BFA Juries: Spring 2017 Edition (Classical Acting)

Oh Juries.
Shall I count the ways I hate you?

In all seriousness though, Juries are not my favorite thing in the world. They cause all this in-needed stress and they really aren't even all that difficult. yes I have to memorize a lot of music and be able to sing whatever song is chosen at random, but that's it! And sure, there is a short dance routine that I have to learn to prove that I still deserve to be in the BFA program and to show my professors that yes, I am progressing. And sure there is an interview with all of said professors.

But it is really not that difficult.

Unfortunately for me I sprained my ankle on Thursday during my Improvisation dance final, so I am back on crutches. Which sucks. So I didn't get to learn the dance jury which I was actually quite bummed about. For the first time since being here, I watched that routine and thought to myself, "Yes, I could do that. I am a dancer". It was empowering.

But the coolest part of this whole thing yesterday (Saturday), was my interview.

In the past these have not gone very good for me. The first one I remember I fell to pieces and cried about how I worry I am only a pretty voice and that I'm not really talented. The second one I was called out on being lazy and not putting for the work that I should and for being to shy and apologetic of myself. So this year, I was hoping for so much more.

And boy did I get it.

Peter told me how incredible my growth has been this year and complimented me on my grasp of the language in Shakespeare II.

Melinda told me how my growth is that much more incredible because of how quickly it is happening, but even ore so, it is great because my passion is burning being it and I am rising to meet my potential.

Scott was concerned about my work ethic in his classes and cautioned me to 'step it up' for Capstone(I am taking it next Fall) or I might not pass/graduate. To which Melinda expressed her worry with my 10 class load next Fall.

YIKES!
But I'm trying to graduate which means taking literally all my dance classes. At least all the lower level classes so that I can take higher levels in the spring. I am determined to be a confident dancer when I leave SUU. If I had to choose one goal for graduating, it would be that.

Cameron has already given me the greatest compliments of all PAUSE II

I totally forgot to mention that! During tech for Heathers Cameron approached me and told me about this theatre company he Music Directs For (lake Dillon Theatre Co. in Colorado) and told me that they had an open spot and he wanted to pass along my information (headshot/resume/audition cut) to the directors. He told me that they don't like to hire students so my chances were slim. But he then went on to tell me that I would be perfect for their season next summer and that if anyone was going to make it in this business I would. Which HOLY CRAP that is a huge thing to hear from Cameron. He doesn't give out compliments very often, so when he does you know they are sincere. I was so humbled and so thrilled to hear that from him. He has been working professionally in this business and industry for 10 years. 10 years and he is only 26. That's crazy! So he definitely knows what he is talking about. He also told me that I should seriously consider taking an audition trip to new York and just audition for literally everything, especially Lake Dillon. So I am working on making that happen. He also told me that the more he works with me the more impressed he is. So ya. I have been flying pretty high for these last few weeks.

PLAY >

Anyhow, Cameron told me that I should not be afraid to chase after what I want in every capacity. In class and voice lessons and wherever I work from here. he told me not to be afraid to work what I want in order to carve out my niche. He told me not to be afraid to keep the people I work with honest while I chase after exactly what I want my training to be.

Overall it was such an uplifting experience to have my professors tell me they were proud of me and that I was doing great work. They all had very nice things to say and overall were just thrilled that I have finally arrived.

I am so ready to do this thing. I have never felt better about my career choice than I have over these last few weeks. I feel like I finally know what it means to really work a show and devote all of your energy to it. I feel like I finally know how to be confident in my body and my movement capabilities. I am confident in my talents for probably the first time in years and I feel like I could take on the world.

When I started at SUU I knew that I was talented but I thought I wasn't good enough to ever really act outside of High School. So I planned on teach at HS. Then I met Kollin and started growing (very slowly at first) and I decided that I didn't want to teach HS and that I was talented enough to gain some real world experience and I decided that I wanted to teach on a collegiate level.

Well, here we are, the end of my 4th year of school and I have decided that I want to perform. I want to chase auditions and chase after shows and pour my soul and my passion into everything I do.

I want to experience.
That is the biggest thing I have learned this year.
I want to experience as much of everything as I can because eventually I want to be like my professors: in a classroom at a college, sharing experiences and working with students and helping them realize and reach their full potential.

I don't have a CLUE what my life holds, but I know one thing for certain: I want to perform.

And that is exactly what I am going to do, just you watch me.

