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.

Day 103: Cymbeline, by William Shakespeare (BBC 1982 film adaptation)

I'm revisiting Cymbeline as the date for my Shakespeare Certificate exam approaches, since my monologue is one of Imogen's speeches. I was hoping to see if someone else's approach to the lines might help me get over the block I've been experiencing - Sod's Law being all-knowing, the entire speech was omitted from this particular version. It did give me an interesting perspective on the character though (played by a very young Helen Mirrin) as almost entirely opposite to how I initially read her. I suspect part of the difference comes from the style of the production - the whole thing felt very melodramatically Shakespeare, rather than the naturalistic approach that seems to be more common in recent play adaptations. But more specifically, Imogen looked a lot less like the wayward heir type on screen as on paper, less angry and stubborn and more hurt and broken.

This has led me to think more about the character type I see in Imogen based on my reading, and I think possibly looking up the "Kate/Bob" episodes of Blackadder might be closer to what I had been hoping to do. It's all valuable research though - seeing it done in a way I hadn't considered and that doesn't feel right for me still means engaging and understanding why it doesn't fit. (I should add, I'm not saying it's a bad performance or even the wrong decision for the production, it's just different and not how I want to do it, and I'm in a position to make that decision for myself.)

Day 102: War Horse (National Theatre simulcast)

I saw the film version of War Horse over the Christmas holidays, and have been looking forward to the opportunity to see the stage show since. It's a slightly different retelling of the story - some elements and characters are changed or combined... I may need to read the original book just to see which bits came from where.

This is an extremely emotional play, the puppetry is utterly fantastic. I was half-expecting something along the lines of the shadow-style puppets from The Lion King, but these were so much more dynamic and lifelike. The program mentions two years of workshop time that went into designing the look, movement and handling of the horses and the result is about as close to living horses as it's possible to have on stage. There was almost no set at all, just a few props where absolutely required - making the barbed wire scene all the more striking for being the only part of the play where the set actually took up the full extent of the stage. The score was fantastic as well, combining cinematic mood music and live singing of war songs (mostly by a "narrator" type character, but occasionally taken up by the rest of the cast). The minimalist set complemented by a constant soundtrack is similar to the staging of Coriolanus, the last NT simulcast I saw. Obviously this show has been running rather longer so I can't entirely put it down to being a current fashion or anything, but it's an interesting parallel. Partly I suspect less set and more sound translates better to screen than a busy stage with no music, so it may be that productions in this style lend themselves to simulcast screenings better.

Day 101: Tamburlaine the Great, Part One, by Christopher Marlowe

This is the second of Marlowe's plays I've read. Having seen a film yesterday which seems in favour of the theory that "Marlowe wrote/was Shakespeare" I have to categorically disagree. It's clear from the language it was written about the same time (and in the same verse form) but the way Marlowe uses that language is completely different. There's less distinction made in the speech patterns of various classes (courtiers vs slaves, etc) and the level to which it averages out is less grandiosely poetic. This does have the benefit of requiring less deciphering, but with less imagery it becomes far less interesting to read.

On an entirely unrelated note, this play contains possibly the least believable suicide method I've yet come across in any play of any era... headbutting prison bars hard enough to split your own skull and literally dash your own brains out, in one hit. And two people die this way. I'm almost intregued as to how you'd even begin to stage something like that and not have it come across as utter comedy.

As for the storyline, I found myself drawing parallels with the "backstory" and opening scenes of Coriolanus, and how that story could have gone if he'd been a little less utterly backstabbed and a bit more silver-tongued. Tamburlaine pretty much seems to show up, recieve an envoy from whatever army he's up against this time, and in the space of half a page of diatribe convinces them to not only surrender, but join him. When he finally comes up against the Sultan, he placates basically the only man in the world who seems likely to be able to stop him by... marrying his daughter. Not quite as implausible as death by headbanging, I guess.

