Monday

Unless I can get this Emilia monologue to work, totally new monologues next week.  We need to present two for the final class (like a real audition) plus also do a side for a call-back situation.  We'll probably have an outside audience, possibly a casting director (because people requested that.)  So, a lot of work to do.  At least, need to choose, so I can do the character work.

Went to the drop-in Suzuki session tonight.  Took time off of work to go; there were three of us, plus the instructor.  We did marches and slow-ten (not sure how to write that.)  I like the slow-ten.  Feel very uncoordinated and amateur otherwise; started to get the marches by the second time through.  Started to.  Learned an arm movement we hadn't done in the intensive, which confused my body-brain connection.  It's still: the centering, the actual movement, the stillness, the holding of the stillness for as long as possible before moving (as quick as possible), the rhythm, the moving in sync with everyone else, and the switching of sides (not to mention just trying to remember what the movements are supposed to be), and the focus.  And then we did the whole sequence again, switching sides of the body, to the non-dominant one, which always throws me off.  Perhaps it's like learning to play the drums, or the piano, or whatever it is where every limb is doing something different and you just have to learn all those things and then forget about it.  When I was learning how to play a drum kit a number of years ago, I remember the moments where I had each limb doing a different thing, and I'd get excited about that, and then think about it, and then lose the groove...actually, that's acting, too.  And I guess that's part of why this is good for that.  (Acting is holding all those parts of the character in your body and voice and mind, and using yourself to communicate their story for them.  You do all the work, and then it's there, and available.)

Anyway, it's only an hour, and in some ways that seems so short, but in others, plenty.  I think the only thing I might have been able to do at the end of the hour would have been statues, and not very many of those.  I was super shaky.  Fatigued.  And really hungry.  (And then I had choir rehearsal after, so wiped out now.) Surprising how much energy it takes to hold focus, intention, and stillness.  I'm not sure when I can go again, but it's the sorta' thing that needs a lot of practice.  I enjoy it, when I get over the nervousness.