skip to main |
skip to sidebar
The birthday girls in front of the fireplace:
Sorry for such a late post. Last week was kind of crazy. In any of my free time I was studying so I'm just now getting around to blogging. Meredith and I also celebrated our birthdays last Thursday night. It was nice to have a big party. Thanks to the Farmhouse peeps for hosting us!! To see pics from the party go to: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=125149&id=606945247&l=a3549771b1
This week started with voice. Warm-ups with some pelvis work, friction, dry shower, and rub down. We began feeling what it is like to push off the ground to walk. Then some group work walking in a circle forwards, backwards, and then changing direction. This sounds easy but it was much more difficult than it seems. At the piano we went through some Ro Ro Ro, Vee Vee Vee O and then did one of my favorite exercises called Cello, Viola, Violin. This helps you find different levels of sound on one note. This is a great help when once we begin working on voices in the mask.
We had voice again on Wednesday. We started with the looking glass image and blowing out hot air on it to clean it. Taking this concept and now letting out some sound, then sound and sustain that sound. We used the image of throwing a javolin and watching it land with the suspension. I find this a hard image to follow without moving my voice. Next we were walking through a crowded street constantly talking. Sometimes we would freeze and only two people would walk at a time. Then we did it one by one, stopping to look at the crowd and say, "My name is Dory (or whoever else's name it was)". Then Kevin stopped me and asked me to play the pro/con game. My subject was scorpions. Basically you just speak about the pros of scorpions until he says con then you go straight into the cons. The only way to play this game is to turn your brain off and not be scared of what crazy stuff may come out. I think I ended up having an army of scorpions spelling ART and then killing eachother so we could eat them. Great exercise. Kevin then gave us our vocography project which is telling three different stories in our life that involved sound.
We had acting most of the week with Marcello. We started with a quick review of all of our exercises adding components to them and moving into improv again. We moved the group through 10 different speeds. We did a lot of group building exercises with him which was really wonderful. Another exercise in this category is the chorus movement on a suspended board. The chorus decides when to follow the hero balancing the space and when they stop, another hero enters and the past hero joins the chorus. We worked on the 20 step glass grab (grab a glass, drink it, see another glass, grab it, throw the other one out, drink it). We moved this into 3 person improvs. It was difficult to keep the drink movement in mind while reacting to your peers and acknowedging there is an audience... as Caroline said, 'Welcome to theatre'. Then we presented one and two people improvs with a clear reason to enter the space and a clear reason to leave the space.
We watched a film on LaCoq and his work (this was one of Marcello's teachers so a lot of our exercises in acting are LaCoq based). Very interesting. The next day we worked on the 31 step boatman. We start this step exercises very sectioned and move them into a smooth transition between movements. 'The body remembers.'
In movement this week we started with a Feldenkrais exercise where we focus on our two thumbs together and they move us around the space. Then we played the peripheral game, having to keep two people always in your periphery. We warmed up swinging our arms back, around, & down then adding a jump in the middle. Next we stretched our legs getting ready for our next step into handstand. From crouching, one leg stretches back across the floor, when it is straight it comes up and you use that momentum to lift the other leg off the floor (image of painting a red line). We did hand stands across the floor starting with one leg up, then one leg comes up to say hello, scissors, reversing the movement, then using unbroken eye contact with a partner. Finally we worked on Negative and positive space playing the shape game with a partner. It was really interesting to see what kind of stories this game would tell based on the partner grouping. Was it beautiful and flowing, did it have a theme, or was it completely sectioned and weird.
We finished the week in Principia Comica with Scott and Mike then Music with Gianni. We told our aphorisms. Mine was: 'Reality is funny as long as it doesn't happen to you'. We made many observations and talked more about the expectations in class. We discussed the fact that most of our jokes were about sex. This segued into our discussion of the body and how it is percieved in different cultures and why. We will continue on this topice next week.
