I was somewhat underprepared for last night's acting class. I spent a good deal of time memorizing the longer sections of my part, and didn't spend too much time memorizing the smaller lines. So when it came time to speak the short stuff, I messed those up more often. And then messing those up made me less confident about the longer sections, and then I totally blanked.
Ah, well. I'm much better now.
Class started off a tad strangely. We spent the first 15 minutes or so standing out by the box office arranging for tickets to the WCU production of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". I didn't have quite enough cash on me to pay for the tickets, so I just put two on hold for Friday. I think everyone else in my class who is going to see this show is also going to go on Friday with a friend or significant other. Weird. After that, Amber arrived late with a dramatic story that Dr. Hash made her tell in front of the class. Apparently she's being stalked at work by some guy with a mental disorder, and he left her a long note this morning about how he wants to take things further. Yeah, creepy - and strange that Dr. Hash would just make her tell everyone about it. So we all had to relate our stalker stories.
We then did exercises, which were alright. It's really just a warm-up for the class, as if we're going to do anything physically intense. We're really not. We practiced the hand coordination stuff again, and Deon still isn't quite getting it. Danielle seems to be getting the hang of it a bit better, and Bob had glitches but hopefully he'll be ok before test time. After the hand coordination stuff, we did a real mirror exercise, moving all around. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels stupid trying to come up with random body movements to get my partner to mirror.
Then we split up into our groups and went into different rooms to practice and finalize blocking, which was very difficult to do by ourselves. It's enough to have us try to memorize our lines and blocking without also making us design the movements. Oh, well. Suggestions from Chris and Dr. Hash helped improve our scene, though, and I think we finally have something workable.
We start out the scene with Deon (as Skylar) sitting on a couch, and me (as Will) laying with my head on her leg. Gradually our dialogue increases intensity, and we end up wandering around the room gesturing at each other. It's really not too bad, and might actually look like we're doing something with the space we have.
Unfortunately, we're going to need a bit more practice with it before we're any good at it, so Deon and I have arranged to meet at Amber's workplace, a coffee shop in West Chester. Upstairs, they have a room that they use for bands and stuff, but it should be empty for our rehersal. And Amber is working that day, so everything should go smooth. That's assuming Deon can pull off a reasonable shift at the hospital and is able to meet at our rehearsal time.
The other guys were really good. Danielle and Amber's scene is darn near perfect (and long!) and the only thing I would say "bad" about it is that they might overact their parts a tad, just because their piece is so comedic and easy to do. Bill and Bob did a good job, too. Their scene from The Godfather was slow but smooth and dramatic. Bob makes a good Don, and if Bill can tap his inner foot-shuffler, he'll pull off his part well, too.
Deon and I have a couple of things going for us in our scene. First is the contact - Our scene is the only one where the actors are actually touching. If we can make that work, we'll score points for our performance. The second thing is the volume. If we can escape the first few minutes with our audience able to hear us, then the rest of the scene should be fine, since we're mostly screaming at each other. Mmm... screaming.
I managed to transfer our scene off the DVD and onto my phone for Deon to watch, and she seemed to benefit from it. I think seeing someone actually perform the scene a few times gives you an idea of where the characters have come from, since the actors are portraying their parts as if they've played the entire show up until that point.
I'm tapping my inner street thug. I think Dr. Hash was surprised/pleased when I started answering her pre-scene interview question of "Who are you?" in character. I'm not sure I did the best job - I'm certainly no Matt Damon - but I was still able to channel the beast well when I told her that, "yeah, I stole a car, but I talked my way out of it." Now if I could talk my way (on stage) into a good grade in this course, I will be very pleased with my abilities, indeed.
