Lots of leiblings

Hello meine leiblings!

Lots of things to talk about, lots of things to say. Right now I am lying prostrate on my bed, pretending I am a warm silk worm in my now-not-Marc-smelly room and imagining that I am still sleeping. Last night we went out to see a play and then went drinking in the gutter at Kings Cross (long story) and although I didn't actually drink I did go to bed quite late. So am pretending that I am still sleeping after my friend from highschool rang me about an hour ago and disrupted my beauty rest.

Okay so where to start...well just as an initial kick I remember the brilliant thing I was going to say in the last post. Although I have never regretted turning down Norway, I did initially regret not being able to have that travel experience, and to live in a dorm with a million different international students. What I didn't bank on, which is probably quite obvious throughout my posts, was the amount of international students that would be studying here, and how many of them would turn into my friends (a lot of them). I think by the very fact that I myself am 'international', I have ended up spending a lot of time with the other 'internationals' (ie. pretty much anyone who is not local, living in London), as, like the Norwegians in Oslo, the locals don't do the course or if they do, they're not particularly interested in meeting transient people. Which is fine by me, because it gives me a wealth of places to visit after the course (Rome, Venice, Paris, Madrid, Leipzig), and, well, Brits are boring anyway (kidding, kidding!). The only thing that concerns me is that I am not sure how much time I would have to travel afterwards, and that I really should be getting an idea of what the local people are like should I want to live here. But I figure that will come with time, and I already had a small taste of it before starting the course. I'm sure when the course ends and my flatmates come back I will work it out then too.

It's weird I have this complex over feeling comfortable around the right kinds of people. It's like I feel like I need to make sure I am comfortable with the local crew rather than the summer folks since they are the kind of people I'd be spending the rest of my time here with should I get in. Yet I don't want to miss out on all this summer school fun. Ah, shut up, me.

Okay, so, on Thursday I was less sick but more sick than I am now. Because I knew I was going to be spending my evening standing in a pit, I tried to conserve my energy and watched my classes instead. Voice with Lesac and the musical instruments is still a delight for me, I think it's so helpful to incorporate something so intellectual like phonetics (odd, I initially wrote physics instead of phonetics...oh my brain...!) with something physical, like pretending to play an instrument. So we filled a whole orchestra with the continuants/nasal sounds (M= viola, N= violin, NG= oboe), and then the semi-vowels (W=, R=, J=). As most of acting is anyway, the combination of the intellectual and the physical. Then on Friday we did improvisation and text, which was heaps of fun. In improvisation we were asked to write down some words that came to our head. Then Steve our teacher told us that these words were characteristics that would make up the character we would be playing as dating agency clients. We would each get one minute to pitch to the camera a sort of 'date me' advert that was natural and improvised. So my character was 42, a student of African dancing, a non-smoker, no kids, liked rap, was born in Townsville, enjoyed silk, steak and chips, Monica Belluci and Eastenders. The other thing we had to do was incorporate a verbal tic and a physical tic into our presentation, as well as inhabit the tempo of the breed of dog we had written down. So my character was as cruisy as a retriever, spun her pencil, and said 'cunt' a lot, while Rob's character coughed and said 'sorry' and was as keen as a beagle, and well, lord knows what some of the other dog breeds were! It made for a lot of crazy characters...but it was really interesting to concentrate on so many different things, especially the inner tempo, which made for a character and an inner life that would be quite different to my initial instinct. Then we had text and argued muchly about phrasing and where to breathe and whether the rhythm of the line should be broken up or not, or should the thought be preserved in a single gasp. Then in the evening we went to the theatre.

A side note: I really enjoy the rigour of study here in London. Already within the first few days I felt my body open up again and my mind ignite. Within two weeks I feel like I've been studying it forever. I came here to solidify what I had learnt already about Shakespeare, which was a lot and not a lot, and since I have been here I have felt my knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare and text row dramatically. I knew certain things before but I know them more even solidly now, just in terms of understanding a text and how it sounds. Having listened to a great deal of Shakespeare in the past six months plus has been a tremendous help without me even realising it. Now that I watch plays and listen to the actors' voices I see what they are doing well and what they are missing. I have a better theoretical understanding of things now too. For example, in the past with Shakespeare, I would scan the text, but have no idea why I was doing it, nor could anybody tell me why I was doing it (most of all my teachers...isn't that strange??). Now I know that the text itself by saying it in rhythm with highlight the words I need to hit, that if the text goes off rhythm there are also things I need to hit, if there is assonance or alliterations there are a multitude of things I need to hit...It's like a dance or a song, it's music, this verse...one two three, HIT, one two three, HIT...it's great :) I'm really enjoying the relishing of it, holding words in my mouth like juicy plums. Of course, the American way, the method way, the filmic way or delivering a text is still behind it all, with the emotion and the feeling and everything, but this savouring of the text is beauty in its own right. Here, Shakespeare indicates all the emotions and feelings for you, just like a piece of music, and that alone is enough to colour the drama before getting into the objective and the intention of it. Obviously there is a great deal more I need to learn about Shakespeare, but already I feel like I have a grounding on which to build for the rest of my life.

