Taking My Time

Yes.

I am still in London.

And yes.

I’ve been quiet...licking my wounds from a very tough year.

I’ve reflected on my growth and my destruction: my misery and hopelessness which crushed an awakening of hope and vigour.  I’ve tried to get some perspective.  And I know that like all heartbreaks, no sort of prodding or exploration will give me the insight that the simple measure of time will.  Some time has passed.  More will follow.

I am starting a new year here in London.  I have an agent who seems happy about pursuing a career with me.  As with all cities, it takes some time before repeat submissions from your agent gets you through a door with a casting director.  Time.  More time.

I had a terrible theatrical experience directly after school which reminded me why I have no interest in amateur theatre.  In the interest of not burning a bridge (not that it is one that I will ever set foot on again) – the company and director will remain unnamed.  As a friend here in London pointed out, “There’s fringe..and there’s FRINGE.”  On the flipside, some of the unpaid theatre here is actually rewarding and has great potential.  A friend of mine was in a pub theatre show that got picked up for a West End run.  Sometimes it gets you in front of the right people.  And sometimes it is just good to do to remind yourself that you’re an actor.  In the fall, I was thrilled to be a part of the CASA Latin American Theatre Festival Scratch Night – where short new works were staged in hopes of being picked up and fostered into a full-length show.  We created a piece called ‘Private Thoughts in Public Spaces’ as a devised piece.  For those of you outside of the theatrical world – devised means that there is no set script or choreography from the outset.  We discussed ideas, played games, did contact improv, tried, failed, explored – and under the guidance of a director and a movement director...pulled together an exciting and imaginative physical theatre piece which won the Scratch Night.  It is to be developed into a full-length production for next year’s CASA Festival here in London! 

 © Gema Juan Bernabeu

I’ve had the good fortune to have some paid work come down the line, too (which pleases both me and my agent).  Most of the corporate film work I’ve been cast in has been specifically because I am American.  The casting notices always make me giggle because they call for a ‘Native American’.  Although I did get cast as Matachana in a quite terrible production of Pocahontas with a touring children’s theatre backin my early 20s – let’s face it people – I’m as WASPy as you can get.  Irish?  Maybe.  Native American?  Not a chance.  But the castings here are referring to your dialect.  They aren’t looking for Brits who do a good ‘General American’ accent...they’re looking for a native...American.

I’ve just begun showing up to some commercial castings and using my RP (Received Pronunciation; also known as BBC English) dialect.  And surprise, surprise...I even got cast that way!  It is for a German tyre company – so maybe they didn’t even notice that I wasn’t a Native Brit.  I got flown to Cologne for the weekend to shoot the commercial.  Wardrobe fitting on the Saturday.  Shoot on the Sunday.  My biggest concern was that they would be ticked to find out that I wasn't British - after faking my way through the audition.  We set up for the first shot of the day...and after a handful of takes, the director said, ‘Perfect.  Now we do it in German!’

We what??

‘It is very easy ‘ ... and he rattled off my line in German.  ‘Um...I think I may have to write that down...’  So, he wrote it down for me.  In German.   So, I quickly jotted it down phonetically as best I could – and set it to memory – because they had not moved the cameras and were ready to do the next take.  My own little Lost In Translation moment.  I’m sure they’ll end up dubbing it by a Native German...(as inevitably my pronunciation was horrific)...but it was a reminder to keep cool and roll with the punches on set.   

Plus: I’ve added Cologne to places-I’ve-travelled.  Add that to Brussels, Bruges, Paris, Portugal, Sweden...and within the UK: Salisbury, Stonehenge, Bath, Durham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Oxford, Shrewsbury, Brighton, Brecon Beacons (Wales), Isle of Wight...and a drive through the Forest of Dean. 

Seeing lots of theatre, lots of friends and keeping inspired day by day.  Helps the time pass a little more gently.

Hey y'all, watch 'is!

I am in the final stretch of my MA.


Classes are done.


The final show is closed.


I've written and done provisional revisions on all three of the essays to hand in for my dissertation.


