Monday, 2-21-11

Monday, 2-21-11

Today in Acting we watched the rest of our classmates’ Private Moments. Brian, Andrea, Taylor, and Michael Reep went. Brian in particular did a fantastic job of taking Matt’s note from the previous semester—that he should take more time in preparation and allow the moment when he trips to actually affect him more profoundly. This he certainly did. Brian maintained a “blue steel”-esque mask incredibly well, which was surprisingly effective for his blue heron character, and his dancing was simple and specific to his bird. When he fell, he channeled that sense of the wounded animal superbly, and hobbled off with every scrap of dignity he could muster. So much was revealed about his character from this performance. We saw him in his element, enjoying the groove, and we saw him recovering from a setback. We knew exactly who he was.

That’s what needs to be aspired to—finding the highs and lows and committing to each in order to most accurately communicate a character to the audience. I also still need to work on keeping the mask alive in my human character.

Another thing we’ve been talking about in class is how important it is to prepare for this work. Matt has noted that in a lot of exercises in class (such as General Hospital, for example) it takes us one or two go-rounds to warm up and really sink into the character. With that in mind, it’s clear that I need to step up my outside preparation. Matt suggested that each of us do at least 15 minutes of in character improv by ourselves or with others every day this week before Friday, and I definitely hope to live up to that.

Today for dinner, Sam and Kyle and I went to wing night as our characters, and that was certainly helpful. I found, though, that my attention was focused distinctly inward, as I kept thinking about what I was doing, how I was doing it, and how I was speaking. I’m trying out the Italian accent, for one thing, and I need to practice that a LOT more for it to feel natural. That being said, there were a lot of nice reactions to what JP or Stetson said, which didn’t feel forced or contrived at all. I just need to keep practicing and exercising as Lawrence until I maximize that sort of natural receptiveness to outside stimulus and minimize the amount of inward self-analysis.

The other thing we did for Acting today was we went around and shared the three songs we picked for our animals. Lawrence’s playlist included the final song from Don Giovanni, Fidelity by Regina Spektor, and Anything for You by Ludo. I think the three nicely contrast and add to each other: Don Giovanni provides for the grand, dramatic opera-lover in him; Fidelity is his gentler, tidy, stylish and put-together side; and Anything for You represents his unabashed social drive and his hopes of finding a life-partner.

(Lawrence rises from his morning bath.)

Lawrence has signed up to be on the Entertainment Committee for Friday’s dance. I’m thinking the Entertainment Committee should meet in character to discuss plans and prepare.

Friday, 2-18-11

Friday, 2-18-11

Again, I’m a little late posting this. I’d better kick that habit.

On Friday in Acting we began with job interviews carried out by Matt Gray who collected our animal-characters’ resumes and asked us a few questions one at a time. It was a great way of warming up because it gave me plenty of time to get into character. I tried doing an Italian accent for the interview and wasn’t too impressed with it, myself, but Matt actually said it was fine. Just a hint of it is really all that’s needed to get the point across.

After the job interviews, we performed our private moments again. We didn’t get through all of them, but I went, and several others as well. In general, everyone was doing a great job taking the note of letting the animal do more of the work, being in that “animal brain” mindset for more of the interactions. In particular, Ashley Twomey and Zanny Laird were doing really nice, specific work that was far more effective than it had been in the initial performance. Ashley was far more fidgety and externally oriented (though blind) which was great for her naked mole rat character; and Zanny was kind of thrilling to watch in how completely feline every action became, right down to the way she ate gummy candies and consumed an energy drink.

As for me, I was much happier with my private moment the second time around. I took much more time with it, for a start, which helped. And even while setting up the scene I came upon new ideas, just thinking about the furniture with the animal’s mindset. For instance when I moved the piano bench in, I thought, “he wouldn’t ever sit on a piano bench,” and so instead he quite naturally just stood over the piano and kicked the bench out of the way when he played a few dramatic chords. I preened and examined myself with spinally oriented twists and turns after undressing, and focused much more on the legs than on the arms, and all that helped a lot. I was extremely confident in the work I did and felt much better about it afterwards, which just shows how much taking the notes you’re given and running with them can help. I spent about an hour Thursday night going over my notes and rehearsing for the next day.

