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Bring on the Emotion
This month I worked on the drama. In class, all of my scenes had hurt and sadness, and there were lots of them. I got to be in class for the first two Mondays, and my scene was from This Is Us, a show I love to watch. My scene partner wasn’t there the first week, so I did a cold read with someone else. I loved the scene, but had to concentrate on not imitating Mandy Moore. We do share a first name, but we are not the same person. On Tuesdays, my scene is from a new show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, that I have never seen. This…
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Filming my Short: Pre-Production
This is something I have been delaying posting about, maybe because at first it seemed like such a huge thing that it couldn’t really be happening, and then I just wanted to wait until I got the location, or I got the actor or…there was always something. Still, I wanted to make sure that I shared the entire process with you, so here is a post on our progress so far: Asking for Help When I made “Film a Short I Wrote” one of my resolutions this year, it was mostly to try and push myself to do something I really wanted to do, but was also really terrified of.…
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Catching Up On Class
I am a bit behind on sharing my class breakthroughs, so this post will cover 4 of them. This month, Mondays were my official class day, but I also had a lot of days at Mcgill, filming things on weekends, self tapes…my brain was basically full of back stories and conversations that were not my own. Which I loved, but it also led to me trying to learn my lines for Nocturnal Animals between scenarios on Monday afternoon, and while driving across town to class (trying to repeat them to myself while driving, then waiting for a red light to glance down and see the script if I needed it,…
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Snow sets and Meisner
It started out with a simple facebook message: Actress meet director. Director meet actress. I thought my friend was telling me he had started directing until I realized there was someone else in the conversation. Fast forward to this weekend, where I spent Saturday afternoon climbing up snow banks and walking around in the snow. It probably wasn’t the most organized shoot I have been on, since it was a bit of a seize-the-moment-now-or-never affair, but it was a lot of fun. A passion project, as they say. I learnt a lot about humidity and fog, and the fact that as long as you have the beginnings of the emotion,…
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The Power of Mantras
A while back I mentioned that I started using mantras. I have always been pretty skeptical about them, partially because I was afraid of focusing on a mantra that wouldn’t come true and thus prove the theory wrong. You might not see the issue there, since not trying it would get the same effect, but part of me believes very strongly in the power of thought. So if my skepticism or setting my sights too high made the thing I visualized not come true, it would have reaffirmed my fears and that mantras don’t work…so I was afraid of sabotaging myself? It makes sense in my head. In that post…
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Through the Snow
One thing you can almost always count on in Suzanna’s classes is that if you are less people than expected, you will be finishing late. The class is 2 hours, but once we are less than 6 people, we convince ourselves we have the time to talk and catch up between takes, or to try more things and then we run late. Which is kind of like a double bonus when you think about it. The first Tuesday of this month, we were only 3, so I got to play Lily Tomlin in a scene from Grace and Frankie. Not something I would get cast for otherwise, but it was…
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The Normal Heart
So far, the Monday classes with Suzanna this month have been pretty sad. We are doing two comedies and a drama, but two out of three still focus on death or dying so we very much look forward to the cute scene from Accidentally on Purpose. The first week is cold reads, so Nick and I went through our scene from the Normal Heart. As soon as I saw the title, I knew exactly what was going on, and although I couldn’t picture the scene in my head, I remembered the scenes surrounding it, and all of the people that are mentioned. My scene partner, however, had no idea what…
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Meisners
I am now two Meisner classes further in my training and things are improving. Still, I have a long way to go. I personally think I had a breakthrough as soon as we moved on from sitting to standing. Apparently, all of the power posing I did back in London has now made me grounded and comfortable when standing. I was also a lot better when I felt like my partner was more nervous than I was, because I focused on calming her nerves and forgot about my own. As they say, the most important person on the stage is your scene partner. And the best way to deal with…
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CUTV shoot :)
In line with my newfound determination to get out there and make friends and be helpful and volunteer whenever someone needs help, I ended up being a part of a new promo series for CUTV (Concordia University’s student run TV network). They were looking for someone during a particular time frame and even though I was working that day, I offered to come after instead of dismissing it as something I couldn’t do. I’m not saying I got the part as a last resort because they had absolutely no one else, but I wouldn’t argue with that statement either. I rushed there once I was done working at McGill, sort…
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Bonus class :)
Although I was only supposed to have one class with Suzanna last week, someone wasn’t able to make it to the Tuesday class, so I was called in : ) Originally, I was only going to do a scene from Damages, but someone else was doing the Maggie’s Plan scene I had auditioned the day before, so I got another chance to step into Maggie’s shoes. We did it like a scene, not an audition, and there was something about having done the scene so many times before, and being with someone I have known a while and worked with a bunch of times that made it really…natural. Like a…