While pondering out loud to a classmate on how to come up with a title which would encompass all three essays:
(1) Hamlet's Gertrude: A Woman Divided by Point of View
(2) Lady Macbeth and Hedda Gabler: A Study of the Jungian 'Terrible Mother' Archetype
(3) *as yet untitled* Reflective Essay on my experience of the year
he laughingly suggested something along the lines of 'The Fall of the Strong Woman'.


I started laughing.  Then stopped abruptly.  "That's not funny."


I'm thinking more along the lines of Mark Twain's quote: "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."


When I first auditioned for the school (and into my first couple of crit sessions) I remember hearing how 'risky' it was that I take on training at this point in my career.  I couldn’t understand what my tutors were on about.  Risky?  Training?  Training in anything makes you stronger.  Honing my craft, practicing what I love, strengthening my creative muscles, trying new approaches…how could this be anything but beneficial?  To anyone?  At any point in their career?

I think I am beginning to understand what they meant.

The course was not necessarily designed for where I am in my career and life.  One professor even emailed me, “there is little we can teach you technically or professionally.” 

What I had been searching for was a re-inspiration.  

In my application letter, I wrote:

I am a leading lady in stature, age and voice, and would love to be able to tackle the great female roles with the clarity and strength that they deserve. 

But almost immediately upon arrival, I was encouraged to abandon the leading lady roles.  No Lady Macbeth.  No Titania.  No Lady Anne.  No Cleopatra.  No Katherina.  I was encouraged instead into softer, more fragile, ingénue roles.  This was, I believe, to strengthen me in a direction that I was not apparently suited for.  To help me grow and stretch in a direction that seemed against my ‘type’ or ‘personality’.  I understand this push.  Training is to help root out our weaknesses and to work on them.  But one of the things I addressed in my application was that I wanted to get the training because I wasn’t landing these leading lady roles.  I wanted the opportunity to finally explore the roles I had been waiting all my professional career to tackle, and instead, I was very explicitly pushed away from those types of roles.  Along the way, I expressed my concerns that the ingénue roles are pointless for me professionally, as at 37 years old, I am a highly unlikely candidate for Desdemona or Rosalind.  I suggested that I look at character roles – things I might play further into my 50s and 60s rather than roles that I would be unlikely to ever have the opportunity to play again.  I do think that my exploration and growth into that 'softer' area was beneficial.  But on a whole, it gave me a sense of dissatisfaction both with the roles and my own work.  Spending a year doing difficult work that you never feel successful in becomes tiring.  There were few victories or breakthroughs along the way – so it felt tediously sufficient or at best, serviceable.

I came to school to reignite a passion.  To get the fire going in my performance.  To challenge myself to really create amazing work.  I had instead become convinced that all I am capable of as an actor is mediocre work.  That I could fulfill the basic requirements, serve a story line, not draw too much focus from the leads…but that I did not have enough shine or interest or magic to create something great.  I started to notice a personal disconnection from my work.  A diminished vigour in my investment and approach.  

A part of this was the fact that I had a tutor who had made it clear that he wanted to, as he put it bluntly to my classmates, 'knock her off her center'.  I do believe that in his heart he was attempting to help me, but we have very different ideas of what creates great art.  I have a hard-won balance in my life.  And I believe that my ability to create good art comes from being a whole, balanced, creatively full person rather than an off-kilter, unpredictable, unhappy one.  I have been through years of my life when I was completely unable to create art at all because my heart was so broken I couldn't see straight.  That darkness and unbalanced place shut me down to the creation of work.  My insecurity and ragged edges locked my creative heart down rather than opening it up.  I spent time and energy and years regaining personal balance, and then launched myself into school in the hopes of a springboard from which to swan dive back into a joyful career.  And to be honest, when I was no longer in the dualistic place of trying to juggle the desire to be emotionally available and free under this tutor's guidance with the fierce guarding of my personal stability from which I knew my good work would be able to generate, I felt my shoulders drop and a great sigh of relief.

