Acting in a Winter Wonderland

One semester down, three to go! Just a few more days and I’m home for a month! Things are really busy these last couple weeks of school – lots of projects and performances on the rise. As I look back on the semester, there seems to be a running theme in so many of my classes. Everything goes back to staying in the moment and being open physically and emotionally. I met with the head of the department for an evaluation yesterday and was telling him how I really feel like I have opened up much more in the past few months than I ever have. He said that there’s been great feedback from my teachers and that they’ve noticed definite changes in my approach – such a great relief to hear that. I know I have a long way to go but I’m started to really see what I need to work on and what I need to do in order to overcome some of my habits. I’m excited to keep evolving and changing in the work as the year progresses… but for now, I’m excited for Christmas and to eat something other than PB&J for lunch!

Theatre Outreach
As I mentioned in the previous blog, I’m working at a school in the Bronx – CS 211 – with two classes – 8th grade and special education. I love it. It’s nice to be working with kids again, just to have a different balance to the week. When I first arrived, the students had just begun to plan out shorts plays they would present at the end of the semester. My 8th grade group had started with the idea of doing a play about immigration, the premise being that four friends try to immigrate to America; one makes it in while the rest are deported. I was amazed that that was just the beginning of their ideas. While the piece was still a work in progress (which is actually the goal of our work), they came a long way in shaping their ideas and improvising the scenes.

The special ed students were terrific. They did a play about a family whose house burns down, they become homeless and another family reaches out to them. It was really touching as homelessness is actually a reality for a couple kids in the class. I love working with them. All of the students in both classes have great energy and ideas. It was great to see the final “performances” and see how excited they were in the end. It really makes me want to consider theatre outreach as part of my career. I’m planning to take the actual course next year so we’ll see how it continues.

And... scene.

My work in comedy, both in class and in Lampoon (the troupe I’m in), has been a blast. We’ve done a bunch of shows, mostly performing long form improv (in which the characters I ended up playing ranged from a male penguin protecting an egg to the maid from Clue to a lunchlady from the Midwest to Jimmy Stewart (and a pretty horrible impersonation at that!) We also tried out some sketches as we’re gearing up for second semester. Next semester we have some big things happening. We’ll continue our usual late night Sunday night shows at 11 – those are more informal (trying out sketches, working on new improv structures, etc.). Additionally we have three shows in Downstage (the student run production company based in the black box theatre) and one in Mainstage. The big show in Mainstage (which basically means it’s really funded by the department) will be very similar to Saturday Night Live with a band and sketches throughout. I can’t wait. I may never make it to SNL (though at the rate they’re going, SNL may not last long enough for me to get there!), but at least I’ll be able to try out the style of it.

In my comedy class, we just worked on an exercise called “Advancing” which was so great to do and watch. Basically we were expected to choose a mundane task and explore the idea of attempting to accomplish that task without ever being able to do so (in other words, things are constantly preventing you from succeeding). We were to set the scene to music, with the idea of the music being your sort of scene partner – you’d base your scene, actions, emotions, character, etc. on the changes and qualities in the music. When watching it, I was reminded of the Charlie Chaplin and other old comedy routines. It was actually very similar to what you might see in a clown routine. It was really neat. I chose to put in contacts as my task and I set it to the song “Mad Russian’s Christmas” by Transyberian Orchestra. It was so much harder than I anticipated – actually taking hours to plan out and rehearse. I wish I could show you all the performances – it was really wild.

Cabaret Style

In Singing Workshop I’ve been working on a variety of pieces, including “Kiss You Off” by the Scissor Sisters and “Cry to Me” by Solomon Burke. The two songs are pretty different but I was really happy with how they went. In fact, while “Cry to Me” is more of a blues song, my teacher suggested I approach it with a sort of Janis Joplin sound and it turned out to be great. This week we did a “Secret Santa” for songs where we picked a name of someone else in the class and had to secretly choose a song for them to sing. I was given “Mouth” (a song that came out in the 90s by Merril Bainbridge – sort of a one-hit wonder... though not much of a wonder). I’m not a huge fan of the song but the accompanist and I played around with it a made it sort of a rock piece so it was a little more interesting.

