"Like the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end."--Sonnet 60, William Shakespeare 

Dear memories,

It all ended so cleanly, like sealing a compressed letter inside an envelope.  My flight took off at 10 am on Saturday; I saw on my ticket that my destination was Charlotte Douglas International Airport.  I didn't realize this was my last time drinking actually decent English breakfast tea, or that I had made my last purchase at Portobello Market last Saturday, or that I would never step foot back in LAMDA (the current building is being torn down for a snazzy, remodeled version).  London molded me, made me into a city person who is too impatient to take the bus and walks instead, or takes the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.  Suddenly I realized I'd be stretched back out to my previous form, and would have to drive everywhere in Charlotte, would have to be courteous to pedestrians instead of being one of those bouncing walkers.  My mom would be cooking meals for me, no more microwavable 2-minute Uncle Ben's rice.  Is it odd that I grew such an affinity for instant rice?  Is it odd that I enjoyed concocting my own meals and washing my own dishes in the sink, not with a dish washer?  Then again, I would be back in a comfortable mattress (no thanks there, NIDO), my feet would wake up to fuzzy shag carpet, not freezing wood floors.  Bubba, the faithful body-wagging lab, would greet me at the front door, inspecting every element of my being, down to my vintage ring from the Vienna marketplace.   I thought I could handle the transition, as huge as it was.  I figured I'd just relive my London memories in a hazy day dream for a few minutes every day.  Well to be honest, it's a lot harder than that.  It's hard to pick up the life you've crafted for three and a half months, all the habits and patterns, all the friends from LAMDA and silent acquaintances on the tube, all the meals at the Polish cafe and the grocery store runs after a long day at school.  It's not even that I've picked up my life that I established, I literally just dropped it.  I sealed it away in an envelope that I keep neatly filed in the back of my mind, and I dare every once in a while to open it just a pinch and let a few memories hop out for a dance.  I know that envelope and the document it holds so carefully will stay crisp and clean.  And every once in a while, I'll read it again and indulge in that life I so dearly miss and treasure.  

I'll love you forever, London.  I'll love all those who were my partner in the Breathing Station exercise in Stevie's voice class, who endowed me behaviors and characteristics in improv scenes, who let their breath synchronize with mine during movement class on Fridays.  I'll love the addictive hot chocolate in the common room, and the 23 bus that dropped us off directly at our apartment.  I'll love the Portobello Market and the entreating vendors.  I'll love the fast dances at the Archangel Club, and the slow hugs in the hallways at NIDO.  I'll love loving those moments.  

Cheers, 
Katie 

P.S. I'll see you again soon.  I promise.          

"To Ireland, I."--Macbeth 2.3, William Shakespeare 

To Ireland went Maggie O'Brien (a spry and big-spirited, yet petite lass), Julie Brannon (my two-time travel buddy--see Vienna blog--and master packer--she fit everything inside a should-strap leather bag), and the Greek girl.  So perhaps my two good Irish friends, Maggie and Julie, had their own cultural reasons for visiting their families' country; I was going to Dublin, Ireland to experience the land of shamrocks, fiery redheads, and Guinness beer.  Little did I know, Ireland is also home to gaze-stealing architecture, sports bars galore, and the friendliest and most kind people in Europe.

EXCITED FOR DUBLIN!

Casual view of a Dublin street

This time we didn't let the shoddy Irish (but financially friendly) Ryanair airline put any bumps in our travel plans: we printed out our boarding passes the day before our flight, and we were sure to get our passports checked before entering security--I will say, however, I don't think the lady behind the Passport Control desk even looked up to make sure my face matched my passport's picture.  Nevertheless, after an hour of staring at the backs of the hideous yellow Ryanair seats, we were in Dublin! We needed help getting to our hostel though; we planned on taking a local bus.  Perhaps it was fate, or maybe just a common last name in Ireland, but a friendly airport employee named Mr. O'Brannon (see Julie's last name above) gave us a free map and made sure we got on bus #16 towards Blessington Street so we could get off at Mountjoy Street.  What pleasant names for roads! Much to our horror, we realized after 3 stops on the bus that we had no idea when to get off: there were no street signs in sight and the bus stops didn't have names and the driver didn't announce the stops! A flashback to our trip to Vienna came to the forefront of my mind when we were on a bus to the main bus station in Brno and didn't know when we were supposed to get off; we didn't know what the words in German meant.  But, wait...everything is in English here (and Gaelic, but our cab driver informed us that only about 10% of the Irish population actually is fluent in Gaelic).  We should be able to figure this out.   Luckily, our Irish guardian angel happened to be seated next to Julie; her clothes looked like that of a teenager, but her smile lines revealed a much older woman in her 40s; her nails were the foundation for nail polish residue, and her sparkly bag artificially added spunk to the lethargy that comes with age and watching after two young children. She realized from our fearful eyes that we were terribly confused and told us we still had about 15 minutes left in our bus journey. I recognized from Julie's frantic patting of her jeans and jacket that something was missing: her phone. Our guardian angel also picked up on it, and she commanded her young son to stick his hand behind the fuzzy bus seat in hopes of a successful rescue. But alas, he failed. So our guardian angel then instructed Julie to pick up her side of the bus seat--this random lady practically pulled apart the bus to retrieve a stranger's phone!  With her help we got off the bus at the right stop, with Julie's rescued phone.  We made our way to our shelter for the next 24 hours: the Dublin Interntional Youth Hostel. While we weren't expecting much for our 18 pounds per person bed and breakfast, I'm glad we only used the hostel as a place to sleep and grab breakfast the next day; my bed smelled a little funky and the bathroom downstairs felt like it was on a run-down fishing boat. Like I said, it did the job.

We wasted no time; we got directions to downtown Dublin (a 15 minute walk from the quasi-fishing boat hostel) and searched for a restaurant to satiate our ravenous appetites. The Larder sounded like just the place...and it was! Once we were all fully replenished after a scrumptious meal (Maggie had fish and chips, Julie had her ultimate favorite Eggs Benedict, and I had a lamb burger), we headed towards Dublin Castle where, rumor had it, a flea market was going on. Turns out the market consisted of a few food stands (I was a happy customer with my slab of fudge!) but we also were greeted by the floating notes of a Christmas choir in the middle of the castle's handsome stone square.

After leaving the castle, we quickly found numerous markets that sold small photographs of Irish landmarks, vintage clothing, rings, and second hand books. We then went to the Porterhouse Pub for a traditional pub dinner--bangers and mash and a beer definitely seemed appropriate for our trip.  Pub vibes are very specific and yet simultaneously applicable to everyone: it seemed like it was Christmas Day and everyone had left their jobs or tasks to come have a good swig of Guinness, whether they be business men still in their suits or men in track suits who may not be able to count the number of drinks they've had on one hand, or a group of dressed up women laughing during their weekly girls' night out. Pub life in Ireland is legitimately a national hobby.

We started our next and last day in Ireland with a trip to the co-op, a market made up of local artisans and merchants, where we found desserts, vintage clothes, jewelry, art, old comic books and photos, and furniture. Seeing as how it was Sunday, we also made a trip to St. Patrick's Cathedral, a truly breathtaking structure that has been around for hundreds of years (I believe since 1400?).

So the two Jews and Maggie ventured through the praised church, observing the small wooden pews contrasting with the light-capturing stained glass and immensely powerful buttresses that held up the heavy stone ceiling. Even though I'm Jewish, there's something unarguably holy and grounding about being in a church that has been a haven for so many troubled people for so many centuries. However, the church gift shop fell in line with the other Irish souvenir shops, attempting to sell us shamrock-peppered cooking mitts and sheep key chains.  Trying to fully submerge into the Irish flow of things, we paired up our trip to the cathedral with a trip to the Guinness Storehouse, combining the Irish love for Catholicism and beer!

