Dead City

I saw a theatre performance at Brown this weekend student directed and acted. I really enjoyed it much more than broadway musicals I must say. First off it was a new piece that I have never even heard of before. In addition it felt relevent to my life as it was performed by people close to my age and involved themes that I can relate to. However, the show was primarly about an older woman struggling with loneliness in her marriage and lifestyle. The actors well clearly well trained and for the most pasrt made me want to at least apply to Brown all the more. I felt like the director at least in the directors note thought to emphasize the location of the theatre piece, New York City, as the main theme when really it was at most a good symbol for the real problems and themes. There were great characters and a constant vibe of livelyness that made me not want the performance to end but at the same time there was an ending that definitely provided closure.

Twelve Monkeys

Two thumbs up. I liked that this movie deals with a time travel to the past and the ideas of changing the future in a way that I can understand. Details, plot and characters only help but at the core of the movie I like the emphasis on the idea that a person can't change the future no matter how hard they try. I liked that this movie wasn't based more on the butterfly effect but more of a set quilt that has already sew in all events. I think this attracts me to enjoy the movie and feel satisfied enough at its end more because I agree with it than because I understand it. This mixed with an idea of a reasoning to kill of human kind; however, I thought this idea was portrayed as a battle between insanity and sanity perhaps inching more towards insanity (as in 1995 the age of a more capitalist society was emerging again with a more prosperous economy in the Clinton years in addition to the fear of a new milliemum of 2000s) but also gives way to the consideration for the thought especially at the end of the film.

I felt like I was going insane at times when watching the film- a success to its creator.

I liked that it was included that James switched sides on his viewpoint on his insanity and almost gave in to living in the dark, taking the blue pill instead of the red.

At first it was difficult to stay engaged but once it hit the present day scene I was locked in.

I loved the mystery of some things to the audience and the characters in addition to the audience knowing things that the characters did not.

I don't understand why they are prisoners in the underground world.

First Field Trip of the Year

Sculpture Center-
Plenty of Dada Sculptures and Bauhaus architecture
Upstairs: Everything was awesome and cool to look at.
-Shattered Stars on the floor
-Painted lip poster with stage lights as teeth
-Hawaiian hula girl sculpture with red skin and covered face
-Video where people sit in front and watch
-Automated circus trapeze
All of the elements are good pieces on their own but together they create a scene and the Dada is justified

Whitney-
Body Drama- Actress in room video tapes herself as she uses a prompt to act on. I saw the performance before reading about Body Drama. I thought she looked like a lost deer on medication. The whole thing reminded me of a NYSSSA exercise called Climbing the Mountain. I thought this performance as just an exercise not a performance. The prompt was simple to put yourself in a lonely scary place. I think it was somewhat difficult for this actress. She was very obviously in and out of the state of mind. However, she did do something right because there were some really good moments.

Potential Projections

About to ask mom for something for sucking up
Making friends and talking to someone in a new school (nysssa/college/ lifeguarding) for fear/ wanting everything to go as planned- do not want to say anything stupid
Think the person knows my secret for inquiry
Waiting for my friend to realize she needs to leave but don't want to tell her
Wanting to make conversation because I don't want to be left waiting for my ride alone
Feel like the person is secretly judging me in every way
See the person as the ugliest, most disgusting, smelly kid every that I must talk to in order to get a good grade because the teacher is watching
Trying to make the person laugh, but not think I'm too weird because he is my biggest crush/ want him to have a crush on me
Standing up for myself against my Mom without "talking back"
Standing up for myself against someone who will take it as a joke.
Standing up for myself against the worst enemy, thinks she's the shit 11th grade little bitch whore.
Prepping to tell my boss I can't work for the 4th day in a row.

Telling my brother I accidentally killed, injured or lost his hamster.
Talking to my grandmother (living) for the last time
Talking to my grandmother  (dead) once again for the last time.
Helping a crying kid with a minor injury that is clearly exaggerating at the pool
Helping a crying kid with a major injury at the pool
Talking to an incredibly annoying patron but would rather talk to them to get the time to pass
Talking to an incredibly creepy patron and just wanting it to end
Talking to a mob of patrons going against you calling you a stupid lifeguard saying you don't do your job.
Miss America.

