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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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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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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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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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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…
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Meisner, Meetings and Maggie
I have to admit that last weekend was pretty awesome. Work on Friday consisted of a really fun scenario at McGill (fun to play, because it involves acting on your toes and Improv and an awesome scene partner, but not-so-fun subject matter). Then I got to sing my heart out at a family karaoke night. Traditionally, one person would choose a song and sing it while everyone else listened and applauded at the end, sometimes singing along under their breath. Lately, it has turned into a much less formal, much more free-for-all setting, where people choose a song, which gets them one of the microphones, then everyone else who knows…
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Class and Thanks <3
This week I am back to only one class with Suzanna, with the same scene partner as last week, but a scene from Maggie’s Plan. I am really enjoying a lot of Greta Gerwig’s movies lately, so it was fun to get to play her, even if I purposely didn’t watch the movie and tried to stay away from what I would picture her doing in my head (which could be totally off). For the first time in what feels like forever, we didn’t get to run our scene together before putting it up. Normally we run lines in the back room, try to figure out the blocking…this time we…
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Acting and Reacting
Have I mentioned how much I love getting to go to class twice in the same week? Because I would go every single day if I could. In class, on set, being a reader…these are my happy places! Since my last post, we filmed our Bridget Jones’ Baby scene, where I stuck to my word and did it with a British accent. It was not at all the right region or social class for Bridget, but I didn’t want to copy Renee Zellweger’s specific way of speaking in the Bridget Jones movies, so I didn’t really hit the mark for the role, but I did have fun using an accent.…
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Planning, Taping, Learning
I know I mentioned all of the motivational videos and reading I have been doing in my last post, and thanked some people for their awesome sharing of information (Thank you Dallas and Bonnie!), but this weekend I actually put it all together and compiled a huge list of things I should be doing. I also prioritized it according to whether it would help with my #1 priority and goals, or if it was just actor busy work that I feel like I should be doing so that I can say I am doing something rather than because it actually needs to be done. I am also trying some new…