At the Guinness Storehouse!

I feel bad for underestimating the legitimacy of the Guinness Storehouse because they explained so much to us! We learned about the influence of Arthur Guinness' company on the Irish economy, since 90% of the barley and hops used in the beer is from Ireland! Imagine being an Irish barley farmer! Cha-ching! On the tour, they also took us to a tasting room that looked like it had been imported from Willy Wonka's factory; it was an all white room (meant to heighten our senses) where we were each given a sample of Guinness, about 1/5 of a pint in a mini pint glass. We, with mini pint glasses in hand, were then instructed to enter a room of deep mahogany and maroon curtains. This was the room where they would teach us how to drink Guinness properly: 1) assume a proud stance 2) bring the glass to you, you never go to the glass! 3) inhale through your nose 4) sip in the beer, swallow 5) inhale again through the nose. Follow these and the dark, smooth Guinness, "that black stuff," tastes magical!   After 6 floors of Guinness ads through history, a thorough explanation of the beer making process, tasting instruction, and drinking IQ tests, we arrived at the famous Gravity Bar. A circular bar counter captures your attention immediately in the center of the disk-shaped room that has windows all around, providing a complete view of Dublin's landmarks and brightly lit windows from the largest pint glass-shaped building in the world. We enjoyed a pint of Guinness, which we thoroughly enjoyed due to our new drinking technique, as we pointed out some of the buildings we had ventured into earlier that weekend.

Sadly, our time in Dubin was up.  We got back to our London flats around 2 am, just enough time to catch a few hours of sleep before starting our last week of classes at LAMDA.  I would describe Dublin as London's younger, hardier, more down-to-earth cousin.  At times I can see myself living there someday; but for now, I'll remember Dublin as a city I loved visiting with two good friends over an adrenaline-packed weekend!

"I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks."--Twelfth Night 3.3, William Shakespeare

For the past 17 years, I've spent Thanksgiving with family, on holiday from school and devouring cranberries, turkey, mom's delicious au-gratin potatoes and her sweet potato dish topped with candied pecans.  But this year, I was the only one in the family missing from the long table (constructed from three smaller, slightly mismatched tables) in my grandparents' dining room as they celebrated Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, my mom's birthday, and my cousin's birthday a few days early.  While I missed all of them dearly, LAMDA ensured that all the Americans and international students would still be treated to a proper Thanksgiving!  The food making process may not have been as organized as my mom's typical strategy of making a long list of the foods and then adjacent to the names of the food is what time they need to be put into/removed from the oven.  Instead, we all posted on the Facebook event page what we wanted to contribute to our potluck dinner; we had some nommy dishes: Mac and cheese, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, stuffing balls, cranberry sauce from a homemade recipe, and tons more.

Upon entering Hogwarts, the large and majestic room we were allotted, we were struck by a warm and inviting environment full of four long tables with white table covers and dozens of lit candles with dimmed chandeliers overhead. Rodney, the professor who always walks around barefoot (now that it's so cold he wears socks), walked into the room and gave each table three bottles of red wine. We all went around and reminisced with our new best friends, whom we didn't even know three months ago, about our favorite Thanksgiving tales and stories. I'd been close with these people (felt their diaphragms expand in Pure Voice class, seen them roll on the ground in Movement class, and pretend to be in a glass elevator in acting class), but I felt like I understood them all so much better after hearing these little snippets of their lives back home. We laughed and ate our hearts out all night; my friend Julie made her first batch of latkes away from home, and they reminded me of my mom's.  My friend Erika made her mom's cranberry sauce from a family recipe, and that also brought back the taste of my mom's boiled cranberries. Sometimes it's hard to move on from a tradition, like having turkey at Thanksgiving dinner, or being with family back in the States, but every tradition was new at some point. So here's a toast to new traditions: may you remember the old, embrace the new, keep what works and forget the rest!

"Conceal me what I am and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent."--Twelfth Night 1.2, William Shakespeare 

During the last few weeks of my journey at LAMDA, I will take on yet another disguise: Viola in Shakespeare's comedic Twelfth Night. However, it's a bit thought-knotting because I'm a girl playing a girl who says she'll pretend to be a eunuch but really just disguises herself as a messenger boy. Typical Shakespeare, right? And who better to direct my peers and me in this puzzling play than Phil, a young and retro-dressing director who graduated from LAMDA.  Phil's approach towards the text is very similar to that of my other directors here: focus on the clarity and meaning of the text. From there we work on movement in the space, relationships between characters, and all the other sparks that add to the ultimate flash of the performance.  His approach is very academic and we often read a scene at least 3 or 4 times through before we get up on our feet with scripts in hand. Before you read through a scene with Phil, you better make sure you know the meaning of everything your character says--or at least by the second read-through! LAMDA will be renovating their building next year due to a lack of room for all of its many courses; in the meantime, this means that we get to rehearse just a tube stop away in a beautiful church with a massive rehearsal space.

We take advantage of this grand space in our warm ups when we play (what I call) "Steal the Bacon," a game we used to play in 7th grade Physical Education with Coach Carlisle--it's much less dangerous now that we're not all armed with field hockey sticks.  However, I did receive quite a mocking from my peers as they exclaimed how Southern "Steal the Bacon" sounded...I shall now be called Miss Katie Maybelle forever.  Phil set our play in the '80s, a flashy and bold time period that meshes well with the three main traits of the play: drunkenness, vanity, and love. Let me begin with the first:

1. Drunkenness: The play is called Twelfth Night because it is the twelfth night after Christmas Day, so basically everybody has been partying for twelve days straight. In this play Viola either magically makes for a good looking girl and boy-in-disguise or everyone around her may be a little too tipsy to be seeing things quite so clearly. It would also seem that in Illyria, the coastal setting of the play, people are of a different breed: they don't just feel emotions, but emotions seem to consume them. This kind of reckless and grandiose emotions we most easily associate with characters who have popped a cork or two.

2. Vanity: Talk about confidence (and that's the nice way of putting it)! Even though the beautiful Olivia refuses to love the handsome Duke Orsino, they are truly a match made in heaven--the two of them could just look in mirrors the entire time and be perfectly content. Meanwhile, Feste is too proud of his continuous puns and pranks, which catches hold of Sir Andrew, Sir Toby, and Maria as they are all too confident in their ability to pull the ultimate and meanest prank on Malvolio (Can you blame them? It works!). Last, Viola doesn't even appear to have any qualms or worries about pretending to be a boy (...has she done this before?) and is extremely confident that she can convince anybody in Illyria that she is in fact a guy.

3. Love: Forget love triangles, in this play we're practically dealing with love any-geometrical-shape-with-many-many-sides. Olivia refuses Orsino but loves Cesario who is really Viola who loves Orsino who loves Olivia who loves Sebastian who she thinks is Cesario but Malvolio thinks Olivia loves him. Yeah, that's what I mean.

Even though most people of my generation may be more acquainted with the teenage girl movie version of the play, "She's the Man" with Amanda Bynes, I've learned that with an energetic time period, a hip director, and getting down to the basics (see #1,2,3 above), this play is timeless for every generation...oh, and also: don't pretend to be something you're not.

It's hard to be a man...when you're not.
--picture from She's the Man

"On Saturday we went to the ballet
The men had abs; 'twere better than okay." 

 --Julie and Katie's Iambic Pentameter Phrase for Applied Voice Class, inspired by the Vienna trip

You may have seen the copious amounts of photos on Facebook, but you have yet to hear the complete story of our journey to Vienna, Austria. Let's be clear: this was a speed round trip. No meandering or lolligagging; when you're in a country for less than 48 hours it's go time! Let me introduce you to my travel companions: Julie, a sassy but caring and loving drama major from NY who sports bright red lipstick almost every day, and Sarah, a blonde-gone-ginger who carries with her the laid-back San Francisco vibe she's grown up with.  Plus me. The ultimate travel posse has been united! One of the amazing parts of a gap year is the speed with which you make decisions. About two weeks ago the three of us had a conversation that sounded something like this:

Hey. Want to travel somewhere?
Yeah, but where?
OMG VIENNA.
I'm in.
Ditto!