Day 100: EAS Class

Firstly I will add that I spent the afternoon watching Only Lovers Left Alive. I've since discovered it's on a VERY short run, so if any of my readers want to see it check your local times very carefully! There is a DVD available on preorder on Amazon at the moment and I highly recommend the film to anyone who loves music, artistic photography, guitars, any of the cast members, understated/natural acting, and getting totally tripped out Hendrix-style.

Drama class today was a physical/mime session, taking in everything from slow-motion to Shakespeare via silent movies and one-sentence scenes. Got through a lot more water than usual, but I'm really starting to feel more confident and willing to play in these sessions. Pretty soon the new term will be upon us, which may mean a few new faces and names to learn, and hopefully will mean getting to revisit some of the styles and themes we've been introduced to this term. Next week we're to bring along the lyrics to a favorite song, though we've been assured we won't be singing, and to choose something accordingly lyrical. I have a couple of ideas...

Very much looking forward to the comedy workshop run by EAS I'll be joining this weekend. Today's session felt like a good warmup, and I've been told there's only eight of us signed up to do it so far so it's likely to be plenty of hard work! In a good way, of course, and I suspect that'll also mean plenty of scope/time for individual feedback.

Day 99: Sweet Cider by Emteaz Hussain

"All action takes place in a park. The park is any inner city park in northern England where there is a strong Pakistani Kashmiri community..."

I'll admit straight up, I really have no background knowledge going into this. There are a lot of words and phrases used in the characters' native language - some of them are translated in the text, but not all. Their situations, talking about living in a secret refuge, selling drugs and stolen trainers and self-harm which is shown to the audience but never dealt with in discussion between the characters, even when one sees it happen. That last point in particular threw me, it's not entierly clear why they put it in if it's never really linked in. As a snapshot of a life I have no real context for, it's interesting. Ultimately though, I feel like in my mind I simplify the story down to "these are people with issues like being gay, poverty, estranged families, religion, self-harm and pregnancy... and nothing really gets addressed or dealt with in the course of the play". Granted some of the problems presented are probably specific to the community it's meant to portray, and maybe once again I've missed a critical point. Pointing out a group of people and saying "look, they have the same problems as everyone else" is great, but I would have liked to see a bit more of a story, maybe see how those particular characters actually resolve those problems. I know this is an issue I keep coming back to - I miss the point of "snapshot" style plays, particularly in reading them. Maybe if I read enough of them, I'll eventually get it.

Day 98: Cloud Nine, by Caryl Churchill

I had some reservations about picking up any Caryl Churchill, as I have less than happy memories of working with one or two of her scripts when I was at school. While those specific expectations didn't apply to this play, I can't say I found myself "splitting my sides laughing" as the blurb promised. Maybe it's just another case of missing the humour and "sexual politics" but all I really saw was a group of people with a variety of sexual identity issues, some of which change through the course of the play, including a blatant case of child molestation that is mentioned once, referenced again later and nobody ever does anything about it. My feelings on that last point might have been influenced by how strikingly different it is to Mouths of Mothers which I read and reviewed in an earlier post. Of course, there's only so much that can be understood from reading rather than seeing it performed, but my first impression is of everyone involved being incredibly flakey about issues that should be given more care and attention - it's a rare opportunity to cover race, gay/bisexuality, polyamoury, gender dysphoria AND child abuse all in one play, and it feels like a roll call and a missed opportunity to really discuss how those issues affect people. Nobody really seems to have a solid bar set as to how much exploration on the part of their partner they are willing to tolerate, or even a clear idea of what they want for themselves (with one or two exceptions). Once again I have a play where I have to admit, I don't get it.

That all said, the genderbending for certain roles is interesting, and I might come back to this if I find a performance or film to watch. I would need to see it performed to make a judgement one way or the other on the direction that the black slave/servant is to be played by a white man - it makes sense for the script, to a point, but the reason for it "in character" is just as uncomfortable ("you'd never know he was black") as if it were a casting decision not dictated by the script. I realise I'm struggling to phrase that in writing.

