11/24/09

Today we presented our personal warm-ups and I presented my gift piece. To be perfectly honest the warm-up had me at a stand-still for a while. I wasn't exactly sure how to construct a routine that would be the best for me. I don't have many routines, I'm not used to them, my brain doesn't work in them. That's why I'm not that good of a student, I've never had the will to establish helpful routines. So I just started playing with different things during our warm-up time for The Spitfire Grill. I've felt lately like I needed to do something to warm up before performances, but I wasn't sure what would help most. So during Spitfire vocal warm up I would go into the dance studio and think, "okay, tension is here, lets stretch that, alignment needs to be this way lets do this" and I went through different exercises I've picked up in class and from work shops and people who I've seen warm up. I didn't have anything really set until last night when I went through the order of exercises in my mind. I find that when I construct a movement piece I need something for it to hinge on, a task or a goal, or something to hold. I decided my goal with the warm up should be to release tension and loosen myself up. It occurred to me this morning that the key to doing that for me is to pop my joints, so I aimed all parts of my warm-up at relaxation and popping my joints and today in class I felt better and more ready to perform than I have in a long time. I just wish I would have had all this put together for Spitfire. If I had been as loose and relaxed during the run of that show as I was today in class I might not have made all the rookie mistakes I made the last two shows, trying too hard to think of the next entrance, or the next piece of blocking.

I did my gift piece, which I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with. I didn't have as much time to work on it as I would have liked, which is no excuse, because I did have enough time. But even with what time I had I found it difficult to find a jumping off point so it didn't just turn into "A day in the life of Brian Cota." So the best departure point I could think of was my monologue. I decided to do my monologue as Brian. One thing I high lighted a few times in my letter to him was the difference between his movements in real life and on stage. So I put that in the piece by setting it in sort of an audition setting where at first he's just chilling with someone, talking to them, then he's called upon to perform, then he gets done with that and goes back to being himself. I tried to show the way some of his personal habits go away when he gets in his acting zone and some carry over. My biggest worry with today's performance is that it just looked like me being myself doing what I've been doing in class all semester. I hope I put his movement in it to a recognizable degree. I wish he had been there to tell me what he thought of it, but I'm kinda glad he wasn't because if he'd been there there would always be the chance he would think I was making fun of him, which was not my intention. I just wanted to show him what I see when I watch him, in the most accurate way I can.

11/20/09

I apologize for getting so behind on this thing. I've been incredibly busy acting in one show, dressing another and getting ready for company auditions. Now those things have dropped away one by one and I've picked up another project: wardrobe for student dance, which comes off right after Thanksgiving break. So, Movement. I'm really proud of the way my movement piece for my monologue came together. I'm glad people enjoyed it, but I'm really not sure that's helpful to me because I'm not sure how to take the movement I have and put it into the piece in a way that I could really use it for an audition or something. Also I'm struggling to create my warm up. I'm struggling to think of something that helps prepare me to move. I usually do a roll-down and vocal warm-up of some kind but I'm not sure yet what's the best way to to prep myself. Anyway, I got my gift this week. I thought it was really cool. I felt like her assessment of my movement habits was pretty accurate. She said it's almost like I have two personalities, one that's kind of tensed-up and one that's really animated like a cartoon. I think she's right about that. I will sometimes hold tension and stay inside myself until I get comfortable in a situation and then I start performing and unleash the weirdness. She showed that in her movement piece by imitating my habits and then switching to me doing my movement piece, using a lot of fluid out-stretched movements. When she said in her letter that there were two of me I wasn't sure how to feel about that at first. I was like, "so does that mean I misrepresent myself?" but I don't think it's necessarily a bad or good thing. As humans our behaviors are situational and we kind of appropriate or habits to situations, so it's normal, but also I find it kind of comfortable to know what I'm capable of movement-wise; to know that I can be animated and kind of sustain two sets of movement patterns and appropriate them to situations. Knowing that I do that or that I can do that gives me hope that I can do the same with my characters and make them more believable.

11/7/09

Haven't had time to post this week since I've been crewing Our Town and trying to catch up with spitfire grill. This week we finished presentations, we talked about I think, tai chi and biomechanics and feldenkrais. I'm not a huge fan of tai chi or biomechanics, but I kind of like feldenkrais. I'm still working on my monologue and trying some of the ideas from my movement piece in my Company audition monologue.