Well, it's over.
It's very strange to plow through a whole production week and open and close in such a few days.
I was pleased with my own focus and work during our tech and dress rehearsals. I set some goals for myself with line accuracy and exploration of specific moments that I felt very good about during dress rehearsal.
I also had a kind of revelation about my castmates-- that it is unprofessional of me to be so frustrated by my peers and have such strong opinions about their performances. It's easier to let it go now that we're not in class, that's for sure. And the direction during this process has been unbalanced. But I haven't liked all the "professional" performances I've seen onstage. Why should I love all my castmate's performances? I don't have to. However, their acting choices don't make ME any more professional as a result. I need to let it go.
It was easier to work with some people when I adopted that perspective. It'll be my goal to own that going into next year with my cohort too.
I felt like I was able to really practice the little Alexander training we've started to have-- exploring how to maintain Madeleine's physical tension with the fewest number of muscles. I loved the challenge of keeping my shoulders slightly raised but finding, oh, I can relax my elbows! And it wouldn't change much, but made me so much more comfortable! I'm really excited to work with Pauline next year.
I realized that Simon rarely gave me any compliments throughout the process, particularly not compared to the number of compliments he gave to other members of the cast (objectively speaking, as I don't need compliments in order to do good work). I really only noticed because we would have notes during tech where some of us would receive a dozen notes, and others would receive no notes and many compliments despite having dropped lines or made changes to their performances. Which is fine. Just interesting.
It was really hard to open to such a small audience. We have this odd thing of knowing that as a workshop we're not going to get large audiences and our work is for the purpose of the work, not the audience. But an audience does feel like a small "pay off" from our training in being able to showcase what we've worked so hard on. Our largest audience was at the matinee, which was very nice. But it was hard. We deserved larger audiences. We also missed our course director through the process and performances. It's so hard with our tutors being stretched so thin, but it's hard not to compare ourselves to the MFA 2s, who had visits from Alex a few times through their rehearsals and multiple performances. It makes sense, being their final performance, though that was the case in their other productions this year too. We missed having some of the support through the process, particularly since rehearsals were so strange and frustrating. But-- I'm looking forward to seeing how all of this (hopefully) changes next year by having our performances open to the public.
Our closing performance was absolutely the best one we had-- potentially of the entire process. It was the only time the Hostage Scene landed in that way. We had a much better pace for the whole performance. Some performances didn't seem so indulgent. I don't know what changed-- maybe not having Simon there, maybe having Alex there, I'm not sure. I'm glad it was the one Alex was able to see. Though I thought his comment after the show was telling-- "This wasn't the play I read." No, it wasn't. It wasn't the play I read either, or most of the cast. I'm not sure it was the play that was in the text. Hopefully our workbooks will be revealing for him to read as to why that may have been the case.
Overall I'm proud of the work I did. I know I did good work. I'm not sure what to anticipate for my marks from Simon-- I think he can't not give me pretty strong marks, though I think he'll give some of my castmates higher marks for even things like they were able/willing to stay late after class to discuss how to explore certain research they've done. I explored plenty of research in my process (where I could, since I only had a certain amount of freedom, admittedly) and I'm proud of my work. So I'm not very concerned about the marks, just curious.
I think I've grown a lot as an actor this year. I'm looking forward to the break so I can give my mind a rest, but I have really enjoyed the momentum of the year and hope I can keep a lot of my training going on my own over the summer.
On to the next!
No comments:
Post a Comment