And this is where you expect something heartfelt and sappy, because you know the lyrics to Moulin Rouge, but I'm just sore. An unmoving, painful sort of sore. Still gloriously beautiful, but ouch. I've been practicing handstands like nobody's business, so my shoulder joints and my biceps ache. I managed to fit in my yoga practice this Thursday for the first time in what seems like a life time... I've been figuring out my shoulder stand (which seems to have hit a brick wall. or some sort of heavy, solid object). And I discovered the other day (yesterday? yes. yesterday) that I can do a cartwheel.
I can do a cartwheel.
I don't know if you realize how epic this realization was. When I was a small person and took ballet classes, I developed a cartwheel complex. I was the only girl in the class who couldn't cartwheel... (So maybe that's why I ended up directing the recitals from onstage? Apparently there's home video proof of this. I deny it.) In any case, I can cartwheel, and this is super exciting. We're starting somersaults and headstands, in addition to continuing partner work, balancing and such. Love Movement.
And we're starting personal character etudes in Acting, taking the character we're using for our scenes and putting them in some given circumstances, giving them an event. Oleg prefers that we place the etude before the play begins, so we can get a seriously thorough concept of who the character is by creating who they were. (That's my rephrasing, not his.) So I'm choosing to explore a happy Sarah, a Sarah who is in love (not the desperate, heartsick love, but the excited, young love). Excited for it-Monday.
Did an awesome training exercise today: Sit across from each other, find a neutral but active seated position. Focus. One gives the other a simple physical action to do (raise right arm, stand up, etc). But you don't speak, you don't motion, you just sit. You communicate with your eyes, and your eyes alone. If they move and get it wrong, you indicate that it's wrong with your eyes. If they get it right, you indicate that it's right, and move on to the next command. It's a crazy exercise. Awesome and crazy.
Saw a performance of Three Penny Opera last night. I think I liked it? Not quite as impressed by this set as I have been by others, but at least they made use of their weird set instead of letting it just exist in space. With the exception of the giant skeleton pulled out for five minutes at the end of the show. That was weird and unnecessary. But I still don't know what to think about the show... It certainly wasn't bad. But it wasn't great. It wasn't good. It lives in some sort of decent limbo. They say that a good production is one which makes you feel strongly, positively or negatively, one which makes you think. This production made me think (in a "hum. that's curious." sort of way). But I don't feel strongly about it. It was an attempt at edgy, unrealized. Several funny moments, provided by one actor in particular and his use of (you guessed it) physicality. A minimal speaking role-hardly any at all-but one of the strongest performances. But I have to wonder to what extent he is responsible for it- a talented actor, very talented, but so were the others. Perhaps he simply had more freedom to play, no being responsible for moving the plot forward. So I have to think about how performances are judged overall. Hamlet is held more responsible for the story than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-is this why we occasionally (maybe even more than occasionally) prefer secondary characters? We judge the Hamlets more harshly-rightly so? A leading role takes on a different degree of pressure, put in this light... It's funny how much you figure out by writing thoughts down.
Saw another show tonight. Giselle. A movement piece by the MXAT fourth-years. I'm sitting here in this coffee shop (Internet in the dorms is still down), trying to figure out how to describe the performance and/or my reaction to it. It's difficult, mostly because describing a movement piece via text can't be done. Example: Two performers stretching upward around each other during an interlude, and I wanted to cry. There is so much heartfelt focus in everything these actors do... I was talking to my friend Katie on the walk back to the dorm and we ended up raving for the thirty minutes it takes to get home about the need for focus and how to apply it onstage and how it's not just a matter of concentration, it's a matter of everything and how we all need to learn to fall apart onstage at one point or another so we can start learning to pull ourselves together. I'm hoping that the latter makes no sense whatsoever, because the conversation was actually much more involved than that.
Giselle. Although it was very small-scale production, staged in one of the MXAT studio theaters, it was very well done. Remarkable stamina, focus, flexibility, balance, strength... and they managed to make it look beautiful. Not effortless, but beautiful.
I'm gone. Enjoying the rest of my Saturday night. Possibly going to Tolstoy's house tomorrow?
M
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