Today classes were so much fun! Every single minute of it!
Starting with the Daily Acting Workout, did some warm up exercises, and then we started the repetition exercises, one person standing far stage left with their back to the rest of the stage, the instructor tells someone else to stand facing the first person’s back, the first person turns around and calls the first thing they see about the other person, and the repeat is off.
I got paired off with a level 2 guy I’ve worked with a couple of times before in the Workout, E., he’s really cute. We’ve never spoken to each other outside the exercises, although I’ve waved and said “Hi” a couple of times. Anyhow, I think he thought he had me figured out, that he had the upper hand on me, but today I intimidated him. (A new thing for me, I didn’t know I could intimidate anyone.) We were repeating, and the teacher called him: “You haven’t been seeing her for the last 15 seconds! She was being nice about it.” (If you want to be nice, work in customer service.) So E. just stops and stares at me, looks me up and down, says “You’re...” and just motions helpless with his hand at me. The teacher says, “Dude, it’s all right in front of you.” So E. starts rubbing his chin and his brow is furrowed, staring at me and I say, “You are thinking Really Hard.” And he laughs very loudly, steps back from me, his face turns completely red. The teacher tells me, “You intimidated him. Tell him that.” So I say, “You’re intimidated.” cautiously, because I didn’t really believe it. He agrees completely, “I’m intimidated.” still laughing, still red faced, so I got all proud, “You’re intimidated!”
Then the teacher had E. sit down, and another young woman, level 2, got up. When I turned around to face her, I couldn't pin down my reaction, I was just stabbing in the dark, and she got upset that I wasn't reading her correctly. Then she accused me of something, I don't remember what, and I've become aware that I shut down and hide when I hear that stuff. (Yesterday, someone called me a robot.) So today, I took a deep breath and I think I managed to stay connected with her. She started to say something else confrontational, but the teacher said, "She's being couragous." So the young woman said, "You're being couragous." And after a few moments she really saw it, and I became aware that she admired that. And I was really glad the teacher saw that I made sure I didn't shut down.
Starting with the Daily Acting Workout, did some warm up exercises, and then we started the repetition exercises, one person standing far stage left with their back to the rest of the stage, the instructor tells someone else to stand facing the first person’s back, the first person turns around and calls the first thing they see about the other person, and the repeat is off.
I got paired off with a level 2 guy I’ve worked with a couple of times before in the Workout, E., he’s really cute. We’ve never spoken to each other outside the exercises, although I’ve waved and said “Hi” a couple of times. Anyhow, I think he thought he had me figured out, that he had the upper hand on me, but today I intimidated him. (A new thing for me, I didn’t know I could intimidate anyone.) We were repeating, and the teacher called him: “You haven’t been seeing her for the last 15 seconds! She was being nice about it.” (If you want to be nice, work in customer service.) So E. just stops and stares at me, looks me up and down, says “You’re...” and just motions helpless with his hand at me. The teacher says, “Dude, it’s all right in front of you.” So E. starts rubbing his chin and his brow is furrowed, staring at me and I say, “You are thinking Really Hard.” And he laughs very loudly, steps back from me, his face turns completely red. The teacher tells me, “You intimidated him. Tell him that.” So I say, “You’re intimidated.” cautiously, because I didn’t really believe it. He agrees completely, “I’m intimidated.” still laughing, still red faced, so I got all proud, “You’re intimidated!”
Then the teacher had E. sit down, and another young woman, level 2, got up. When I turned around to face her, I couldn't pin down my reaction, I was just stabbing in the dark, and she got upset that I wasn't reading her correctly. Then she accused me of something, I don't remember what, and I've become aware that I shut down and hide when I hear that stuff. (Yesterday, someone called me a robot.) So today, I took a deep breath and I think I managed to stay connected with her. She started to say something else confrontational, but the teacher said, "She's being couragous." So the young woman said, "You're being couragous." And after a few moments she really saw it, and I became aware that she admired that. And I was really glad the teacher saw that I made sure I didn't shut down.
Today in The Actor's Instrument, we had our regular teacher for the first time, Kennedy Brown. Last week we had a substitute. We started out with breathing exercises to warm up our diaphragm, then we started adding voice to the breath, and then articulations on top of the voice. Then we got speak what Kennedy calls "Amesh", which is a nonsense language using our tongue, teeth and lips to articulate and explore different sounds.
So we got in a circle, and each person said something to the person standing to the right of them in Amesh, the person receiving the communication nods and says okay, then says something in Amesh to the person to the right of them, so on around the circle. I was nearly at the end of the circle (if you consider Kennedy to be the beginning), and it was so much fun to watch how each person communicated in Amesh, and the reactions of the people receiving. Some people were just spitting it out, some people were throwing it, some people were giving it gently, some were hyper or silly, and reactions were just as varied, from scared to grateful to "Wow that was weird". I started laughing watching all of this, I couldn't help it, it was so silly and so much fun, I tried not to laugh too loudly to avoid interrupting the exercise, but when my turn came, I turned to the person to the right, mananged to get out two thirds of a sentence in Amesh, and then I just bust out laughing hysterically, you know red-faced-can-hardly-breathe laughing. The woman I had been speaking to turned to the next person, but the teacher pointed her back to me and said, "She's not done yet." I thought that was kind of cool that my laughter was part of my communication.
Then we practiced breathing some more in various positions, allowing the breath to go deep into the belly, there was no pain there this time, Yay! And then we stood up and after some visualizations, keeping our eyes closed we were coached that we were each the greatest poet on the planet, (we were each from a different planet), and that we were to speak the greatest poem we had ever written in Amesh. So we all spoke our poems simultaneously, and then Kennedy went around and touched each of us on the arm to signal us to speak a single line from our poem. Again, there was a wide variety of poems in the room, but this time it was all very touching. One of the poems was loud and aggresive, some were soft and quiet, one was very simple, one was full of rage and frustration, I could hear the guy breathing raggedly next to me after he spoke and when we were done, I opened my eyes and there were tears streaming down his face.
My poem...it's hard to describe, I could feel it radiating from my heart as I spoke, and I spoke calmly and peacefully. The teacher commented "Beautiful" after I finished, but he had been giving compliments all along. (In other words, I'm not the only one who got a compliment--Why am I trying to devalue it??)
Anyhow, that was today. Absolutely Awesome!
1 comment:
Just because I take the occassional day off from writing doesn't mean you can. Jeesh!! I'm took the day off from work because I am sick... and I have nothing to read. I know I don't always comment...but I do read...Update woman Update. :)...time for more ibuprofen.
Post a Comment