-
Year Of Yes
When I found out that Shonda Rhimes had a book coming out, I knew that I had to read it, even before I found out what it was about. I have long wanted to be a part of Shondaland, not just because it is where some of my favorite shows live, but because from my outside perspective, it looks like a family, where getting killed off of, or leaving one show just means you can come back and be on another show. It is also a magical land where you can spread your wings and try new things, like directing or writing, but also let your freak flag fly proudly,…
-
Work, Class, Combat, Magic
Already halfway through August. Summer is fading fast and I am nowhere near where I had planned to be by now, but I am still keeping busy. I have worked a few days at McGill, which is always fun. One day I was playing a woman who had just given birth, while also writing a story about a character in the same situation during our breaks. This definitely put me in an interesting head space, and I personally think it made the acting and the writing a little better, because they could feed off each other. I went to see two movies in theatres, both action/adventure films that I would…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
Mad Hatter Tea Party @ The Sanderson
Monday was dance night here at LAMDA, so other than a couple of rehearsals scattered throughout the day, we mostly had the day off. We took advantage by rehearsing our scenes and dances for the performances on Thursday, but I also invited a few friends to join me for a Mad Hatter Tea Party at the Sanderson Hotel. Since the tea was Alice in Wonderland themed, all of the napkins had riddles on them, the menu was tucked away in a book, and the sugar came in this super cute ballerina music box, that actually played music every time Sydney opened it to get some sugar. The tea selections came…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…