What's been keeping me from posting? Here's a little segment on Regan's MFA grad school week in review:
Sunday - travel to LA to assist with the showcase of the 3rd year actors in my program; mind blown by Werner Herzog's new movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams at the Arclight in Hollywood; get to see my good friend and former East High head boy TJ Miller do stand-up at the LA Comedy Store.
Monday - 3rd year showcase presentation for agents, managers, and other industry folks (people like Tony Shaloub, Camryn Manheim, and other interesting folks are in attendance to see UCSD, NYU, and Yale do their stuff...and Regan is part of shuttling some of them to the theatre in her van when they have to park a few blocks away)
Tuesday - Back to school in San Diego - create a finger play in movement class that is then translated into a staged film noir-esque presentation with black hoods over our faces; continue Shakespeare scansion and sonnets (see end of post for one of Regan's creations); learn and practice liquid "ju"s in speech (as in a word like "music"...the yeeeuuuuww sound...oh, it's too fun); blow the roof off our building when our 1st year class learns some incredible Crosby, Stills, and Nash harmonies in singing. No evening rehearsal or class - woo!
Wednesday - Yoga; practice an emotional monologue from disabled playwright John Belluso's "A Nervous Smile" and work on avoiding vocal strain amidst intense delivery; discuss the intersection of Shakespeare and disability with the masterful Jim Winker over lunch; rehearse a comedic scene from His Girl Friday for acting class and marvel at the comedic talent of actors like Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant (who started out as a circus man, by the way. Check out some of the brilliance in this clip); evening collaboration project with 1st year actors, directors, designers, dancers, and playwrights
Thursday - More movement, skills, and speech, with an evening filled with callbacks for the fall UCSD shows - The Dybbuk (a Jewish exorcism story) and The Storm (a Russian drama about love and death) - succeed in making the auditions great fun (including turning one of the audition monologues into an interpretive movement piece); host a Cinco de Mayo celebration
Friday - More yoga, more acting and critiquing fellow actors in scenes, more rehearsing of monologues and phonetic scansion of Shakespeare; mildly interrogated by a nice old man at the bank who questions me in an indistinguishable European accent about why I'm using a wheelchair and whether someone did spinal surgery on me and messed up...I assure him that the surgery was actually the successful part! I think he gets it by the time I have to leave the line and go to the teller. Evening Mexican food in Coronado and a short exploration of the Hotel Del Coronado beneath a beautiful evening sky. (By the way, those who are not in California may not know that restaurants are required to put caloric content on menus out here...and I just have to say, I don't really care about seeing how many thousands of calories I'm consuming when I ingest tortilla chips and margaritas...if there's a measurement of the amount of deep-soul happiness I gain from eating a basket of chips, feel free to put that on the menu. Heh heh.)
Saturday - Swimming and fundraising at the 1st UCSD-hosted Swim With Mike event (my director friends Josh and Larissa end up winning the kayak jousting competition); attend Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy at San Diego Rep, and get to see behind the scenes of the entire theatre building, garage, and more due to the fact that the one elevator to the theatre is broken (but, love the show!); enjoy a night watching a movie with cupcakes and avoiding homework :-)
Sunday - Brunch and sightseeing with a good friend from Denver - Mount Soledad, seals at La Jolla Cove, and Balboa Park (get to sit on the stage next to the Spreckels Organ for the weekly concert because it's raining...what an awesome experience to hear full organ blasting next to your head!); visit the United Nations gift shop; read a play, do some scansion, meet up with 1st year actors to welcome new residents to our building, and prep for a week of Shakespeare, comedy, film noir, emotional monologues, a visit from Anna Deavere Smith, songwriting, a Beckett project, grantwriting, and plenty more!
So, this is a pretty typical week (although I left a few things out). But, just a taste of what this experience is like!
And, I thought I would share one of the many sonnets I have now composed in my Shakespeare skills class. We were to write about a character we played at some point in our past, and I chose Little Becky Two Shoes from Urinetown - The Musical. For those who may be interested but have perhaps forgotten since high school English class, a sonnet is typically 3 quatrains of rhyming verse with a couplet on the end, written in iambic pentameter (look it up if you're curious). This one follows that structure, with a few syllabic irregularities for effect (see if you can spot spondaic, pyrrhic, and trochaic feet, feminine endings, and syllabic compression or expansion).
Sunday - travel to LA to assist with the showcase of the 3rd year actors in my program; mind blown by Werner Herzog's new movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams at the Arclight in Hollywood; get to see my good friend and former East High head boy TJ Miller do stand-up at the LA Comedy Store.
