Recent (mostly theater) activity

In First callbacks, I posted about my theater activity for 2013 August 28–Sept 17. Now I’ll bring you up to date on more recent activity.

• On Thursday Sept 21, the cast for The Artist met at my house (being the most convenient for Jonathan and me, as neither of us has a car) to do a read-through of the play. We had a lively discussion of the play, particularly of the arc for my character (Harper).  We were (and still are) having some difficulty figuring out what motivates Harper in last 30–60 seconds of the play.
• On Sunday Sept 24, all 16 casts did a read-through of the entire set of 16 plays, so that everyone could at least hear the other plays once. Several actors were missing (many because of a conflict with Mountain Community Theater’s performance of Something Rotten). I volunteered to cold-read one part for a missing actor—a part that I would not have a chance of being cast in, since it needed to have someone who could convincingly play a teenage (or young 20s) boy. Some of the plays were a little better read aloud than they had seemed on paper, but there were several I was pleased to have no part in!
• Last weekend (Sept 30 and Oct 1) was a Meisner/Chekhov workshop through Actors’ Theatre, with Lana Palmer and Bruce Avery as instructors.  We were guinea pigs for a new teaching technique they were trying that combined Meisner and Chekhov techniques.  It was a pretty intense weekend with 12 hours of instruction and practice (not to mention a little bit of homework to prepare for a Meisner activity). I was a bit drained afterwards, and I think I would have gotten more out of the workshop if the 12 hours had been in 3-hour chunks once a week for 4 weeks, but the experience was worthwhile and I would do a followup workshop with the instructors.
• On Monday and Wednesday (Oct 2 and 4), I rehearsed a 2-minute scene from In the Middle of Nowhere by Kent R. Brown after acting class with my scene partner.  I really need to be off-book by tomorrow, so I’ve been practicing with the $4 LineLearner app.  Monday afternoon (Oct 2)
• Monday afternoon (Oct 2) I got the new Covid vaccine and this year’s influenza vaccine. I had only mild soreness in each arm, though I was a bit more tired than usual this week—whether that was a reaction to the shots, the number of things I was trying to do, or the unusually warm weather that started on Wednesday is not clear. I’ve still not firmly made up my mind about the RSV vaccine, as the risks of Guillain-Barré syndrome have not been clearly quantified for me yet.
• Monday evening (Oct 2) there was a rehearsal for The Artist  in my living room.  I moved all the furniture against the walls, clearing a floor space about as big as the space we will have at Center Stage for the actual performance.  I don’t know when we’ll do rehearsals on the actual stage, but we’ll probably do rehearsals in my living room about once every two weeks until then.
• Tuesday evening (Oct 3), at the ceramics class, I got back the glazed little dishes that I had made with a 3D-printed mold. I’ll do a separate post about them when I have time to photograph them. I did not attempt any throwing on Tuesday, but learned to use the slab roller and tried doing some hand building.
• Wednesday evening I set up my softbox lights and tripod again, and recorded some of the monologues I’ve been working on (none for release yet).
• Thursday was hot, but I mowed the front lawn in the morning before it got too hot and donated blood to the Red Cross midday.
• Yesterday (Oct 7) started 5 weeks of lectures and reading of As You Like It with Saturday Shakespeare (Oct 7–Nov  4). For the first Saturday, I read Le Beau’s lines, which were not particularly challenging. Next Saturday, I’ll be reading Jacques’ lines for Act II scenes 5 and 7, which include both the fool-in-the-forest speech and the all-the-world’s-a-stage speech.  I’ll have to practice both a few times to be ready. I have part of the fool speech memorized and almost polished, as I’m using it as a monologue in my acting class.
• I also re-recorded a couple of the monologues yesterday (Oct 7), and I released one on my monologue playlist: a monologue adapted from Walter Wykes’s The Worker.

Coming up:

• More hour-long rehearsals for the 2-minute scene for acting class on Mondays and Wednesdays after acting class.
• More ceramics classes—we are about halfway through the series of sessions I signed up for, and I’ll be needing to buy another 25 lbs of clay soon.
• Wednesday Oct 11 starts a 4-session table read of Hamlet with Santa Cruz Shakespeare (10 hours total).  I’m still slogging through the Arden 3rd series edition, with its dense scholarly notes, but we have received the cut-down script (cut from the Folger edition, I believe) that we’ll actually be using for the table read.  I also received my hardcopy of the 2012 Folger edition in the mail yesterday from Bookshop Santa Cruz, which was included in the cost of the fundraiser.  I’ve not been assigned a part to read yet, which won’t give me much time to prepare.
• Thursday Oct 12 will be the next rehearsal of The Artist in my living room.
• Next Monday Oct 16 starts an 8-session (Oct 16–Dec 4) radio-acting workshop with Bill Peters through Actors’ Theatre.
• Monday Dec 11 (thankfully the week after the workshop with Bill Peters ends), I have the showcase for the Theater Arts 10A course at Cabrillo.
• The 8 tens @8 are coming up January 19–Feb 24, and The Artist is scheduled as the second play of the Part 2 series (unless it changes from the current schedule). I found the dates on the ticketing calendar (https://ci.ovationtix.com/35410), but I’ve not transferred them to my personal calendar yet.