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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…
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Work on what you're not good at
I am spending two days as background this week, watching guys take their clothes off at a strip club, so I had to move my Tuesday class with Suzanna to Monday. I always love class jumping, because I get to meet new people, and reconnect with some old friends as well. It was an incredibly small class, me and 3 other people, so we all got to work on our things until we were happy with them, which didn’t really take anyone that long. I was the reader for a scene from Parenthood, watched a heartbreaking one from 50/50, then it was my turn. My scene was from Steve Jobs,…
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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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A 40 hour week :)
A while ago I was talking to my brother about my acting career, and he told me that since acting is my career, it isn’t enough to be working a few hours every day at it, I need to be putting in at least 40 hours a week. I needed to make it my full time job to get jobs. I recently started to tally my hours spent acting, and this week I got my 40 hours. For the first time since I started keeping track of them. The theory is that by counting the hours, I will treat it like more of a job and actually spend at least…
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My New Slate
I had quite the time yesterday deciding which of my 5 scenes from this month I wanted to do for my audition. I crossed off two because I didn’t have printed versions, then finally chose the one that had about equally distributed dialogue, and we hadn’t done in front of the Tuesday class yet. Whiplash. The first take felt great, although when I watched it this morning, I saw that I said ‘you always had your feet on the ground’ rather than ‘your eyes were always pointed on the ground’ which imply completely different things. Luckily, I didn’t notice last night, so I was able to stay in the…
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Twice the Whiplash
Two classes in the same week is a good week 🙂 Last night, I joined the Wednesday class to do my second scene of the month with Patrick. It was an interesting class, because it was so small, with only 6 students, and four of us doing the same scene from Whiplash. Patrick and I went first, while the other group doing our scene were sent out back to rehearse. We did it a first time, and it was fun and easy, a nice date with me trying to talk a lot to cover the silence. The second time, Suzanna had us make it more awkward, explaining that both of us…
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Testing my RP
If you remember, a while ago I asked Suzanna if she could maybe find me a scene where I could work on my British accent (RP). This week, my scene partner couldn’t make it to our usual class time, so she found me a new scene, from Bridesmaids, where I got to be British 🙂 It was a short and easy, hilarious scene, but I could feel my heart pounding and the nerves building up the whole time I was filming and being on book for the other scenes. For some reason, even Suzanna’s confidence that I was well-prepared and had the accent down pat made me even more nervous.…
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Reading and Classes
I usually like to equate being busy with making progress, so lately I have been feeling like I am on the right track and things are going to work out this summer. Which is always a wonderful feeling to have. On Tuesday, I got called in to be a reader before class, which we have established that I love to do. What was different this time was that I saw someone audition for the part that I auditioned for, only it was after I had already done mine, with no chance of going back and changing anything. Every time she got a note or praise, I was kind of going…
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Multiple Personality Disorder
Yes, I know it is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder (I was a psych major, after all) and no, I don’t have it. But yesterday I did get to live the lives of 8 different characters, albeit for short periods of time, not counting the lines and monologues I use for vocal exercises. It just so happened that before I even got to Suzanna’s class, I had 3 self tapes to do at home. I am planning on doing Bonnie’s Self-Tape Challenge this month, to flex those acting muscles, but these self-tapes were auditions done at home for actual parts, which is always exciting. At first, it was just my…
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A twist to the audition class
In last night’s class, I got to be the adorkable and quirky Jess from New Girl. We ran lines before class started, then went up first, since we were the only ones who weren’t doing it audition-style this class (due to my being absent a few weeks ago). We did it the first time and it was good. It really felt natural and we were both present, but we also sort of maybe rushed a bit through some moments that we should have lived in more. So, we did it a second time and allowed the moments to land, to listen to and react specifically to what the other person…