Monday - 3rd year showcase presentation for agents, managers, and other industry folks (people like Tony Shaloub, Camryn Manheim, and other interesting folks are in attendance to see UCSD, NYU, and Yale do their stuff...and Regan is part of shuttling some of them to the theatre in her van when they have to park a few blocks away)
Tuesday - Back to school in San Diego - create a finger play in movement class that is then translated into a staged film noir-esque presentation with black hoods over our faces; continue Shakespeare scansion and sonnets (see end of post for one of Regan's creations); learn and practice liquid "ju"s in speech (as in a word like "music"...the yeeeuuuuww sound...oh, it's too fun); blow the roof off our building when our 1st year class learns some incredible Crosby, Stills, and Nash harmonies in singing. No evening rehearsal or class - woo!
Wednesday - Yoga; practice an emotional monologue from disabled playwright John Belluso's "A Nervous Smile" and work on avoiding vocal strain amidst intense delivery; discuss the intersection of Shakespeare and disability with the masterful Jim Winker over lunch; rehearse a comedic scene from His Girl Friday for acting class and marvel at the comedic talent of actors like Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant (who started out as a circus man, by the way. Check out some of the brilliance in this clip); evening collaboration project with 1st year actors, directors, designers, dancers, and playwrights
Thursday - More movement, skills, and speech, with an evening filled with callbacks for the fall UCSD shows - The Dybbuk (a Jewish exorcism story) and The Storm (a Russian drama about love and death) - succeed in making the auditions great fun (including turning one of the audition monologues into an interpretive movement piece); host a Cinco de Mayo celebration
Friday - More yoga, more acting and critiquing fellow actors in scenes, more rehearsing of monologues and phonetic scansion of Shakespeare; mildly interrogated by a nice old man at the bank who questions me in an indistinguishable European accent about why I'm using a wheelchair and whether someone did spinal surgery on me and messed up...I assure him that the surgery was actually the successful part! I think he gets it by the time I have to leave the line and go to the teller. Evening Mexican food in Coronado and a short exploration of the Hotel Del Coronado beneath a beautiful evening sky. (By the way, those who are not in California may not know that restaurants are required to put caloric content on menus out here...and I just have to say, I don't really care about seeing how many thousands of calories I'm consuming when I ingest tortilla chips and margaritas...if there's a measurement of the amount of deep-soul happiness I gain from eating a basket of chips, feel free to put that on the menu. Heh heh.)
Saturday - Swimming and fundraising at the 1st UCSD-hosted Swim With Mike event (my director friends Josh and Larissa end up winning the kayak jousting competition); attend Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy at San Diego Rep, and get to see behind the scenes of the entire theatre building, garage, and more due to the fact that the one elevator to the theatre is broken (but, love the show!); enjoy a night watching a movie with cupcakes and avoiding homework :-)
Sunday - Brunch and sightseeing with a good friend from Denver - Mount Soledad, seals at La Jolla Cove, and Balboa Park (get to sit on the stage next to the Spreckels Organ for the weekly concert because it's raining...what an awesome experience to hear full organ blasting next to your head!); visit the United Nations gift shop; read a play, do some scansion, meet up with 1st year actors to welcome new residents to our building, and prep for a week of Shakespeare, comedy, film noir, emotional monologues, a visit from Anna Deavere Smith, songwriting, a Beckett project, grantwriting, and plenty more!
So, this is a pretty typical week (although I left a few things out). But, just a taste of what this experience is like!
And, I thought I would share one of the many sonnets I have now composed in my Shakespeare skills class. We were to write about a character we played at some point in our past, and I chose Little Becky Two Shoes from Urinetown - The Musical. For those who may be interested but have perhaps forgotten since high school English class, a sonnet is typically 3 quatrains of rhyming verse with a couplet on the end, written in iambic pentameter (look it up if you're curious). This one follows that structure, with a few syllabic irregularities for effect (see if you can spot spondaic, pyrrhic, and trochaic feet, feminine endings, and syllabic compression or expansion).
Little Becky
By Regs
Your bladder must be bursting; yet, you swig
That flask you’re clutching like the ‘lixer ‘f life!
A pregnant belly looms ‘neath the fat twig
Of t’bacca’ hanging limp ‘tween lips so rife
With soot and muck, it makes me gag. Which chap
Should take the blame for bunning your smut oven?
You’d prob’ly call the devil to your lap
In ‘xchange for bubbling monkey smack a-shovin’
Deep through your veins. Multitudes of gross
And grime entwine your soul; but gravitate
I do toward the loathsome stench that close
Behind you trails. The ire you fabricate
For fellow good-for-nothings reeks of sass,
But how I loved embodying your ass.
Almost at the end of my first school year out here...holy moly! I'll be working at the La Jolla Playhouse in their youth theatre programs this summer, followed by potential trips to Denver, Chicago, Michigan, and London. So, those of you blog readers that exist in those cities, hope to see you!
Please tell me there is video/photos of kayak jousting.
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