First up for the week was Shakespeare with Evelyn. We started with the last of the 'Basics' presentations, followed by a quick discussion of the value of this kind of work and what we've learnt from it. This was on the whole pretty good, except for the reflections from some people being more of the gushy-self-discovery-and-acceptance type rather than really to do with Shakespeare or acting. Which is absolutely fine, just not what I'm there to do personally. Overall though it was a positive block of work where I learnt some things about an initial 'way in' to Shakespeare, which is probably different to how I would've normally looked at it.
Then we moved into a quick block of work on a physical exploration the Humours/Elements that are so present in Shakespeare's work. It was similar to other work I've done on the elements before, but the introduction of this concept of Humours and the melding of the two I found very interesting. Basically we were led through a physical exploration of these four archetypes (or states, or elements, or humours, or whatever) by a series of prompts from Evelyn, and it was up to us to individually explore within the confines of what she was giving us. I enjoyed it and could easily appreciate how it could be practically applied to character or scene/monologue work.
Then we got into some more gritty text work - analysing punctuation, meter, apposition, intellectual/emotional argument etc. We started by looking at "To be or not to be", which we'd done some analysis on for homework, and it was really great to discuss with Evelyn all the observations we'd made within the text and speculate as to the potential significance of this and then what it means for an actor playing this text. The next bit of work was to do with verse and breath - and while I enjoyed it and can understand the learning on a technical level, I'm not sure I totally agree with it. The Shakespeare world (if you will) is pretty well divided over the issue of whether you are supposed to breathe at the end of every verse line, or where the punctuation suggests, or just wherever you damned well please (this last one is the least popular view). Evelyn is of the former school of thought, while David, who I've been doing other Shakespeare work with, is of the second. And I've gotta say, I think I'm with David. Even after trying it out in class today, for my mind taking a breath at the end of each and every line of verse - even if you are mid-sentence - just doesn't help to make sense of the text at all, and seems often to introduce confusing pauses and emphasis to thoughts that are often confusing enough all by themselves. The only function that I can see that it serves is to preserve the form of the verse, but why should that matter at the expense of the sense of the text? My understanding of it is that verse is a device employed by Shakespeare to serve the actor and the story which he is putting to his audience, not to serve the verse. So in this way I find it far more useful to breathe where the punctuation suggests I should, but to let the form of the verse be a guide for me in my delivery, giving me useful clues and hints of where to go but never making me slave to it. Obviously there are minds far greater than mine who disagree, but there are also great minds on my side of the argument. Who knows, with more experience my mind may change. But, as David said during one of our sessions, "Why not just try both ways, because they're both options for you, and pick which you think serves and helps you best?" And I think that's what I've done.
A 20 minute break is then followed by my Voice/Movement class. First up is our usual Fitzmaurice voice work, but today David asked us to each individually lead ourselves in our warm up so he could observe what we were doing and help us and make individual corrections where necessary. I found this incredibly useful, as it made me kind of search through all the exercises I've done in David's classes over the last three weeks to find ones that I could remember, that I could do properly, and that I found useful. And that was a really great process to go through, especially at this stage as I look to make sure I have a firm enough base of knowledge in this work to take at least some of it back and incorporate it into my work at Toi. I found I was able to fill the time easily with a number of exercises, and not only that, I found that without David's guidance I almost got more out of some of them. It was like it made me actually think more deeply about what I was trying to achieve with the exercise, and then concentrate my efforts to achieve that without relying on David to guide me through it. At the end of that, David observed how well we were all working within our individual warm-ups, but also invited us to avoid the temptation to just be loud, especially early in a warm-up, and to play more with different pitch in the voicing we do. Good advice.
We then did a quick bit of work on finding different kinds of resonance in your voice, based on some work David had done with a teacher called Richard Armstrong. It turned out to be the Violin/Viola/Cello/Double Bass exercise that my class had done in our first year at Toi with D'Arcy - basically about finding different qualities in your voice solely through imagery of elves and dukes and bears and the like. It was great to go over it again with this group, especially to remind myself how it can be useful. I feel like I did it so long ago that it had kind of just become one of those warm-up things I did because... well, because it was just one of the warm-up things I did. Going through it today though reminded me why it's useful and how to make it useful, so I'll probably start using it more again.
The last part of the class was for our dialect work - starting on the English Estuary work. Before we started that, David handed back our Deep South quiz from last Thursday, and I scored an A with 99%. Stoked. I got one answer wrong in the written section, and I didn't quite understand the way the spoken section was graded, but with a 99% mark I figure I did reasonably well. So that's one dialect going straight on the CV. Anyway, we then moved into the Estuary work and it was very fun. We watched some clips of Ricky Gervais and Jamie Oliver and from that we together went about identifying key features and signature sounds of the dialect (in dialect, of course). After listening to a few more clips and talking a bunch more that was all we had time for. An exciting start though and I'm a bit sad i'll only get one more lesson on it before I go.
Last session of the day was Twelfth Night and more in-depth Shakespearean text analysis. Again I really enjoyed being privy to the meticulous yet fun way that David led the group through the work, growing understanding and ability through repeated discussion, debate, practise, drilling, and just teaching. While at times it's a slow process (I think we got through two-and-a-half scenes today) it's definitely very rewarding, and makes you realise how rich and complex the language is - there's always something more to be mined from it. The last section we worked on today was the first scene in which Feste, the fool, appears, and his use of language is so extremely complicated that we were talking ourselves in circles and tying our brains in knots trying to untangle all the different threads of meaning and figure out all of its complexity. Confusing and frustrating but also kind of exciting and deeply interesting, and when you feel like you finally understand a line that seemingly made no sense whatsoever it's gold. This kind of work gets me really inspired and excited to work on Shakespeare again and soon, and to do it thoroughly and properly with a group of skilled people committed to doing the same.
So three days and seven classes to go. It's not a lot at all. Tomorrow I have my last Dialects class with the third years and my last Camera Techniques class with John, and it will probably be the last time I get up on the floor to be worked by Svetlana. Man oh man. Let's hope it's a happy parting memory. We'll find out tomorrow.
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