Starcatching

Wednesday morning. Scriptures with Susan. We talked about a psalm that had seemed to save us both at a time in our lives.
Sometimes text just saves us. Sometimes text is the only thing that really opens your eyes and heart and make you listen, feel and understand.

In a world where truth is hidden so much behind masks. 
In a society where rules have been set up about how we must interact with each other.
People lie, people hide, people pretend.. so every once in a while, we escape into a book, a movie, a painting, a dance, a song - because here is always truth.

Every day I do my best to bring that truth back into the world we live in. The ironic thing is, that it's already there - the books, movies, paintings, dances and songs are all created by us.
The most beautiful, pure and unique truth lies within all of us. 

But it's difficult not to filter it. We all filter our thoughts and act them out to something that seems easier and more valid to show to the world.

So I'll start.
Here's my vow:

"I won't be scared.
I will act on all impulses, because I have no fear.
I will tell the truth, no matter what people think of it.
I will always be myself and trust that that's the most beautiful in me."

Soon.

Every day I try my best to make that soon 'now', and every day I'm closer to that goal. I have moved so unbelievably much already.

And a good start is acknowledging that: I am dead scared, but I'm not scared of showing it.

- Yesterday I made a decision in dance; to have a specific thing to focus on for the day. Even though I have many flops I could comment on in that subject, I decided that just for the day I would never look down. Even if my feet hurt, or if I bumped into the ballet bar or if I wanted to make sure my 5th position was correct, I would NEVER allow myself to look down.

IT helped! At least for the exterior image. But even so.. that's the thing; when you force yourself to put on any kind of exterior image for a while, it eventually becomes a part of you. Making myself stand taller was something I inhabited after a while.

You just gotta push yourself to take the first step.

So what's your vow to yourself and your achievements?

If you can't come up with something or if you aren't sure of how to put it... I have something that I discovered when I first came. Take a look at this text below in italic. From my point of view the actor's vow can apply to all people.

This is what we promised in acting class:

I will take my rightful place on stage
and I will be myself.
I am not a cosmic orphan.
I have no reason to be timid.
I will respond as I feel;
awkwardly, vulgarly,
but respond.

I will have my throat open,
I will have my heart open,
I will be vulnerable.
I may have anything or everything
the world has to offer, but the thing
I need most, and want most,
is to be myself.

I will admit rejection, admit pain,
admit frustration, admit even pettiness,
admit shame, admit outrage,
admit anything and everything
that happens to me.

The best and most human parts of
me are those I have inhabited
and hidden from the world.
I will work on it.
I will raise my voice.
I will be heard.

*

I am sitting in the subway, on my way to Times Square to try and get student rush tickets for a show. The show is 'Peter and the Starcatcher'. The show ran on Broadway for some months, and has now been moved to an off-Broadway theater with a new cast. Everyone who has seen it says it's amazing!

We spoke about it in class, and our history of musical theater teacher said "After I'd seen it, I thought - that's what theater should be."

The musical is a prequel to Peter Pan, written to adults. I've heard the scenic design should be amazing.

I will let you know about it, if I get the tickets! ;)

*

Today in speech class we spoke a lot about the things we had noticed in the different accents we were surrounded by. How the different people use their articulaters and which vowels they emphasize most.

Finding the neutral American accent is something we all work hard on, outside school. In this work we discover what other muscles we use - than those we use for our mother tongue. It's really interesting. For an American accent I need to think of my mouth more flat and relaxed, placing the vowels in the middle of my mouth. It's a placement you just need to know and once your body has understood that, the accent flows almost naturally.

It's about knowing the muscles in your face. Just like knowing your muscles in dance. And just like knowing your placement in singing.

We also spoke about how you tend to change your way of speaking, according to who you speak to. Not only the way you use the language, but the accents you use. If you speak to an Italian person, who has difficulty understanding English, you often loose a bit of your original accent subconsciously and try to sound Italian, in order to be closer to their way of speaking.