That's where we first hatched the plan, and then the hotel booking, airplane tickets, bus tickets, tickets for the ballet came later; as always with teenagers and young adults, the big ideas first, the necessary logistics later.  Our adventure started on Friday at 10:50 AM in Stansted Airport in London (we had woken up 4 hours earlier though to catch a bus to the airport); our flight would take us to Brno, Czech Republic and from there we were to take a 2 hour bus ride to our final destination, Vienna.  Since we're students, we were going cheap for all the transportation, so we decided to roll the dice and put our lives in the hands of Ryanair, a notoriously shoddy Irish airline.  The tickets are super cheap for Ryanair flights since they make all their money off of the fine print fees that nobody reads when they agree to the Terms & Conditions flyer.  So, if you don't print out your boarding pass before you arrive at the airport, Ryanair fines you £70 even though your ticket may only have been £50.  Keeping that in mind, you can be sure we were on top of our printed boarding passes.  Turns out, even though the bus ride from Brno to Vienna didn't cost much, we traveled like royalty! We received the most delicious hot chocolate (I'm ashamed to say the best hot chocolate I've had in Europe was on a bus), free internet, and tons of movies and TV shows (one might say I am hooked on the show Friends--what happens to Rachel and Ross in the end?!?).  Once in Vienna we dropped our luggage off at a surprisingly well-furnished and comfy hotel near the center of downtown Vienna, and adventured out onto the streets of Vienna to find some noms for dinner.  Here's what you must know about restaurants in Vienna: the food is delicious, the servers are modest.  We stumbled upon a cozy, hipster-ish cafe in the center of Vienna and our waiter orally recounted the menu (we tried to read German but failed spectacularly); he recommended small pasta dumplings filled with cheese, meet, or tomato. He didn't describe them too enthusiastically but each of us ordered three of the pasta dumplings.  I don't know why he didn't describe them to us like he was describing a prized and ancient recipe because our dinner was succulent and we savored each bite. The same thing would happen to us at our dinner the next night, when the gnocchi and risotto made our mouths water even after we had polished off the plates, even though the waitress played the dishes off like they were nothing much.  I may as well stay on the food theme and make way to the most important food of all in Austria: STRUDELS.  I demanded of myself the consumption of one apple strudel per day, and I'm proud to say I didn't let myself down.

Saturday morning we forced ourselves to be early risers, even though the hotel mattresses put our rib-poking mattresses back in our London apartment to shame.  We had enough cause to be excited about the day: we were going to hit up the largest flea market in all of Vienna, Naschmarkt. The flea market is situated between two streets, so it's set up with edible, heavenly items on one end and then not so subtly turns into an antiques and clothing fest. The food section was seemingly never ending: vendors enchanted us and other passerbyers with olives, kebabs, fudge, cheeses, breads, seeds, dried fruit, pastries, stir fry, and just about anything else that can be consumed.  Then suddenly, the market turned into the ultimate clothing and random item swap; vendors under tents sold anything from decrepit 90's phones and their fathers' old jackets to more intriguing items like antique door locks, jewelry boxes, traditional Austrian scarves (mixed in with a few made in China), and art.

Julie and me at Naschmarkt

It was pouring rain and I think my umbrella might have done more eye poking than I had anticipated, but until we realized our feet were frozen numb and our coats thoroughly soaked through, we sifted through the immense number of tents. We unanimously decided that our next activity should be indoors (none of us wanted another one of nature's showers) and we chose to head to the Museum quarter where we picked an art museum with some of Klimt's most famous works.  It was almost like all the art history I had studied in AP Euro last year actually was useful! But in all seriousness, the art pieces revealed how determined and hard working the Austrian people are; many of the pictures used dark and depressing colors to describe the landscape of the country, but there were also marvelously bright colors intertwined with the duller ones, showing all that Austrians had done to make use of whatever they were given. After a much needed siesta, the girls and I tried our best to dress up (we had fit everything for the trip into our three backpacks!) for a night at the ballet! Julie had bought us cheap tickets, the equivalent of 12 dollars each, that were in restricted view--we were totally pleased with that, we're going to the ballet for $12 after all! Turns out, our restricted view seats had their own private box and we were located right next to the stage. I could literally see the sweat on the dancers' costumes and see the small smirks that floated onto the ballerinas' lips when they perfected a lift.  The whole experience at the ballet was extravagant: a massive glass chandelier lit the entire theater, red velvet covered our seats, and Austrian mothers photographed their young daughters posing in front of floor to ceiling mirrors.  Not every part of our trip was as relaxing as watching ballerinas twirl and be lifted into the air like feathers, we had an 8 hour trip back home to London and our bags threatened to rip at the seams they were so full of souvenirs, but every part of our Vienna trip was full of memories created by three friends who planned every detail of their Austrian adventure together and enjoyed every second of it.

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."--Macbeth 4.1, William Shakespeare 

Londoners take Halloween to a whole new level.  This special Halloween edition blog post will feature some wicked and deadly things: murderous Jacobean tragedies from drama class and LAMDA's annual Halloween Sleazy.

For the past 5 weeks I've worked with London short film director William Oldroyd.
He's pretty legit:  http://www.williamoldroyd.com  (Check it out.)

Will employs some unorthodox directing tactics to help us work through Jacobean tragedies, plays from the era of James I that specialize in whoredom, murder, backstabbing, and incest.  How juicy! For example, one group is doing a play called 'Tis Pity She's A Whore (the main woman character leaves her husband for her brother) and my group is performing a piece called Women Beware Women, complete with a big shabang in the ending scene that results in 12 deaths (one character is killed by flaming gold).  These plays were written without the graceful and poetic writing of Shakespeare, yet they attempt to deliver similarly complex thoughts and plots (revolving around some weirder topics).  Many times one might appear more like a pirate instead of a character of the Jacobean era since the playwrights often shortened phrases like "you are" into "y'are."  In context: "Y'are a damned bawd" (that line comes up quite a bit).  There is one specifically extreme example of this shortening of phrases: guess what " 'slid " stands for?

Did you guess "God's eye lid?" I thought so.

Besides the oddness of the writing style and plots, Jacobean theatre grew exciting during rehearsal because of Will's determination that we bring alive the emotions and objectives of the characters through physical work and what's written in the text.  In the ending scene of our play, I find out that my brother has killed my love, Leantio.  Here's what I logged into my personal journal after rehearsing that scene under Will's direction:

"In order to run into the murder scene with fury and surprise, as soon as I entered the scene Will would begin to drop a blue ribbon to the floor from the chair he was standing on.  My objective was to run and catch the ribbon before it hit the floor.  Next, we ditched the ribbon-dropping exercise and I still had to replicate the same rush and intention of hurrying into the scene, this time with the objective of finding out who has been murdered.  Then, in order to get Livia's disappointment and shock when she finds Leantio dead, Will blindfolded me and made me find Leantio in the room, saying my line of text "Leantio? My love's joy?" while I did the activity of searching for him.  Eventually I found him lying on the floor and the connection changed.  Will lifted my blindfold and I felt the burning hurt of losing the one you love after optimistically searching for them for so long.  Then I turned to see Ben, playing my brother, who murdered my love.  Will told me to go get this wooden bat and hit this large green punching bag with the frustration I felt for Ben while saying my lines of text, really putting the energy of the physical activity into the words.  Then I had to convince everyone else in the room to "run for officers" so we could arrest my brother for the murder of my love, but they weren't allowed to leave the room and obey me until they truly felt compelled to do so, and Will made me use the emotion in the text to move them into action.  Will said the connection in that moment was definite, and that now we must transfer that energy into the performance without the punching bag and the ribbon dropping to the floor. I must remember the feeling of those moments."  

