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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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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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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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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…
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First Week and the Tower :)
For our first week in the program, the teachers really took it easy on us. After a first day of mostly games, and a second spent visiting Hampton Court Palace, the rest of the week was very relaxed as well. On Wednesday, we started late with Debbie, who had us moving a lot. The best way I could think to describe it was that we were seeing how certain imaginary circumstances affect us physically (but also emotionally). For instance, we divided into pairs, and it was super easy for my partner to bend my arm when I was forcing it to stay straight. It was less easy when I relaxed…