Day the Ninth

Only two classes today - both with David and the graduate class. First up at 1pm (a nice wee sleep in) was Voice/Movement, where we began with our usual Fitzmaurice vocal work. We spent the first half hour in various compromising positions producing sound and trying to experience the "tremor" that seems to be so important to this work - it basically means putting some part of your body into a position where it will involuntarily shake, or tremor, while keeping the muscles of the torso loose and breathing in the optimal way to produce sound. And while it does seem to work, anyone walking into the class for the first time could be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled upon either a group of noisy epileptics or some sort of satanic cult. But, like I say, it seems to help. And it isn't as weird as I make it sound. Honest.

Then we moved into a section of work on what David called "extreme vocal work" - what we would call vocal violence at Toi - which basically is learning how to safely scream, shout, wail, cry, laugh or perform any other potentially strenuous vocal task. So today we started with wailing (like a cry of overwhelming grief I suppose). David demonstrated first, and man, even though we all knew he was just doing a technical exercise, the sound he produced was kind of haunting and deeply effecting. When he sat up at the end and just smiled calmly it was bizarre. So he then led us through a series of steps which in no time had each and every one of us wailing safely together. And it was loud. Great though to learn to make such a sound in a totally safe way, and my voice did feel totally fine afterwards. We're going to continue to develop these skills over the coming weeks.

The last part of class was again dedicated to forwarding our work on the Deep South dialect. We started by all just having a cup of tea and sitting down together and informally chatting - which ended up taking up quite a bit of time - but it was actually very helpful and my Chai was very good. Then we would go through each signature sound of the dialect and one by one go round the room saying a word that features this signature sound, with David making corrections or adjustments as necessary. After that we took turns to tell improvised stories or jokes to David in dialect, and that was all we had time for. But being the studious pupils we are, we carried on the dialect work right through our break, talking to everyone we encountered as though we were from Mississippi. Ordering coffee was fun.

The only other class was continuing the work on Twelfth Night. We finished the read through, and it felt to me that everybody's reading had improved since last time, and we took some time again to discuss specific features of Shakespeare's writing. We the took the time to have an open discussion about thoughts that arose in us from reading the play, favourite sections or lines, themes or motifs, or basically anything that struck us after completing the read through. The discussion was very wide-ranging, and though at times we seemed to disappear on long tangents, I appreciated the way David just let the conversation go where it wanted to go and didn't get too uppity or particular about relating everything back in a practical way. It's still the very early stages of this process and I think it's a great approach to just take the time to see what emerges, regardless of whether it's hugely pertinent, because you never know what you might stumble on. Next time we're getting down to the "table work", which in my understanding is where we'll move into the text analysis side of things. I'm really excited to see what David's approach to working the text is and I'll be keenly locking away little nuggets of process.

Just one class left for the week then, and it's the one where I'll finally get up and perform some Chekhov in front of Svetlana - needless to say I'm terrified. Someone was telling me the other day that she is considered one of the foremost authorities on chekhovian performance in the world, and that people such as Al Pacino have been known to consult and seek coaching from Svetlana. Wow. Better get preparing. I'm sure I'll have lots to write about tomorrow.