You know what else I think is beautiful, actually, is just the motion of typing my words and feelings onto this keyboard...I'm listening to music at the same time and channelling my feelings into my fingers, which are flying as if they are on a piano...It's quite beautiful actually, the connection between my fingers and my heart. Liquid and pepperminty, banana skins and tea :)

Now, the productions...the past couple of days we've been to see a couple of Shakespeare productions here in London. Thursday night we went to see The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe. The Globe is a recreation of the theatre that Shakespeare used to play in in Stratford. This version is on the Thames and bright white and panelled with dark wood and full of tourists. Leipzig, Madrid and I stood in the pit, but in the interval we moved into the segment right in front of the stage, which was a VERY good idea. The show was a very traditional rendering of Shakespeare, with period costumes and musicians and everything that one would expect to find in the original court. The acting was played out a little bit to the audience, for example, a lot was made of the noise the planes flying overhead were making, but otherwise the performance was great, big and colourful and gaudy and everything a Shakespearean comedy should be. All the actors were so grounded but so big at the same time. And the energy! When the whole cast came out dressed as sprites singing and dancing in the round, it was magical. We were in a hurlyburly of giddiness and delight. It was VERY good. I was a little reserved about the acting and how I would fit into it but I'll get into that later. Afterwards we headed to The Anchor, with me swigging my way through my 1.5L bottle of water, and everyone else getting into a pint or two.

The other production I saw was Romeo and Juliet at the Open Air theatre, last night at Regents Park. This was an altogether very different production, although with the same level of production values and skill. The theatre was this beautiful open air theatre, bigger than the one they use for Shakespeare in the Park in New York. It was massive, this huge almost stadium sized theatre that fit as many if not more people in a typical West End Theatre. The stage was a wooden/brick contraption somewhat similar to the set for Mother Courage in Central Park and was well set up with lights and sound to project all the way to the back. The major disappointment for me here was that they put too much into the production aspect of the show and neglected the text and the connection with the audience/other actors. The theme of the performance was West Side Story meets Romeo and Juliet so there was a lot of hairspray and bomber jackets and all that going on. The problem was that it was very very stylised. There were all this great movement which wa very dramatic and I'm sure in the context of, I don't know, a very sexual, rompy West Side Story it would have it's place, but it was just too melodramatic and ungrounded in this text. The actors were all very good and skilled and I'm sure talented put in the right context but it was colourful and empty and hollow. Romeo was well-trained but badly cast - he spent all of this time during the balcony scene grinning his love to the audience; Juliet was physically perfect, dark and short and cute with big bangs - but spent most of her time 'sawing the air' with her hands and reaching for the audience up the back. The Friar was very good as was the Nurse - who, in a bout of colourblind casting/let's try and make the unimportant characters ethnic, was black - and I didn't mind Paris, who (and it's hard to tell with these Brits) was Indian or Latino or something. There was this random buxom woman who was very musical theatre and thrust herself about the stage without having an apparent character other than a harlot who made out voraciously with all the men - although she did sing very beautifully in the death scene. But once again, this beautiful, practised, performance was ruined by the fact that she started singing before Romeo and Juliet bloody died, so it was like a pre-emptive death, and everyone was standing around like soldiers in their blacks looking remarkably solemn, and Juliet hadn't even grabbed her gun yet (in an attempt to be like the movie Juliet shot herself in the head and forgot all her dying lines). It's hard to be critical of something that obviously had a lot of potential and spark and is obviously a well funded and professional, but there was absolutely nothing to grab onto. Occasionally there was some spark, especially when they left the actors to their devices and just allowed the text breathe, as in scenes between the friar and Romeo or the nurse and Juliet. There were some lovely moments when the words and the text hit home. But by golly, I was too busy giggling over the stylised sex scene to really care for any of the characters, as polished and presented as they were.

