Remember that time I freaked out about having an eight hour acting workshop every week? Remember how I didn't know what I was going to do with all that time and wasn't just trusting that it would all work out? Well, I should have.
I have had three Fridays so far and I have survived each one of them. The first week we worked on Miracle plays and the very start of story-telling theater. We were handed a script and had to just play with it and block it and cast it. We worked out how the story would be told and what was actually needed. 8 hours- done!
The next week we worked on monologues from Shakespeare. We were each handed the same pieces and we read through them and talked about the choice of words and the phrasing. We looked at the metaphors and when the play appeared in Shakespeare's folio and how that effects the playing of it. We talked about the who and the how and the who. It was a day of on our feet exercises and studying the texts. 8 more hours- DONE! And I'm more in love than ever before.
(If you're following along at home, we worked on Richard III's first speech (Now is the winter of our discontent), the rape monologue from Titus Andronicus (Who is this? my niece, that flies away so fast!) and the tent monologue from Richard III (Oh I have passed a miserable night). We also worked on some clown monologues: Lance's Two Gentlemen of Verona (Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping.) and the scene between the brothers in Comedy of Errors.)
Today (Friday) we worked on the character development of the play we will be performing as our end of term project, Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women. We have not been cast yet, so we all are working together to get to know the journey each character takes in the play. We spend the entire day working on the events each character experiences and how it effects everyone else. It was wonderful to have us all contribute to every character, not just the one we will be working on. We all had to know why the Duke did what he did and why Bianca did what she did. We all have to know what The Ward is doing and why the Mother says what she says. It's vital to the understanding of the play as a whole.
That is something I love about this process. It is wonderful to experience the joy of bringing a play to life without the business side of things. I have spent the better part of 10 years trying to "get the part" and then get the next one. I've worked on musicals and plays as a production and what ticket sales it can bring to the playhouse more than as a work of art that is being produced because it's amazing. I've gotten caught up in having to sell myself in an effort to climb the LA theater ladder instead of truly enjoying bring the story of someone to the stage. There are obviously exceptions to that, but on the whole I have spent more time trying to get cast than truly enjoying being an actor.
20 hours a week of acting workshop will definitely bring that love back. I thank the universe every day that I get to do this for a living. And one of these days, I'll get paid for it!
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