February 15th - 21st

February 15th - 21st

Sunday

Oh, recovery Sunday.  I am waiting to post more pictures from the show until I have the official production photos from Gabby (the producer).  I had brunch with James and then tried to do some work, but felt a bit ill (not hung over ill but tummy ache ill) and took a nap...which lasted about 4 hours.  Then I Skyped with my Grandma who told me I looked tired again (this is a reoccurring theme) and with my family who was in upstate NY visiting my aunt and uncle.  It was great to see them and despite the snow they seemed like they were having a great time.  My Uncle Kerry poked fun at me, per usual, saying that I was out partying all the time.  My response: Oh...I wish!  I think I missed out on that "partying" concept in both undergrad and grad school.  My Aunt Rita said she liked my hair cut and we chatted about the show at the Young Vic for a bit.  I saw my cousin as well, who seemed to be doing well (he'd just had surgery).  They called me back a few hours later because more of my relatives had come over to visit.  My Uncle Larry was there and cousin Erika (who just had a baby) came to visit from Ithaca for the day.  The baby was too cute!  Big blue eyes and a typical Thompson family trait - very talkative.  They named her Lenora after my Nana who passed way in November of 2007.  This kid has got some big shoes to fill :)  Note to self: new chapter in book.

I had dinner which was pretty boring and sent some emails.  I feel like not only is my body slowing down but my attention span is as well.  The time I'm spending on lesson plans is like 60% and the time I'm spending on my work is about 30% and 10% is spent doing abso-freaking-lutely nothing.  What's happening to me?  I think I need a holiday...er...vacation.

Monday

This Monday's schedule did not look bad at a glance.  Unfortunately I was deceived.  

10am-11am was spent with my Research Project group.  11am-1pm was spent in Movement where we looked at the next rhythm in Roth's Five Rhythms - Staccato.  This is...how do I say this?  Exhausting.  We didn't have the usual space we're in which is quite large and cold - perfect for a movement class where you're running around the whole time.  No, they put us in Rehearsal Room 1, which was stuffy and small.  I got light headed about 15 minutes in and had to sit out for a bit.  

I have not been feeling like myself since the start of this term.  It could be that I'm not going to the gym, that the workload has doubled, that I have less free time to debunk during the week...but something has got to change because I cannot be functioning at a slower pace than I am used to.  I don't have the time to do that.  I know it sounds a bit nuts, but it's true.  I've at least started taking a multi-vitamin and a B-complex, and upped my water intake...but there's just something missing.  I think I'll start going back to the gym.  Everyone's been telling me to see a nutritionist, but it's pointless because my meals are predetermined for me thanks to the lovely Nutford House catering.  I've been spending a little more money on lunch because it's all I get during the day after 7:45am and before 7pm.  Even just writing that out makes me cringe.  

I managed to take some pictures while recovering though, which is usually impossible in that class because we're always moving.  Who would've thought?

  

Staccato.  The second picture has Anna Healy, from the MA Movement Studies who is assisting in our class as her teaching placement.

  

  

More staccato.

  

Dialogue between two people in staccato.

  

More dialogue and then a conversation with Debbie at the end.

I didn't get much done when I got home that's related to my work.  I don't know where my head is at.  I need to plan much better.  

Tuesday

Tuesday was about as painful as Monday as far as how slowly it went by.  It seems like everyone doesn't want to be there.  It's hard to stay present and in the moment when the energy level is dropped way down from what it normally is.  I found myself checking the clock a lot today, which is not like me.  

The first thing we had in the morning was a Student Led Limber, this time the theme was disco.  Hilariously good times.  Lizzie was feeling ill so she took pics (I'm actually in some of these, which never happens because I'm always behind the camera....now you can see how ridiculous I look!)

  

Jeff and Daniele were suddenly transformed into disco divas.

  

Warming up to disco music.  My dad would've loved this.

