May 31st - June 6th

May 31st - June 6th

30 days!

Sunday

Massage day.  The woman told me that my back, especially my right shoulder/shoulder blade is messed up.  I could've told her that.  There's no way anyone could sleep on this pathetic excuse for a bed for 10 months and carry a heavy bag everyday to class and not have back issues.  A few hours later I met Kate at the Contemporary Art Institute to hear a woman named Joan La Barbara who is a "vocal artist" but to be honest, she didn't do anything that we don't cover everyday in our practical voice classes.  I wasn't particularly impressed with her.  It gave me hope though that this woman makes a living doing what I do everyday in the studio.  

  

Union flags, for Jen :)  The next one is of the Contemporary Art Institute.

Joan La Barbara.  We sat in the back as to not draw attention to ourselves, hah.

  

Kate needed me to take a pic of her riding her bike for her IPP.  Love her :)

Kate and I sat in the sun and chatted for a few hours about IPP and life.  I need to spend more time with her before I leave.  I feel like I'm already missing her, if that makes sense.  Then I treated myself to a movie, which Tim's been telling me to see - Synecdoche, New York (word play on Schenectady, NY where the movie was filmed).  See meaning of synecdoche.  The film blew my mind a bit, as Tim warned, but then...Charlie Kaufman films usually do.  This one had a particular effect on me, as it was to do with theatre vs. reality and existential anxiety.  All things I've been struggling to define my relationship with, or discover the effects of on my day to day life.  These things were also the topic of conversation with Kate today, so it really did my head in for the night.  

I came home to find my inbox rather full, noteworthy being - an email from Catherine saying she's got some reading for me to do before the teaching certification program in NYC (sure, I can fit that in on the plane ride home, right?), and a "when will you be home?" email from a nice guy I hung out with last summer.  Still trying to be patient concerning other potential emails.  Anyway, I think Catherine is trying to get me to stray from what Katerina wants me to do for my thesis.  Secretly, or maybe not-so-secretly - I like this.  Tempt me to do what I want rather than what is expected or "right".   That's why I am here. 

Monday

5:30am I am up with the rising sun and ready to start the day.  Considering I got home so late last night I'm not sure how this is possible.  Katerina sends me a text at 6:30am saying she's got food poisoning and is canceling class but asked us to use the space to work on IPP.  I get ready to go in to yoga led by Nia this morning at 8:30am and then meet with Kate to work on IPP.  For some reason I started crying about 3/4 of the way through the yoga.  I think it's because she was asking us to do a certain kind of breathing for hatha yoga and it was some sort of muscle memory/anxiety related feeling.  You have to do "ugai" breathing - thinking of bringing your belly button in towards your spine the whole time...but this is not easy to do whilst in crazy yoga positions.  I don't know...I just burst into tears and had to leave.  I went outside and Kate followed a few minutes later.  She had me vocalize what had happened, which kept me from having an anxiety attack.  I'm convinced it was the "ugai" breathing required for this kind of yoga.  I was completely wiped out after that and we spent most of the day doing relaxed exercises for IPP.  Alex had us rolling in the grass, tumbling and things to get us to play more.  I'm all for playing, but I was exhausted at that point.  I just wanted to crawl back into bed and try to do the day over again tomorrow.  

I picked out two monologues to work on - one from Crave by Sarah Kane and one from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.  Neither of them have punctuation and both are very long (two pages minimum).  They have no logic and therefore are stream of consciousness, i.e. right brained monologues.  I realize that memorizing them is a left brain activity but once I've housed the language in my body and mind I just be able to turn my left brain off.  Here's hoping.  I'll post them sections from them because they're crazy and I love them and they make me feel like I can make some real progress in getting away from thinking too much and hyper-analyzing.  Here are snippets from them both...they're nuts, and they're both male speakers, I'm aware:

And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the the programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your... (Crave by Sarah Kane).

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast heaven to hell so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and... (Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett).

Such is my quest for being impulsive, playing more, risking more, doing what I'm afraid of.

  

Rolling in the grass and blowing bubbles - all apart of the graduate course...who would've thought?

Tuesday

We had Text with Alex Bingley today where we worked on Pinter.  We got filmed by a director from Central who was doing work for the MAVS promotion, etc.  So there was a little bit of pressure to "be productive" and make good, intellectual comments, haha.  We tested out a few exercises of our own that we'd prepared as homework to explore subtext, Pinter pauses and manipulation.  Here are some pictures from the exercises we did.

  

Jeff and Tara trying an exercise using physicalization of the actions, for example in the second picture Jeff said his dialogue and his "action" is "to oppress" so his physical action mirrored that.

  

Jeff and Tara doing dialogue from The Birthday Party by Pinter.  On-lookers...

Tara.

  

Kate and Colin doing Pinter dialogue from The Birthday Party working with the idea of manipulating vs. being manipulated.  So if Kate felt she was being manipulated she'd be at one end of the room and vice versa.  I liked this one a lot.  It flagged up a lot of areas to explore.

Kate explaining the next exercise.

  

Lu explaining that the opposing forces of people holding them back might illuminate something vocally for them...Kate enraged...

  

In this one if you felt like one speaker had higher status/more power you stood behind them and mirrored their physical stance.  How did this effect their voice/the text delivery?  

Who's side are you on??  Chris seems to be winning in the second picture...

 

Chris's posse...

  

The view from Mette's side.  Lu explaining an exercise.

Then Nia taught us an exercise about letting go.  Bells went off in my head - YES this is for ME.  Let's do it!  See video for further elucidation.

  

Video of the basket exercise (turn down volume!).  The aftermath/dizziness that ensued...

  

"Having a go" at the basket exercise...

