Training

I've been immersed in some theater classes both last week and this week at Studio 206, in the Ivy Building, with two of my favorite people: Bob Rosen and Barbra Berlovitz. The classes are very affordable, as part of the studio's mission, and I felt that as I wasn't in rehearsal, I needed to take the opportunity to work on my craft.

I feel a little pretentious using the word craft, but really that's what it is. Actors, generally are fairly lazy. We learn our lines, and that's usually about it. How often do we exercise our technique when not in rehearsal? For me, not very often, especially since I've been out of school. So I felt I owed it to myself to spend two weeks of working on my practice.

Last week I took Barbra's Shakespeare class. I've taken it before, when I was doing the Deception at the Jeune Lune, but it was good to take it again. Barbra has a unique approach to Shakespeare. Her first training was with Jaque Leqoc, which was mainly physical work. With the Jeune Lune, she worked on many Shakespearean and Classical texts, and in recent years has studied with voice guru Patsy Rodenberg. So her approach is both very physical and breath oriented, which I like.

What's interesting is that while she approaches the work physically, she also encourages her students to simplify. So much of what young actors do is extraneous. She asks: Why are you making that gesture? Can you get rid of the tension in your face? Because just moving your hand, or raising your eyebrows, doesn't do anything: it's not connected to the text, or to the emotion. One of the most difficult exercises for me was to try and do my monologue only with movements in my torso. I realized how much I rely on my arm movements to speak.

This week I've been taking Bob's devising class, which is something that I could do for every play that I'm in. Instead of simply performing a play, it's about creating a piece of theater using multiple sources- text, music, an image, and simply creating an idea using play and improvisation. It takes an incredible amount of trust and courage, but I find it a lot more rewarding in the end. If I had my way, I'd be in a theater company that worked in this way for months at a time before ever performing something on stage. Hahaha. I know this will never happen in this country.