Now here is my gripe. I have duly enjoyed my time watching theatre here. London of course is the place to go for classical theatre. The productions are slick, the actors are sharp. But I feel like I have watched a lot of polished performances and not a lot of truth or reality. I haven't been moved by anything I've seen yet, bar one or two moments here and there. The Globe was great fun but I'm not sure if I want to perform traditional Shakespeare for tourists, nor do I think I will ever be cast to do so. The open air theatre was modern and fresh but overdone and disconnected. I have not yet seen any theatre that has moved me or made me think, or well, actually, the only thing that has, has been a bunch of construction workers banging on trash can lids. Do I want to train in a place that will give me a beautiful speaking voice and a lithe body, but ultimately no soul?

It's not like I have been totally uninspired. I have heard some beautiful voices and seen some wonderful bodies, but as yet I have not been hit in the gut with anything. I do have to make a sort of decision based on what I have seen here, because I don't want to spend three years training for an industry that I do not feel connected with. I feel that even though I felt I had no structure to hold onto in New York, I learnt so much there about being in the moment and motivation and how to affect the other person. There are still scenes that my classmates did that I can recall vividly in my mind, scenes and moments that moved and tickled me. Here the focus is on the technical aspects of acting - the language, the text, the physical language of the time, all of which is good and what I was looking for, but I still feel as if there is something missing. Although having said all that perhaps I don't need the action/objective part since I kind of already know most of it and working with my scene partner is a breeze because he's a working actor and he knows it too. So maybe it's not that big of a deal. And not being inspired viscerally here doesn't mean it's not worth being here - I can learn all the technical aspects and then go away and infuse it with charged stuff later. And it's not like they're completely dead or anything, those moments of truth are still there. I think it's probably accepted that you know how to act, and they're just feeding you the skills to act Shakespeare. But other than the excitement of all the technical stuff, I need to find some inspiration here.

*A side note - since this post is so long, I started yesterday (ie. Saturday) and it is now Sunday. So just move my last nights to two nights ago and so forth!

**Another side note - since yesterday I received an email from a friend of mine who said of course you can come and stay on my couch in Edinburgh during the festival so I might end up being inspired after all! Edinburgh International Festival here I come!!

I have forgotten most of what I wanted to say yesterday?

Intimidation: a small side step I wanted to talk about. I too no longer feel intimidated by ambitious boys anymore. No, scratch that, I felt slightly intimidated when I met one of the boys in my Shakespeare class for the first time because he said he wanted to get into LAMDA and I was like, ahheeek, so do I, don't freak me out. I think I get freaked out by ambitious boys, or at least ones that I know I am in the running with because I feel like I am on par with them, and good boys are always more likely to get into drama school than good girls, purely by the nature of the industry. But I think intimidation is an indicator of how confident you are. When someone else is confident, it throws your own self-worth out a little bit because you have to be able to hold up to that confidence. So obviously in meeting this boy I was not certain of my own ability. After a while when you get to know them you lose that initial fear but they are still your competition. But at the end of the day you can only control what you are capable of and need to focus on that. I don't get intimidated by actors so much any more, well, I do a little but increasingly less. I think I feel competitive with ambitious boys because they are the epitome of success, if you are going to be a success in this world, and probably most worlds, you are going to be a boy. On the other hand I haven't met that many ambitious girls? And if I do I feel a comradeness with them because as females we all share the same fears and considerations. Ambitious boys don't have anything holding them back, they are pure fire and passion and will stop at nothing to get what they want. And we ambitious girls want to be on par. Stuff all that family and getting married shit, we want to be with the big guns! But at the same time there is that family etc thing at the back of our minds...

Anyway this sort of brings me to another brief thing I wanted to say about study versus work...I was talking to some of my classmates last night, my lovely Italians and we were all lamenting the lack of men in our lives...Maria is in her late 20s, beautiful, and studying acting in Venice. What to do when you're nearing baby age and you're still studying and getting about? I was looking through my emails yesterday and noting the work that other people are doing. As much as I love all this study I do feel like I've got to get a move on with my life somehow. I'm 24 and still living at home! I haven't even started really banging out a career yet! I haven't got any professional credits, I want to work in New York and London and I haven't even done the industry in Australia yet...in a way I wish I could go straight into work right now. There is time for study and contemplation later, right now I feel like if someone offered me an acting job in film or TV I would take it. I am undecided about whether I want to work in the theatre in London, I think they're all very skilled but what space is there for me? So far everything is hollow and shiny and beautiful. Theatre here reminds me of those porcelain/china dolls, the ones that you get at Wedgwood or something, these beautiful pastel, glazed, watercoloured women that gleam like milk but are ultimately hollow inside. I want to be a creative being, I want to write and tell stories and move people and I don't feel like I'm doing that.

I have more to say but I'll leave it for now...gotta get ready to host our barbie tonight! x