Week 7

Monday

Scene Study rehearsal and a session with our Voice teacher working on our scene from a technical point of view. Working on the thought processes of the character turns out to be tougher than expected but we felt we were making good progress. We’d memorised our lines so that freed us up to act more effectively.

Tuesday

Storytelling: we finished listening to and discussing the fairy tales and/or myths people had prepared. Someone even adapted the ‘classic’ children’s film The Last Unicorn into a rollicking adventure.

Character: we revisited the characters from last week for one final time to see what had happened to them further down the line. It turned out that my shy aspiring artist had hit the big time, winning a prestigious ‘art world’ prize. Unfortunately, when his old teacher came to see the gala exhibition, he was too busy trying to schmooze with critics and potential buyers to chat. It was a tragic end to the characters’ journey.

Voice: we did lots more articulation exercises and worked on clarity of pronunciation. Very interesting and it turns out I say ‘little’ in RP already so that’s one less word I’ll have to work on next term!

Wednesday

Theatre History: our last session for a while in which we covered the Elizabethan period and had our minds blown when we found out that the first time Romeo sees Juliet’s face is when she’s dead (the other times she’s wearing a mask or it’s too dark – I know; crazy!).

Movement: another exhausting class in which we started learning a whole new dance and got to choreograph our own eight beats!

Singing: We’ve nearly got our medley/mashup together. Today was a good session working on the detail now we had the overall structure sorted.

Improvisation: in Impro, we played a couple of fun concentration games, including one which involved trying to keep a straight face which challenged us all! We then worked further on building scenes, this time focusing on ‘accepting the offer’ and expanding on it in order to develop the story.

Thursday

Another short voice session and rehearsal for our scene study. Not long to go until Tuesday’s ‘performance’.

Afterwards, I went into Specsavers to start the process of getting contact lenses. Having had glasses since I was about 4, this is going to be quite an adventure. Specsavers Man put a pair in for me to try out (despite my eyes’ resistance!) and it was really weird but very exciting. I’ve booked a session after the end of term when they are going to teach me how to put them in myself. In the meantime I need to practise poking myself in the eye to get used to it. Hopefully it’ll mean that I won’t fall off the stage when I can’t wear my glasses onstage (it has happened!).

Friday

Voice: a class where we teamed up with Group 2 and worked on connecting text physically with movement and breathing. It involved skipping round reciting lines from The Bacchae which was fun and very ‘drama school’!

Tech: our first class about the non-actor jobs in a theatre.

In the afternoon, we were in the Theatre watching the Summer School production of the 80s thriller Dangerous Obsession which was an entertaining twisty-turny play with a surprising twist at the end. All the more impressive was that one of the leads was a DSL graduate who stepped in with only a couple of days’ notice. Gave us something to aim for!

Saturday

In the evening, a group of us went to an evening of impro at The Miller in London Bridge. With performances from London’s leading impro troupes, Do Not Adjust Your Stage, Music Box (who improvised a musical about Vincent Van Gogh) and Shoot From The Hip, it was an hilarious evening and certainly strengthened our resolve to do some more musical impro ourselves. The Edinburgh Fringe had better watch out!

I think I’ve decided on my headshots. Only one week to go of term. By this time next week, we’ll have performed our scenes, our singing medleys and undergone a daunting process of tutorials with all our tutors… Details then, if I survive!