The calm before the storm

Wow – what a long exhausting day. Sees like once we settle into something they up the ante and its like we have to renegotiate the day. Suzuki was good thins morning – not too much new stuff, but reviewing and polishing. They are starting to add text more and more into the movements – with the idea that we should be ready to speak at any point in time. We got to do basic 1 (stomping in a circle for like three minutes, falling to the floor, and pulling ourselves back up) twice – what was great – I could have done it a third time. I love the energy of this movement and the group dynamic. I also like to watch it when we switch groups. What I like about doing it is the sustained intensity and having to put more and more energy into the movement to keep the energy level the same. Watching is great, because we get to see how individuals navigate that energy. As they walk down stage I scan all the eyes. These have changed drastically since we began. Whereas week one I could see doubt, fear, anger, week two is bringing a different dynamic, a different intensity.

It is really interesting to see how this training affects each person – what parts they like, what parts they dread. But more than that, how it is shaping people who perpetuate the process of working on the self. Some of my goals revolve around learning to listen better, both as a student and colleague. Everyone here has interesting stories to tell about why they are here and what they are getting out of it.

Viewpoints work today redistributed the space and so we looked at a sequence of smaller groups doing specific actions. As we were told – we are going to start with specific rules and then progressively open them up. This lead to some interesting group dynamics in which the goal is kinesthetic response – don’t think just do in reaction to someone else. It’s a hard state to maintain, but once there it is really interesting to hang out there.

Part of the exhaustion is due to speech class today – which Is not like any speech class I ever had in college. A series of stretches working muscles I didn’t know I had – which is great cause now those can be sore tomorrow too. Then Ellen taught us a couple of movement sequences involving lengths of pvc in place of swords. The energy these movements create is really quite amazing. We worked on an Irina/Tuzenbach scene going back and forth with the movements with actors facing each other. I opted for Irina and squared off against a male Tuzenbach. The level of intensity while executing these moves really caught me off guard. It just provides so much potential for the voice.

Tomorrow is a double Viewpoints/Suzuki day – so I can only imagine how that will feel. Then rehearsal. We had a great meeting tonight and feel like we have a direction. So the plan is to meet tomorrow night and get things up on their feet and see what happens. I feel like we have done about two weeks of table work – not on character or story, but styles, genres, ideas – some of which may make it into the piece, some may not. But, they all inform the process.