  

The repercussions of the basket exercise :)

Daniele working hard...:)

Other groups doing Nia's basket exercise:

(Turn volume way down!)

    

  

Airplanes...for feeling freedom of diaphragmatic breathing and forward placement while doing text!

    

More airplanes...

  

Having lunch in the grass and making one of those silly fortune teller things from when we were little :)

Wednesday  

I got up around 9:30am and then around 11am made my way to the doctor's to fight my way into an appointment.  They couldn't fit me in so I had to go during their walk-in hours.  I hate doctor's offices.  I just feel like I'm going to come out of there carrying germs and virus and God knows what else.  

Around 2ish I went to Kate's for lunch and to do work on IPP.  She has been on a vegan diet for a little over a month, so we had a massive salad and some berries for a treat later.  We did some yoga and some boxing - working from either extreme.  The Yin and Yang as Kate keeps calling it.  I spent about two hours showing her how to use her new macbook.  I love teaching.  She keeps telling me that I should be doing computer tutorials as a second job when I get home.  I wish it were that easy.  

Thursday

We had Accents and Dialects with Tim in the morning, learning a Cumbrian accent (northern England).  It was pretty fun.  He had us drawing and doing artsy right brain things like if the sound for "goose" in a Cumbrian accent sounds like the word for "foot" in RP (our basis) then he had us draw a foot and a goose (for example) together and write the phonetic symbols.  Then we had to display our art and when people came around to look at our "art" we had to explain what the pictures were in the accent.  A bit of a challenge, but Tim said I did a fine job :)  We got our Phonetics exams back today, I scored a 69 (which is the equivalent to a B+.  I was pretty happy, considering how hard it was (an aural/oral exam).  

  

Chris and Tim.  Tim and Colin, Niamh in back.

  

Tim, Shona, Colin, Lizzie.  Nia and Mel laughing :)

   

Kate and I comparing our "art"...haha.  I'm trying to be proud of my amateur quick sketches of moons and tigers... :(

  

Nia's drawings...Nia showing Chris and Colin her "art"...

  

Alex showing Tim.  Kate showing Corin and Lizzie.

Then in the afternoon Katerina (being a certified Lessac trainer) ran her Lessac workshop for about 4 hours.

  

Katerina's Lessac workshop.  Mel and Thomas.

Corin, Shona and Jeff.

  

Lessac workshop

Alex, Nia, Lizzie and Mette

  

Corin and Thomas.  Colin, Chris and Niamh.  Alex, Mette and Kate - with tuning forks learning about tonal resonance.

  

Niamh, me, Daniele and Katerina.

  

Katerina and Alex.

After class I went home to change then met Nia at The Bedford (a pub/venue) in Balham to see her brother in law's gig that she was singing back up vocals for.  I was stunned by the venue, which was incredibly deceiving, as you can see in the pics below.  Nia introduced me to a few of her friends who are in "the biz" and they all bought me drinks.  How thoughtful :)  The opening act wasn't very good but her brother in law Luke Ritchie (please click this link, his music is so good) just held the audience in the palm of his hand.  His style of songwriting/playing reminded me of a mix between Pearl Jam and Dispatch.  His lyrics are delicious and his voice is just captivating - a genuinely talented guy.  

The Bedford...seemingly normal pub..until you go upstairs to their Globe theatre.

Gorgeous venue...

Opening act Andrew Dunn and Laura Swain singing some pop music I wasn't a fan of.

  
Nia and friends

The band in the Globe.

  

Luke Ritchie with Nia Lynn accompanying on piano/vocals :)

Nia singing beautiful back up vocals that she wrote for her brother in law :)

  

The band.

After a few glasses of wine and a lovely evening NOT doing work - I returned home and skyped my mother.  I had quite an uninhibited conversation with her and then went to bed, haha.

Friday

I woke up to find I'd received an email from Tony canceling our classes at TCM/Reynolds last minute (again) so I just started working on my new journal.  I did a lot of research on anxiety/panic attacks and starting to pick apart where my anxiety stems from, how I deal with it and what other people say about it.  

Then around 4:30pm I met up with Nia at Me Love Sushi for a glass of wine and a little sushi.  Then we went for a walk and went to a little cafe for some more wine and a little cheesecake.  I adore her.  She is one of the most generous souls I've ever had the pleasure of being friends with.  I don't feel like she ever judges me.  I consider her one of my very closest friends here, it is just too bad she lives so far away (that will seem an understatement when I get home).  She does live in Brighton, as I've mentioned, which is an hour south of London, so I mostly see her in class and occasionally when I've had time to visit her on the random weekend.  Her birthday is Sunday and her fiance is on tour with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and knowing that she too is having a difficult and emotional time on the course at the moment I'm going to spend Saturday night and all of Sunday with her.  She's throwing a little party and has invited all of the MAVS to it.  I really hope people show up; it would mean a lot to her.  She deserves a nice time surrounded by people who love her.  She works so hard and travels so much, not just to London for class but all over England for jazz gigs, as she's a very talented jazz singer.  She's someone I know I will be friends with long after this course is over.  

Saturday

Nia sent me a text saying she was having a rough day and thought she'd better spend it getting  settled and all before having to play hostess; so I gave her the space she needed.  I've been coming down with a wreck of a sinus infection - this weather has been kicking my ass.  I was actually really grateful for the time to rest.  I went to Kate's with the plan we'd work on boxing but she was so worried about me (and I was so out of it) that we just chatted about it and she made me tea and sent me home with homemade fresh food.  Kate had bundled me up in an extra sweater and scarf because she was worried about me.  I took the bus home, sniffling and such and got right into bed.  

I'd like to think I'm the mess you'd wear with pride.