Will's strategies follow the foundation we've been given at LAMDA: emotion starts from the body, not the head.  Physically energizing the text does more for your voice and emotion than thinking so hard about it.  

But we can't leave the bloody murders and gore of the Jacobean tragedies yet, since British people don't think of Halloween as the day when you dress up like a movie character or something funny; for them, it's all about the scary fancy dress.  The week leading up to Halloween I kept seeing posters around school saying "wear your fancy dress to the Sleazy" and I was so confused why I was going to get dressed up all nice for Halloween...fancy dress means costume, y'all.   Last night I went to the annual LAMDA Sleazy, a talent show/dance/venue for cheap alcohol.  I planned to go as a hippie, but realizing that the Brits wouldn't accept that as scary enough, I began to come up with titles that would make me sound scary: Hippie from Hell was definitely the winner.  I'll tell you what: I seriously underestimated the scariness factor of my British peers.  Brits must just have a container at home labeled "Halloween Blood" in their medicine cabinets; if I had 50 pence for every fake stitch, wound, and gash I saw last night, I could maybe rent a room in Buckingham Palace.  Somebody went as Mario the video game character, and then of course they had to put a fake knife going through his hat, dripping with blood.  The talent show was amazing, going to school with multitalented drama kids always means you're in for a good performance--where else could you get a dance off between traditional Indian dancing and 1920s dancing and then have the dance off battle resolved with the Thriller dance?  After the performances, the music seemed to last all night and we literally danced the night away.  Even though it was on November 1, it was the best Halloween I've had yet.

Yola and Me! You can catch a glimpse of the fake blood behind us on the left side of the picture. 

"And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and name." --A Midsummer Night's Dream 5.1, William Shakespeare 

Drop Curtain of "The Light Princess" at the National Theatre

I don't know who decided that having an imagination was childish, but obviously he was not an actor.  This week, through a performance of "The Light Princess" and in my classes, I've experienced the invaluable congealing of three important entities: movement, thought, and imagination.  These three pieces can only be useful to an actor if they're used in conjunction with each other; otherwise, an actor will simply be caught in his head, always thinking and never acting on impulses, or always moving without intention, or exploring so much with imagination that the embodiment of the character strays from the clues in the text.  Regardless of being an actor or an audience member, imagination is used by both sides in every show as we suspend our disbelief for an hour or two and enjoy a story about people, their struggles, and the relationship between the two.

On Monday night after classes, I made my way with two friends to see the National Theatre put on an incredible theatrical feat: "The Light Princess."  (Can I interrupt real quick: OMG I get to see amazing theater on Monday nights after going to acting classes all day.  This rocks!)  The word 'light' isn't referring to actual light, but to the property of being physically light, since the main character (Princess Althea) has lacked the ability to feel deep emotions since her mother passed away and from that time has floated in mid-air.  Yeah, I don't know how George MacDonald's original 1867 production of this fairytale compensated for having a main character who floats in mid-air, but I'm sure it was interesting.    

Advertisement for the National Theatre's "The Light Princess"

But I will tell you how the 2013 production of the mature fairytale pulled off this challenge:

 In the very first scene, Princess Althea is supposed to be descending in front of a very large, Wicked-reminiscent bookcase (I'm guesstimating about 20 feet tall) to about a foot off the floor.  It was clear she wasn't using one of those "whoops, I just saw the invisible string" wires.  No, no.  Instead, she was fashionably harnessed (it fit right in with her orange outfit) in the back to a movement man dressed in all black.  He was facing the bookcase and crawling down it very slowly (with a 5'8'' full grown woman attached to his back as she belts songs).  I promise you, I gasped out loud, pointed with my finger and remarked in a whisper, "Fuck!  Do you see him?" (very British with the "fuck") to my friend Victoria.  She nodded in agreement with big eyes and equal astonishment.  The Princess really looked like she was floating; I had to look closely to even notice the movement man since he was practically hidden behind her!  Throughout the play, the number of movement people taking on her entire body weight increased, and at one time there were four people dressed head-to-toe in black clothing on the stage, moving Princess Althea's limbs and torso with such flawless execution and fluidity that at times I forgot that she wasn't really floating.  At one point, one movement woman lay on her back on the stage, supporting Princess Althea with only her legs and feet.  As Princess Althea tilted her head and upper back down to the stage in order to float horizontally, the movement woman simultaneously adjusted her legs, placing one leg on the actress' spine and the other on the back of her upper leg.  I have no idea if the moves were choreographed down to the second, but I never once felt that Princess Althea was in danger of being dropped and cracking her head, even though all of her body weight was being supported by movement professionals that were essentially invisible to the audience members who bought into the story and used their imagination to believe in a floating princess.  When I can find another actress who can be so relaxed physically that she can convince me she's floating AND sing beautifully at the same time, I'll let you know.

Today in movement class I got to experience another mix of imagination, thought, and movement, but this time I wasn't in the audience.  Our movement teacher repeated that phrase that we hear all too often at drama school: "walk around in the space." (To be fair, walking is just about the most neutral physical activity a character can do.)  So we followed instructions, like obedient school children, and all 12 of us walked naturally and fluidly through the space (we had spent the previous 45 minutes stretching and soothing bodily aches, so we were all very happy to obey her orders).  Now Fey gave us another thing to do:

"I want you to pick a person in the room.  Be subtle about it!  I realize that's not an easy task for actors, being subtle, that is.  But, pick a person and notice their walk.  Do their shoulder rotate?  Do they swing one arm more than the other?  Do they stick their bum out?"

As I ticked through a whole checklist of that person's movement in certain body parts, their walk evolved into a predictable system, not just something random that a person does to achieve walking around a room.  Our walks reflect what injuries, tendencies, and inadequacies we've had in the past. We're constantly compensating for aches and pains.  Therefore, each person's walk is uniquely crafted for that certain somebody.  Fey recommended we don't share who we picked, so for this blog I'll call the person I picked Jenny.  Jenny's stride was pretty short, kinda like mine.  She swung her right arm a bit more than her left, but overall didn't rotate her shoulders much.  Her mouth formed a small, determined pout, and her head was slightly tilted back.  These are just a few of the characteristics I noted.  Then Fey took it one step further:  "As I count down from 10 to 1, 10 being your walk and 1 being the walk of the person you chose, I want you to embody their walk.  This is not time to impersonate somebody's walk or your opinion of their walk.  This is fact, and merely an embodiment of their walk."  Slowly I adjusted, remembering all that I had noted about Jenny.  My shoulders stopped swiveling, and became stiffer, my mouth turned upside down slightly, and my speed decreased just barely.  Then Fey asked us to create a character based off this new walk we had taken on.  Who would walk like this?  Where are they going?  Where are they coming from?

Joanna would walk like this, but everyone calls her Jo for short.  She's on her way to her flat from her job at a cafe, one of those little places that sells lattes and little breakfast pastries.  She's exhausted, and just scraping by with a meager job.  She thought she'd be someplace better at the age of 27.  She's going home to see her boyfriend, they've been dating for many years, but he hasn't popped the question. She's kinda one of those tough girls, she doesn't have many acquaintances, but the friends she has are lifelong and trustworthy.

So I came up with that whole character and background story in about three minutes of just walking like Jenny.  That's imagination.  That's connecting a movement with a thought.  It was surprisingly easy, to be honest.  So maybe I wasn't floating with the support of movement professionals like Princess Althea, but my imagination was floating and bright for the first time in many years.                