As I started writing my reflective essay, I began to dig back into what was useful, what helped me grow, what made me feel alive and vital.  I started to refocus on my sense of 'play'.  So much of my confidence in my ability up until this point has based on getting roles and achieving success in my career based on my 'work'.  It is a huge intellectual and emotional leap to disengage from the idea of 'work'.  As I've said before on the blog, it is how I judge if I have earned my place.  Work = earned = valued.  Play is a whole different beast.  I'm hoping that part of my feeling of disconnection is actually part of detaching myself from this value system based on work.  Play is not as important.  It doesn't have the same judgement of right and wrong.  It is more creative and explorative.  And by releasing my strangle hold on the importance of getting it 'right', I've found myself feeling vaguely detached from the passion I so sought to regain.  And maybe that is not such a terrible thing.  Just unfamiliar.

I spoke with my Dad yesterday about the idea of each city having a Word.  One word that defines the city, and if your personal word matches the city word, you fit in.  For me, New York's word is 'Achieve', which is similar, but to me a vastly different word than Los Angeles' word 'Succeed'.  Washington D.C. 'Power'.  Boston 'Learn'.  So, will my internal word match London's word?  What is London's word?  I may have to discover that as I've decided to throw myself into the pool here and see if I can swim. 

Dad said, "I think Easley, South Carolina's word may be: 'Hey y'all...watch 'is!!'"  (Which if you say it with a full Easley drawl, is pretty much one word.)

Maybe I'm still an Easley girl, after all.  Because with no particular reason to think that I might have success, without much in the way of confidence or passion, with a rocky road behind me and complete empty slate ahead...I'm jumping into the deep end with both feet and yelling on the way down: "Hey y'all...watch 'is!!!"

my heart's crippled by the vein that I keep closing

My love affair with the theatre.

A Professional Demeanor

I have a professional demeanor.

Here in London, that seems to be a dirty word.

It reads as 'disconnected', 'dispassionate', 'cold', or 'guarded'.

Whether or not I am able to bring openness and honesty to the table in my work seems to be directly linked with my ability to take direction with or without emotional volatility??

I am pretty unapologetic about my professionalism.  I am happy to try direction whether or not I agree with it.  Primarily, because I have paid $50,000 to come to school for the year under the assumption that the people that I work with have something to offer me: I feel like I would be remiss not to try something they (or a guest professional that they have brought in) suggest.  Secondly, I honestly try to keep my openness to direction in all working environments.  Just because something feels 'right' doesn't mean that (a) it is the only choice, (b) the strongest choice, or (c) that it works within the vision for this production.  If I try something and then don't agree with it, I am happy to engage in a discussion and defense of my original instinct in order to further unpick the direction that I was offered, or to search for an option that neither of us had yet considered.  But I don't feel like "I would never DO that" is a useful statement for the growth of any actor at any stage of their career.

Of course the work is personal.  It is what you create using nothing but your voice and body, your mind and heart.  It was suggested in class yesterday that working for years in this industry forces you to have a thick skin.  The amount of rejection - rejection of your voice and body, your mind and heart - is only bearable if you are able to have a certain amount of resilience.  But I see a difference in a thick skin professionally - one where you can take criticism and direction on your choices without feeling emotionally wounded....and a thick skin emotionally - one where you can no longer access the emotions that are required to share in order to create this art form.  Here, though, a professional approach seems to be thought of as an 'American' quality that is one and the same: if you have thick skin, you are emotionally unavailable.  End stop.

I defy that.

I choose to be open and willing and ready to try.  I choose to make strong choices but not be married to them.  I choose to take direction without being argumentative, or emotionally hijacked by the idea that I have been personally rejected.  I choose to allow my strength and stability, my strong sense of self to be a root source for my ability to be vulnerable.

