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.