             

"Prepare for mirth for mirth becomes a feast." --Pericles 2.3., William Shakespeare.  

Acting isn't always about telling the saddest, most dramatic tale possible.  In fact, even in Shakespeare's most tragic stories, such as Macbeth or Othello, a fool or lighthearted character is inserted to keep the audience's spirits up and chuckling in between the oh-so-frequent death scenes.  During my study at LAMDA, I have two classes that specifically focus on creating a game with the audience, or adding a humorous take on even the darkest subjects.  Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen, to Clowning class and Improv class.

1) Clowning.
Job: PLAY.

The playful entity an actor creates with a large red rose and innocent manner, commonly known as a clown, is really a manifestation of that actor's individual impulses and habits.  Some basic rules: the clown always tries its best to follow instructions and feeds entirely off of the audience's response to its behavior.  The common theme of maintaining contact with the audience or people you're working with also continues here, and will thread throughout all of my classes.  So, in fact, a clown is simply another character the actor must become.  The large red nose, the most famous accessory of a clown, creates a barrier between the audience and the clown through costume and conceals the identity of the performer.  The clown's job is simply to play, innocently but inherently incorrectly.  Whatever the clown does, it sincerely thinks it is doing what you've asked of it.  For example, if my clowning teacher, Michael (a native American and lighthearted fellow), instructs us (we have our big red noses on) to be as quiet as possible, we all may begin to bang on the ground or speak to one another loudly.  Thus the clown's accidental prank is meant to have good intentions, but fails so miserably it transforms into humor.  During clowning, all topics lose their seriousness and depressing content, and instead are funny since we know the clown is playing a harmless game with us.  Important:  the clown never makes us (the audience) into the fool, all jokes and laughs are done at the clown's expense.

Now to discover your own personal clown personality:

You'll need a semi-circle audience (we had 12 people watching), a simple chair or preferably a flat piano bench, and behind the bench you'll put a drapery/door/hidden place for exits and entrances. One person goes behind the door and puts their red nose on.  As they come out from behind the door, they find their way to the bench and should maintain eye contact with the audience the entire time, not acting.  It's important that the clown has an honest response to the audience's response; if the clown should accidentally stumble into the bench, and the audience snickers a little, the clown should be open to responding honestly (whether that's looking ashamed, giving an embarrassed chuckle, or blushing).  Just from these natural impulses and behaviors, Michael will ask the clown to investigate something further.  For instance, the French guy in our class happened to respond to the audience's responses with his fingers first, almost like his fingers got hit with a wave of energy before the rest of his body did.  Michael picked up on his energetic fingers and would give simple instructions, "Hadrian, now fall in love with someone in the audience through your fingers."  So Hadrian played along: he made eye contact with one of us in the audience and his fingers gave a little flutter and hovered above his heart, doing a kind of "jazz fingers" dance.  Michael continued to play with this clear trait and habit, and thus the beginning of Hadrian's clown's personality began to form.  Going back to the idea that all topics lose their seriousness in clowning: in our class one girl's clown personality was that of a killer.  When she was just organically responding to the audience, her eyes continually darted back and forth, sometimes zoning in on one person.  Therefore, Michael asked her to do everything like a killer (laugh like a killer, sit like a killer, fall in love with someone like a killer, and then ultimately get up and exit behind the door like a killer).  However, since the performer and the audience were invested in the playful manner of the clown, we all laughed at her killer demeanor instead of being frightened of it.  Interestingly, an actor's clown may change from day to day, since certain days we will have different reactions to things.

2. Improv
Job: Commit.

"Improv can either be hilarious or amazing, just commit."

These wise words were said by our substitute improv teacher, a young, small wiry man (he attempted to bulk himself up with a very puffy winter vest), who has a passion for the side-splitting humor of improv but also the deeper, more serious stories that can be told.  Let's see if you can avoid the trap he set out for us: "Alright, here's the scenario: two people are in a raft.  Go! Make a scene!"  Let's see which scene you prefer:

1) So two of my classmates got up in front of us and were in the supposed raft.  They spent the first minute of the scene in the raft and arguing about which way land was. They eventually decided upon paddling North.

OR

2) GET OFF THE RAFT, and find an ISLAND!!!  This island happens to be filled with a magical fruit, and is surrounded by mermaids, and also cannibals.

Hopefully you prefer option #2, or your sense of entertainment may have been dulled by years of bad TV shows.  As an actor, picking the right way when you come to the fork in the road between these scenes is dependent on knowing what the audience wants to see.  Chances are, the audience would prefer to see two people discover a magical island via their raft instead of watching two people bicker on a raft.  This leads us to another magical quote:

"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.  Otherwise don't put it there."

Basically, don't tease the audience and then never get to the climax of the scene.  In one of our scenes in class, a man and his daughter wanted to purchase the Eiffel Tower.  I repeat: they wanted to BUY the fucking Eiffel Tower.  Therefore, in the scene the purchasing of the Eiffel Tower should happen.  The man and his daughter shouldn't just mention, "I'd love to buy that and put it in the backyard" and then decide that they want to buy a croissant instead.  Knowing that the audience wants to see the climax of buying the Eiffel Tower (the crazier the idea, the more important the idea is to the audience), don't backpedal towards safer ground!  Take the risk!  Either it'll be hilarious if it fails ("Improv is 95% failing") or it'll be amazing when the man who sells the daughter and father the Eiffel Tower goes around with a tiny hand wrench unscrewing the massive structure's bolts from the ground and then offers to fly it to their backyard in Ohio (this happened in our scene).  Usually when Improv scenes are ridiculous and hilarious this implies a large circle of expectation, or basically the number of possibilities is greater.  For instance, wanting to buy the Eiffel Tower increases the circle of expectation, and even more ridiculous ideas, like the offer to fly it across the ocean, enlarge that circle even more.  However, you can also have Improv scenes that have a smaller circle of expectation, and tend to be a bit more realistic in their story lines.  For example, we could have a scene centering around a nursing home and the seniors who inhabit it.  Maybe a nurse has to take care of an elderly man who just lost his wife, and he looks to the nurse for comfort.  Both of these scenes, the one about the Eiffel Tower and the one about the elderly man, are plausible and legitimate in Improv.

I feel like people in general tend to have a misconception about both of these arts.  People assume that improv must be hilarious and void of anything serious, and people assume that clowns are just creepy (Okay, that is sometimes valid--Krusty the Clown, anybody?).

See, he is kinda creepy. 

Improv and Clowning can be used to address serious issues, but they often turn to a veil of humor to make the topics more palatable for the audience.  Then again, nothing is wrong with buying the Eiffel Tower either.            

               

"Fair is foul and foul is fair." --The Tragedy of Macbeth 1.1., William Shakespeare 

Even though risky to insert my own words into the work of a genius, "easy is hard and hard is easy" essentially defines my two weeks working in a small 12 person group with my first (of three) directors, Dominic.  Full of energy like a coiled spring, Dominic's vibe was that of a pixie; a short, petite man, Dominic boasted eyes that seemed to be so full of magic and sparkle that I almost could have entertained the idea that he was an elf or fairy-like creature.  The staple of his wardrobe are forest green pants and a bright green watch (surely from the Elf Forest) and his voluptuous hair seemed to literally defy gravity.  But in all seriousness, Dominic's brilliance as a director comes from his ability to give depth and meaning to the (seemingly) easiest tasks and unite a group of twelve strangers.      