On a personal note - nothing much has changed on the where-do-I-go-from-here front.  We finished Showcase, and although I had a brilliantly talented and generous scene partner I have no idea whether the work I created was good or not.  Every once in a while it would really get me down at the end of the day - since I am constantly faced with the ghost of the art that used to bring me such joy.  To feel disconnected from it, to be unable to feel confident in it or even clearly judge what 'works' or 'doesn't work' can be emotionally draining.  But the only way I know how to deal is to 'boot-up' and face the day.  I go in.  I do the work the best I can.  I take suggestions and criticism and advice on how to improve it.  And whether I feel it, or as is the case: not, I bring that professionalism to the table.  Things won't change because I force them to.  They won't change because I stare them down, or poke them continually, or strangle them with my desire for them to go back to the way they were.  On the positive front, I feel much more confident about my decision to head back to NYC, since I have had zero agent interest in me here.  It is a small reassurance that I was pretty accurate in my instinct that my desirability as an actor here is pretty limited.  It makes the choice so much easier.  It would be much more difficult if I was longing for home, still unsure of whether I should be an actor or not ... and had a career path opening up for me here.  Sometimes comfort comes in the strangest packages.

The Big Question

Back in 2006, while performing in The Underpants at Lyric Stage Company, I was interviewed for a feature in the Boston Globe.  Louise Kennedy reported:

Lawton herself takes a modest view of her abilities. "I'm very hard-working, and I'm very dedicated, and I'm willing to try anything. I don't get embarrassed very easily," Lawton says. "I don't think I have a lot of natural raw talent. I have a willingness."


Looking back on that statement, I still feel that holds true.  I have continued to develop my craft, but that reflects more of my fierce dedication than anything else.  Scanning through the rest of the article, I see some things that have changed: I was married, I hadn't held a 'day job' in over six years, I was happy to stay in Boston for my career...and at the close of the article, I see the biggest change:

"I had a teacher say to me, `Just do it until it's not fun anymore. As long as it's fun, it's the greatest job in the world. And when it's not fun, it's the worst.' "

So has there ever been a time when she hasn't found it fun?

She laughs again. "Not yet."

I have, for the first time in my life, been truly faced with the question about whether I am supposed to be an actor.  Almost twenty years into a (successful) career, and 2/3 through my MA training and I am seriously doubting whether I am meant to be on stage.  


The search for the joy and passion were what tempted me back into school in the first place.  Theatre hadn't become a joyless place, but the career itself had started looking more and more like a job.  I wanted to rekindle the glow - both professionally and personally in my work.  And I look back over my time here, and I've definitely had flickers of that reignited.  And to be honest, in many ways I feel that I love theatre more deeply now than I ever have.  Somehow I haven't been able to maintain that glow of joy in my performance, though, and it does seem to be the note I get most often from my school critique panels.  


Something interesting happened in the full mainstage production which we just completed.  I started the rehearsal process excited and inspired by my two roles.  (I think 'thrilled' was actually the word I used).  I had been challenged by my tutors to push beyond my usual solid (what I have referred to as 'serviceable') work and allow myself to be brilliant.  With these two smaller roles, I felt the unique opportunity to play and push boundaries; to create something memorable and new.  


Now, the rehearsal process was unlike anything I've ever experienced in my career.  Our cast of 18 jumped in on the first day with group improvisation and devision, rather than a traditional read-through of the script.  As a matter of fact, we never had a read-through...never heard the entire play until the end of the third week when we did our first run-through.  A week into rehearsal, and because we were rehearsing scenes out of order...I still had not spoken a line out loud.  I found it difficult to keep the story line straight, and to develop a strong sense of the journey of the play.  The design team was devising along with us, so although we had a clear dimension of the stage, we had no clue what costumes (or shoes), props, or set pieces would be in play.  It was much like rehearsing a film (you jump into the process mid-stream, with only your scene and lines in hand), except without the clear vision of storyboards to lead your way.  I could see how this process would be highly successful with a much smaller cast - and I would love to participate in devising theatre in this actor-led, organic manner.  However, my experience was that for 18 people to successfully organically stage large group scenes and maintain audience sight lines, or to improvise battle scenes with quarterstaffs on a deep thrust stage requires a huge amount of time (and danger) to undertake.  