Costume wise, Lawrence (he’s now Lawrence instead of Florence, since Florence from Florence is just too corny) is getting more eccentric by the minute. But it works. And it’s nice that it’s far out enough that just the act of getting dressed up like him puts me in the mindset of the character, which is a nice place to get to with one’s costume.

We’ll be doing the rest of the private moments on Monday, and I also need to bring in 3 songs that I think are fitting for my animal character. That will be fun. I’m thinking opera will be appropriate for at least one of them.

Wednesday, 2-16-11

Wednesday, 2-16-11

So I’m a little late in writing this entry, but I’ll still be talking about class yesterday. In Acting after we warmed up we worked the General Hospital improv. We ran through each of our improvs about twice, all simultaneously, and then Matt opened it up to us to expand from our scenarios and enter other rooms of the hospital.

Our scenario was that Stetson and Reggie found me unconscious in a park late at night and took me to the hospital. Bertha was the nurse that came to examine me. I revived, and after sorting things out in my head, realized I was late for a date that I had been preparing for by walking in the park to calm my nerves. I hadn’t eaten much that day so the fainting spell was probably just a result of a lack of nutrition or dehydration. I then made my exit as quickly as possible.

During the first few runs of this improv, I tried to be much more specific and free in allowing the animal to dictate my actions. At first I modeled my hands after claws to smooth back my hair and manipulate objects, but even that was too digit-oriented considering flamingos don’t really use their feet in that way at all. Matt suggested that I try using my fingers as little as possible—that maybe my character doesn’t use his hands as a way of showing his status. Like he doesn’t need to use his hands because other people do things for him, and his fingers are carefully manicured so he fears messing them up.

Taking a break, Matt had us go through the exercise again with a focus on our character’s vocalization, and encouraged us to try a dialect or accent. I adopted a sort of southern aristocratic drawl, and experimented with using my hands less and instead originating movement in my spine and head, which is beginning to work well. Flamingos lead from their heads and long, spinal, necks, so that’s an appropriate choice for the animal. I got into a verbal argument with another character after he insulted my pink shirt, which was fun.

The southern dialect didn’t really work that well though. What did work was trying to be less nervous and verbally fidgety, and more quiet and reserved—letting loose on the specific occasions when I did speak. That was nice. Matt suggested that I look at European accents though—German or Italian. He also suggested a Sydney dialect might be interesting. So I’ll be looking at those over the weekend.

We’re redoing our private moments for Friday, which is great, because I was wishing I got a second chance after Monday’s class. I’ll be taking more time to be decisive and specific as the animal, and try to bring in the physical things I did Wednesday.

Monday, 2-14-11

Monday, 2-14-11

Today in Acting we watched the rest of the private moments. Largely they were all much more successful than the ones that went on Friday (like mine). People were taking Matt’s advice to heart, I thought, and really letting their animals inform more of their actions. I particularly liked the work Brian Pettit-Schieber was doing with his heron. It was some of his best work I’ve ever seen, and it was all in the way he was putting on his shoes with his feet and putting hair gel in before dancing his heart out on his own private dance-floor. It was truly impressive.

I need to start incorporating more things like that. Physically, my human hands can work both as flamingo wings and as flamingo claws. I can take on more of the behavioral gestures of flamingos too: twitching my head, shaking my foot, stretching contra-laterally, etc.