Most days we begin our three hour scene study session with ensemble exercises.  Especially for young actors, taking risks with Shakespeare's text will be only successful if you can dive 100% into the risk, and thus an environment of trust and respect is needed among those working.  Dominic gave us a simple task:

"Walk around the room and live out here with us."  Okay, sounds pretty basic.  However, so many of us are unaware of our tendency to look at the ground (Dominic: "I swear guys, nothing is on the fucking floor."  I would also like to point out that British drama teachers throw "fuck" or "fucking" around with the same frequency that they drink tea, so don't be alarmed.)  and our hesitancy to make honest contact, with eyes or smiles or bodies, with others.  Have you ever just wanted to hold eye contact for one beat longer than is socially acceptable?  Too bad, you're going to come across as a creeper.  Luckily, that instant response of disgust doesn't exist in a room full of actors.  If you want to look at someone for 4 seconds instead of 2, go for it!  If you feel the impulse to smile a little at someone as you walk by them, oh snap, go for it, you rebel!  This is what "living out here with us" means:  keep your head up and be open to communication with others.  After all, how can you feel emotion in a scene if you're not open to feeling it?  Once we mastered walking around in a space and not looking at the riveting and exciting linoleum floor, we challenged ourselves with tasks that seem simple but are actually kind of impossible.


Get into a circle.  As a group, you will raise your right hand together and simultaneously, then, when you feel the time is right, you will all quickly drop your right hand, sit down, have a moment of stillness, stand back up, and repeat.  But the trick is that nobody can lead and yell, "Okay, guys, on 3!"  Instead, you must be aware of all the movements in the circle and listen to your own personal impulse that whispers, "Goddamn it, put your fucking arm down." When in true cohesion, the movements are spot on and there is only one flicker of all twelve arms dropping, not twelve separate movements.  The other difficulty in this exercise is the deflection of the want to do superfluous movements, like adjusting your shirt or wiping your brow, or pushing hair behind your ear.  Learn to focus, and yet at the same time notice everything that your peers are doing too.  So after the previous exercise of walking to sprinting in the space, I had sweat literally dripping down my face.  You have no idea how much I wanted to wipe the burning, acidic sweat out of my eye.  But in that moment, that was not the task.  The task was to focus and raise my arm, and drop it, and sit, and stand.  It would not be fair to my peers, who are all invested in this goal, to get distracted now.  Discipline is pretty cool, actually.            

On Tuesday night, we attended Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a space that has been triumphant in preserving a sense of itself from hundreds of years ago:  no roof, no microphones, a partially standing audience, and two notoriously large and obstructive poles on the stage that block the view for some unfortunate part of the audience.  I was standing three feet from the stage in the front of the standing audience, where all the peasants would have smelled of rotten vegetables and sewers, but still with an awesome view of the actors.  I could see the sweat fly from the actors' faces during a fight scene, could pick out the seam that connected the pieces of their old-fashioned costumes, and witnessed a second possible tragedy that was cleanly avoided as the person standing in front of me dodged being hit in the face with a prop (we were that close).  Once you've been working in depth with Shakespeare's neatly packaged yet puzzling language for a few weeks, it's almost like you don't have to untie the metaphors, rhyming couplets, and subtle (sometimes) sexual innuendoes of the time; everything just makes sense.  All the lines that would muster up only sighs of frustration and doodles of boredom in high school English classes now held importance and my utmost appreciation, because Shakespeare wasn't meant to be read like a book in an uncomfortable wooden desk.  It's supposed to be put up on a stage under a sky full of stars (and now planes) and acted with true emotion.  That's what makes Shakespeare timeless: the relationships between the characters and the emotions.  Any modern audience can relate to Macbeth's desperation to succeed and to gain power, or to Lady Macbeth's hope and certainty that her husband will in fact be victorious.  Nobody speaks in sonnets, or in iambic pentameter, be we all feel and connect on some level with others, and as theatre-goers we've been that way for hundreds of years.

The play closed in a semi-choreographed dance, accompanied by two violins and the clapped rhythm held by the audience.  But the dance was special:  the majority of the actors couldn't see their fellow actors up on stage.  They didn't appear to be counting beats in their heads.  They couldn't make eye contact or yell, "Oy, when I count to 3 we'll all raise our right arm!"  Instead, they proved that they had mastered the art that Dominic had been directing us towards in our class: feeling the support and presence of your peers.  So there I stood, my heels partially numb from standing for three hours, and I realized as these actors all raised their right hand to begin the dance, that they were doing what I was learning.  The dance continued, and the actors never were out of sync with each other.  Having struggled with it in class, I appreciated the bond and trust they must have created in order to pull off this act of ultimate connectedness.

When you think about it, life can always be a beautiful dance.  All it takes is some feeling, some trust, and the risk of making honest connection.

"With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come." --Merchant of Venice 1.1., William Shakespeare 

This may be the only week in my entire life during which I was sick (don't worry Mom, just a cold), sleep deprived, and dressed in all black but completely and utterly happy.  Let me explain:

I just finished my first week of LAMDA classes.  My morning starts at 6:45am when I grasp around on the floor next to my bed for my iPhone that is buzzing and jumping energetically, accidentally picking up my chunky rental phone, which resembles the indestructible but aesthetically unfortunate phone I owned eight years ago.  I shower, eat, pack my lunch, gather my books, check for my tube card, and head towards the elevator in order to catch the 7:55 shuttle that takes residents of the Nido apartment to the two closest tube stops, Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill Gate.  I'm dressed in an actor's "blacks," an ensemble of black pants, a shirt, and white shoes in order to create a feeling of neutrality in the classroom and discourage clothing distractions during class.  The shuttle has 16 available seats.  The bad part: there are 22 LAMDA students staying at the apartment.  Even though I'm not a math kid, even I know that I need to be downstairs in the lobby at least 10 minutes before the shuttle arrives to get a seat on the shuttle and not be one of the 6 who must find another form of transportation to school.  By 8:25 we've made it to school and get to hang out before class starts PROMPTLY at 9 (If you're late, they hate you.  Pretty simple).  In LAMDA's common room there aren't food machines, but instead tea machines.  Plug in 36 pence and within 2 minutes you have yourself a piping hot cup of green tea!

LAMDA (beautiful, huh?)

At 9 am I start off my first class in a small six-person group.  We have these small groups for classes that require a lot of individual work, like singing and Alexander technique (a technique that uses relaxation and cleansing of tension in the body to produce better vocal sound).  The first three classes of the day last an hour and 15 minutes, so coming from a high school where each of my classes lasted 45 minutes, I've had to work to expand my attention span. We then have 15 minutes to make our way to the next class, during which time you can eat your snack, grab another tea or coffee from the machine, or socialize quickly in the common room some more.  The next class is slightly larger, this time with 12 students, and is either acting, improv, historical dance, physical theater, clowning, pure voice, or applied voice to text.  I especially enjoyed the physical theater class this week; this class gets a lot of attention at LAMDA since the Academy focuses on producing actors who produce emotion and impulses from their bodies first and then their minds, instead of producing actors who are stuck in their heads and always thinking about what they should be doing on stage.

I've always appreciated having a long, Greek last name: it tends to be a good conversation starter, provided some ethnic zest to a typical Southern high school, and confuses people when I then tell them I'm Jewish.  Having said that, the Greek last name ended up being an AMAZING boon during the physical theater class since our 26-year-old teacher could easily have played the extremely attractive Greek man in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie.  Yorgos is from Athens, has eyes that are almost as blue as the famous Greek ocean waters, and has an accent with a romantic flare that resembles French.  When he saw my last name on the attendance sheet he began to ask me about my Greek heritage and my last name and all of that (all the other girls were quite jealous).  But, onto the actual work of the class: Yorgos led us through an exercise called the "Pleasure Exercise" where you lie on the ground, in your own space, and focus on movements that make your body feel good.  For instance, we first focused on our pelvis and our legs.  He encouraged us to breathe fully, do movements that weren't symmetrical, and block any distractions out of our focus (like what other people were doing, what we looked like).  It was the first time that I've been completely unaware of what I was doing with my body, what I looked like, who was looking at me...I've never been so content with freedom and obliviousness before.  At first, I was flat on my back, and stuck my leg straight out and then wiggled each toe, then the ankle.  Then I brought the second leg up and kicked the air quickly with my feet, doing whatever impulse came to my body.  We did this for probably 20 minutes, moving the focus up to our arms and chest, moving slowly and thoughtfully and then rapidly changing into quick and tiny movement, and then sometimes even just sitting in complete stillness.       

