THURSDAY

Went to my Shakespeare class this morning with my 6-10 lines of verse (I had 12 - overachiever) prepared and excited to get into it. We began with a discussion based on some big questions the teacher set for us: what does it mean to be alive? How should we act (as human beings)? What must I do? Why do we do theatre? Woooooooooah - MASSIVE. The point of the discussion was to get us all conscious about the kind of stuff Shakespeare's dealing with, and how big it is. As a foreigner in the room, it was pretty interesting how very American people's responses seemed - and the teacher raised this point and acknowledged it. Neither a good nor bad thing, just some pretty different ways of looking at things.
Then we moved onto doing our text in front of the group. It was interesting for me to observe as we moved through each person that I probably had some of the most experience with Shakespeare in the room - and not only that, but a lot of people (like, almost everyone) had real trouble with direct address to the audience, or with just breathing and being in front of a group, or with corpsing and then apologising when they dropped a line or word. And they've been training for two-and-a-half years. These skills (or habits or practices or whatever) are things that after even a year of Toi Whakaari training you take for granted - it's what you do. It'll be interesting to see what the difference is when I finally get to see and work with the Senior (4th year) actors on the floor, to see what the difference is, but I get the sense from my Senior classes that the 3rd (and maybe beginning of 4th year) must start to get more disciplined and trained in that kind of work. Nevertheless, I can see there's going to be real value in this class, as the teacher, Evelyn, clearly has a vast body of work and knowledge behind her and her approach seems exploratory and comprehensive.

Followed this up with another Voice/Movement class with the graduate class, and straight away you notice a difference in discipline or professionalism or something between this group and the third years. And I don't mean that in a bad way - it's clearly just indicative of the level of training - but the graduate class has a really good environment to it.
We started off with a focusing name game, which is geared at maintaining ease and freedom in a stressful or heightened situation - ie the pressure to not mess up. Then we moved into more Fitzmaurice voice work, with more stretches and semi-comfortable positions to be in while you try to freely and resonantly produce sound. And while I don't understand the theory of the method (although David's given me some reading I can do about it), I noticed the resonance in my voice increasing with the exercises and a feeling of increased space - make of that what you will.
For the second half of the class we moved down to David's office to begin our dialects work with our Deep South dialect. And this was GREAT. Approaching the work in a really methodical manner, but learning in an environment where everyone's having a really good time and is allowed to fail was just awesome. This group seem to really find the joy in the work while working hard, and it's pretty infectious. The one rule of the class seems to be that from the moment you walk in the door to the moment you walk out everyone must be speaking in the dialect we're learning, which at times was pretty hilarious. Also a bonus of the class was that, when I did my standard American accent for them, they all told me that I could definitely pass as an American. That was until I chose to use the phrase "I reckon", which apparently is a dead giveaway.

And the afternoon was spent watching and participating in the same graduate group's wok on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Following on from a discussion about homosexuality and Shakespeare that we all had earlier, this afternoon was for the remainder of the group (I missed the first lot on Tuesday) to present their research into specific themes or areas of interest in the play. There were presentations about "the cult of melancholy", about traditional Twelfth Night celebrations, about Fools, Elizabethan class structure and meanings of characters' names, and finally about Illyria. It was all really interesting and I learnt a lot, but I particularly enjoyed the presentation about Shakespeare's Fools - their origin, function, role etc. It took my understanding and appreciation of this character to a much deeper level, and also helped to articulate more clearly some things about it that I already knew.

It struck me at the end of the day when David said "nearly through first week" that I've almost done a quarter of my time here at CSUF. How did that happen? It's already going so fast, and I'm trying to squeeze the most out of it I can. At least I've got this charmingly written yet meticulously thorough blog to refer back to should I forget anything. Phew. Stay tuned for tomorrow's edition.