Now, anyone who has ever worked with me knows that about 2/3 the way through a rehearsal process I have a major meltdown.  I have my lines, my blocking, my script well-actioned...everything should be falling into place, but it is still mechanical and disconnected...and I fall into an absolute panicked-weeping-mess.  "I don't know what I'm doing."  "I'm lost." "What the hell do I think I'm doing being an actor?!"  I seek help, I get it, I struggle, and I usually connect and start having fun again.  It is something predictable for me, so even though it always feels like the end of the world, there is something in the back of my mind that also knows that this is just part of my process.  I love rehearsals.  I probably love them more than performing.  I love the permission to explore and fail and play.  And even the predictable melt-down is not a drag...I know it is a temporary phase.


So, yes...I had my meltdown.


And while the director summarily dismissed me with, "You just think you're struggling," the movement director took interest in helping me.  She came in an hour before rehearsal one morning to work on physically differentiating my two characters.  I still was feeling disconnected from the work, but I focused on creating the hooks for each character.  I employed every single technique that I could remember from the last seven months of training and threw each of them at the roles.  I did vocal work, animal work, Laban movement, textual analysis, Lorna's in-depth character work (both the written and physical work).  I tried opposites, counter-intuitive choices, Yat work, answered my Stanislavskian questions.  I started coming in an hour or two before rehearsal with a fellow classmate to do creative warm-ups to try to free up my mind and body to make unpredictable choices.  


Nothing.


I finally decided - screw it - I'm just going to go back to what I know.  What I did before school.  But I couldn't figure out what that was.  And there it was.  We were at performance.  I had been given more rehearsal time than I have EVER had to put up a professional show, and opening night came and went and I wasn't....I wasn't....present.  My confidence: shattered.  My ability to judge my own work for quality: evaporated.  My joy: absent.  The holy triumvirate of the actor - and all had abandoned me.


And I become overwhelmed with grief.  True grief.  I have felt this kind of sorrow only one other time in my life.  "I love you.  I have loved you all my life.  I don't know how not to love you.  But if I stay with you - it will destroy me."


And so, dear friends, I am standing in unknown territory.  If there is one thing I've always known for a fact - it is that I am meant to be an actor.  It has always been clear.  And now it is not.  


I still have time left on this course to explore...and I don't discount the strength that simply going home to New York might revive.  But as a close friend just reminded me: the last 8 months in New York, the ones when I had been accepted into school and wasn't auditioning were some of the happiest she has known me to be in a long time.  So maybe this is more of a slow dawning.  I certainly don't feel reactionary.  I know to many, it seems like I had a singular bad experience and I'm overreacting.  "Don't let one show throw you!"  Trust me, I've been through bad shows before.  I've had directors that I butt heads with, teachers who have wanted to undermine my personal balance in order to create excitement in my art, bad experiences on stage.  I've been miscast, misguided, mistaken, and done jobs I'm not proud of.  But none of them has shaken my very core.  Every other negative experience has left me hungry to create better art.  This one has left me feeling like I don't have better art to give.


I still need processing time.  I not only need to digest this experience, I need more time to grow and explore.  And I don't feel like the question is answered.  If I decide to stay with acting, it will be after a long, hard consideration of whether it is capable of bringing me happiness - and MUST be accompanied by some reemergence of confidence and self-critical judgement.  If I decide to change course, then I know that theatre will stay in my life - it just will have to be redefined in what capacity.  
My friends have been quick to comfort, my family has extended their support in whatever I choose, my boyfriend has reminded me that I am going to be fine - no matter what.  I feel very blessed by the amount of love that has surrounded me.


So, ... um.... no nice little bow to wrap up this one.

Just one big question.

Faith, Here It Is...

Yep, that's me.

Looking smoking hot as my 2011 version of R&J's Nurse.

I had such a blast.  She had a completely different physical life from me.  From a released hip which resulted in a different walk, to always being on the verge of a smile, to the release gesture (as seen in the picture, rubbing hands on the thighs)...she lived in a different place than I did.  I got put in a Free Form performance group with a classmate playing Friar Lawrence, and was delighted to see the chemistry and symbiosis which arises out of two characters from the same play.  They just seem to click because they share a similar world, a similar language, a similar story.