Then, the real fun came.

Yorgos blasted music.  Our bodies had already adjusted to the freedom of doing whatever made them happy, and the music was the catalyst for even more movement.  At first, the music was something you'd jump up and down to at a concert, fast and furious, full of energy.  Almost like a chord was connected between our bodies and the stereo, my body head couldn't help but beat up and down to the rhythm, and my legs bounced up and down, and then suddenly I wasn't sitting, but I was stretched across the top off the piano that was in the room, tapping my fingers to the sound of the song.  There were no boundaries, it seemed.  Then the music changed: one of those songs you'd hear during a sad scene in a movie.  Slow notes on a piano, where you could almost imagine the pianist with tears down their face.  Suddenly my body didn't move in jerks and bounces, but in streaks and graceful circles.  At one point I was just lying down on the floor with my eyes shut, with my right arm making strokes in the air above my face.  When we finished, Yorgos simply said, with his exotic accent, "Stay as long as you want.  I invite you to stay this open and relaxed throughout the day.  I'll see you next week."  And just walked out.  If he does this everyday, he must be the most relaxed man on the planet.  I stayed lying on the floor for the next five minutes, unaware of my hungry stomach, or the fact that my hair was probably not as straight as when I left the flat, or that the common room would be crowded for lunch if I didn't leave right then.  I didn't get up, I just stayed there, perplexed and satisfied by this simultaneous calmness and energy in my body.  Upon talking to people in the common room during lunch, I noticed my voice was clearer and lower, almost as if the dancing had stripped the tension from all parts of my body, even my voice and mind.  Kudos, Yorgos.

After the hour lunch break, the 34 semester students are once again split up into smaller groups, each with a different director, this time with approximately 12 in each group.  These are our scene study groups in which we analyze scenes from Shakespeare's romance plays and work on them purely for the benefit of our own experience for three hours a day.  We don't perform these scenes for anybody outside of class, which means we can spend as much time on one topic or objective as we want.  For instance, my director Dominic has focused this past week on making my group into a true ensemble.  Solidifying trust and communication between all 12 of us, when we go to act we will feel comfortable taking risks with each other.  His catch phrase is "stay here with us," which means that we need to be open to making honest contact with each other, and experiencing every moment with the group.  Often he'll give us impossible tasks to overcome together:

"As a group, walk, then run, then sprint in the space and work your way up to your fastest speed.  When you collectively think you've reached your maximum speed, stop immediately as a unit.  Then come stand in a circle with your backs to each other, and clap at the same time."

The hard part: you cannot speak during any of this.  You must achieve these tasks by maintaining constant communication with your peers, always making eye contact, and being aware of others' body language.  If I were to look at the ground (so many of us are unaware of this habit) or space out for a moment, I may miss the key to stopping at the same time as the others.  When you think about it, this tasks requires that you must be equal in the amount of presence and attention that you give to and receive from the group.  I must give my openness and communication, making sure to stay present and in the moment, but I must also be open to receiving the unspoken communication from others.  Acting isn't just about memorizing lines or projecting the words to the audience, it's about being a better human being.  It's about always listening to others in an honest way.

I'll try to focus on one class each week, and go into detail on something that really changed how I think about acting.  But trust me, every teacher at LAMDA is a genius, every student is so dedicated, and every class I come out more in tune with my body, mind, and heart than when I walked into the room.  

"He fell down in the marketplace, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless." --Julius Caesar 1.2.250, William Shakespeare

I wasn't exactly "foaming at mouth" in the Portobello Market on Saturday afternoon, but it was something close to an avid shopper's most excited face.  It was a testament to my self-control as I pinned my elbows to my hips and kept my fingers glued to my legs, making sure I didn't touch all the bobbles, clothing, and jewelry in the wide and expansive marketplace.  This well-known splendor occurs every Saturday, providing local vendors and artisans with the chance to show off their goods and talents yet another day a week!  The range of cultural food, set up in tents with big blown-up pictures of their dishes, could be witnessed simply by trusting your facial structure with the two funny holes.  Suddenly the nose became the most important feature known to man as the smells of Indian, Lebanese, British, French, and Eastern European cuisine wafted through the damp air (it rains everyday, literally).  I settled for the Indian food and was handed an aluminum tin filled to the brim with rice, salad, and lamb curry. NOM NOM (For all who are not aware and have not yet adopted this important phrase into their vocabulary, nom nom is synonymous with DELICIOUS).  

Moments before arriving at the marketplace, Sarah, Victoria, Maggie and I were told that the party we had been invited to for that night was themed "monochrome"; the hosts were hoping that the guests would dress in one solid color (and preferably not every actor's go-to color, black.  For the record, almost everyone wore all black to the party).  About half the marketplace is dedicated to vintage clothing, so we went trooping through the maze of racks of tacky fur coats, military jackets, hats meant for attending horse races with the Queen, and touristy sweatshirts.  Alas, London only has patterned and multi-colored clothing.  So while the monochrome clothing mission failed, we still witnessed some of the most outrageous clothing choices and fashion "experiences" vicariously through the worn pieces of cloth.    

                 

"Lord, we know what we are but not what we may be." --Hamlet 4.5.43, William Shakespeare 

I sure hope Shakespeare was right on this one, because I know I'm an actress, but right now I don't know what else I might become during my study at LAMDA.  Yesterday, the 32 students of the single semester course were introduced to three other LAMDA faculty members who will facilitate our growth in other disciplines that are just as important as pure acting training in a successful career.

1. Singing.  Our first warning came as I bit of a surprise to my ears, "'Ello everyone!  I'm Scottish, so sometime during the course you will have trouble understanding my accent."  I hate to admit it, but he was kind of right.  I felt as though I had to physically perk up my ears to grab everyone word his accent flung at us, but by the end of his personal background introduction, I was up to 95% hearing clarity. This urban-fashioned, casually mannered man was going to be at the front of our singing instruction for the duration of the course, with our personal lessons being conducted by two other singing teachers.  As we went around the room explaining our various degrees of experience and training, it became apparent how even the most seemingly confident of people were terrified about opening their mouth and croaking out a note and how many others claimed to be tone deaf.  When he was 13, his mother told him he should never sing because he sounded awful. Our teacher has been in several West End musicals and is a professionally and classically trained voice instructor.  Now, there's a man who overcame!

2. Movement.  Before we realized, she was ordering someone into the center of the circle to do 10 push-ups.   Stage directions: Enter movement teacher and fitness fanatic.  Handed the task to teach 32 actors stage combat, clowning, dancing (tap, modern, jazz, historical) and how to connect their minds and voices with their physical being, our movement teacher wasn't wasting a second. We played a fast paced game that engaged all of us into a big circle, and included different hand signals that went with vocal cues, and the goal was...to not mess up.  If you should pair up a vocal cue with the wrong hand signal--10 PUSH UPS!!!  If you should hesitate even the slightest---10 SIT UPS.  If you made a funny face--10 MORE PUSH UPS! (Just kidding, it wasn't that intense.)  Needless to say, I shall be moving quite a bit in her class.