Acting Class

I really enjoyed today's first class; I am so grateful to go back to studying and working on acting. I really missed how good it makes me feel or rather how accomplished it makes me feel. Once I reach that state of reality, not schmActing, I feel so in place. After Luke explained his theory of acting I was still confused especially in sorting out all the previous information of acting I have had before. After further discussion the confusion in ideas cleared up. However, I need more experience in the actual practice of the theory to get a firm grasp on the method.

STAC Wall

I can almost see myself reflecting back to this day later on in the year. Making a mural that I will see everyday for the rest of my high school life.  It was a nice way to begin my second year of STAC and semi-disentangle my senior year status in life. Because we already worked on core values and issues a bit last year, I was not hesitant on what to write. I simply allowed everything to flow out. The only reason I restricted myself was for STAC publicity executive decisions, but that did not hinder myself from knowing the truth for myself even if everyone else can't see it. Most of the words came from my subconscious and after looking at them and considering them more deeply I realized defining characteristics about myself in the moment. Last year I was in an incredibly different and more vulnerable state than this year. This year I am vulnerable but in a confident way. I also feel more calm throughout the day. Perhaps it is the effect of having off periods and being a senior in a school I am familiar with. I am excited to be able to track my progress and change throughout the year by looking back on my beginning year defining words. 

1st Day

Star Trek was so much fun to watch! To be completely honest, last year watching the prisoner the last 2 periods of the day caused me to almost fall asleep. It was a long day with no lunch or off periods but this year i have 3 off periods, 3 super hard classes and 3 of the best periods of my life/stac. This year I was wide awake through all of the show especially the end. I was totally skeptical at first- I didn't know the show could be so good. Actually in the very beginning I was questioning this show would just be completely strange like last years various videos and whether or not it would have a love interest and then all of a sudden it turned into a love story, kind of!
I'm super exciting to do more acting in class and on my own... college auditions yay! (? )

Bullying 2

Lear

So excited to do this thing! Playing Lear gets really intense. Lately, in my life I've been bashing out at people so much and letting my anger out. When Lear yells at everyone for murdering Cordelia (and yelling at himself as well) I  feel that personal connection and drive. Agh! I love acting. I also can feel my speech so much better after doing the letter emphasis exercises.

1st Bully Commercial for the STAC series

King Lear 2

Today's workshop with Rob was pretty cool and very fascinating. I love dissecting books, plays and literature because there is always so much that I don't see at first. By the end of this workshop, I am in love with Shakespeare's King Lear and his work in general. I love that points and themes are so real and relevant to human life because as the years progress the same problems still remain. Art is often times regarded as happy and a way to escape everyday life, but in this case as great art should do, makes us come back to our lives and have it almost physically affect our lives in that we feel (in this play) the pain and violence of how we humans act. The bleak realization that innocence sometimes dies shows us that no matter how hard we try to be "good" in life, we won't survive. The only people that do are characters like Kent and Albany: powerless and hid behind others when we know something is being done wrongly.

Dance Workshop #2 (my first though)

Today we did hip hop which was a lot of fun getting away from the classical dance, although classical training is needed for any dancer except I'm definitely never going to be a dancer so I'm good. Dance was never really for me. I guess I'm just not coordinated enough. I can probably learn the dance steps eventually but I definitely need a lot more time to get something to look remotely close to the step being taught. I do like dancing, though, but just for fun. Because I get so involved and stressed with other forms of art, I guess I've always kept dancing as the stress free form to just do with friends at a party or alone in my room. Still, this workshop is good for the exposure and experience of dance, and I do appreciate those who can dance and get those moves so perfect.

Acting Workshop With Rob Gioia

The unique thing about this workshop is that we are working towards a performance which adds a whole new factor and motivation in our work. I'm really excited to keep doing acting and I'm quite pleased with this year's STAC experience on my acting. With STAC live, getting into NYSSSA, Meisner repetition, some improv, and now this workshop I definitely feel I have improved. We are doing an abstract version of King Lear which is exciting to merely consider what that could mean.

Got Into NYSSSA!

Yesterday when I arrived home my mom yelled for me saying I think your SAT scores are back. Annoyed and tired, I slowly slugged downstairs knowing she was wrong because I know exactly when my SAT scores come. I see an uninformative sent address- New York State.. etc.. I open it up not knowing what to expect but not at all enthusiastic. As I quickly skim through the first labelings I see NYSSSA along with random words now all a blur in my memory. I got a bolt of adrenaline when I realized what this letter or package was. After screaming for this simple realization, I got around to reading the first line just to make sure it was good news. I screamed again. The smile burst through. It was an amazing feeling- the feeling of accomplishment.