Chekov (Classical Acting)

Today was our final performance of our Chekov scenes.

Chekov is usually something that I do not look forward to. There are always so many words and I personally feel that they are not all useful. However, for the first time, I actually enjoyed this assignment.

Rob and I got assigned to work together--which we have some how managed to avoid working with each other for the 4 years we have been at school together--which I rather enjoyed. We tackled a scene from Uncle Vanya and at first we didn't' really understand it. The first time we performed it, nothing really read and Bugg told us that we weren't playing with high enough stakes and that we weren't really getting the objectives and arch of the scene. He went on to explain to the class that Chekov deal mostly with sub-text. That there is always so much more going on than what is being spoken. Which: subtext is always hard to get to in a scene because you don't have the whole play to build it and add on to it.

So, Rob and I started over and we spent some time really talking about our characters and this awkward "half-love scene" that we had chosen. We came to the conclusion that we both just needed to keep that natural element of the scene but really take risks. For me that meant that I had to be bold and really make strong choices. The first time we performed it I played too quiet and shy and Bugg told me that I needed to be strong and assertive. So I tried that and it unlocked this relationship between our two characters. Suddenly this scene became the scene that would define them for the rest of their lives. This was the moment that they would either profess their love for each other and get carried away into the night, or my character (Sonia) would be denied by Rob's character (Dr. Astroff) and their relationship would dissipate.

When we added those elements, I feel that it read so much better. When we performed, we got lots of great comments from Professor Bugg; including that he felt we had finally tapped into the arch of the scene. So that was great=]

This semester in classical acting has really opened my eyes. I always assumed that I was only good at contemporary musical theatre and that I wouldn't ever do anything other than that. But in both classical acting and Shakespeare II, I have received the comment that I have a good sense of the language and physicality of the pieces I am working. These two classes have really opened up my mind to the possibilities that I could work in other shows besides musicals. Musicals are still my first love, but I have a budding love for classical works now as well.

Fall Auditions/Heather Chandler (Classical Acting)

Holy crap it has been an insane couple of weeks.

This weekend were the auditions for all the Fall semester shows. They included: Edges, Assassins, MacB,  and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. We audition in groups of 12 in front of ALL the directors/professors. It is exhausting.

I went in, expecting to be cast in Edges, and sang a cut from "Anyways" by Kerrigan and Lowdermilk (which is my strongest vocal piece right now) and I did a monologue from Rabbit Hole (which I am not crazy about but I've been using it for everything lately) and a monologue from Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare Piece). My audition was good. I felt very confident and proud of the work that I put forth. And I have recently decided that that is how I want to feel after every audition. I'm going to stop trying to decide who I should be cast as and just start putting my VERY best foot forward in every audition. Then I can know that I did everything in my power to ensure I was promoting my self and my talent in a positive way.

Anyhow.

Callbacks go out. And I get called back for everything except Edges. Which I honestly found vey strange. But I shrugged it off and focused on the callbacks that I did have. At first I wasn't very excited about Assassins, because it honestly has never been one of my favorite shows. But then I learned that they were probably going to cast a woman in the role of the Balladeer which is the only character that I really like in this show. So when I got called back to sing for the Balladeer I was pretty excited. It didn't go great but I was still happy with the work I had put forth.

That was sort of the theme throughout the callbacks. with MacB I knew I could have done much better but I still felt good with the work I had done. R&G was a little different just because I had to email my callback to Peter due to work being at the same time as the callbacks.

After all was said and done, I was just happy to be on the other side. It was very relaxing to be honest: I didn't want to be in any of these shows extremely badly. I just wanted to be in something for the fall. So I didn't feel any pressure to prove myself or anything. I felt confident in my skills and talents and just left them out on the floor.

Well, the cast lists have been posted and I have been cast in Assassins! I will be playing Sara Jane Moore. I honestly don't know a lot about her and I can't focus on diving into Assassins yet because Heathers has opened and is running and that is literally sucking all of my life-force away.

I have seriously never been more exhausted from a show in my entire life. Heather Chandler is so draining. She takes all of my energy, concentration and will power. I literally give her everything I have and she takes it and we walk on stage like the "Mythic B*tch" we are. It is so exhausting but so very empowering. There is nothing like strutting out on stage and hearing a crowd lose their minds! The roar of cheering from opening night (last night) was deafening! It was such a thrill.=]

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE performing??

The Exploritive Mind (Classical Acting)

It has been a couple of weeks since I last wrote about my improvisation class, but we played with some really cool material today so I just had to share!

