3 Hours of King Lear...In Russian
2 weeks down and more crying. That's right, more crying. It's incredible what looking into yourself every day for 9 hours of class will do to a person. It's better than therapy, I will tell you that much! This week we focused on neutrality, bringing you to a character, and the importance of observation with our fab head of year, Rhys.
The highlight of the week was an emotional one. We had to, first, write in our notebooks for a half an hour on an event that has influenced our lives and has had and will have an effect on our present and future. We then shared our stories with one other person in the class and became the listener for another. After all was shared, we had to present the story that we heard to the group as if it were our own. In first person. We all felt such a responsibility to the story and to the person. You, pretty much, had another person's heart in your hands. Everyone did such a beautiful job of relaying their story to the class and we all listened with due respect. It's amazing to hear your own story told by someone else. Surreal. We all realized how much import this exercise had and how we could not embellish and/or "act" out someone else's true-life story. Rhys brought it all back full circle by telling us that the same rules could be applied to text and character work. Don't exaggerate, be true to the stories that need to be told, be honest with yourself and the character will follow suit. So cool.
We also had to see 3 productions this week, on top of writing our first essay for our MA Tutorials class on two differences between Stanislavski's 'System' and Strasberg's 'Method.' You are all thrilled, I know. On Wed. night we saw the BA Acting, 3rd Year's production of A Flea in Her Ear, Thurs. we saw the BA Contemporary Theatre, 3rd Year's production of All the Things That Anne Can Be, and on Fri., the real kicker, a 3-hour production of King Lear at the beautiful Barbican Theatre... COMPLETELY IN RUSSIAN!!! Uh huh, Russian. There were surtitles on a screen at the top of the stage. It was insane. This theatre company,the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg, is regarded as one of the top ensemble theatre companies in the world. All I will say is that it hurt my brain. Ouch.
In all, loads of theatre, crying, and drama. As it should be, I suppose. One more exciting thing - I am going to teach a tap class for my fellow MA students on a Saturday's! I had been talking about tap and so many people expressed interest in learning or getting back into it. So, Rhys is finding me a space and off I will go! As many of you know, my feet aren't happy unless they are doing some tapping, so I am really looking forward to it. A tappa, tappa, tappa!
I'll be back with another installment soon. Hope you are all well and know that you are missed...
posted by Eli @ 3:34 PM
2 Comments:
It's so very theatre nerdy and exciting. Just so you know, you haven't lived until you sit through 3 hours of Noh theatre just to watch a character turn to the left.
Hey there: I'm all shook up, both by your descriptions of the tribulations you went through and by the shake-and-bake we had on Sunday. We had no damage unless you regard the two pocketbooks that slipped off their shelf as a near-disaster. The real problem was the power outage that followed, from 7:15 AM to 11:42 PM... Can you imagine: No coffee, no NFL games...a real American Tragedy, to mention an old title (not as old as King Lear, but good enough for this purpose.) I love the tapteach idea, enjoy it to the hilt. But enough with this silly nonesense -- apart from all this crying, how are you, Mrs. Krispin? Do you get enough rest? Do you eat your vegetables? And when will you come across the Pond for a visit? Your bro the doc mentioned something about coming to the EST zone during the Holiday season -- we'll be there, too, so how about it? Let us know and we'll coordinate our respective moves accordingly. See you soon!!
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