3. Voice.  Stage directions: Enter classiest British man known to human kind. But really, if Britain had a version of What Not To Wear, he'd be the host.  He peered at us through his tortoise-shell rimmed glasses and adjusted the neck of his cashmere sweater a little to the left.  This man, so poignantly dressed, was also going to make sure we talked and articulated ourselves with the same degree of perfection as his attire.  First he would work with us on RP, or Received Pronunciation, the high-class pronunciation of old time BBC newscasters, politicians, and modern Shakespearean actors.  As a Southerner, I'll definitely be getting some extra help with the accent, since out of all the Americans, my basic accent was the farthest away from RP.  He'll also assist us with breathing, getting rid of tension (that gets in the way of producing a pure vocal sound), speed, and enunciation.

Below, an example (from a feisty comedian type) of Received Pronunciation:

"This above all: to thine own self be true."  --Hamlet 1.3, William Shakespeare

In my theater class today, we were supposed to be true to the feelings and movement of seaweed and a current.  If you're an aspiring actor or just someone who fancies experimentation, feel free to repeat this acting exercise once you've read the blog. 

Goal: relaxation, no active thinking, freedom of movement, imagination

Time: 10 minutes (5 minutes each)

Equipment: 2 people who are willing to ditch their hectic human lives for 10 minutes and take on the persona of (literally go-with-the-flow) sea organisms.    

I stood with my eyes closed in the middle of the room that used to be the practice floor for dancers of the Royal Ballet; no tutu, no shoes, and certainly no neat bun (have you seen these untamable curls?). Through my feet extended the wiry roots of a seaweed, my body was the bright green, flexible algae. With my eyes shut, it was imperative to the success of the exercise that I trust that my partner Sarah was in fact doing her part of the job: she was the ocean's current, sometimes calmly ebbing and sometimes rushing by me.  With her arms and hands determining the current's strength and speed, she touched me, brushed me, pushed me.  My task:  as honestly as possible, without making an active decision how to move, I was to react to the giving and taking of the current.  At times my shoulders would sway back and forth, adjusting to Sarah's nudge to my upper back.  Or perhaps my knees would quiver side to side when Sarah ran her fingers without a break across the backs of my knees.  My arms flopped and my entire body swayed gently in between Sarah's actions as I felt the roots of the seaweed extend through my hips, knees, ankles, and feet down through the floor boards.    

It's harder to be an honest seaweed (incapable of moving on its own, thinking on its own, making decisions on its own) than one would think.  We live in a world that is so dependent on active thought, from middle school we're taught to be thinking one step ahead, always brainstorming an idea.  This exercise, introduced to the western world by a Japanese acting master, requires us to turn off that switch that makes life hectic and complicated and embrace a quasi-improvisation mindset.  For those 5 minutes of seaweed world, I wasn't a girl thousands of miles away from my family, I wasn't beginning adulthood, or dreading the moment when my subway card would eventually run out of money (ironically, that happened later today).  For those 5 minutes I let the current dictate my life, a delicacy that is so rarely experienced in the developed world, and I relished the rejuvenation it produced in that class and for the rest of the day.                   

TRY OUT SEA WEED LIFE; IT ROCKS!     

"Thy friendship makes us fresh."--Henry VI 3.3.87, William Shakespeare 

I'm not sure if it was the nerves, or the fact that the playwright I'm studying is inherently wordy, but I think I saw the chattiest Katie yesterday and today.  Fact: If you only know one person in London, regardless of the fact that she is a billionaire, you're more than eager to make friends.

My billionaire mentor, Nancy, and her nice Colombian cab driver (he drank a cappuccino the entire drive; I guess that's why it takes 3 years of schooling to become a British cabbie) dropped me off at my apartment building in the Notting Hill neighborhood, known for its Portobello Road Saturday markets and flowing canal.  It was 10 am British time, and definitely time for sleep in the USA, where I would still be dreaming of this exact adventure if I were not already in London.  So needless to say, my brain (still thinking that it should be 5 am) frowned immensely when the receptionist told me I could not check in until 3 pm.

The Apartment Lounge

Sorry, old chap?

Even though I was literally willing to give over my dinosaur egg-sized suitcase for a shower, I tried to hide my disappointment.  I figured the smartest thing to do at this point was to change out of my chunky American tennis shoes (instant tourist giveaway) and slip into some more European looking boots.  Within 15 minutes in the lobby I was chatting with another girl who happened to be in my acting program, who happened to be an American, and who happened to be named Katie too.  How handy! The Twin Katies made their way down the street and set out for a cheap but yummy lunch. After the first two restaurants that we had researched on Google looked as though their doors hadn't been opened in 3 months, we found a pizza restaurant that appeared to be the way classier and British version of Chuck E. Cheese's.  These British parents had figured out the secret to keeping a toddler quiet during a meal (they could probably sell it to American parents for $4.50 per child): put an iPad with a movie in front of the child with a plate of pizza and let the magic work.  Sure enough, around the restaurant dozens of content children and their parents nommed on THE nommiest pizza I've ever had (ouch, Brooklyn).

Soon after that, Katie and I spent time in another LAMDA's student apartment, Victoria, and then finally at 3pm we met the rest of our counterparts.

I feel like most people in North Carolina would consider me fairly Northern or neutral in my accent, but here I was deemed the adorable Maybelle Southern gal (so maybe the nickname Katie May WILL catch on).  Fine by me: everyone thought whatever I said was pretty darn cute.  So maybe I'm sounding more Southern than British at this point, but hopefully that'll change.  I've also been deemed the "baby" of the group at 18 years old while all my peers (besides another gap year girl) are juniors or seniors in college.

FIRST DAY AT LAMDA!!!

Today we were introduced to the rest of our 20 classmates and some of the other students who are at LAMDA for the 1 year, 2 year, and 3 year courses!

"Real, live actors!"

We've got a pretty hectic schedule (9am to 6pm everyday), filled with trips to Hampton Court Palace and other famous locations, Royal Shakespeare Company performances, and in-house events like Poetry Competitions and "Sleazy Night" (questionable?).  All the semester students were welcomed to LAMDA with a Welcome Party held by the older students who are there for longer courses, and the academy boasted of the free alcohol and food that would be served (actors aren't that much different than college students).  I've already used the tube five times today, and I can already feel my immune system being exposed to hundreds of germs and diseases (Leggo, Vitamin C!).

Well it's 12:30am here and I've got a trip to Hampton Court Palace tomorrow, so Captain Katie signing out!    

"I am giddy; expectation whirls me round."  Troilus and Cressida, by William Shakespeare

And Shakespeare gets human emotions right...yet again.  I am more than giddy to get this London adventure underway!  Let me set the scene for you (more theater puns to follow): an eighteen-year-old girl falls in love with a boy, Romeo, whom she is forbidden to love.

Sorry, wrong story. Take #2:

An eighteen-year-old girl has been given the opportunity of a lifetime to travel the world and explore. Out of the many splotches on the map, the not-so-secret Anglophile picks an island known for the most photographed new mother and father (Prince Williams wants the baby's nursery to be "Africa themed"), an oddly charming accent, and museums filled with other countries' goodies (finders keepers, I guess).  Furthermore, as a thespian, she was immediately drawn to the society that at one point banned all traces of the theater ('tis mighty sinful, after all) but is simultaneously the home of the most influential playwright ever.  Over the next three months, she will be tested to the acting extreme as she joins 30 other aspiring actors in an intensive (9 am to 5 pm, 5 days a week) acting program which centers on Shakespearean comedies and Jacobean tragedies.  If that were not intense enough, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art requires that her acting wardrobe consist of all black.  But enough of talking in the third person, I'm not a pompous Englishman from the 19th century...yet.

For the next three months I'll have a few buildings that will become my home away from home.

1. My own apartment! I'll be sharing a twin apartment with another actress from my program, complete with my own room, a view of London, and a kitchen.  This student apartment building also has plenty of other perks like a media room, pool tables, a roof cafe, and occasional barbecue parties (this Southerner will show them how it's done).

2. The LAMDA building!  I don't know much about the inside yet, but if the outside is any indication, I CAN'T WAIT.