Christmas looms on the horizon; snow was falling in big fat flakes today. I have piles of clothes, toiletries and Christmas gifts in staging grounds around the apartment - preparing to be packed and dragged from London to New York to South Carolina to New York and back to London.
It has been difficult to process the past few weeks of class in either a private journal or a public forum. But it is worth poking a bit - to see if I can scare some formed thought out of it all.
We finished up our clown work last week. Our task was to bring in a prepared clown piece in a group of three. I had the pleasure to work with two smart, talented and enthusiastic classmates whose honest approach and sense of fun boosted my ability to play. As I mentioned in a previous post, clowning in the Lecoq based work we were exploring is a delve into what is funny and vulnerable about YOU. Stripped of character and barriers. My 'sad clown' developed more deeply and personally into what is uniquely me. That is to say, the part of me that people would laugh about behind my back was the part I embraced and highlighted in my clown. I became a high strung perfectionist whose sadness was an inevitable devastation caused by my inability to be perfect. Our group did a song and choreography routine to 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' - which was appropriately train-wrecked by planned 'mistakes', which each of our clowns handled in their own way. Much like neutral mask, the clown has to do very little to read very big....as long as it is grounded in honesty. A small tilt of the head or a tiny step away can read volumes. I actually have no idea how successful it was in performance. And with our critique panel tomorrow giving feedback on our clowning and scene assessment - I wanted to start writing about this tonight more as a reflection of the work rather than the reaction. Clowning was interesting, challenging work. Absolutely not something that comes effortlessly to me, but worth the exploration in a way to unlock some of the social barriers that creep into my work.
I found myself looking around my last class of the term today in a bit of shock. Call it an old-lady moment. We are 1/3 of the way through the course, and I was having the 'I can't believe I'm actually here doing this' moment. Shouldn't that come in the first couple of weeks? I guess the reflective part of my brain has been dialed down for the past few weeks, so it came as a 'new' realization - one that I know I've probably had before. And if the reflective part has been dimmed, I would probably say that the actively engaged part has been on. I've just been exploring. In movement, in acting class, in clowning...I haven't been making note on all that I've been learning, because I've just been experiencing. No major lightbulb moments...but building a new vocabulary of ideas, ways of working, ways of thinking of myself....exploring the unknown in a way that doesn't seem brave because it doesn't seem scary. It just is what I want to be doing.
A good place to wrap up. Just a bit difficult when I go home and inevitably have to field the 'what have you been learning' question!
I feel a bit like a plant. The first bit was the most difficult: breaking through my hard seed shell. But with some moist soil, I quickly stretched toward sunlight. Then I began to grow in both directions: higher and deeper. Now I am just developing. A few more leaves, a few more roots. Nothing to sing about in the day-to-day: but growing stronger and with each new leaf unfurled, soaking up more and more sunlight.
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