May 11

Oh my god, the scene is way too long, but not sure where to cut it.  I've got pages of writing and I'm barely half-way through it.  The section we discussed cutting has the gist of the play for Carolyn in it, she suddenly finds the language and says, "Nobody explores another person all alone.  You only get in where they let you in.  I never meant that there wasn't more of you to find.  I only meant I was tired of trying to find it alone." (Lee Blessing, Riches.)  Which still doesn't register with him on a deeper level, he then comments that there's hope, because she says there's more of him to know, completely ignoring the little part about not letting her in.  She's banging on the door, and yet for him, it's still all about him.  Sorry, buddy, there ain't no "hope" there if you can't hear what she's saying.  (They still are not speaking the same language, one both can hear.  It's sad: how loneliness exists in a relationship.)

Anyway, have to get what I understand into my body now.  (And finish this dialogue with the text.)

Happy Mother's Day to all who are or have been a mother to someone, whether you have your own kids or are looking out for others who need it.  Thank you.

The crows have started early

I should get up and see what they are up to. All the sensory tours went well but we only got to two scenes, ours and one more, so we won't do ours next week, which means we really need to work on our own and get this down. His needs/wants are pretty strong, mine change from moment to moment, and it was a big chunk of material last night and it went too fast for me to latch on to any of them. Scene partner said he'd work that with me this week, we can probably do that without rehearsal space, I'm feeling unanchored on stage. Do I want to believe there are other options besides abandonment, abuse and contempt? I think I do, but am I convinced that something better will never be in my cards because it never has been? He's trying to convince me that there are more options. He's definitely more the optimist.  I'm afraid to hope, afraid of change, I think. Afraid of his intensity.  Intensity=abuse in my past.

Video is done shooting. We need to figure out how to edit, how we want it sequenced and do voice-overs (which I'll need to write, but can't yet, because I don't know what we're using from Monday's shoot yet.) I read somewhere that people who are doing what they love always seem to have so much energy and get a lot done, and while that may be true, there is a point where even they have taken on too much to give their best to what they are doing, and I'm definitely beyond that point this quarter. Still have a quiz today, so I guess I'll leave now and try to get some studying in before class (three hours from now.) And gonna go see what Spot and company are up to (I suspect they may have gotten into the garbage, someone left the lid off.) Only 15 hours of social media break this time.

Nope, no garbage digging, they must've just been making a ruckus for the fun of it.

(And so, can I do the Shakespeare class without spreading myself too thin? It's only four weeks, but do I need a break? I feel like life goes by so fast and opportunities arrive and slip past and sometimes you don't get a second chance. But is this one I need? And Shakespeare runs into the intense clown class running into the performance class and then it's early September. By then I'll know if I'm doing Meisner or not. Besides applying, and being accepted, it would also require a scholarship for me to do it.)

Survived the last quiz. Video project and final to get through, then just the theatre class. Glad I got dropped from working on the conference, just wouldn't have been able to put enough effort into it.

After meeting with scene partner

And as far as the scene work goes: how would things play out different if Johnny is lying? What would he hope to gain? If he's just a player, she's already played him, there's nothing to get, she doesn't have any money. And is he slightly stalker-ish? Not in the scene, but later he says that even if the police were to come, he'd sneak back in...that's creepy, even if he's joking. And yet the play doesn't really seem creepy overall, but maybe I sympathize with him too much.

Need to test the recording equipment now. Just recording myself reading the script, two birds with one stone. I'm really unmotivated, tired of sending out missives into the void, still I continue. Someday I'll get over him, but that's still not today. (And the other one keeps calling at the last minute, even when I say I need more notice to make time. I'm not being coy, I'm busy. I don't have any free time for over a week after right now, and now I need to learn the camera equipment.  This has been going on for over a month. A non-date date.) And sh(oo)t, we HAVE to shoot the video at some point this week. Crap. It looked like it had recorded earlier but now isn't showing up. I can do it again, I just don't want someone else seeing my crappy line-reading.  I wonder if I go into the office if someone will show me basics of using the equipment? I find technical writing to not be very helpful to me, and manuals seems to make things harder than they actually are. Tell me how to turn it on and record, and what the settings are and how to play back, put the trouble-shooting in later, but it's always all thrown in together in the manuals, and I feel like I have to root around just to find really basic info. Oh, good, my classmate likes manuals.

Frankie and Johnny

So, our scene has fear, emotional vulnerability, tenderness and underlying sexual tension (or sexual energy), but no anger or volatility or hate in it, and therefore really hard to play as an improv...especially after watching all the explosive reactions in the previous scenes. We went last, and had a really short time. We'll have to go first next time, so we can get more feedback. (Also, people will have more energy to respond to it, it was almost 10 pm by the time we started.) I really want to learn from this process, and you have to have time to present the work. All the other scenes are essentially fights. Ours is someone trying to find love as a second chance, and someone terrified of that. We have seven more weeks to go.