voice breakthrough

I can't put my finger exactly on what just changed for me in Francoise's class just now, but it was enough to make me feel rather emotional in the moment and inspired to jot down some thoughts before they fly away.

It's a layered feeling, I guess, stemming from a real inspiration from MR. FOOTE'S OTHER LEG the other night, which I found entirely lovely and inspired, from my seat in the upper dress circle. I was quite amazed and curious by how the actors' voices carried-- it's of course an aspect to the theatre which I've had much more appreciation for since I began my own real study of voice work, but for some reason that particular performance really "clicked" for me and I found myself lapping up every vocal nuance, particularly from Dervla Kirwan. Her voice was quite low in pitch, for the most part-- not a female baritone, but a lovely and rich alto that really only ever grew into a kind of mezzo at it's highest. And such wonderful amplification!!

Today I think I got as close to a similar sound in my own voice as I've ever come.

I've been looking forward to my voice classes this term with real excitement, far more than I had last term. By December I could feel myself starting to put the pieces together, and just anxious for the exercises and tools to really let it rip. We moved quickly through a lot of warm-up exercises we're familiar with and then into focusing on various lip, teeth and face resonance.

I struggled with "waking up" my nasal cavity and sinuses, in part I think because I've been focusing in singing and in voice class last term on not sending sound into the wrong places (big, low pitches resonate in the chest, middle sounds resonate in/on the mouth, without using the nose). My nose felt very lothe to engage. I did feel the resonance bouncing on my cheeks but to get to the nose, it was almost going around to the back of my head and up over to my nasal cavities, which I expect is a start. When things started to clear up and become more direct, I found the buzzing was a lot more delicate than I expected it to be, and when we released a very nasal "MMMMI MMMMI MMMMAY MMMMAY" into a more neutral "Mah!" it was like the clouds parted.

I'm finding so much FREEDOM in my voice! The "Mah!" was meant to be on the high end of a mid-range pitch and it really felt so easy and a lot lower than I expected-- not that the pitch itself was low, but that the energy it took to make the sound was so minimal.

THIS is the kind of sound Alex is after, and that Francoise and Simon have been complimentary of!

It sounds like my mother, in a lot of ways... But of course it should, because I'm coming into the age that my mother was when she had me. I've been hearing her voice all my life!

My voice is reflective of my age and experience, which is so much deeper than I've EVER given myself credit for. I've spent a lot of my life feeling rather smug about being much younger than most people think I am-- being actually 19 though thought 25 or more, etc. And while I think some amount of youth is a good thing to retain, I'm suddenly very happy to embrace my age and let it reflect in my voice, which has taken some time to catch up to the mindset. To "sound 29" does not mean to sound "old" or "mature" or even "early middle age"-- it simply means to sound like me, exactly as I am right now, with all my life experience and training and emotion and ambition and shortcomings that I have right now.

My voice can, and increasingly does, reflect the person that I am, not the person that I was or the person that I think I need to be.

And additionally, I discovered that I, as myself, a 29-year old woman, can sound "youthful" and "innocent" without sounding "young" or by resorting to a high, petulant style of voice. It's not a thing I have to put on, which ends up sounding false and shallow because it isn't latched to anything real or deep. A "youthful" voice can AND SHOULD be rooted-- not a shallow vocal trick. There's a time and place for a cartoon-y voice, but it's never been a challenge for me to find those. My challenge is in rooting the voice to successfully find color, age, range, variance, etc. AND TODAY I STARTED TO DO THAT!!!

I feel positively unstoppable and endlessly curious to see how I can apply it all in my work.

Now THERE'S a penny drop!

workbook thoughts

Part of reason for being in training is learning what is your responsibility as an actor-- find ways of being 3D, regardless of direction given

"How do you act?" - September's question at it's core

Readiness and industry begets greatness onstage -- it's not possible for me yet because I still have work to do. Toolbox and technique allows an actor to draw on skill in the exact moment it's needed.

Discipline is required-- must be able to deliver

Actors need to act-- not by default or anything, but dedication and passion and drive, single-mindedness. Not talent, not lack of options.

Failure is a requirement-- part of the process. It is necessary.

"Teach us to care and not to care." - TS Eliot

Know what your limits are-- know when it's enough-- as long as it IS enough, as long as the WORK has been done, as long as it's measured correctly.