Toy Theatre

On Wednesday I just presented my final puppetry project. We were working on toy theatre (see link below) and creating pieces based on short excerpts from a Shakespeare play of our choice. I’m used the prologue to Henry V (“O for a muse of fire…”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_theaterdia.org/wiki/Toy_theater . It turned out pretty funny – I decided to play on words rather than stick to the true meaning of the text. A guy from class photographed everyone’s pieces so I’ll post them when he sends them out.

An Intuitive & Impulsive Exploration of Text

The class I have with Ed Sherin ended the semester with a presentation of our work from the semester. It was a compilation of over forty monologues and scenes, seamlessly performed one after another without interruption. It was amazing to see how far the actors have come with their pieces. I was really proud of our work and love the technique we’ve been using throughout the term. When we return, our class will be rehearsing for a full scale production of The Trojan Women to be performed in May. This is going to be a huge undertaking, and knowing Ed’s work in the business, I don’t think this will be just some class project. And because no one volunteered to design the set… I’m going to be in charge – good god. I’ll keep you posted.

In my end of semester conference with Ed, he asked about my goals: what I'm planning to do when I leave, why I came to Sarah Lawrence in the first place. It was actually a great conversation. He said that for an actor without an agent, New York is like choosing a slow painful death - a lovely image for any actor.. but a realistic one. There are just sooo many actors all trying for the same roles in this 7 person play or that commercial or what not. And, in addition to the thousands of actors showing up to the "cattle call" auditions, there are hundreds more actors with agents who already have a better show but who still have tough odds. I know this. I've always known it. And I told him that quite frankly I don't want to spend my life waiting tables in New York (though I love this city) and going to auditions day after day after day never knowing when my next steady job will be. I think I'm too practical minded for that. He recommended instead that I research reputable professional regional theatres around the east coast, send out interest letters, resumes, and headshots telling them about myself, what my plans are, my acting work, my teaching experience, my interest in outreach programs, etc. It was really nice to speak with him about this. Just hearing his confidence in my talent and ability made me think I have more of a chance than I often think I do. I don't think in that one conversation i realized my future professional plans but it was nice to really consider making a career that includes acting in a city other than the big apple.

Extra-Curricular...

Flash Gordon

In the radio drama ensemble, we’ve put on two shows so far: Suspense and an episode from Flash Gordon. It’s really different working on these pieces as they are totally character/voice driven. The audiences seem to really enjoy it. This past episode we changed up our structure and decided to set up the actors in front of the audience. It’s strange to actually be in front of them but not acting full out but it’s really great to hear all the voices and sound effects.

Hamlet

The play is cast and the scripts are cut. I got cast as the role of Claudius! I’m really excited. If you’re not familiar with the play, he’s basically the villain. It’s going to be a hugely challenging role but I think I’m up to it. We’re planning to rehearse the play until April and then do a two week run, performing both shows (male and female casts) back and forth with each cast performing about 4 times. At the end of the run, we’re thinking about having a sort of marathon performance when we started mixing up the casts, switching actors midway through the play, etc. It’s no quite figured out yet but we’re getting ideas.

A Staged Reading

Heels in the Sand, the reading I was involved in, went well. One of the faculty members played the part of my mother in the show and it was so much fun to work with her. It’s so different to do a staged reading as it’s all about the vocal and character choices but we had fun. We had a large audience, with many teachers and department members there, which is always good. It was nice to be a part of the creative process of this play. The playwright seemed to get a lot of feedback and ideas, which he will consider as he revises it. Sometimes plays done in these readings are later put into full production through the department. We’ll see…

Time to go home! Thanks for still reading (if you made it this far).

I hope you all have a great holiday. Hope to see you in the new year!

Much love,

Chris