In Music we went over some of the dances we had learned the week before, and then learned the turns. We also learned a song to sing and Gianni gave us a beautiful poem to read. Great way to end the week.
Ironically I had been bitten by a spider this week on both arms and was having a pretty major reaction to them. I was about to go to the doctor when Thursday rolled around and I felt much better and the poison started to drain thank goodness. Well, I'm enjoying a much needed rest but I will be practicing most of the weekend as well. Tomorrow we are going on a hike in the Pratomagno with Scott so that should be fun.
Thursday was a great day. We had Music class all day with Gianni Bruschi. We starting learning the basic steps of the Pizzicato which is the ritualistic dance in Tarantismo. After a person has been bitten by a spider, snake, or stung by a scorpion they would gather together musicians and the women of the town would dress the victim in all white. They would begin on the ground and start to dance for days and days. The family would cook for the musicians as payment. This is a very passionate tradition. Later that day we learned how to play the tamborello and some of the other percussion instruments used in the Tarantismo tradition. It was a really great day! Here's a picture of me and Brian posing with our instruments:
On Friday we started with voice class. We worked with a partner doing head and neck massages. Making sure the persons neck and head are free when they begin to hum. Then we worked with the freeness of the arms. At the end of this exercise we pulled our partner up to sitting and then let them down vertebrae by vertebrae. Next we worked with the baton doing some Pilates work, into hanging off the baton while standing, then sitting and exhaling as we go down vertebrae by vertebrae while the the baton pulls us forward. After this we worked in a circle as a group, first on consonants (breath then sound) then breathing. We each did a concert just using our breath which morphed into a group working with the E.E. Cummings text. This text has been very hard for me to memorize so I hope to make some more progress on that this weekend.
In movement yesterday we started by walking in the space. Next Claudia asked us to keep the space balanced, two people started and then we went in one at a time, then 3 ft. away from eachother to 6 ft. away to 9 ft. away then back in to barely touching moving into levels. After our Yoga we started working on elbow stands. I don't know how long it will take me to get this one. It does take a lot of strength. We did some downward dog relay races across the floor, forwards, backwards, and sideways. Then we started in downward dog and walked up the wall as far as we could go. I found this exercise very fun and helpful in finding the way my pelvis tilts when I go up in a handstand. We did this is groups using each other as a counterweight, going over and under each other. It was really fun and pretty funny. It was interesting to see who took what risks. I was a little too unstable to crawl on top of people while on the wall. I'll get there soon enough. Finally we worked on saggital and horizontal planes in Laban work. The saggital for me was much easier than the horizontal. I had more trouble figuring out what was and wasn't horizontal rather than what was or wasn't forwards, backwards, up, and down. This morphed into a group picture in both cases.
Me and Persephone Len having a nice conversation after class today:
It has been raining all week so far. This has been hard for me because I really depend on sunlight. I'm a pretty sleepy person when it rains all the time and sadness can really catch up to me.
Today was interesting but harder for my ADD self because it was a lot of sitting and talking. We started with Principia Comica I with Scott McGehee and Michael Grady. This is the study of comedy. What's funny? This class is aimed to help us form our thesis project through finding our own point of view or angle on life. We will be sharing things we find comic in life through Aphorisms, jokes, journaling, and our facebook page where we will share viral videos as well as other observations. We also broke up into groups and did some lazzi. Bob, Meredith, and I picked (without knowing what we were picking) a lazzi where someone had to use the other's limb in order to trick the third person. We made it a grave robbing scene... niccccce!
The film lecture series today was about the History of Comedia dell'Arte. Scott explains the historical implications and backdrop of the uprising of Commedia dell'Arte. Very interesting!!
We had our first music lesson with Gianni Bruschi today. We will study the southern Italian tradition of music, the Tarantella. Today we explained with words and pictures what music meant to us and how we found music. My story revolved around a picture of a foot print in the sand and then three other pictures that represented different points in my life. Here is my story:
'Mary walked into the living room and found her daughter sitting on the ground in front of the television. She was certainly amazed that her daughter was transfixed, mesmerized by the opera on PBS. I was 3 years old.