The blog slipped. (Days 87-97 placeholder)

I have been keeping up with the reading. However, I let the blog slip for a few days, and then only managed one or two catchup entries so it slipped more, same again a couple of days later and now I'm sitting here with a list of over a week's worth of reading and viewing that I haven't written up, along with a handful of photos taken of me during that week (which are probably not quite as unflattering as I think they are) and feeling frustrated and worried about the next step. It would be exaggerating to say that everything is slipping away from me, that's not the case. EAS classes are going well and I am still reading or watching my requisite 5-6 plays a week. With that in mind, here's the list of what I haven't written up:

• Dido, Queen of Carthage, by Christopher Marlow
• Into the Woods, by Stephen Sondheim (at BIG arts, Sanibel)
• Sunshine Over Leith (film adaptation)
• EAS class: Introduction to Meisner
• The Laramie Project (film adaptation)
• Futureproof, by Lynda Radley
• William Shakespeare's Star Wars, by Ian Doescher

I will be doing these at some point, but for the sake of my sanity and getting the blog going again, I'll be posting short thoughts only, and updating this post to do so. Tomorrow the blog will resume with Day 98 and whatever I chose to read/see. Once again I find myself in a position of trying to reiterate this year was never going to be easy or flawless, and this is the safe time to make mistakes and learn to recover from them.

Day 88: A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare

Right at the start of the project, I promised myself that my favorite Shakespeare play from my school days would be my birthday treat to myself. I have read the play before (though not since starting the project), seen several different versions performed including at least one film adaptation, and performed in it twice: once at school as a generic extra fairy (I don't remember exactly but I think we were given a few of Puck/Oberon's lines, since we were in his train) and again at university where I played Peaseblossom and also was dresser and costume design assistant to the fairies. I won't go into details but if most actors are superstitious of the Scottish Play, I feel like this is my particular cursed script. Something has gone dramatically wrong backstage both times, and I have been involved in sorting out both, and each time the audience were none the wiser (as it should be!). All that said, it remains my favourite play. I've made no secret of the fact I am drawn to fantasy when it comes to stories, books and films. It's rarer, it seems, to find a play that isn't a musical and has a fantasy setting. I did try to focus more on the lovers and court scenes this time, since most of my love for the play comes from the fairies plotlines, and the play-within-a-play. Part of that comes from how seperate the three groups of characters are through the play. To some extent they all interact with one another, but they feel more like three stories which could each exist almost entirely alone (if not for Puck, they basically would). Minor fairies don't share a stage with any of the courtiers (except perhaps right at the end, depending on how the wedding blessing is staged) and of the mechanicals only interact with Bottom. The courtiers encounter Puck, but no other fairies. The mechanicals perform at court, so that link is stronger.

I have been considering whether any monologues might be suitable for adding to my repetoire. I used Puck's last two speeches, cobbled together, as a monologue for a speech and drama exam at school, but for most drama school auditions character choice is limited to gender-appropriate (and some actively ban Shakespeare's more androgynous fantasty roles like Puck and Ariel) so I'm not holding much hope for that to come in handy, though I might use something along those lines for one of the RADA certificates later this year. My alternatives seem to be Titania or Hippolyta, since I'm probably somewhat older than might be suggested for Helena or Hermia.

Day 87: DOUBLE FEATURE! Romeo and Juliet (film adaptation based on Shakespeare's play) and Kindertransport, by Diane Samuels

Today was mostly spent travelling, including a ten-hour flight from London to Miami. I managed to pull myself away from several hours of re-watching old favorites (yay, on-demand videos! Makes a change from last time I flew to the US and they didn't have individual screens at all) to check out the most recent incarnation of Romeo and Juliet, as well as reading my chosen play for the day, Kindertransport.