Restoration & 18th Century - workshop presentation notes

Presentation based on:

• other topics assigned to cohort
• maybe filling in some blanks

Civil War Summary

• Series of 3 wars between 1642-1651
• Uprise of Puritans & anti-Royalist support in Parliament
• Charles I wasted a lot of money, Absolute Monarch, potentially pro-Catholic, anti-Parliament
• Beheaded for treason - 30 January 1649 - only monarch in UK history to be killed by subjects
• Establishment of Commonwealth of England and Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell
• Lord Protector (offered title "King")
• House of Lords reinstated in 1660

Restoration

• Entire realm at war - estimated casualties (battle & disease)
• England - 190,000/5 million - 3.7%
• Scotland - 60,000/1 million - 6%
• Ireland - 616,000/1.5 million - 41%
• Ireland was Catholic and posed bitter threat - also many Royalists
• Richard Cromwell removed - Parliament "reset"
• "As if nothing had changed since 1642"
• Charles II declared King 14 May 1660 - coronated 23 April 1661
• Oliver Cromwell exhumed, hung and beheaded
• Civil Wars effectively set course for Parliamentary Monarchy

• Theatre reopened - revival of traditional holidays and festivities (Christmas)
• Reestablishment of Church of England as national church
• Stuarts had Catholic sympathies till 1689, Charles II converted to Roman Catholicism on deathbed 
• Great Fire of London 1666 - Great Plague
• Impactful on huge urban population boom
• Advances in architecture - St. Paul's Hampton Court, etc. 
• Science and exploration - literacy of middle and lower classes - Isaac Newton
• 1663 - published history of all animals in Bible
• Century following Galileo - astronomy, navigation
• Habeas Corpus Act (unlawful imprisonment) - 1679
• Literacy accomplishments - rise of "decorum" and taste/affluence
• Women widely published
• Act of Union - 1701 - Union of England, Scotland and Wales to Great Britain

Ideas

• Rights to pursue pleasure and libertinism (upper class)
• Women onstage
• Empiricism and industrialism take foot
• Rise of slavery, especially in 18th century

18th Century

• Act of Settlement - 1701 after Queen Anne's heir died
• Succession passes to Hanovers to avoid Catholic succession by passing 50 more immediate claimants and ended Stuart line - German
• 1708 - St. Paul's Cathedral finished in London
• 1709 - Copywright Act - to protect ideas and discoveries
• Music and opera - Handel comes to Britain
• Advocacy for education of women

People and Monarchs

• Charles II & Catherine - no legitimate heir - 13 children
• Prince William will be first monarch descendent of Charles II
• James II & Anne - his brother, overthrown because he was Catholic
• William III & Mary II - his daughter and nephew, Anglican
• William of Orange - Glorious/Bloodless Revolution
• Anne & Prince George - her sister
• Major advances in trade
• George I & Sophia - her cousin
• Robert Walpole holds parliamentary seat for 41 years - "prime minister"
• George II & Caroline - his son, not seen as a good monarch
• George III & Charlotte - his son, of American Revolution
• Isaac Newton - mathematician and physicist - 1642-1726
• Christopher Wren - architect, mathematician, physicist, 52 churches in London - 1632-1723 
• John Dryden - first poet laureate
• Jonathan Swift - Irish satirist and essayist - "Modest Proposal"
• Samuel Johnson - published "first" dictionary, conversationalist, cat lover

final workbook session

I know it's my own fault but I felt really rather discouraged upon leaving our final workbook session of the term today.

I'm a little bit tired of how frequently my cohort likes to (as the Mormons say) "bear testimony" of how much they love each other and the programme and how we work together, etc. etc. etc. 

Cool. Got it. 

It doesn't serve much to continue talking and TALKING about it. 

And it's tough because I can't invalidate someone else's experience or opinion-- their views are all valid. But for example, Robert started talking about his friend who is in a 3-year course and how glad he is that he's in a 2-year programme because he'd rather "fast-track" his progress. But our course isn't a "fast track." And it shouldn't be. And I certainly can't say that I feel like I'm on a "fast track" since one Shakespeare scene in acting class and working on one Shakespeare play hasn't really given us a lot of exposure to the entire era. The whole point is to find and explore and discover in depth.

What our programme is is immersive-- or at least it should be. We aren't going to "be tested" on the reading list, but the discoveries we make in the reading should be reflective in our work. We don't have many traditional assignments due each week, but the work we do between sessions should indicate a level of focus ongoing outside of class. I was attracted to this programme specifically because it expects the students to do the work of a 3-year course in two years. To me there's nothing "fast track" about that.  There's a lot of trust and responsibility put on us in that regard. And the progress I feel we've made as a cohort this term I'm not sure reflects the depth we could have reached in ten weeks. I think we've "fast tracked" it in the sense of being a little bit shallow, breezing along and taking advantage of free evenings and no papers to write.

I know I haven't done everything I can either. I know I've allowed my mindset to be somewhat swayed by the fact that I'm fairly confident in at least some sessions that people won't take it very seriously, won't necessarily have done the work throughout the week, won't necessarily even be completely memorized, and that there will be very little consequence for that, particularly since we aren't being assessed on much this term. I know I've fallen into that trap. It's a tough one too, because I see myself doing it and I'm annoyed by myself, but I'm also faced with the reality that it's hard to reach new depths for myself in every session (some it's certainly possible, and I do my best in those to push myself) when I spend time waiting for others to catch up, simply because they haven't thought about the session since the previous week. I can coast on that. We all can.