I’m also thinking of trying a new tack with Florence. I’ve been playing up his nervous, socially awkward side a little too much, and I want to explore the regal pride of flamingos. Yes, they can be chatty and vocal, but that doesn’t mean he has to talk nonstop. Indeed, flamingos are silent for a great portion of their day if they aren’t actively squabbling or calling for their young. Perhaps he is slightly more self-important and majestic, more confident in himself and his flamboyant style. That’s definitely something I’d like to explore more. Plus it presents a different obstacle to his super-objective if he comes off as egotistical or vain instead of nervous and awkward. It sort of relates to the idea of not playing your costume too. My costume, replete with pink and unabashed formality, already says “social outsider,” and “outrageously extroverted.” If I bring in a certain degree of pride in that, a sort of “yeah, I wear pink, so fuck off” mentality, then I think the whole picture becomes much more complex and interesting. And, in truth, far closer to the source material. It’s not like flamingos are self-conscious about wearing pink. They’re loud, brash, flamboyant, and proud of it. Florence can learn something from that.

("Yeah, I know I look damn good. What of it?")

So that’s what I’ll be playing with in Wednesday’s assignment. We’re meeting in groups of two or more to come up with an improvisational situation that could take place in a hospital, and on Wednesday we’ll bring it together for an exercise called, unsurprisingly, General Hospital. My group includes myself, Kyle Wilson and his polar bear inspired Stetson, John Garet and his sea otter, Reggie, and Olivia and her gorilla, Bertha. We’re meeting tomorrow to rehearse for an hour, and I hope to briefly blog about how that goes.

I should also mention that we briefly discussed the CMU production of A Number in class today, and it was noted that it seemed as though each of Denver’s three different characters (each an identical clone), seemed to be by and large defined by an attitude. This is a good way of differentiating between the characters on a starting beat, but I think it tended to take energy out of the performances in the long-run, simply because that attitude came to define every moment of the character’s scene, which was perhaps an unfortunate loss in variety. The performances were nonetheless very strong I thought, but I thought the production overall gave a little too much emphasis to the creepy side of the show, which relates back to the idea that you don’t need to have all the elements of a production saying the same thing. It’s already creepy that this guy discovers he has twenty identical clones. It might have been cool to let that speak for itself and find an interesting opposite to inform other aspects of the design.

(SO MANY BOXES. A NUMBER OF BOXES! Our production looked so much better than this for the record. Scenic Design gets major props.)

Friday, 2-12-11

Friday, 2-12-11

Today in Acting we spent half the class performing Private Moments in Matt’s class, and the second half going through the Blind Date exercise with Ingrid.

Though we didn’t get through all of the Private Moments today, I was among those to go. I came into my apartment late at night after work, looked at a framed picture of my family, and then looked at an empty picture frame next to it. The idea being that Florence wants to put a picture of his girlfriend there, but doesn’t have a girlfriend yet. Then I played a few notes on the piano, and undressed for bed, taking one last look at the picture frames before cuddling up with a pillow.

I thought it was a successful story, and I think Matt recognized that, but what he pointed out was that we were all (myself included) agonizing over the story we were telling so much that we forgot to let the animal do the work for us, and lost some of the specificity. I need to work on maintaining more of an active flamingo-esque mask for Florence, and when I undressed I could have taken more time to be proud of myself with flamingo-esque vanity.

Getting more specific with the costume will help too. I like the idea of Florence needing glasses but I should try and find a slightly more flamboyant (if I can use that word without fear of over-interpretation) pair this weekend. I also can probably dispense with the blazer—the pink shirt speaks for itself.

Going over to Ingrid for the second half of class was fun; we were put into pairs and spent the rest of class getting to know each other in pairs through improve, as if we were having dinner together. They didn’t necessarily have to be dates, and indeed I was paired with a seven-year-old mandrill boy (Josh), and though it was a fun exercise and got me thinking a lot about how Florence interacts, I rather wished that we’d gotten the opportunity to switch partners at least once. I would be interested to try interacting in a more date-like scenario with a girl, because that gives very specific objectives, intentions, and relationships. It was sort of contrived to establish stakes between me and this kid, even though we bonded about our large families and grew to like each other quite a bit.

Though it was a bit of an off day, it made me realize where I need to solidify things. I have a better understanding of how Florence vocalizes and communicates now but I need to make sure that that physicality is always there as a solid foundation. I need to reestablish the mask as well.