  

Musical Chairs while dancing using Laban Effort Life (I'm using "press", in case you can't tell...I'm not doing the robot.)

  

I was using "flick" and loving it.  Kate and Alex were really getting into this game.

  

More dancing.  And then quickly finding a chair.

  

Our funky limber leaders.

  

Mel fighting Thomas for the chair.  More dancing.

  

When you didn't get a chair you had to serenade the group to get back in the game.  Seen here: Colin and Thomas singing "I Will Survive"...do I sense blackmail?

  

Haha...

Then we had Phonetics which was fine, followed by Text with Alex Bingley.  We were a bit antsy to be somewhere other than Phonetics and Text, especially after such a fun warm up.

  

  

Working hard.

I had a tutorial with Katerina right after Text, in which she had me working on breath capacity and said I needed to start working my intercostal muscles more (muscles between the ribs) so I can get a more effective rib swing and make use of my breath.  Oy.  Tack that on to the pile of exercises I'm already doing!  She wants me to bring in the text I am using for the EVP next time to work on it.  

Then we had Research Methods and Outputs meetings with Bex, our tutor.  We narrowed down our research question a bit, but I am still not convinced our research is measurable enough for an effective presentation.  I've got some video clips to analyze and splice in the mean time.  We're working out how to use this audio analyzer too, in order to check rhythm consistency.  Exciting, but tedious because I'm the only mildly technologically savvy person on my course...

On my way home I stopped in a store called "EAT." whose sly marketing guile tricked me into buying dinner there.  I got an amazing salad with spinach, shredded carrot, peas, broccoli, beet root (better than it sounds), goat cheese, seeds and nuts with a chardonnay vinegar and lemon dressing.  Something I have every intention of recreating when I get home.  Delicious, filling, healthy.  Done and done.  I got a small fruit salad too with mango, blueberries, kiwi and pomegranate.  Sure beats the pants off of Nutford House catering, that's for damn sure.  

I started my outline for my essay (4 weeks til it's due) and feel much better about it.  I'm meeting with Katerina (now that my mentor moved back to Canada, um wtf?) to chat about it because I told her I wasn't sure what she wanted.  Now I guess Katerina is my mentor.  YESSS!

I chatted to Jason online tonight too.  We were talking about how I was going to put the feelers out to my connections in the states for potential jobs and he said, "Whatever you decide, you'll be able to find work...you're one of the only people I know who works hard!"  This one little comment totally made my day.  We scheduled a Skype date for tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to.

Wednesday

Getting up in the morning has become harder and harder.  My weird dreams are always unfinished too, so I usually want to know how they're going to turn out.  Today I got up around 10am, showered and headed out to the library to get some work done.  I've been reading Out of Our Minds by Sir Ken Robinson when I ride the bus to and from school, (the only time I have for pleasure reading) which I'm loving.  I feel empowered about being an educator and want to change the way that the education system is only praising "academic ability" rather than intelligence.  

I watched a film called "Make Me Smart" which was about a guy named Michael Mosley who saw if he could raise his IQ and find out why certain people are smarter than others.  A visit to an international Mensa meeting (people with IQ's over 132 for the Stanford-Binet or over 148 for the Cattell) inspires him to try out techniques to "increase his intelligence" or at least boost his IQ.  He meets with a man who is the UK memory world champion (this guy can memorize a randomly shuffled deck of cards 24.68 seconds....I know) who mentors him.  He also tries neuro-feedback which measures your brain waves (theta being the prominent wave when you are fully concentrating) which they've been using to help eye surgeons improve their performance (handy, I'd say).  Michael also meets America's most intelligent man as well as attends an institute that claims it can teach babies to read.  The card deck guy was the biggest nerd, but seemed quite happy to be winning memory contests and collecting comic books (which took up an entire closet, mind you).  Now I'm not rocket scientist, but I know that there is so much more to intelligence than a number given to you by a standardized test.  