Just a quick posting to show you what a variety of 'characters' played in our class today.  Directly behind me is Lorna Marshall...our teacher extraordinaire.  Working with her has inspired me more than I can express.  I will use what I have learned in her class for the rest of my career, and will chew on some of the insight she gave me for years and years to come.  I will miss this class, but her thoughts will continue to spring new life in me.

End of Term

First term is drawing to a close.

Tomorrow is our final assessment: movement/character study - something I am really looking forward to.  I have been investigating the Nurse (from Romeo & Juliet) with rigour and passion.  The homework:  I went through the entire play first writing down FACTS (what we know about the character: age, location, marriages, children, family life, etc).  The next section of my notebook was on OPINIONS (what other people say about my character) - for example "good nurse" "honest nurse" "O, she is lame" with who said it about you.  The third reading is to write down KEY WORDS (words that your character speaks about).  I created a chart with key word categories across the top (eg. Nature, Family, God/Religion, Body, Insult, Money, Travel, Emotions, etc.) and down the side I separated it by acts of the play.  Each time a key word in popped up in a line, I ticked the appropriate box.  This gives you a true sense of the words that your character says - words that the audience hears coming out of your mouth.  For the Nurse, it was a surprise. As much as she is usually portrayed as a wise-cracking bawdy, what actually comes out of her mouth is primarily about God, with speaking, travel and the body following.  She speaks about the body with the detachment of a medical professional - without lewd connotation.  You also get to see act-by-act how your thinking/speaking changes over the course of the play.  The final section is for INTUITIONS (anything you just have a feeling about - not supported by the text.)  This section is to allow your gut instinct a place to be released - and referred to later to see if it was correct or off-base.  The homework gives you a clear picture of what the text says.  Shakespeare writes each of his characters with a different voice.  They use different words, speak with a different musicality.  It is our pleasure as actors to mine the treasures that are in the text.

The next step was done in class - and was about putting the work IN THE BODY.  Instead of making intellectual, emotional choices - we approached it from the outside --> in.  We fed the body with the information, allowing that to inform our understanding of the character.  We brought in the first speech (or scene) of the character - the first time the character is introduced to the audience - and used it for the following exercises.  Vowels:  speak only the vowels of each of your lines.  Listen to the different vowel sounds in Lady Macbeth's first line, "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promis'd" and Titania's first line, "These are the forgeries of jealousy; And never, since the middle summer's spring, met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead..."  Immediately you get a strong sense of the sound and music your character uses.  Next was Scoring: we stepped out the syllables.  Does your character speak in simple, straightforward words, or use complex language and thought?  With the Nurse, it was primarily monosyllabic, "And she was wean'd - I never shall forget it - of all the days of the year upon that day."

The next three exercises are to understand the energy of thought (still using the first speech).
1.  Anywhere there is punctuation, turn 90º.
2.  Walk in between those shifts.  Is it a long walk between the thoughts, or just the turn?  How much (mental) space must you cover to make the leaps between thoughts: turn that into physical space.
3.  Wherever you walked a few paces = drop to touch the ground
Wherever you walked many paces = drop to touch the ground, and stand back up.  This exercise changes from distance between thoughts to the energy expended to jump between thoughts.
(You may find that there are certain topics that your character has to spend much more mental energy on - eg. Rosalind when talking about her father uses lots of energy, when having battle of wits she is quite at ease.  The Nurse, however, spends lots of energy just to get through a simple sentence.)

The next day of class we worked on EMBODIMENT.
Sitting with my homework notebook,  I went through all the FACTS as "I" statements, allowing them to settle.  I read through the OPINIONS, allowing them to impact me.  I went through the KEY WORDS with the most checks, to see what words I remembered and let the lips form them.  (In religion category, I might remember "Lord" "heaven" "beshrew" "Christian" "faith".)  We then went through a reverie - an imaginative journey into waking up as the character as a child.  What was the bed like? The fabric? The clothes? Breakfast? Were you still hungry or full? Activities for the day? Who says prayers with you?  Again we did the reverie waking up as the character 6 months before the play starts.

