind the audience, while the audience faces in the direction of the sound effects person. The entire focus is on the line delivery, character voice, and timing of the piece. It’s a really neat experience and I’m looking forward to working on it. Rachel Sacks, our director, seems to have a good feel for the process and has put together a great ensemble of actors. She will cast each episode as we go along, with the attempt to spread the parts out evenly throughout the year. We present our first show on November 27th.

A bit of history on Radio Drama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama


About the first episode: http://www.old-time.com/otrlogs2/suspensehx.html

Heels in the Sand
In addition to the radio series, I was cast in a staged reading of a full length play written by one of the graduate playwriting students. I’m playing the role of Jade in the play Heels in the Sand – I don’t yet know the whole play but from what I’ve learned it seems to be about a mother and daughter (I’m the daughter) traveling to Israel for what begins as a business trip for the daughter and ends up being an exploration of family history/relationships and revisiting their Jewish heritage. The cast consists of 1 faculty member, 2 grad students, and 2 undergrads, directed by a graduate directing student. While we haven’t had our first read through yet, I’m eager to start working on it. Like the radio series, the rehearsal process is very different from that of a typical production. Again, we have the scripts in hand and need not memorize lines. In some staged readings the actors are limited to stay in one spot; in others, sparse movement and stage direction is added for certain effect. Sometimes simple costume and prop pieces are added as well. The staged reading give the playwright a chance to hear and see how his/her play performs with actors rather than just on the page. Often playwrights and directors of the reading will work closely to effectively communicate the playwright’s vision and sometimes edit/revise the script as needed. The cast and production team are great so I think the performance will turn out well. We perform December 17th.

Theatre Outreach

When accepting the staged reading role, I spoke with one of the theatre teachers who helps to coordinate casting of the staged readings throughout the year. This teacher, Alan Lang, is also in charge of the Theatre Outreach program at SLC. While Theatre Outreach is a class (which I plan to take next year), he asked me if I would be interested in working with them on a part time basis. They need a replacement for a student who had to drop her role in the program. I’ll be filling in for her by co-teaching two theatre classes at a middle school in the Bronx. The other student-teacher and I will be teaching an 8th grade class and a special education class. I’m only needed once a week, Wednesday mornings for a couple hours, but I’m excited to be able to do it. Obviously teaching is something I’ve always enjoyed and it will be great to try doing it in a new environment with a whole different genre of students (namely boys.. yikes!). I start working with them after Thanksgiving break and will continue on for the remainder of the year.
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Classes:

As the semester begins to wind down, we’re looking ahead to spring. I’m picking up a new course that is only offered in the second semester. Here’s the description:

Acting Shakespeare – “Students will study advanced acting techniques in approaching Shakespeare’s scripts, with special attention on script analysis as a way of unlocking methods for acting the text. In addition, students will rehearse and perform monologues and scenes from Hamlet to be directed by students in the Directing Shakespeare class.”

However, in order to pick up this new class, I need to drop Alexander Technique. I’m disappointed because I really love the class and feel like I’m getting a lot out of it. But I think I’ll take it again next year and continue for the full year.

My other classes are going well. In my puppetry class we spent some time working with marionettes and are now moving on to Bunraku, a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre. Both forms are very different and really challenging to master. With marionettes, think the scene from The Sound of Music, puppeteers are manipulating the puppets by an airplane rod with strings attached to various limbs and joints of the puppet. Typically one puppeteer controls one or two puppets at once. In Bunraku, no strings are used as the puppet is controlled by three puppeteers. The main puppeteer holds the puppets upright by grasping the spine like rod that runs down the back of the puppet. This person also typically controls the left arm of the puppet. A second puppeteer controls the right arm, and possibly the waist if needed for a particular movement, and the third puppeteer manipulates the puppet’s feet. The picture here is taken from a performance my teacher created called “Hiroshima Maiden”. You can get an idea of how the performers control the puppet. We watched a few clips of the performance on video in class and it was really amazing and beautiful to watch. Operating these puppets (both Bunraku and marionettes) requires an immense amount of focus, choreography, and attention to detail. When doing it effectively, the audience will barely notice the puppeteer as it can be mesmerizing to watch the puppet come to life. And it’s actually a bit of a workout – my shoulders were killing me by the end of class just holding these things up for 10-20 minutes at a time!

One of the classes I’m taking is Linklater voice training. It’s a speech/breath class that has been really helpful to me in my acting, especially when applying it to other classes. Elena, our teacher, has great ways of helping us release tension and find more openness in our face and body in order to allow more freedom in our voices. It’s so great to work with her, and I’m definitely seeing the benefits of the exercises.

In my song class I’ve been working on some new pieces – one really fun one in particular called “I’m Breaking Down” from the play March of the Falsettos. This past week I brought in Elvis’ “Burning Love” as I was preparing to sing it at my dad’s retirement party. I never thought I’d be singing “Hunk a hunk of burnin’ love” in that class but it went over really well – I think they enjoyed watching me humiliate myself more than anything but oh well.

My Comedy Workshop class is really coming along. We’ve been working on the long form improvisation style, most specifically the Harold. We’re preparing for our Harold Night on December 10th, when we perform for an audience along with Lampoon (the comedy troupe I’m in). I’m glad I took the class because while I have a lot of experience in improv, Christine (my teacher) really focuses on mastering the basic ideas that drive all improv – something that is always crucial to good scenes and shows. It’s also nice to approach the work from a different standpoint as her experiences performing are much different than the experiences of me and my fellow Baltimore Improv Group improvisers. I love working with Christine and have been thankful to do so more in Lampoon rehearsals as well. We had our first Lampoon show last night for a late night Sunday crowd. It went really well and we may begin gearing our Sunday night shows towards creating a sort of continuous improvised soap opera with recurring characters and situations. We had the audience give suggestions for one last night and we gave it a go to try out a template for a potential episode. It was fun. I don’t know yet how it will be set up but I like the idea and I think the audiences will respond well to it.

