-22.4-

I realized that I haven't finished my reflection on the acting workshop with James III, yet, so I will do so in two separate posts. One will be for the purely Shakespeare acting, the other will be for the improv workshop.
Shakespeare:
We moved on from Sonnets to small scenes. The actors that were in the musical did their scenes from The Taming of the Shrew, and the rest of us did small scenes or monologues from The Tempest.
Before all that, we did an interesting exercise on "O's." I think doing the warm ups was my favorite part of the workshop, but this was my favorite exercise.
For the exercise, we got a card with an emotion on it. We had to say "O" with that emotion, while the others guessed what we were acting out. I liked it a lot, because you could say "O" with such emotion that you could probably hold a conversation with someone just by saying "O!"
A similar exercise was when we said a line from a Shakespeare play in different ways. We all got a line, then James told us how we should say it ("Say it like there's a baby in the room, and if you wake it up, it will never stop crying!") I enjoyed both warm-ups. It was fun to really put yourself into your emotions.
Back to the Shakespeare. The people in the musical worked on a Shakespeare scene, and I was put into one of the Tempest scenes with Emily and Lex. We read through a couple times, and got the general part, since James explained it to us beforehand, but some details of the scene confused us (What is a moon-calf?)
Finally, we both presented. I tried really hard to let go, and I was happy that the others watching us got the plot (a success)!
Overall, it was an enjoyable workshop. I felt even closer to the "actors" in STAC, and I learned that sometimes you need to let go and focus on the feelings behind the words instead of the actual words themselves.

-16.4-

I believe the Shakespeare workshop, taught by James III, was my first pure acting workshop in STAC. I enjoyed it, but felt a little shy because I'm not usually an 'acting' person.

As I discussed when writing about the Shakespeare documentaries, Shakespeare IS about debating the meaning of the work, and presenting your results on stage, but it's also about making sure the audience can see your actions (it's also about getting used to speaking in iambic pentameter.)

During this workshop, we mainly focused on making our actions big (as if people in another room had to see us present Shakespeare.)
Before the workshop, we all chose a sonnet (it couldn't be the more popular sonnets). I chose sonnet LXV (65) because I thought the rhythm of the words was calming.
After warming up and introducing ourselves, we reviewed how the iambic pentameter sounds, then read the first line of our sonnets in this way. For some, breaking down the syllables was a bit harder than others, but we all managed to say our lines smoothly.
Next, we focused on action. We chose words in the sonnet that stood out to us, then thought about actions that suited each word. When comfortable, we silently performed the actions, then added sound effects to the action.
I was used to focusing on action, rather than getting into the mind-frame, from Luke's acting advice, but yesterday was different since we had a physical "script" to act from.
Acting individual words out of context seemed a little strange to me, but when people started to present their sonnet to the group; the actions fit the meaning of the sonnet!
After the initial performance, James started to go over making movements bigger (be big because you can always pull back if needed), and adding in context. For example, Brian's sonnet was directed towards a love intrest, so James had one of the girls stand next to him, and the rest of the guys stand up, so Brian had actual people to refer to while acting. Since many people had sonnets that involved antithesis, James encouraged them to emphasize the differences in order to get the meaning across even clearer.

When I went, I was nervous, but I tried to speak clearly and with the iambic pentameter in mind (people before me had some trouble with destressing words commonly stressed. The night before I didn't have time to go over the meaning of the sonnet, so I acted blindly. It went all right, and after we discussed the meaning of the sonnet (although time erodes everything, I hope my love for you in this letter withstands time). Without meaning to, I emphasized the meaning of "rocks impregnable"by pausing before doing my action for rock (James said the pause interrupted the rhythm, showing how even the words were stopped by the strength of the metaphorical stone.)

After I went, we ran out of time, so we recapped what we went over. While recapping, I began to think about how hard acting Shakespeare is. There are many ways of approaching it, and it's easy to get caught up in your approach to acting. However, when it was my turn, almost everything went blank. I suppose in the end it's as Charlie Parker says: "Then you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."