Friday, December 15, 2006
'Tis the Season...
...to be jolly, and grateful, and thrilled about many things, but the thing that thrilled me most so far, this Holiday Season, was my ACTING SCENE STUDY CLASS!!! I could not have received a more wonderful gift than the presentation of scenes they did yesterday morning for whatever audience gathered! Shakespeare and Chekov words filled the room, and I am reasonably sure that , if the ghosts of those two geniuses did manage to make it to NYU Campus yesterday, they left much happier ghosts, realizing their works were alive and well in the hearts and mouths of young training actors ! We did pepper the presentation with monologues from more modern sources, side by side with monologues from the two masters, and the mix was a fortuitous one: the event rocked! I was deeply proud of the work displayed .Deeply proud. I wept tears of joy and every so often actually forgot i was watching my students....they really did the work!
The things that were most powerful were the longer, fuller scenes, most of which were from Chekov's THREE SISTERS and UNCLE VANYA and THE SEAGULL.....and the longer SHREW scene, the first meeting of Kate and Petruchio worked particularly well too...so next time, I may try more Shakespeare scenes in the program...we did work on a bunch. But every so often, a monolgue would display particular sensory work or cleverness and awareness of place, and it was a gem...and I don't want to single out work because it was all so damned good! So many steps forward were taken, and i am delighted...delighted...that most of the steps forward were not due to performance adrenaline but rather to the actual groundwork laid in their various rehearsals. So many of them wrote in the final exam about what they learned from the research work we did in class...and how it influenced their approach to the scenes...this specificity of ideas was evident in the scenes and mononlogues...when a fireplace was in the room, the audience knew it! When a mirror was on the wall, they knew just where and how high it was hung! I mean the kids really did their work!
AND I WAS ONCE MORE REMINDED OF THIS: for students of the singing voice, whose passions already run deeply and more connected to the body (because of their vocal training) , working on classical scenes from dramas and comedies written by masters is valuable because it teaches them the necessity of truth in the speaking of large emotions before the singing begins...and the geniuses I refer to (Shakespeare, Chekov, the Restoration guys like Sheridan, other verse dramatists like Marlowe, even the highly poetic Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller,...these men wrote language so beautiful it could be sung! More modern playwrights have also written poetry but the music is different, and for the development of the instrument, I can't help but feel the older writers are more useful. They force the young actor to inhabit a time and place and manner different from their own, and forces them, thereby, to stretch in many widening directions in the use of speaking voice and use of a more open fluid body language.
Again, I WAS SO SO SO HAPPY with yesterday's presentation, and I want my class to know it. We did go back into the dressing room and i did tearfully let them know how proud i was of them....and so many of them simply did not want to leave...they wanted to keep working...I know how they feel...I have felt that too, and it is a sign of growing passion for wht really matters: the work, the power of what the individual actor can do ...SO I SAY TO YOU ALL (if any of you happen to be reading) : We will work togetheer again, I promise. And, to you all, BRAVO!!!
The things that were most powerful were the longer, fuller scenes, most of which were from Chekov's THREE SISTERS and UNCLE VANYA and THE SEAGULL.....and the longer SHREW scene, the first meeting of Kate and Petruchio worked particularly well too...so next time, I may try more Shakespeare scenes in the program...we did work on a bunch. But every so often, a monolgue would display particular sensory work or cleverness and awareness of place, and it was a gem...and I don't want to single out work because it was all so damned good! So many steps forward were taken, and i am delighted...delighted...that most of the steps forward were not due to performance adrenaline but rather to the actual groundwork laid in their various rehearsals. So many of them wrote in the final exam about what they learned from the research work we did in class...and how it influenced their approach to the scenes...this specificity of ideas was evident in the scenes and mononlogues...when a fireplace was in the room, the audience knew it! When a mirror was on the wall, they knew just where and how high it was hung! I mean the kids really did their work!
AND I WAS ONCE MORE REMINDED OF THIS: for students of the singing voice, whose passions already run deeply and more connected to the body (because of their vocal training) , working on classical scenes from dramas and comedies written by masters is valuable because it teaches them the necessity of truth in the speaking of large emotions before the singing begins...and the geniuses I refer to (Shakespeare, Chekov, the Restoration guys like Sheridan, other verse dramatists like Marlowe, even the highly poetic Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller,...these men wrote language so beautiful it could be sung! More modern playwrights have also written poetry but the music is different, and for the development of the instrument, I can't help but feel the older writers are more useful. They force the young actor to inhabit a time and place and manner different from their own, and forces them, thereby, to stretch in many widening directions in the use of speaking voice and use of a more open fluid body language.
Again, I WAS SO SO SO HAPPY with yesterday's presentation, and I want my class to know it. We did go back into the dressing room and i did tearfully let them know how proud i was of them....and so many of them simply did not want to leave...they wanted to keep working...I know how they feel...I have felt that too, and it is a sign of growing passion for wht really matters: the work, the power of what the individual actor can do ...SO I SAY TO YOU ALL (if any of you happen to be reading) : We will work togetheer again, I promise. And, to you all, BRAVO!!!
Labels: Holidays and Slings and Arrows
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