I watched another one today called "Make Me Live Forever" where he decided to compare different ways of finding longer life or immortality.  His aim was to find out if any of these modern elixirs or lifestyle changes really affect the way the body ages.  He finds calorie restriction is too difficult.  He meets with a doctor who explained that our hormone levels drop as we get older so he gets testosterone injections and hormone replacements.  He meets a woman (a very wealthy woman) who looks forty but is actually sixty-two who's been taking them for about five years.  She just looked plastic, I don't know.

He finds out that people who live in stimulating environments live longer.  There was a mouse whose environment was modified everyday and it ended up being the longest living laboratory mouse in history.   It keeps the body off balance and mind guessing so that you are constantly building new pathways in the brain.  It helps the immune system too apparently.  Maybe that's why people who travel live longer?  Do they?  They're happier I know that much.  Always adjusting to new environments.  Mosley also visits the scientist who has created a replacement organ using stem cells.  

He reflects on it all and decides to put his trust in fate.  He said he'd be happy to grow old with his wife and let his kids take on his genes.  His immortality would thereby continue on through his children and their children. This made me think about how baby Lenora is the newest member to the Thompson family and how my Nana (the original Lenora, as I like to think of her) is carrying on through this baby.  This baby who is four generations down the line.  This baby who will have never known Nana, but will have the distinct privilege to say, "I was named after my great-grandmother Lenora Thompson."  

My mom was pleased to hear I was starting to write down information about our family's past (even if that's only reflecting on last summer) because no one has ever done that.  We only have pictures and a few scattered postcards or letters.  She said she tried to get Nana and Papa to fill out this little book of information about their youth but they couldn't be bothered.  They weren't the kind of people who felt it was necessary to write everything down.  They were happy just to live it and breathe it and more importantly, let each day go as the next one was on the horizon.  

I skyped with Jason for about an hour, which was refreshing because he's one of the only people I can speak freely too and know he will not judge me.  There's no tiptoeing around certain subjects or sugar-coating to be done.  I think we laugh a lot more that way.  He called me out when I said "process" (because I pronounced it PRO-cess instead of PRAH-cess...very English of me.)  Sometimes I am reminded that my pronunciation (and frankly some of my vocabulary) has slightly been altered since living here, but this was a classic case.  He said, "You're gonna end up like Madonna."  For those of you who didn't know this little fact, Madonna was with Guy Ritchie and came back to the states with a HORRIBLE faux British accent and was ridiculed.  This, however, despite what anyone says, will not happen to me.  1) I'm not an idiot.  2) I'm a voice teacher.  C'mon now...where's the logic in that?

 

Off to the gym!  Who would've thought!?

Microteaching is tomorrow!  Nervous.

Thursday

What a strange and long day this was.  Today turned into a 12 hour day full of ups and downs I was not prepared for.

  

Doing Cis Berry's "Heavy Jog"

  

Breath work in the style of Cis Berry

We each taught for 25 minutes.  I did the introduction, breath, release and phonation.  Then Nia took resonance and articulation, followed by Corin who did text and language.  It went okay, although I wasn't really happy with my section.  I was too stuck in making it Cicely Berry's language and didn't "make it my own" enough.  This was a comment I got during feedback.  I was also aware of what Katerina had said in my last tutorial about how I needed to work on my rib swing/suspension to support my sound better.  It came and went.  When I was thinking about it I didn't feel connected to the group, even if I sounded good.  So I let it go after a while.  It's not something that's going to happen overnight, so I needed to stop worrying about it.  It'll come with time and daily practice.  

