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Playing House
On Monday, Michelle and I had planned to meet early and rehearse, but unfortunately, life got in the way. Luckily, I knew my lines and had worked on the text on my own this time. So, when we got to class and went to run our lines before going up, I should not have been completely thrown when she asked me, “What is Bruce doing here?” Someone once told me that a great acting exercise is to go out in public and run your lines, then see if people can tell you’re rehearsing, or if they think you’re genuinely having that conversation/argument/falling in love or whatnot. Michelle was super natural…
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Rabbits and Trolls
On Wednesday I had a scene from Love, where I was Mickey’s roommate, Bertie, who was described to me as weird and eccentric. With this (and my recent Seeking White Female scene) in mind, I forgot that even if you are playing the crazy character, you usually shouldn’t think of yourself as crazy. The trick to nailing those characters is to play them like you’re the most sane person in the room and everyone else is crazy. In this case, Tracy and I ran the scene in the back to figure out the blocking and make sure we had our lines, and then we did it 4 times. I would…
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Rabbit Hole
This week I tried something different. Johnny, who teaches me Meisner, was telling me about the amazing opportunity we have in this class, to rehearse scenes with each other before filming it in class, being able to watch it afterwards…I realized that I wasn’t taking advantage of the rehearsing with scene partners between classes, so I did something about it. My scene is from Rabbit Hole, which is some pretty heavy, emotional stuff. Last week, we all teared up, but for me it was because it’s a sad scene, not because I was internalizing any of it. Usually, I am nearly off book from the first class where we cold…
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Time over shallow
Last Monday’s acting class was the kind where I know I can do so much better, but I just didn’t put the time and effort into it. The first time I was supposed to do the scene, I got booked to be on set and couldn’t make it. Then the week after was a holiday, so when last Monday came around, I had sort of forgotten about it, especially since I had something else I was supposed to be going to. Ultimately, I decided to go to class and then be late for the other thing, but it meant I only put a quarter of the time I should have.…
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Class Lessons
It has been over a month since I shared what I have been learning in my acting class, so today I will go through the scenes I have worked on recently, as well as what I learnt from each one. First is the Break Up, a scene I did with Nick. I hadn’t worked on it as much as I should have, and he had a cold when we did it, so I was slightly worried, but through running the lines a bit before class, I was reassured. He even went all out and got a doorbell sound effect on his phone for the end of the scene. If you…
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Reasons to Stay
I slightly panicked when I realized we were pretty much half way through July and I was way behind my word count for July’s Camp Nano (like the one in November where you write a book in a month, only you have a lot more freedom to choose your word count, page count, or to simply edit something you have already written). I have been spending a lot of my time this week trying to catch up on that, but I also had class with Suzanna on Tuesday 🙂 If you remember, our scene is from the Social Network, and we break up. The scene starts out with us talking,…
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Ron Leach Workshop
I have been trying to take part in this workshop with Ron Leach for years, but the dates have never worked out, or the workshop got cancelled. Which is why I was so excited to finally be able to learn from him last weekend! I had the schedule for the weekend, and I saw we would be watching Shurtleff on Friday night, so I was ready. Having read Audition, and taken multiple workshops with Tom Todoroff, I know all my guideposts, in numerical order, and was fully prepared to list them off. I even reread Audition, so it would be fresh. This is not what happened. It started off with…
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Always Be Prepared…
A long time ago, I had decided I would do something every day to advance my career, be it acting, research, calling people or whatever.A week after making this resolution, I decided it was impossible to do something every day, but lately, I seem to be doing it without trying, just because acting is always on my mind, and my favorite thing to think about. Whenever I am near a computer, I just can’t help looking up headshot photographers, acting advice, actorfest, classes…that isn’t to say I don’t do other stuff and have a life, but I keep feeling like the dream is becoming more real, or concrete. Last Saturday,…