After being off for a week for MLK Day, being back in class felt good. Missing were Alex, who joined by Zoom due to work travel, and Paige, who had tech for Red Speedo.
We started with the final scene presentation with Lukas and Olivia, then moved into our Full Exercise based on the text for our next scene. I’m working on a scene from Blue Denim with Lukas, a play I’m not familiar with. My nerve was I have to get my BEST friend to take responsibility. For my trigger, I used “I just helped my best friend’s girlfriend get an unsafe, illegal abortion.” Overall I thought the exercise went well, but I wasn’t completely happy with my crafting, specifically the trigger. After some discussion Jolene suggested that perhaps the girlfriend might have said something to me just before the scene started. I like this suggestion – more immediate, personal, and raises the stakes. I’ll work on re-crafting this week (along with memorization). Some of the feedback I got from Christine was that she felt that I was “showing” how I felt at one point, and Jolene seemed to concur. I wasn’t clear when this moment was, so I asked Christine after class. She mentioned a moment early in the exercise where I had gotten frustrated, turned my back on Lukas, and ran my hands through my hair. I did recall doing that, however it felt impulsive to me at the time. She said that it didn’t seem to be related to what was going on in the moment. i thanked her, and will ponder on this.
The question I want to ponder is, if something is an impulse, and we are supposed to follow our impulses, do we then evaluate the impulse in the moment to determine if it will be perceived as “showing,” or do we follow the impulse and let someone else tell us when the action reads as false? I would tend to lean toward the latter answer – we should follow the impulse and let the director or teacher comment, otherwise we will be in our heads the whole time.
Next week we start using the text, however we can carry the script. I’m going to try to not carry mine…just need to devote some time to memorization this week.