wednesday.

Long day.

Sidenote: Greg is currently riffing The Itsy Bitsy Spider like crazy in the kitchen. I love him so much.

The day began with Russian. Which was not my favorite, as it never really is, but we finally got through the last form of declension. Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Prepositional, Instrumental, Dative. Lots of different rules and different personal pronouns and frustration. Highly frustrating, entertaining. Sort of.

Had Ballet this morning, and we really rocked it out. Went through the format of our final performance: Ballet exercises, Russia dance, Tango, Tarantella. So much fun, and we did really well. She gave us all a piece of chocolate at the end and told us "Maladietz!" which it the transliteration of "Wonderful!" This doesn't happen too often, so we were really excited. And more than once, she called me Marishka. "Good, Marishka!" Can't even express how excited I was about that, all day long.

Then, a long lunch, followed by Acting. We went through all of the scenes in the order that we'll be performing them: a run-through, if you will. Darren and I are up first. You'd think that it'd be a little nerve-wracking, to be up on the chopping block at the very beginning, but I'm excited. The scene went pretty well. The beginning was a little bit wonky, as it has been all along, but the rest felt a little more normal. Things were more or less familiar to the way we'd rehearsed yesterday and today. I was happy with it.

After everyone performed, we got into our usual semi-circle, and Sasha went through his notes. Sasha has a tendency to extemporize... So we went an hour over. Which was perfectly fine with me, as listening to those notes was an extremely helpful tool. But he gave me and Darren a ton of notes, and we've got a lot of work to do. We rehearsed tonight, and our scene changed completely. Entirely. We've become people, this time around. It's... modern. That's the way Darren phrased it, anyway. And he's right. I felt like myself, and tried to take Sarah's given circumstances (whether I've got it down or not remains to be seen...).

As Marissa, I'd get angry that he neglects me and chooses to leave. But upon realizing that he has difficulty dealing with his own "tedium" (that's the word in our translation-essentially, "depression," but that word is too strong), I'd become sympathetic and curious and want to help. I'd be concerned and need to fix the man I love with all my heart. But there's another layer for Sarah. She's dying. She's sick, and she needs Kolya to be there just as much as he needs her to be there. She recognizes that, but knows that he doesn't see it. She has to convince him. So I need to use those stakes in addition to what I know about myself.

This whole acting this is a little complicated.

Came home, ate dinner and rehearsed. Practiced my song for tomorrow, had a lengthy discussion about the acting finals, and attempted to convert the .avi format of my audition videos to .wmv or .mpg, to no avail. I tried it this summer, too, but had the same problems all over again. I'm not sure that there's a way to do this without buying a program. Which sucks. And I don't want to do that without help from someone who knows what the hell they're doing, because I really don't want a virus.

And now I'm going to attempt to go to sleep, because it's 1 in the morning, I have Stage Combat first thing (ech)... I say attempt because someone is belting Children of Eden down the hall. Everyone here loves to sing. It's absolutely wonderful. Until you need to sleep.

love. peace. etc.

m.e.p.