This is about our instinct of connecting with other people.

*

Yay! I got the tickets to the show! Just gotta figure out how I get dinner today, because I need to go straight to the theater after class finishes at 6:30!

This made me think - in a week from now I will leave the same class earlier to pick my mum up from the airport. The last time I wrote, I believe there was 2 weeks till she came. The days sure do go by fast.

Right now, I feel like I am just writing random stuff that happens on a regular day. Let me know if my writing gets boring ;) Seriously let me know. - For one post I've had 67 views, for another there's been 11, and I have no idea if it's about the writing or the timing of how many people were online when I posted it on facebook.

*

So, Peter and the Starcatcher... Awesome show on so many levels. My personal favorite part of it was the scenic design and how they'd used that with the light in such a clever way. In the whole second act they had the same scenography, but the light changed drastically in every scene. The scenography was like a background material. It had a certain pattern that was able to catch or reflect the light in so many different ways. With that 'simple' scenography, we were in the jungle, by the mermaids' cave, in a dark grotto and many other places that I don't recall just now.

The material of the scenography was a kind of fabric that was cut out in small pieces that hung loosely on a wall. These walls were placed in layers from downstage to upstage. The loose pieces made it look like tons of leaves, when there was green light on them, for the scenes in the forest, it looked like blue waves when we were by the mermaids, and it looked like a spiky and rough edge of the grotto in the scenes for that. It was truly amazing. And all of that done on a rather small stage, off-Broadway.

Peter Pan and Molly (Wendy's mother;)

The Indians attack the boys in the forest

The acting was really funny. The acting was either comic, absurd or serious. In the beginning I had to get used to that, just because of the totally different tone of acting (different to all the other shows I'v seen for the past weeks) - in that way it also changed what they expected of their audience. They broke the 4th wall a lot of times (the imaginary wall between the stage and the audience. When you break it, you interact with the audience and speak directly to them).

I had expected it to be  more of a 'fairy-tale' setting, but they didn't always play with that truth. Like I said, it was mostly comic.

I wasn't too fond of the actors. They were good, but with none of them I felt that they had a truthful behavior. I wasn't engaged in their personal story very much. I think part of that though, is the comic tone they were directed towards.

*

After taking Meisner, I've really started to notice when actors truly connect with the other actors onstage and let the behavior of them IN THAT MOMENT affect their reactions - NOT WHAT'S PLANNED in the script.

My Meisner teacher says that text isn't important (oh but it is - for your audience to understand what the story is. Text is powerful). BUT the most important thing for an actor is behavior. Actually working off the other persons behavior, acknowledging how you feel about them and their behavior and how they feel about your behavior. What does the person do to you?

So it is obvious in an actor, if his/her behavior has been affected by someone else/something else onstage, or if the smile/the laugh/the weeping/raising the voice/talking clearer is planned acting. Then - the text doesn't do magical things. That's why I wasn't always fully engaged in the performance tonight. The text becomes magic, when it has been said from an impulse of behavior. When every word has a meaning, and affects the actor in some way.

I'd like to see this show again to see if my second experience would be better. My original seat in the audience was on the first row, but completely to the left. There were quite a few things I couldn't see onstage, so by the second act I had moved to a central spot in the orchestra (surprisingly, the theater was like a 3rd full! .. so there were plenty of good seats left). 
I really dislike sitting way up front, because the performer look out into the room, so when you sit below stage level, you don't really feel like they're acting to you. Also 2 of the main characters were played by understudies, so I'd really like to see it again for the original cast.

*

Our singing class today was amazing (voice studio lab). We had a substitute, who is in fact my private voice lesson teacher. She works very much with getting the body engaged when you sing, using your whole body for support. She is also such a funny and cheerful person to be with, that we just had a blast as a group. It was a fantastic 2 hours, and we learned so much in little time.

Today was a good day!

My head is slowly drifting more and more over the computer. I need to sleep. X