Friday

I slept until about 10am, and then went about my normal Friday preparations: assembling lesson plans, showering, figuring out a professional-looking outfit that I could still be able to do movement work in (can be a bit of a challenge) and then got some lunch at "EAT." which I'm now a bit obsessed with, and got on the train to Greenwich.  I sign in and climb the three flights of stairs, go through the maze which is Trinity College of Music and clear out that classroom that was in the pictures from last Friday....which had about 20 desks and chairs in it.  When the room was clean and I was set up I looked at my watch - 1:25pm..."Okay, they should be here any minute now."  Fifteen minutes later...no sign of anyone.  I call Alex.  I am realizing though, as the phone's ringing, that the students are on "half-term" i.e. HOLIDAY for this week.  I've just come all the way out to Greenwich for nothing and I am laughing as Alex answers the phone.  She answers, "Hey Missy."  "Hello, I'm an idiot," I respond.  I tell her what happened and we have a good laugh.  She encourages me (claiming it's fate) to make use of this sunny day in Greenwich (which honestly is really beautiful).  So I pack up my stuff and think, "Well at least I burned some calories moving all of those desks."

I went to the Greenwich Market which was nice, although I don't have money to spend at said market, so I just took a couple pictures:

  

Greenwich Market

  

On the train, then a bit of Canary Wharf, the only part of London that actually looks like a city.

Canary Wharf station is like an airport terminal.

Then I got back on the Jubilee line and went to school to work in the library.  I made some progress with our research project and sent some important emails.  I got a call from Kate and we chatted about the RMO class she missed where Tara demolished our research question.  Then we planned to meet tomorrow to work on our text for the next Expressive Voice Project via buddy work.  

I am really getting into Out of Our Minds by Ken Robinson.  It's awakening something in me that I feel like is going to be a big change, or something revelatory.  Maybe something that will affect the way I move forward as an educator.  I feel like I'm on the cusp of something new.  It's something that's been getting me out of bed in the morning.  Searching.

Saturday

I slept until about 11am.  Had strange dreams about locking myself into a small room to escape something scary.  I'm sure it's a metaphor for something.  Haha.  Ate brunch (making healthy choices) and then came back to clean up my room a bit before Kate arrived.  She came around 1pm and we worked until about 3pm on our texts we'll be doing in our Expressive Voice Project 2.  It went well, but you start to really listen to yourself, which can be detrimental.  I get into my head too much anyway, so I need to just think about what I'm doing not how am I doing.  

After Kate left I had a healthy snack (banana and apple with peanut butter) and then went to the gym.  No cardio because I'm lazy but worked legs, arms, abs, back, etc. with weights.  At least I'm being consistent?  Then home for a shower, chat with me Mum and went to dinner.  All veggies and protein with chickpeas and egg in salad.  I wasn't exactly full but it was good enough for the time being.  I went food shopping (more healthy food like Ryvita with seeds and apples and sugar free jam).  Wa-hoo...I can't wait.  

I left to head to the Young Vic to meet with a director named Gbolahan Obiesesan who's directing a play called Sus.  He's also directed at the National Theatre (!!!!!)  I met him at the cast party for Indian Wants the Bronx and we chatted for about a half an hour or so.  Next thing I knew he had asked Daljinder (director from Indian) for my number.  He text me to ask if we could meet and chat about Sus.  Sus takes place in London, so I wasn't sure how he could use me as a dialect coach...but when I met with him he was very particular about what he wanted.  1979 East London accent.  Um...sure.  That's fine.  I can research that.  Three actors in the play, 2 of them who will need the accent.  This sounds familiar.  High-tension drama, violence, etc.  Also sounds familiar.  Rehearsals start May 18th, show opens June 13th.  The more he spoke about it the more I liked the sound of it.  He asked me who he should go through to get me paid, and I said, "I don't get paid.  This is a teaching placement for me."  He seemed a bit surprised.  Yes.  Free service, just because I need the experience.  They get me free tickets to main stage shows and free beverages, etc. when I'm there, so it's actually a sweet deal.  

Anyway,  long story short:  Landed my second official professional gig at the Young Vic doing accent coaching for a play called Sus which opens in June!  I've got my work cut out for me!

Time for bed.  Pretty tired, despite not having done much today.