Joe's ACA Journal - Backlog of posts

Introduction
To begin with, I apologize for not getting this journal online in a more timely fashion. For many tedious reasons I only obtained my own personal internet connection today. And being an admitted internet addict, the fix is long overdue and so very sweet.

Now then, as you most likely know, I am in Washington, DC to earn my MFA from the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Academy for Classical Acting at George Washington University. Long name, huh? You can click on the "Academy" link to read an overview of what I'll be doing here until July 15, 2007. This journal serves three purposes:

It will be my personal record of my studies—by regurgitating the lessons and event of the classroom, I hope to synthesize and solidify my artistic/academic experiences.

It will be a way for interested family, friends, and acquaintances to find out and keep up with what I’m doing at the ACA in a consolidated and clear manner.

And to any strangers who happen to wander to this page, it will simply be the record of one actor’s journey through a conservatory grad school program.

I intend for it to be no more but so and will endeavor to keep it free of non-ACA-related content. So there you have it and I invite you to read on.

Our program takes place on the 4th floor of the building that houses STC’s administrative offices. Here’s a picture:



It’s located at 516 8th Street SE in the Barracks Row area of the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

8/21

First Day
Although our regular days will run 9am-6pm (with an hour lunch), today we met at 10am and did introductions. There are 14 students, 9 men and 5 women. After brief physical, vocal, and speech warm-ups we all performed a Shakespeare monologue. I will not color this journal with critiques of my fellow students, but I do feel comfortable saying that it’s a good group and I was impressed with everyone’s work.

After lunch, we had voice class with Ellen O’Brien. We talked about how our work will be a mix of many teachers’ styles. We began with breath—going over the anatomical process and the subjective feeling. We spent most of our time noticing and activating our ribs (sides and back) in addition to our diaphragm movement. This included exercises to isolate the back ribs movement and exercises where a partner applied steady, gentle pressure on the sides of the ribs as resistance as we breathed into their hands.

The last class was mask with Isabelle Anderson. We did a lot and it’s hard to remember and dictate all of it. Briefly, we were introduced to the neutral mask and the proper respect to show to the mask. We went over neutral or universal body posture. And we broke down the elements of walking. It was very back to basics—examining physical activity that we take for granted. We also experimented with character masks, which immediately stirred the imagination and was quite inspiring.

8/22

I don’t know if I’ll be able to document my experiences here in quite the way I expected. Today was a long day—and they’ll all be like this. The classes were voice, Alexander technique, stage combat, acting, and speech. Each class is meant to integrate with the others and they are all starting with the basics: breathing, stretching, relaxing, footwork, observation, instincts, and the nature of language. I fear being more specific wouldn’t be interesting to me or you right now. Perhaps I’ll end up doing weekly updates and mentioning highlights.

Like this: Christopher Cherry, our Alexander Technique teacher, began our first class by telling us we were taking a trip to Arizona. He showed us a map and told us our first stop was Meteor Crater. He read an excerpt from a book explaining how it was created. He then asked us to write a poem about the crater. We each did and read them aloud. Our next, and final, stop was the Grand Canyon. And we repeated the exercise. Apart from inspiring some lovely poems, the point was to illustrate two methods of change—sudden (and perhaps violent, traumatic, etc.) versus slow, steady, and gradual. He said that whereas many instant makeover reality show were popular on tv, most real change comes in little increments by making small choices day by day. For example, no one actually quits smoking cold turkey—they decide against having a particular cigarette, then on their next coffee break they feel a craving and make another decision to not partake, then they’re out at a bar with friends and they decide against that craving, and so on. Specifically with the Alexander Technique, the incremental change is noticing how you are using your body and where you are harboring unnecessary physical tension. This process of daily, incremental change is what our year together will be about.

8/26

The first week is over. It flew by—except for getting out of bed at 8:00am every day, which I’m still adapting to. Our group has an inquisitive nature. Lively and thoughtful discussions often tangent-off in our acting and text classes. And I’m impressed at the way the physical work in the different classes (mask, movement, Pilates, stretch, Alexander Technique, voice) blends right into each other. I look forward to seeing where the work in these disciplines takes me. Although I must admit it feels retrograde to be starting from scratch with scansion and IPA, two subjects I feel very comfortable and confident about. But when I examine these feelings I realize there’s nothing wrong with going over the basics, it can only help—-and I expect that we will progress into new territory to me in those areas before too long.

That’s right, I did mention Pilates earlier. And a stretch class. There’s no fuckin’ around here; we’re all coming out of this program strong and flexible. I’m so glad—-I really need the work on my abs and lower back.

8/28

Week two begins! Monday is our “mask day”. Today we spent 10:45am-4:30pm with Isabelle working on physicalizing speech and relationships. It's really good stuff and she's an excellent motivator. Since we didn't go until 6pm today, a bunch of us stuck around and did a table reading of Othello which we'll be working from in our acting class for the next few weeks.

So yeah, that's the word so far. Since I'm new to this, please let me know if there's anything I'm leaving out or anything I should elaborate on and so forth...