It makes me really frustrated. And energized to do better.

But I don't know how to push my friends to expect more of themselves too. I suppose that will come naturally the progression of the course in each term, if for no other reason that we'll have assessments in more and more classes to look forward to. But I think more can be expected of us. All eight of us are capable of SO MUCH MORE than we've been displaying. We are MASTERS students, which means we should be producing MASTERS-level work, whether or not it's even expected of us. We should go home every day feeling exhausted and spent, but responsible for the work we still need to do before coming back to class the next morning.

This shouldn't be a "fast track."

I need to do a lot of reflecting over the break to take ownership of what I can do better. And I will do those things, for the sake of myself and also the cohort. But I hope I can look forward to the support of my fellow students to do the same.

d.o.n.e.

I think I'm ready for this term to be over. 

I really enjoy the things we've been working on and I think I'm starting to get to a place where it's all starting to gel, but I'm really done with the learning dynamic of my cohort. I understand that people learn in different ways and at different rates, and I understand that we came into this programme with different levels of training, but I'm really really frustrated that the pace of MY learning in class is so frequently determined by my classmates. 

It took us two hours over two class sessions to learn the steps for the jig that's supposed to be at the end of As You Like It. We haven't learned the actual choreography yet. We have one class session left. 

It took us more than an hour to learn HALF of the pavan today, which is a series of WALKING STEPS. 

Literal.

WALKING.

Francoise is still having to remind us to "listen to me demonstrate" before we jump in to the exercises she takes us through. 

Our final cultural studies session yesterday was 1.5 hours of mostly senseless nodding to questions like "Have you talked about pastoral comedies yet?" to which the actual answer is NO, not in the textbook, historical context that she's referring to. In fact, I don't know that the phrase "pastoral comedy" has actually be used anywhere this term. SO WHY ARE WE NODDING?????????

I'm frankly also disappointed that we haven't been able to tackle more than one scene in our acting class. I feel like we need to be be exposed to more scenes/plays within a term, particularly within an acting class. I'm worried that this is going to determine the rest of the year. I'd like to do more than one Restoration piece, for example, and definitely more than one Well Made Play scene. 

All of this comes back to a sense of pace. As graduate acting students, why aren't we able to work through more material more swiftly??????

I feel so ready to just finish this term, get what I can from it, and regroup before next term. I'm ready to FLY next term.

And at very least, I cannot be in Group B as it stands right now. 

In fact-- I almost wish we had Groups A, B AND C because in groups of 2-3 we'd truly get the instruction each of us need without holding anyone back or moving too swiftly for others. 

But being that we can't have three groups, I'm JUST DONE working at the rate of the slowest members of the class. I really hope the instructors start to push us a little faster next term and encourage those who can't move as quickly to sometimes seek tutorials or work on their own time. It just doesn't feel fair. 

Now isn't this a change from my initial feelings about school!

progress

I've landed on Jaques.

At least more so.

And goddammit-- David Jackson was right about the clothes and no makeup.

I very specifically wore clothes that made me feel boxy and uncomfortable as Emily. My goal was to find a way to make them feel comfortable as someone else. Wouldn't you know it, carrying myself differently and utilizing my hands in pants pockets made me feel more comfortable.

And I made some big strides in line delivery, which allowed for a lot of good, specific direction.

I wore my glasses to rehearsal today and it was like icing on the cake. Glasses even give me a mannerism-- pushing them on my nose.

I'm actually looking forward to rehearsal next week. I never thought the day would come. I still don't particularly like As You Like It and I certainly don't love some of the acting choices my peers are making, but we're starting to have a show here, and I'm starting to enjoy my contributions to it.

All the world's a stage...

rehearsal reflections

Good progress this morning on the play. I wish we could get a little deeper into things but David's directing style is layered, so we get a bit more each time we work through it. Also it's tough to work very deeply when we're all in varying places of memorization (myself included). I guess overall I prefer to learn and work chunks at a time. I'm quite used to being memorized for rehearsal but usually there's the benefit of working on a scene for an hour or a few right up front so it helps the memorization process solidify before the next time the scene is revisited. I don't know. This process isn't my favorite and I think it's ambitious as our introductory rehearsal process, but oh well. It's coming along and at least David recognizes the work I'm doing on my own. I guess that's what matters to me the most.

I'm so glad we're at the point in the term where our cohort are starting to get real direction and correction from our tutors. I've been waiting for the kind of corrections we've really started to get this week. There is something to be said for "discovery" and in our own time, but that really only gets a person so far, I think. I'm here so I can improve-- being let to continue in bad habits doesn't seem helpful. I don't mean line-reads or anything like that, but I'm a little tired of kind of exclusively exploring. Exploration can go hand-in-hand with the kind of direction that I'm hoping for.

But today makes me feel encouraged. Hoping it's an indication of things to come over the next few weeks.