Diverse Ramblings: Not one, not two, but THREE hours of drama!

At Stagecoach on Monday nights we usually have an hour of singing, an hour of dancing, and an hour of drama. I do OK at the singing, and can more or less keep up with the dancing, but drama is definitely my weak point.

So I wasn't too enthusiastic when last night turned out to be three hours of drama LOL, and some of the class shared my sentiments, but of course the people who love drama and just tolerate the singing and dancing were very happy. Takes all sorts, hux?

Our warm-up was a game of Catch, and I've decided that Catch with adults is easier than Catch with kiddies, because although adults are harder to evade and sprint faster, they get out-of-breath quicker and decide to end the game much sooner than kiddies do!

Then we did more of those exercises that I hate so much; "Look at a point. You love that point. Use sounds to express to the point how much you love it... Now you hate the point! Let it know! Can it hear you? Louder!... Now you're looking for the point...".

Aagrh, I always feel like an idiot doing these things. Plus there was a University student there, observing and taking notes, and that raised the self-conciousness level by about ten notches, lol.

Moving along, our teacher, Toni, gave us a little lecture about different ways of acting characters, that you can either try to get inside your character by remembering a time in your life when you felt similar emotions to what the character is feeling, or else you can approach from the physical side and work more on the character's actions, posture, walk and voice. He mentioned Stanislavsky again, I'm going to have to look this guy up.

Theory is followed by practice, so we had a bash at empathising with the characters in our monologues and then practicing the relevant emotional line. Once again, felt like a wally, but as usually happens, once everyone got into it, it was OK. Nothing like seeing EVERYONE looking silly to help you get over your self-conciousness *grin*

And finally, brilliant fun in the form of an improvised sketch with Toni narrating and pulling people in and out of the plot as we go along. Yesterday's involved: a politically-incorrect Maltese Prime Minister and her aide, a rude little girl and a kite, the French Prime Minister with a German accent (yours truly, cannot do a French accent to save my life), four nuclear warheads and a political crisis, a telephone, an aeroplane, a guard of honour, the Louvre (not the Loo), an evil cow with a piece of string, museum security guards, journalists, a Maltese roundabout, a car, the cow busting some robot dance moves, scenes of carnage in various Maltese villages, a showdown between the Baqra ta' Malta and Żeppi the Gendus from Għammieri, and finally the world was saved by Maltese kaċċaturi.

It just got better and better as we went along...

A couple of people in our class are fantastic at physical comedy - they just let go and throw themselves completely into it. They always have me in stitches when they do stuff like this - just watching them walk across the room is enough to make everyone laugh. In fact in several places we were laughing too much to act... brilliant fun!

So, yes, the monologue. Didn't have to actually perform it yesterday so I have another week to really absorb the lines before wowing my class with it (because nothing kills a piece quicker than when you stand there with your eyes glazed over, trying to remember what comes next). And figure out what to do with that stupid scarf.

Four weeks (minus one day) to performance date.

I think that the last time I acted a solo piece was when I did a skit when I was about 17, in the YMCA - I saw a visiting YMCA-er perform it, and since I was the only person who could remember it, it became "mine", and my so-called friends used to torture me by making me do it at campfires and socials and so on. They would walk towards me with an evil grin, a chair, and a glass of water. The chair was my prop, and the glass of water was because this skit involves so much action that the performer needs to drink some water either before or after, lol.

It's somewhere between a mime and a monologue - not exactly a mime because there's words, but not exactly a monologue in the traditional sense because there's only three words in it: "talati, talata, talatum" *grin*

Some day I'll get someone to video me doing it.

In the meantime, to answer Hsejjes's question, my monologue of choice is "Ethel" by Joyce Grenfell, more on that this evening, all going well.

Comments

I've got some fab theatre books for you to read over summer. Remind me to lend them to you! Also, when's the performance - I want to see your monologue (unless i have rehearsals of course *sigh*)

Posted by: Reesa | June 07, 2006 at 14:01