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Culmination of the Semester
I am now back home and have graduated from my Semester at LAMDA. Although I am happy to be here, with family and work and everything, it is still bittersweet, so I am going to fondly look back on the end of that journey. The final few days were very stress-free school-wise, at least compared to the nerves of our final performance on the Wednesday. Still, that doesn’t mean we didn’t do anything. On Thursday morning we had tutorials with a teacher from each department. These tutorials were designed for the full time students, who would be coming back after a break, so in addition to telling us how we…
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My First Shakespeare
Today, we performed our tragedies, that we have been working on for the past few weeks. Ours was Timon of Athens, where I got to play Hortensius, Flavius, and the Poet. Monday and Tuesday we rehearsed from early morning until late evening, doing our first ever full run, and discovering that Rodney hadn’t mentioned costumes to us, because he already had them all figured out for us. And props. Getting there on Monday was like Christmas morning with bags full of presents. We didn’t have to worry about anything except for the acting. We got notes after the runs, and mine were a lot about articulating and relishing the language,…
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The Last Classes
This week was the end of our regular classes at LAMDA. We still have rehearsals, our Tragedies and a final movement project on the last day, but our class groups and regularly scheduled classes are all over. This semester is truly coming to an end…. Monday was pretty intense, with some people having to present in every single class. Luckily, all I had to worry about in voice was circles of attention, and watching other people do their monologues. In Debbie’s class, we presented our duologues, with Lucy and I going first (because I asked, I always ask now). It went pretty well, except for a moment near the end,…
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Songs and Sweet Airs
This was the name of our singing concert that we had on Wednesday, but I will start with the beginning of the week 🙂 On Monday, the beginning of our voice class was spent embodying the images in our speeches, which really tests how well you understand what you’re saying, before I got to watch others perform their monologues. We also watched the last monologues in Debbie’s class, and rehearsed a bit for our duologues. Lucy and I are doing a scene with Emilia and Desdemona from Othello. It seems that almost all of my roles here at LAMDA are servants of some kind, but luckily, most of them have…
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What scares you? Now do that.
This was kind of unintentionally my motto for the week, starting off in voice class. You see, people have been presenting their monologues to the class, and our teacher has been giving feedback and working on it with them. Monday morning, the last thing I wanted to do was stand in front of everyone and present my monologue, which I really wasn’t confident with. Still, when he asked for volunteers, I stood up. Although I normally did the monologue standing in one place talking to one person (since we were always paired off for those exercises), this time I walked all over the place so I could look to each…
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The Shortest Week Ever
This week we only had 2 days of classes, and a workshop, because we were spending a few days on an educational mini-vacation. Still, this doesn’t mean we didn’t get any work done. On Monday, we had our usual Voice, Acting and Stage Combat curriculum, learning all kinds of things, but my brave moment happened in Acting. You see, we had to become familiar with an Iago speech from Othello, which basically means knowing it off by heart, and then we did a few exercises with it. One of these exercises consisted of going into pairs and reciting the speech while your partner heckled you. I was with Molly, and…
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Meetups, lines and movies
I have some lines to memorize, some scene work to do and should probably be getting to bed to prepare for my early start tomorrow, but instead, I am writing this post to let you know what has been going on with me. Selfless determination or semi-productive procrastination, you be the judge. In acting/ text, we are working on points of concentration. For instance, we had to do simple tasks, but Debbie would come and whisper some kind of information to us. Sometimes it was environmental, like the time of day, the weather and general atmosphere of where you are. Other times, it was more emotional, like she would tell…
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My fifth week at LAMDA :)
So maybe it wasn’t the best idea to sign up for a semester highly focused on Shakespeare when I have no idea what iambic pentameter is. In my defense, I have been very vocal about letting everyone know that I am completely at a loss when it comes to this concept. This week, I found out that everyone assumed I had learnt it and just didn’t really get it, as opposed to: I went to French school and we never learnt Shakespeare or Iambic Pentameter! Luckily George made it a learning exercise by having students explain to me, then the exercise for them to get a better understanding of it…
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Adieu French King
I can’t believe today is the last day of January. I am already done my fourth week in London, which is crazy! On Monday, Debbie had us working on our monologues, and she saw me standing there with my arms crossed, so she told me to stand more open, and to take up more space. Harder said than done for someone who tries to take up the least amount of space and go unnoticed most of the time, but I was determined to try. In stage combat, after we spent most of the class practicing what we had learnt and adding more things to it, we were asked to do…
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JEDI – Just Effing Do It
This week was really interesting as far as classes were concerned. Mostly because I learnt a valuable lesson. Or at least put it into practice. Thanks to Bonnie Gillespie for the awesome acronym 😉 You see, I truly embraced the concept of not hesitating and just doing it, even if I’m not ready and even if it scares me. Actually, especially if it scares me. On Monday, we were working on qualities, and one of the activities was a staple of drama schools, where you pretend to be an inanimate object. In this case, leaves. I was in a group of 4, but all the other groups had 3, so…