I'll start with Romeo and Juliet. The film is billed as being based on Shakespeare's play since some of the language has been updated a bit, mostly when the people speaking are meant to be teenagers - the older generation tend to stick more faithfully to the original text. I've always shied away from modernisations, but the last time this play was brought to film in Baz Luhrman's version the setting was modernised leaving the script almost entirely intact and I really found it uncomfortable to watch. This was a complete joy, in contrast. The younger generation characters were played by actors much closer to those in the script than is usually the case, possibly combined with the slightly easier text this may have been intended to draw a younger audience into the story. There was also an unusual twist to the ending - the first kiss that Romeo gives the comatose Juliet actually wakes her up, so in his final moments of life, having already taken the poison, he not only sees that she is alive, but they very much share their final kiss goodbye and she watched him die in her arms. Utterly heartbreaking and a fresh take on the scene - most of the renditions I've come across she only wakes after he dies. That scene aside, the whole unfolding tragedy seems so much sadder with the characters played so young, the deaths that come from the various duels feel far more accidental in the hands of angry children who might just as well be playing at swordfighting, only happen to have live blades. Perhaps my being a little bit older has something to do with that feeling too, though.

Moving on, Kindertransport tells the story of a jewish girl sent out of Germany as a refugee in the late 1930s, and tracks her gradual but total naturalisation in England, leaving behind her entire heritage to such an extent that her husband and daughter don't know about it. The play is split between following the young Eva in her journey out of Germany to Manchester from the age of 9 through her teenage years, and the much older Evelyn, preparing her own daughter for university and leaving home and coming across books and letters from a past and now denied childhood. I read The Diary of Anne Frank (in original German) at A-level, which covers what the girl in this play was getting away from, and Goodnight Mr Tom much earlier, which gives some idea of (domestic) refugee children. The combination of the two was really something I hadn't thought much about before. I think I had it in my head that the German refugees fled to nearer continental countries like Austria, rather than winding up in the UK, so this is yet another play I feel like I've learned from (and also come away not entirely sure if I sympathise with any particular side of the arguments presented).

Day 86: Day off/EAS class

We had a stand-in tutor tonight, who works in forum theatre. Our focus for the evening was discussing and expressing the concepts of survival, resistance and thriving, and within that a focus on physical tableau and body language rather than speech. Working through Plays for Today by Women and also Other People's Shoes as I currently am, it was an interesting practical session which coincided perfectly with my current reading. I am increasingly feeling that 2 hours is a short session for fully exploring each new idea we're given. Recognising that, it makes it all the more important for me to keep up my notes after class, so that I can come back to them when I meet each idea again in a longer form in the coming years. Today I certainly felt a little bit behind, as much as I tried not to show it and it wasn't commented upon, but my trust in my physical masks is lacking. In the past I've not really thought much about it, trusted that if I could think hard enough about what I was saying and its context, that the face would show what I needed it to. Movements might be copied from observing friends or other actors, but never in front of a mirror, just moving according to an image in my head. I'm not sure where the concern that what I want to show might not come through has surfaced from, but I've been noticing a similar worry in my rehearsals for the Shakespeare certificate. I hope we can cover more non-verbal activities in upcoming classes, as it's certainly something I need and want to work on.

Day 85: Welcome to Ramallah, by Sonja Linden and Adah Kay

Another from Plays for Today by Women, and again I find myself learning about current/recent historical events that I really should have known more about. This time the topic is the occupation of Palestine, with two very different perspectives as two jewish girls talk with two men from Palestine. One of each pair are fairly open minded and have already learned something of the other side of the story when the play opens, their sister and uncle respectively are far more convinced that the story they know, whether told by family or having lived through it himself, is the only one that is true and/or meaningful. By the end a lot of information has been exchanged and while convictions are hard to break in the space of hours everyone does seem to come out of the meeting with a deeper understanding of the whole situation.

