END OF PHASE 1

Yesterday was my Bronze certificate exam at RADA, I felt like it went well, now comes the wait for the results! This marks the end of the first phase of the project. From here on in, it gets a little bit more loosely "play a day" and rather more varied as a self-study project.

My plan going forward includes a soft start this week (I have a planned break at the end of the month already) but should be fully in place to start at the beginning of April, and the new requirements are as follows.

• 3 plays read per week to include one Shakespeare/Classical.
• 1 play seen live or film adaptation per week.
• 1 other film per week seen for the first time. (should be something new at the cinema but might be an older film I just never got round to seeing)
• 1 acting class per week
• 1 choir session per week
• 1 monologue work session per week with research and feedback (some of these can be 1-on-1 EAS classes)
• 3 workout sessions per week to include one long walk and at least one Dancebase class.

I will also be continuing with the Shakespeare And His World online course, and working towards wrapping up Phase 2 in June/July with auditions for the performance class at EAS for the Autumn term, and hopefully the Silver Certificate exam if everything goes to plan.

There will be 4 phases in total, each reliant on completing the previous one, but in an ideal world, Phase 3 will be a longer session which ends with an EAS performance and the Gold certificate exam, and leads into Phase 4 being applications and auditions.

We're On A Break

I've been dragging my heels on this project for a couple of weeks, with every excuse from being abroad to having a bit of a cold to just not being in the mood for reading/writing on a day. I've added a few new things to my schedule - I'm doing an online course on Shakespeare And His World, and starting in April I'm planning to join a choir. My Shakespeare exam at RADA is this weekend. This isn't defeat or an end to the project entirely, just taking a few weeks off to focus on other things, during which time I will take some time to work out how best to restart "season two" of this blog. It will probably involve more movies, more emphasis on the various activities and classes I'm doing, more structure to what and when I read and how I write about it.

I just want to say a quick thank you to those who have been reading and following this blog along the way so far, and if you have any suggestions as to things you'd like to see - deeper thoughts on what I do in class, plays you think I should read, activities I should add to my weekly schedule... leave a comment. I can't guaruntee to use everything, but I'll do what I can (within reason!)

Day 106: The Artist Man and Mother Woman, by Morna Pearson

It's always a little bit awkward to watch a grown man submit to an overprotective mother. It's never expressly stated but I get the impression the "Artist Man" might be very easily played as rather autistic, though it seems to stem more from the dysfunctional relationship at home, where at forty-something he still lives with just his aging mother. His father is dead and this is only mentioned briefly and skated over in a scene that could be played in so many different ways. When he ventures out to the shops alone for apparently the first time in his life, and advertises for a date, she does everything she can to stop it - including murder, though this it once again only strongly implied rather than exactly stated. I was left with the strong impression that perhaps he doesn't really know about his differences, that maybe he has been so sheltered that stretched to not telling him of a diagnosis (though his interactions with the few people he meets at the shop and through his dating ad make it painfully obvious that he doesn't have much in the way of social skills, dispite being an apparently successful art teacher)

This play is written "in dialect" and while I've struggled with this before, I am starting to get the hang of particularly the scottish terms - I think partly being in a weekly drama class with mostly-accented classmates has helped to attune my ear. I didn't find I was slowed down nearly as much by it this time, and was drawn into the story with a deep sympathy for the vulnerable and smothered Geoffrey.

Day 104: The Awkward Squad, by Karin Young (Day 105 is day off)

Penultimate "Plays for Today by Women" installment. Interesting take on the class divide, using memoires of the mining strikes as a parallel for more recent financial problems in a family with roots in the mining community but aspirations of a middle-class life. Naturally everyone's apparent success is short-lived and there are secrets each is keeping from the others, making for an engaging read and I'm sure, an exciting play in production. Not much in the way of monologues apart from the character in her late 60s, but definitely one to keep to hand if I ever need pair or group work scripts.

I feel like I'm running out of things to say specifically about all these plays, I may need to rethink why I'm doing this project. Firstly the reading is to get a better feel for what's out there as well as returning to a few old favorites. I've probably read more plays in the last 100 days than I had in my entire life previously. This blog is meant to be a check that I am focussed while I'm reading, that I can take something away from it and articulate that in writing. It's partly telling that the blogs written when I haven't had the opportunity to talk to someone else about what I've been reading tend to be shorter, and more often seem to be full of missed points or even straight up admissions that I didn't like the play. That's a tricky one to solve - ideally this blog should be a way of having that discussion myself, without the need for an external ear. I have never been all that good at factual writing. Essays at school were a chore, even lab reports and projects at university were a slog. Where this project has fallen down has almost exclusively been the writing side of things. So, I might try mixing things up a bit. Maybe in future posts sometimes there will be character explorations, or fiction written taking the play as inspiration. I'll probably feel a bit silly doing things that way for a while, but if it refreshes the blog a bit and makes it easier to maintain, then that can only be a good thing.