Although I do have other options for summer programs, work, travel I will most likely be going. Every time, I think about the experience of being in the program I get more and more excited.

Ahhh! I'm smiling now again.

An Audition

So, I found out about the NYSSSA Audition  Monday of last week and the audition was Saturday which gave me exactly 5 days to prepare. 2 monologues: 1 contemporary, 1 classical. Luckily, in ninth grade I readily prepared one with Luke's help that was conveniently a great monologue: Lil Bit's monologue from How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel. Still, that was two years ago. The Shakespeare was the problem. I had chosen Hermia's monologue from a midsummer night's dream but, as I knew, it was just too overdone. Rob was here to help with that,. We read through a couple but the one for me was Phebe's monologue from As You Like It which contrasted greatly from my contemporary. The entire week was like a mini-hell week but only for me. This meant that it was stressful but really fun at the same time.

Anyway after many reads through the monologues and the greatly appreciated help from Luke and Rob and memorization.... the audition finally came. I was glad to have Kalli with me and especially to have her mom pick me up- Something about having my mom around before gives me anxiety. It's not that I don't appreciate her care and concern to help me but her advice is just annoying and as a natural instinct I am inclined to ignore whatever she says even if it is good advice. We also got there at around 11:10 which gave us plenty of time to find the place, get settled see who was there. Actually there was some sort of dance show going on right next to the audition room, so there were a lot more people there which eased the tension of being the only person there. The Audition room was called "Little Theater 2" which gave me the idea that it would be a smaller room than the big auditorium we anticipated during practice at the community center. It ended up being a hybrid of a classroom and a theatre. The Auditoner was sitting at floor level. I walked in and waited until she called me over. We did a brief introduction with a handshake and she immediately asked me if I wanted to just go out and do my monologue or chat first. I took a second to think but immediately felt an instinct to "chat" first. I thought first off it would help me feel more comfortable performing if the tension was eased and also giving me a moment to catch my breathe. Also being myself is always easier than being myself in another character. Anyway that went well enough. I watched my "likes" but also was very fluid in my speech- (I was probably going too fast but maybe she noticed my excitement?) I tried not to hold back. I said whatever I was thinking at the time to keep the conversation going and also give her a bit of myself. First she asked about me a bit and I told her the generic 16, 11th grade...etc. I don't remember that quite exactly. However I do remember her asking why I wanted to be in this program. At first I took a second- shit I didn't know much about it other than it was all of New York State, sleep away, acting and other arts but I'm doing acting... no worries.. I just said all this- "I love acting which is why I want to improve myself... this program has great prestige from what I hear... I will meet people from all around the state exposing me to the outside world..." She asked who am I hearing these great things from- so in came the discussion about STAC... From my description of my audition with acting she asked how much acting is done in a week. I told her about repeating and how everyone is scared of me- something I at first hesitated to say but let it out just to show her more of me.

After describing the program to me, the auditioner asked me to perform finally...
I walked to the stage and noticed the lights!- acknowledged their presence and fixed myself to be seen...
Made sure I was loud from the first word.

After performing the monologues she changed something to see how I react to change... Interestingly enough it was just an elaboration of what I had already worked on and just made more of a distinct adjustment to fit her requirements.

At the end I smiled (as if I wasn't smiling throughout the entire thing enough) told her it was great to meet her and walked out.

workshops 6

WE ONLY HAVE 1 MORE DAY!!! :'(

This has been -life changing experience is probably too dramatic but it has taught me a new skill in life. There are so many new ways of thinking I have learned especially in the movement of the human body. I probably won't consciously remember them all at once -for example I can not list them all in this instant- but I'm sure they will come up to me when the moment is right and applicable. For example, one that is coming to me now is the way that mimes have to exaggerate movements and perform things in unrealistic ways so that people.. common Gregg phrase make things so that "your mom can understand."

Workshops 5

So I'm really excited for this performance we are working on. There is now a purpose to everything we do which makes it easier to learn the moves. Also with thinking of new scenes that aren't really stereotypical mime actions we learn things we might have never done. I love our ideas because they feel really original- not deadly, yes holy. We are performing common rituals in our society but we are acknowledging that they are rituals.  We are miming them and on top of that we juxtapose strong images dead and marriage for example and then there are moods happiness to anger. It's hard to explain.