Alright, my time has ended. Off to class. Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Halloween

Here's the latest...

Shakespeare Got Naked…

We held auditions for our Shakespeare ensemble and had a very successful turnout. We saw 32 actresses and found plenty of talent to fill the ten slots we had available. I am really excited to move forward on this project. We have a strong ensemble and I think each girl will bring a different flavor to the group. More to come.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Every year a student run theatre company called Downstage produces a 24-hour play festival. The festival (this year entitled “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”) is comprised of 14 actors, 6 directors, and 6 writers chosen at random from a sign up posted the week before. And as my name was one of those drawn from the hat, I found myself sitting in one of the black bow theatres in the performing arts center on Friday evening (10/26) at 7:00 waiting to see who I would be working with. For each group, the producer of the festival chooses (again at random) the names of 1 director, 1 writer, and 2-3 actors for each of the six groups. Once assigned our teams, all were released for the night while the writers stayed up all night writing the scripts. Each show had the same set of guidelines/restrictions set in place: we all would use the same bare set (three wooden boxes of various shapes for furniture and small immovable black flats with red trim), limited lighting options, and two props (a plastic groucho mask with the big nose and furry eyebrows and moustache and a mardi gras mask); the play had to take place on a Halloween night; the script had to include the line from “The Raven” – “It thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before”; and costumes could only come from the closets of the actors and were only allowed to be black, red, or white. Scripts were due to the producers at 6 am on Saturday morning. Actors and directors were to meet at 7 am to read the scripts and begin work. So on Saturday morning I dug through my closet for any black, white, or red article of clothing and trudged up to the theatre. While the coffee was a nice comfort, the script I was handed was not. I was worried and wondered what our director would be able to do with it. While it is a short amount of time to come up with a good play, I was hoping for something a bit more substantial. Nevertheless, we moved to our assigned rehearsal space and began to work. As the day progressed we learned lines, played around with staging the piece, chose costumes, and prepared for the performance. All the plays were to be performed at two shows that night – one at 7 pm and one at 9 pm. When the dress rehearsal came around, I was nervous. I began to regret my first time on stage at Sarah Lawrence would be acting in this show. We stumbled through the play but got through it. None of us felt good about it and didn’t know how we’d pull it together for the actual performances. To make matters worse, the director of the theatre program was in the audience of the first show and I really didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of him. I don’t know what changed – maybe it was just the energy of the audience or the performance nerves, but somehow the three of us really pulled through. We gave two great shows and felt good about both. Though I never really felt it was a great play, I was happy with how we approached it and had fun with it on stage. I loved the experience overall – I got to work with new people, and to see all the shows come together as they did in such a short amount of time was really impressive.

Tell me a joke.

Anyone have any ideas for a good comedy sketch? Lampoon, the comedy troupe I’m in, works both on comedic improv and sketch comedy. I’ve only been to a few rehearsals but it seems like when working on sketches we throw out ideas that are amusing, interesting, or whatever, and then play around with the ideas doing scenes based on them. They can be based on political issues, celebrity stories, current events, etc. (basically the same sort of idea as you might see on SNL but we don’t do a show every week). Let me know if you have ideas!

Overall the rehearsals are going well. At times it feels a little disorganized but I think we’re still getting into the swing of things. It sounds like we have been given a space to perform (the most difficult task on campus as there are always performances and events going on) on Sunday nights (late night – a 11pm to 12:30 am). We’ll be doing shows there either every week or every other week – improv or sketch and improv. Should be interesting to see how it comes together.

GradWorks

Every Friday the theatre grad students come together for a seminar program. Sometimes we have guest speakers, discussions on required readings, and other such meetings. One thing we’ve been working on is called GradWorks – a production that will be put on solely by the grad students in February. After much deliberation, we finally settled on our plans for the show. We’ll be putting together four pieces – 2 published one-act plays, The Lover by Harold Pinter and Red Cross by Sam Shepard, 1 to-be-written short piece called Alice Blue Gown, and an ensemble piece to be created by the group. We’ll all be playing a variety of roles in the production, from directing, acting, and writing, to playing music, designing costumes, and advertising for the show. I am really excited about it. I’ll be working with the group to create the ensemble piece and I’ll also be playing the lead female role in The Lover (Synopsis at http://dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=641 ). I also offered to help with design and perhaps singing as a way of transitioning between pieces. I begin rehearsals this week. We’ll be putting up the show February 8th and 9th.

So…

Things are good. I’m happy with my classes and really have enjoyed working with my teachers so far. I’m beginning to feel the drag of November – it’s always been a tiresome month of the school year but I think Thanksgiving will come rather quickly. Eli and my friend Jason came up this weekend so it was nice to have a break from the routine. They didn’t get in till late on Friday so I made them dinner (a Cuban feast ala Rachel Ray) and went out in Bronxville. Saturday we got lunch in town and then went into the city for the night. Got dinner at a great Moroccan restaurant and met up with some college friends for a birthday party at a bar in the East Village. It’s times like this weekend when I really wish I lived in the city. But I guess if I wasn’t in Bronxville, we wouldn’t have been able to have front row seats to a fight on the train back home that night – lucky for us. Well, it’s about time I did some work this morning. Hope you all are doing well!