So my birthday was yesterday. And yes, it was a good one. Thank you to all that sent a note/message/etc. I felt very loved from so far away. I woke up at 10 or so and lounged around doing nothing. My favorite activity. My first and only meeting of the day was at 4pm and was a thing called matriculation. Apparently it's the UK equivalent of registration. As any of my AMDA people that worked orientation with me know, I was expecting absolute organization that would make Lizz Furtado proud. However, this was not the case. I'd put it on par with herding disgruntled and lost cattle into random small places, chucking a piece of grass at them, and wishing them the best of luck.
Thank God I arrived fifteen minutes early and avoided the rush but I had to wait two hours for the rest of my group to go through. I will say I'm pretty excited for free health care though. Canada and the UK really have this stuff figured out.
Afterwards, ten of my new cohort (people in my class) took me out for a drink. It was really sweet. A Brit named Maria brought out a tray of mallowmars lit with candles and they sang happy birthday to me. Michael-Alan bought a round of appetizers. And Riley bought my beer.
Then I took myself to a movie. There's just something about going to the movies, that no matter where you are, you feel like you're home. I know what you're thinking, how sad, she went to the movies by herself. But you know what? It might be one of my most favorite things to do. You don't have to worry whether everyone's having a good time, share your soda, or try to shut them up when they try to talk to you during the previews. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE going with people (especially my mother) but sometimes, you can really only fully escape in a film when you are by yourself. And the theatre they have is a doozy. 6 floors. First floor is a bar. Yeah. A BAR! The fact that the Scottish drink is an understatement. It should be on their national flag. The normal establishments here may close down early, but that is only because they have to open the bars.
I didn't partake in the bar this time but used my new fancy student ID to get the discounted price of admission. In case you're wondering, movies with ID are 5.70 pounds. (equiv is around 8.50). I saw the movie Drive. In case you are hankering to go, I do recommend it but with a disclaimer. The violence in it is sometimes at par with Tarantino. Consider yourself warned.
Today was our first day of seminars. Basically one welcome speech after another. But then there was the three hour meeting with our two dept heads and our full cohort. Here's the breakdown. We have 12, count them TWELVE!, Americans, 3 Scots, 1 Russian/Scot, 1 Canadian, 1 Canadian/Brit, 1 Irish, and 3 Brits. There was one other girl but she went missing so I don't know where she's from. But the total is 23 people. 10 girl actors, 10 guys, 1 guy director, and 2 girl directors.
Some highlights from the meeting (if you aren't a theatre person and are reading this, you may want to skip down to a later paragraph).
*We rehearse/have workshops/classes 9-6 M-F. With some evening and Saturday classes. But the building closes by 9pm each night so rehearsals are going to be ridiculous.
* We study Stanislavsky and Le Coq techniques, as well as heavy on the Nadine George for V&S.
* We have to find a 1-2 week placement for ourselves where we shadow a theatre company, venue, or professional.
*We have to find a "mentor" to be in contact with from the professional community.
* We have large research papers due at the end of each of the four terms.
*We do a playdate with the MA Musical Theatre students (I wish we took the same workshops because they get to work with John Barrowman this year. Ugh, I would just die!)
* We spend the month of January in London at the Globe theatre and are taught by the members there.
* After Easter we put on two shows (half of us in one, half in the other) for which we have to audition. The shows are Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. and The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster.
* We have the opportunity to put up a new and unique piece of our own in conjunction with our research projects.
* We do select scenes from Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard as our Realism project and then perform them for faculty and students.
*We combine a choral grecian piece with a contemporary piece and perform that for faculty and students.
*We have well established Scottish playwrights come in and write a play for us after watching us act excerpts from their already established plays. We then tour those plays to London, Edinburgh, and around Glasgow.
*We keep a daily Practicum (all the AMDA students may now groan for me).
*And we go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next august/september for more seminars, workshops, and to see shows.
...is your mind blown yet? because mine is. We all walked out of that room feeling excited and overwhelmed. I did ask whether or not we had to learn a standard accent. As some of you know, at AMDA in NY, all foreign students had to learn an American Standard accent. Here, they believe that your accent is attached to who you are. While it is a good idea to learn the standard "RP" british accent, they said that as long as your accent does not hinder the forming of whatever character you are playing, than our natural speech is good enough.
At the end we went around and said how we were feeling about the whole thing. I said that I was very excited but also a bit petrified. That all those buttons that make me feel uncomfortable but need to be pushed will be here. That I was happy to be in a safe place so that I can fail big. And that now I needed to go back to my room and marinate in all this.
I think, but I'm not sure, that both professors were reading absolute fear on my face. It's true, I'm sure it was there. But I hope they realize I'm not going anywhere. Yes, I hate the fact that I'm going to be really really bad at some of this stuff. Like abysmally. Physical comedy freaks me out. Clowning is uncomfortable for me. Improvisation gives me hives! I hate being wrong. And it's exhausting convincing myself that THERE IS NO WRONG CHOICE...only better ones. I'd say almost every single person in that room though is someone that I may be ok making a complete ass out of myself. And that's good, because I will.
I just don't want to hear "You'd be great, Stacy, if you'd just let go." or "Stacy, you are too reserved and safe." or "Stacy you don't really fit anywhere." I'm tired of it. So I'm doing some yoga tonight to decompress and then as Faith says "Let go, and Let God."
This sounds like the most painful, exhausting, and AWESOME program. I will be a better actor for it. And I will be a stronger person. Period.
So after that mental explosion, I went home to fix some form of dinner after I hit the Pound Store. It's the dollar store of UK. And it's Brilliant. Almost everything you can imagine that you need for only a pound. I finally got some coffee cups and a bowl. Ok, yes the bowl has cartoon superhero figures on it. and the coffee cup is something that would fit in a Precious Moments collection. But they work. And that's about as high as my expectations go.
Now here's the best part of my day. I go to the kitchen to make some pasta and find that I dont know how to turn the mother f*&^ing stove on. First there's a switch on the wall that you flip to turn on the gas. Then there's the gas dial that apparently you have to turn on as well as flick the ignite button. I'm thinking, oh shit, I'm going to burn this place down. But then in comes Michael the Composer (who by the way scared the bejeebus out of me while I was scowling at the stove). Now, from now on I'll call him MC for short. MC was sweet enough to slip a birthday card under my door early that morning, so I accept my embarrassment and ask how to turn on the stove. Funnily enough, MC is NOT a cooker. He said his mum gave him a crash course in cooking before he arrived here and he was just planning on attempting pasta himself. In the end, he figured out how to light the stove, and I taught him how to use the can opener (UK translation= tin opener) as well as explaining that the pasta has to boil. Not just sit in hot water. It was very entertaining. In the conversation whilst we were attempting culinary gloriousness, it came up that I saw Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) on Broadway in both the musical "How to Succeed in Business..." and in the play "Equus." Now, for those who don't know Equus, that is the play in which the character is butt naked running around the stage stabbing out the eyes of horses in stables. Yeah...it's a picker upper.
Anyway, MC asks in his posh accent "Now, may I ask you a question?"
Me: Of Course. (thinking it will be whether or not Daniel was a good actor)
MC (after a dramatic pause): Does he have a two inch twitter?
UK Translation= does he have a small...well, you know.
I don't think I've laughed harder all summer.
I think that's a good note to end on. :)
I'm thinking of you.
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