Today we have entered into a subject about working with different amounts and types muscularity involved. We began by moving around the space as if we were just a skeleton. We experimented with what it felt like to envision and imagine movement just from the joints. This was so interesting to me because it resulted in this very angular movement. It was fun to explore what it felt like to move from the finger joints or the joint of your right shoulder or left hip.

After that we explored what it would feel like to be just a body of muscle. This movement seemed a little floppy at times, so our instructor told us to imagine we had to use every single ounce of force that we had. All of my muscles tensed and suddenly it was like I was forcing myself through an ocean of wet concrete.

We began to switch very rapidly between the two styles of movement, experimenting with tempo and repetition of certain moves. We also played with the ease of movement; this idea that sometimes it took all our strength and concentration whereas at other times it only took a minimalistic thought.

Following those two exercises we experimented with what it was like to move from our skin; what it meant to revel in the feel and touch of everything. This was the exercise that reached me the most. a little background:

I grew up as an insecure little girl. I was taught not to flaunt my body or do anything that might attract direct and outside attention to it. That has since transferred over to my grown-up vision of myself. I dress very modestly and I don't move or dance or do anything that would attract outside attention to myself. Which has then registered to my brain as zero confidence. Well, over this last year I have had to find confidence in MANY places. It began in The Spitfire Grill I had to find the confidence to take up space on stage and to be loud and be heard. It has since continued on in Heathers. I am wearing a mini skirt! I have never worn anything that short in my entire life! She is this brash and fierce girl who knows how good she looks and she flaunts it everywhere she goes. I am 100% NOT that girl. So finding the confidence to move that way and flaunt that way has been such an immense struggle.

But with this exercise, I finally just let myself go and experience what it felt like to move from every inch of my skin; what it felt like to revel in the beauty of movement that my body was capable of. It was such an eye opening experience; so much so that I felt I was truly experiencing movement for the first time; like I was discovering what it meant to walk and to dance and to feel the energy electric on my skin.

It was empowering and I hope to use that in my work with Heathers. I guess we will see how it goes!

The Opera: that I can never remember how to spell or pronounce (Classical Acting)

I was lucky enough to see the Saturday night performance of this show. I have been told that was the best night, in fact, to see it. So I feel quite lucky. I walked in just as the lights dimmed and the music of the overture began. As the orchestra began to fill the auditorium, my breath was taken away. The sweeping sounds of various instruments all playing together in harmonies almost too complex to catch was remarkable. I get so used to being a part of shows with small orchestrations that to experience something so sweeping and beautiful was surreal. Quite honestly the orchestrations were my favorite part of this opera; what a neat experience to be a part of.

When I regained control of my breathing I took in the stage and about lost it once more. We have such talented designers at SUU. The marble pillars were painted with such care and detail that I had to remind myself that they were set pieces. Then the show began and the lighting painted these beautiful tapestries of light and color across the stage. My eyes enjoyed almost three hours of stimulation and indulgence; dancing from the lighting to the set changes to the costumes.

And those costumes were stunning. The jewel tones balanced with the lighting and the colors of the set pieces perfectly. It was such a cohesive design. Until Claire Robinson stepped out in the second act wearing a bright, canary yellow gown. Now, I understand that her character was meant to stand out. I understand that I am not a design major and that I was not the one that designed this show. But that color did not belong on that stage in that color scheme. The gown was gorgeous, there is no argument about that. However every time she came on stage in that dress I was thrown out of the show and all I could think about was how terrible it looked against everything else. Which truly was too bad because Claire has an incredible voice. She is stunningly talented and yet she was costumed in such a poor color.

Aside from the yellow dress, my biggest issue with this show was that I could only hear and understand about half of it. So much so that when it ended I didn’t have a clue as to how the conflict was resolved. I felt like I didn’t understand any of the characters or their purposes or character arcs. I felt completely robbed. The biggest exceptions were Keaton Johns and Robert Wilson. I could hear and understand everything they said and sang. I was reminded again just how important diction and projection truly are. It is vitally important to slow down and enunciate everything we say when we are on stage. Otherwise the audience won’t catch the story we are trying to tell.