My father was the musician of the family. He had been raised in a poor family on a cotton farm in Opelika on the border of Alabama and Georgia. He told me stories of a time when there was no television, just their favorite radio programs. A time of deep seeded racism, hate, and poverty... But allso a time of music; Jimmy Rogers and the Blues. He played guitar with Paw Paw on the front "po'ch" as they say in Alabama. Songs that had been handed down between friends and families. Songs with stories, history, and worth.
I'm not sure when Daddy started writing music but it is the first music I had ever known. From the time I was just a baby sitting on his lap to the day in November when he passed away, music was his legacy, his gift to us.
Momma says she doesn't remember a time I wasn't singing. She insisted we join a church and Daddy agreed to the Presbyterian Church on Calvin St. because his friend was the minister and he was known to be incredibly liberal as well. I joined the Youth Choir and made my first best friend Jamie. Her parents were the Youth Choir directors and we did plays together. Their support and love really paved my way in music and theatre. We sang together from Elementary School to High School. My life from this point began to become sections that eventually informed my decisions in life and music. There was a time when I became a person that I never knew I would be: All-State Choir, Pom Pon Squad, Cheerleader, Theatre, pageants. But because of all of this, I was awarded a very prestigious scholarship to College if I majored in Music. That is when I started taking lessons with Janice Yoes who said to me, "You are a Coloratura Soprano". I had found my niche. Daddy said the last thing the world needed was another big woman standing on stage screamin'. However, he was very supportive and proud of all of my accomplishments in Opera.
There is always a point in time where you pull away from your parents. You need this to start making your own way in life, your own decisions. Then you come back and my bond with my parents became stronger than it had been since I was a small child. Daddy still didn't understand a lot of my taste in music. "Rap is not music. If you want to say it is a form of poetry I will slightly buy that, but I think it is a bunch of bullshit", he would say. I didn't pick up a guitar until it was much too late for Daddy to ever teach me anything because of the crippling arthritis that had taken over his joints. So, I listened to his records and stories about his life as a rockabilly star in the south. Opening for Johnny Cash was one of my favorite stories. "What did you talk to him about Daddy?" "Oh just about how hard it is to make it in the music business." Daddy used to get up in the middle of the night and tell momma the muse had come, then he would go and write music. I guess that is how it has always been for me, though my muse has always been my father. I can only hope to make as big of a footprint in the sand as he did in his lifetime. That is why music is in my soul.'
I'm ready to begin my life as a graduate student!
Wow... It has been quite an exciting couple of days here at the Accademia dell'Arte! This is the inaugural year for the Master of Fine Arts in Physical Theatre program in which I am a candidate and Graduate Assistant. Yesterday we went over the basics: where things are in the Villa Godiola, rules, Italian culture, etc... of course I already knew a lot of this since I have worked here for the past 4 years.
Today we had met all of our teachers and they spoke about what we will do in class. This semester we will take acting with the great Marcello Bartoli. We will start with neutral mask moving into commedia dell'arte. Voice with the wonderful Kevin Crawford which is all based on the Roy Hart techniques (very interesting; read 'Dark Voices' if you want a better understanding of this Parisian company). Movement with the amazing Claudia Schnürer which encompasses Feldenkreis as well as many circus training techniques. The talented Gianni Bruschi will be teaching our music class focusing mainly on the Tarantella or the Meditteranean musical tradition (southern Italy). Then of course Aesthetics lead by our Founding Director, Scott McGehee, and co-taught by my colleague Michael Grady (check out his short plays; they are hilarious and are being performed in festivals all over the world).
Jesse and I had dinner with the rest of my fellow MFA candidates last night at their house in the Casa di Elide. It was fun and we brought out some really old liquor.
Needless to say I'm pretty excited for my new adventure!!!!