Workshops 4

Miming today was more interesting than before because we began to "think more like a mime." We started talking about our ideas for our final project performance. This is like writing a play but the main consideration was how the ideas would incorporate into good scenes for mimes. In this way we became real mimes because mimes have to think of things they want to say not just perform little tricks and unconnected routines.

Workshops 3

So today we did another character: robots and scene: fighting.
We spent most of the time on the robot which is actually not as hard as I thought it would be. Which is how I feel with a lot of what we are learning at this point. I really thought it would be harder to grasp a lot of it. I guess there are just basic things that anyone can do. Things that any human body can do. However, one thing that was really hard was walking with one foot by sliding in and out, so I'm guessing there is a lot more that will be so much harder- which explains why people have professions in mime.
The Robot overall was really fun and there is a lot one can do with it with simple practice. It's easier every movement has to be separated into different single movements. This can be difficult to keep still and keep track of things but it is much more straightforward in thinking.
After a while being a robot gets tiring and you want to just be human again. Then there are fighting scenes. We only got to the basic principle that someone makes and action but the most crucial part the is other persons reaction. In fact, it is this the victim who holds the most performance- the funner part because he or she can make the funnier faces.

Sketching Positions

It's fun and I like seeing them improve

 

Workshops 2- First Day of Mime

Today was pretty cool. I was amazed at the fact that we were able to learn so many mime movements in such a short time and actually get them to look like something. We worked mainly on creating a scene. In this way we connected acting and the theatre into miming to an incredible extent. Miming requires acting and acting requires miming. In miming we have to imagine an invisible world and acting there is an invisible world but the audience doesn't really see it through movement but rather through the words and the way things are acted. What I like about miming is that there is a sense of a definite way to do things which in a way makes things easier to learn quickly. If the movement cannot be determined by the audience then it is not being done right. Of course the challenge is to do more interesting and in some cases funnier things. One of the main things we got from today's lesson was that most of physical comedy and the miming performance is done with the face. This concept is already known to me in the form of acting by keeping one's body and face towards the audience and from singing in that the face and mouth always has to be facing the audience in order to resonate better. All in all, I am excited to learn more because we did so much on the first day I wonder what Gregg has in store for the next two weeks!

Workshops 1

Gregg Goldston
-Born in 1956 in L.A.
-Began to study mime at 18 with Richmond Shepard- mime, painter, actor, comedian, director who had operated five small theaters in Los Angeles at the time of Goldston
-Has also studied with Moni Yakim from Israel, Stefan Niedzialkowski- Poland and Marcel Marceau.
-Started a summer program for miming in 1980- "The Goldston & Johnson School for Mimes" in NYC
-Toured a solo "One Mime Show" across the United States, Taiwan, Korea and Poland as well as in Hong Kong and Paris
-Notably, performed with Marcel Marceau as his sign holder "Assistant to Marcel Marceau" in Marceau's U.S. Tours in 2000-2002

-Later in 2004, performed in Marceau's company "Nouvelle Compagnie de Marceau" in Boston
-Received two N.E.A. choreography fellowships- National Endowment for the Arts offers significant grants to choreographers with categories such as "American Masterpieces: Dance" and "Access to Artistic Excellence."
-Made appearances on The Daily Show, Law & Order & various televison commercials.
-Coached comedians, ballet & modern dancers, film actors including Anne Hathaway for "Ella Enchanted"
-Currently writing a book on mime choreography, creating a 7-tape video series on mime and physical comedy, teaching mime classes at his NYC "Studio for Mime & Comedy" and coming in at Herricks High School Tuesdays and Fridays for the next 3 weeks in February.

I am very excited. This guy seems so accomplished and I am anxious to work with him in addition to meeting him and his personality. I want to understand his passion, skill and motivation. Miming will not only be a cool thing to learn to do but from what I already know about it, it will help me become more aware of my body and its positions. 

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is STAC live and I'm really excited and hopeful for the outcome. Whatever happens I'm really proud of everything I was part of organizing as well as everything else that STAC worked on. I am most anxious for my and Kalli's script of the foreigner scene. Even though I'm just a newbie I don't feel like one at all.