Malapropisms (Classical Actings)

Kade, Abby, and I have picked the perfect scene! It is going to take some cutting down because it is currently a 4 person scene, but I think we can do it. It's from a show called The Rival and it is about this girl who falls in love with a soldier pretending to be a poor and lowly stature of a man. The scene that we are going to perform is when the girls caretaker--Mrs. Malaprop (played by myself) discovers that the young girl (played by Abby) and the young soldier (played by Kade) have been secretly falling in love and planning to elope. Well it then comes out that Kade's character is really the soldier and Abby's character freaks out because she feels like he has lied to her and it's just a huge mess.

That being said, it is also farcical, so it's hilarious! Everything is over dramatic and non-sensical. and Mrs. Malaprop has this habit of using the wrong words in her sentences. One of her lines is "make no caparisons please" when she really means the word "comparisons". In fact, a malapropism is a real word which means: "the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with unintentionally amusing effect, as in, for example, “dance a flamingo” (instead of flamenco)" and it came from this show and this character. How cool is that?

I love this scene because I never get to play these sorts of outrageous characters. I am usually the young lover character in scenes and shows. So getting to play this over the top woman was such a blast. I don't think I quite leaned into the absurdity as much as I could have--though believe me I did try--but I think we nailed the scene pretty dang close to the top of the head.

On top of all this, we learned how to communicate with fans. Which means I got to use one as a prop in our scene! I got to hide behind it or smack Abby/Kade with it to emphasize my points. I even fake cried behind it at one point. Fans are such a fun prop and I honestly had no idea that there is practically a whole other language written just for their use. How confusing that must have been back in the day. Certain gestures could mean more than one thing so how were you supposed to know which one the woman meant!?

Although, Ironically, you could argue the same point to today's society. Women, people in general really, have a habit of saying one thing while meaning another. So how do you keep it all straight?

Well, our scene is going to be great and I am loving getting to work on this project with Kade and Abby.

Improvisation (Classical Acting)

This is the first dance-like class that I have taken since my hip surgeries. When we first started I was honestly really embarrassed and worried because I knew I couldn't move fully and Improvisation is a subject that begs you to go all out and all in.

In our text book, there is an author, Zaporah, and she claims that the mind and body are inseparable. She says, “The body knows itself through the mind as the mind knows itself through the body. Sometimes it’s convenient to talk about the body and the mind as separate entities. We can talk about taming or disciplining the body, quieting the mind, relaxing the body, focusing attention. But can you imagine doing any of these things without both body and mind? (21)”

And I just started to think about that quote and wonder what it means to me and whether or not I agree or disagree. Well, in respect to my personally experiences and journey that I have experienced in the last two months, I decided that I agreed with her statement. 

The body reacts and responds to what we think and how we feel. You simply can’t have one without the other. You can certainly try, but I feel the results would be less than desirable. For example: if you are laying in bed trying to relax your body,it won’t matter how calm you are if your mind is racing. This happens to me all the time and it keeps me awake for hours at times.

Even though I know they are both integral, I feel very segregated between mind and body. Especially when any sort of dance/movement is going on. I have never been a strong dancer and as a result I have never considered myself “a dancer”. In fact I didn’t even feel like I could call myself “a mover” until a year or so ago. I always get caught up in my head with personal judgements and insecurities. I am constantly telling myself that I must look ridiculous which then results in a lack of commitment to movement. Let me explain a little bit.

Over the last 6+ years, I’ve been dealing with hip problems. My joints would painfully pop and lock and sometimes lock up on me. It made it difficult to enjoy dancing or movement for extended periods of time. Eventually I compensated because I couldn’t trust my hips to fully hold my weight. Because of that my body and my mind started to compensate as well. I held my weight higher so that I was always prepared to catch myself if my hip locked. I altered dance moves in musicals I was a part of so that I wouldn’t pull anything the wrong way. It became second nature to me. But then I finally said ‘enough is enough’ and my husband and I started to search for answers last summer. We found a doctor that knew exactly what was wrong and how to fix it. So I had two hip surgeries within as many months.

Now I find myself longing to be “a dancer”. Longing to reshape my mindset and my own opinions of my body and how it looks and moves and responds to music but I have a lot of bad habits to break and years of self-doubt and insecurities to overcome.

Needless to say, I know how powerful our minds can be. I am starting to truly understand that I have to find a way to mentally trust my body again and trust my muscles to know what to do; trust that I don’t always look completely ridiculous. Which is honestly one reason why I am so glad to be taking a dance improv class. What better way to begin trusting my body again, than in a class where all we do is explore how our bodies move and react. The mind and the body are powerful tools and are even more powerful when they are working together.