Then we moved to our feet.  We started to move as the character with clear physical choices.  Where is the weight? The breath? The focus?  How do they sit? How long do they stay still?  Are they used to carrying weapons?  What is their release gesture (lowering shoulder, sitting into hip, brushing hair out of eyes)?  We then tested this body against the first speech.  By reading the speech out loud, we changed the body as needed in response to the words.  We introduced the public vs. private self (what is the difference in weight, focus, rhythm?)  and then revisited the first speech with the public and private self explored within the text.

So....yeah...that's the prep work so that we were able to get ready for the assessment day.  We are to come in dressed as the character in 2011 London.  There is an amazing amount of freedom to dress within the parameters of 'normality' - something that wouldn't draw stares on the streets of London today.   We have chosen who we are in modern terms (for my Nurse, a New Orleans Katrina refugee working as a nanny for a wealthy family who has relocated to Chicago).  We have an interview with our teacher and 5 other of the "characters" - on modern issues (war in Iraq, gay marriage, education reform).  You quickly realise how much of the homework has worked its way into your thought process.  You know when you would speak up, and when you would keep your mouth shut.  You quickly make alliances and enemies with the other members of the panel.  You have an understanding of what issues are hot buttons for your character and which ones you have little to no opinion about.  With our group of 6 (now no longer strangers) - we spoke our CORE SPEECH.  The core speech is the speech in the play where your character is challenged; where things must change.  The core speech is spoken to and reacted off of the other people in your space.  If they move away from you, you might need to follow them, OR you might need to find someone who is supportive in the group to start speaking to.

The final (and really exciting) part is the FREE FORM.  One person in the group begins their core speech.  At any point, if something they say sparks a reaction in you, you may respond with any of your lines, in any order.  (This requires an absolute backwards-and-forwards memorisation of your core speech, by the way.)  You may say one line over and over.  You may continue through a chunk of your speech.  You may say one or two lines and stop.  The group creates a dynamic piece of theatre by reacting in the moment off of each other, using Shakespeare's text in order to respond.

I know, I know...very technical description of the exercise, but it is a very different approach for me.  I am so used to the inside --> out method of working.  To put the character in my body so strongly before any intellectual choices are made has been phenomenally exciting.

We had our scene assessments on Monday.  Just for a bit of added pressure, the casting director from the Royal Shakespeare Company was running a "mock audition" while watching the scenes.  Surprisingly, the added pressure did not amount to nerves.  It was more relaxed and confident than the assessment last term.   For this one, I did the Hamlet/Gertrude closet scene.  My scene partner was lovely.  He brought some of the best work I've seen: working in the moment, bringing passion and levels into his work.  My work?  I felt much as I have for the last two months of work:  serviceable.  I don't feel as though I have made any sorts of breakthroughs in my performance this term.  I did have a wonderful lighbulb moment when rehearsing for the Hamlet scene - we decided to do a run where we 'over-acted' it.  And I realised that I CAN'T overact this scene.  It is not reality television, it is larger than life.  It requires something more than small acting.  I've always been afraid of "acting with a capital A".  And to get away from my bad habits as a teenager, that was probably a good thing.  But equally, I cannot bring film acting to a stage version of the closet scene.  It requires SO much more.

The main discovery for me in the last few months has been much more of a personal nature.  With the amount of work that was piled on - I found myself under a crunch.  No matter how much work I did, I was always behind.  And my first instinct when I got under the gun was to slip back into the groove (ok, ok, RUT) of my former work patterns - specifically, a choke hold on it to force it into what I think it needs to be.  The sense of play, the sense of relaxation and fun ran away screaming as my stronghold came in to GET IT DONE RIGHT.  It took me about a month to realise that I was even doing it.  I looked around, noticed that I wasn't having fun anymore, and wondered what the hell happened?!?  Oh, right, my body jumped in - "I know how to deal with stress and overload!  I know!  I know!  I've done this before."  I had to gently thank it for trying to help me, and remind it that I am trying out this new approach instead.  It is very much like riding your bicycle and driving along a tram track.  Your wheels just WANT to go into the deep groove of habit.  It takes a conscious choice to pull your tires out and set along a new path.

So it is.