For me, what little I heard of the war/occupation over the last few years was just another war - I developed a rather awkward combination of cynicism and fear about war as a child and tend to lump together "wars" in general in my head and avoid reading about them. As something of an introvert, I was pretty much of the opinion that if everyone in the world minded their own business and didn't take things that weren't theirs, we could have an ideal world. (Sharing wasn't my strong suit...) The biggest sticking point on that theme in the play is the Jewish girl maintaining that these were "ancestral lands" that used to belong to her people thousands of years ago, and that they have, however minorly, been living there ever since so it was merely reclaiming what was rightfully theirs. Obviously not the way the current locals are going to see it, and thus we have the main argument of the play. It's fairly clear to me which side the play invites the audience to take for most of the action. There is a final more personal twist at the end, but I will in this case avoid giving too much away and instead encourage my handful of readers to find the play and watch or read it for themselves, particularly if you have a very one-sided (on either side) view of the occupation, or like me have very little knowledge or opinion.

As a complete aside, I found myself considering an ongoing situation in my LARP game where an ancient race is fighting a nation for control of their land... and the ancient race has a much older claim to the land. It is a fantasy setting (and also a game) but I was seeing parallels with the in-game situation through the whole play, and may well end up taking some of the thoughts and messages from the play back to the game.

Day 83/84: A weekend off...

Between the start of the olympics and a rather fuller week than I've had so far through the project so far, and the lingering uncertainty and gremlins, I seem to have needed a weekend to zone out, figure out my sleep pattern and regroup for next week. Feeling worse for skipping a couple of days, because I feel like I need to be harder on myself than this. Hopefully I can come out running tomorrow and get back to where I feel like I need to be now.

Day 82: From the Mouths of Mothers, by Amanda Stuart-Fisher

This play was created in collaboration with a charity that supports the non-abusive parents of sexually abused kids, and is adapted from several hours worth of interviews with voluntary participants. It's certainly not a light play, and it isn't meant to be. The stories all overlap, which makes it rather hard to follow for a lot of the early part of the play. Maybe that's partly my own struggles with following more than one conversation at a time, but I suspect it's also partly to show how easily each voice can become a bit lost in the noise for the medical, legal and emergency service professionals involved, and how devastating it is being just one lone voice that nobody can give full attention to. We do get to see each mother interacting with the son or daughter in question through the play, in snapshot conversations, but the mothers don't talk to each other. The final line brings them all into unison and... well, just reading it had me at the point of tears, so I can only imagine what it would be like to watch performed.

It's an awkward and difficult subject, and a lot of it makes for uncomfortable reading, as well it should. Some plays are subtle in their politics or activism. This one pretty much just comes out and talks about it, straight up. There's a lot of good advice, though most of it comes from examples of how not to deal with things. Whether I'd recommend it to others, I think if it's a subject you're interested in, it's worth a look. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, going to hit hard anyone who has been involved in simlar situations from any side of the story, but really it can't be any other way.

Oddly, I'm considering this as a potential source of monologues. There are a few of the mothers who are spot-on age appropriate and some great deep emotional stories (and because each story is just broken up through the length of the play, it'd be easy enough to run a couple together for length) - I would probably need to choose a different Shakespeare piece to go with it than the monologue I'm currently working on, for contrast - there's a subtle difference between a soliloquy and directly addressing the audience and I feel like it's not enough of a distinction.

Day 81: A Dish of Tea with Dr. Johnson, (adaptation based on two books by James Boswell)

The title credits were getting a bit long so I abbreviated, in full they should read: Adapted by Russell Barr, Ian Redford and Max Stafford-Clark from James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The play is presented as a sort of living memoir delivered to an implied small and intimate audience by Dr Johnson, both as long monologues and conversations with Boswell. The conversation seems to keep coming back to the theatre, particularly discussing prominent contemporary actors (and at that, mostly Garrick).

As a portrait of the man, it is an interesting read though I suspect as with so many plays rather a lot is lost in not hearing and seeing it acted out. I did find myself hearing Dr Johnson's voice as he was portrayed in Blackadder, and I suspect either both sets of writers were working from the same source material or the writers of this play had been somewhat influenced by the episode in which he appears. Either way, he seems to have been a classic example of the eccentric, addictive-personalitied, self-assured and manic creative type, who seems to take a lot of pleasure in disliking and disagreeing with things.

There's a lot of quick changing, if cast according to the suggested layout, for the man who for most of the play is Boswell. Some of these are instant shifts on-stage from a female character back to Boswell, which put me rather in mind of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, only I don't get the impression this was intended to be a farce, so I'm not sure how that would work - again, interesting to see, should the opportunity arise.

Day 80: EAS day/no play.

I'm going to keep this brief since my laptop has stepped up it's death throes and I don't want to keep it running too long while it's in this state. Did some excellent characterisation work today, using the same scripts as last week we were first set mixed-group improv scenes in crisis situations (my group was shipwrecked, and characters included and 8 year old boy and and an insulin-dependent diabetic) using what we knew or felt able to add to our scripted characters. The second excersise was to take that characterisation back to the scenes as scripted, but to work through the scene in our own words from an approximate memory without looking at the script. Finally with the feelings brought out in those two scenarios, we went straight into performing from the script to the class. Every scene came out much more emotional, much more natural and much more off the page. Definitely something I can take away as a method to use in building the characters for my monologues for the Shakespeare certs and later for auditions. Next week we'll be working on some more general acting excersises rather than direct script work, and in the mean time I plan to go along to trial sessions for Alexander Technique and Pilates at DanceBase this week. Definitely glad I made the decision to join EAS - I feel like I've got a bit of the lost mojo from earlier in the week back, and I'm starting to feel more open and trusting with my acting.

Day 79: Yours Abundantly, from Zimbabwe, by Gillian Plowman

The first in a compendium of six recent plays written by women, this one mainly takes the form of a series of letters from children, the headmaster of a local school in Zimbabwe, and his wife to a woman who met one of the kids while on holiday there and (in the eyes of her daughter) is having a "midlife crisis" in making plans to return as a teaching assistant. Through the eyes of both the locals, and the wealthy and deeply sympathetic woman who becomes their benefactor, the story of life under Mugabe unfolds, and one by one the letters begin to talk about friends who are lost to illness or under circumstances where the government is implicated. Eventually the headmaster is killed explicitly for his anti-government beliefs, and we're told that the woman continued to teach at the school after his death.

When I was growing up, I didn't take a lot of interest in world current events. A newspaper was something for grownups - I was interested in fiction, particularly fantasy, and the snippets of information that filtered through to me when I accidently saw parts of a news program on television, or saw the older girls handing out badges for some overseas cause or other scared me away. I can't help feeling a little bit like I should know more about the background to the play than I do, and I certainly feel like I come away from the reading with more of an understanding than I had before. When I was seventeen I visited Tanzania for a month with a group from school, a trip that included a week working with a Masaai tribe. While I was out there we did get to briefly see their local school, which I think gives me a bit of context for the play - it is a different country and a different set of circumstances, but as an image to keep in mind it's probably closer than imagining any school I've ever been to.

The daughter's protests that her mother won't be able to get her home comforts if she goes out to Zimbabwe struck me as equally funny and deeply sad. It has been my experience in travelling to a whole range of places in various states of development that it is always easiest to let the place tell you how to respond. The friends I went out to Tanzania with will probably all agree, on returning we were all craving hot baths, bacon, a bed without a sleeping bag, water that didn't need iodine added to it... but I don't think I really noticed missing those things while I was out there. There were so many other experiences, and simply a different way of life, that pining for those creature comforts wasn't so much inappropriate as just something that didn't occur to me. I'm not sure everyone I was with would agree with that second part, and I suspect that the sentiment in the play that it's crazy to think you could just live without everything you take for granted every day is one that a lot of people would find themselves nodding along to. And that, I find sad.