…a bit frustrating.
Things in class are getting simultaneously better and worse.
Mr. Smith led us in warm-up today but I get the idea he’s going to have us start leading warm-up sometime soon. Maybe even tomorrow. A couple of the other girls said they know Sun Salutations so they’ll lead us in that and there’s this one kid who likes telling us all how he already knows this and knows that and knew everything Mr. Smith was trying to say… Let’s call him Mr. King-of-the-stage. In fact, whenever the teacher starts talking about anything new, Mr. King-of-the-stage has to find some way to let us know that he already knew what the lesson was, how he did it before and how we should be doing it.
Congratulations! You’re an expert!!!! So why are you here????
We’ve been doing these walks around the stage all week. Simple, sort of. We walk in lines – front, back, and side to side. We make right angled turns and just keep walking around and around and around “on a grid.”
A couple times we’ve done some cool stuff, like changing our speeds (if normal pace is “5” we take it as slow as “1” and as fast as “10”) and once we did this thing where we each stopped and froze one at a time but IF WE STOPPED AT THE SAME TIME AS SOMEONE ELSE WE HAD TO START OVER!!!!!
We failed twice. My tactic was to just stop walking as soon as possible, but I was the one who stopped at the same time as two other people so it became obvious that wasn’t working. So the third time, I think we were ALL trying to keep walking as long as possible, but somehow I managed to keep my attention on everyone in my peripherals and I finally found a moment to stop moving when it looked like everyone else was going to keep going.
It’s hard though. There are 18 of us in here! It’s easy enough to worry about yourself. Then it’s kind of easy to keep track of yourself and one or two other people. But keeping track of 17 other people besides yourself???? Sometimes you can’t see them all, sometimes people are behind you….
Speaking of, I think on that third try we were starting to stop when we were each on the outside of the group – so we could see that everyone else was still moving when we stopped. If you stopped while you were in the middle, half the room was behind your back and it’s harder to keep track of them.
Other than that, I don’t get why we’re walking around the room this much! I mean, we all know how to walk. Why are we walking in acting class? I mean, I kind of get it, I think Mr. Smith was watching these two girls walk – he kept giving them personal corrections – but the rest of us were just left walking around the room on our own.
I guess it was kind of fun watching the other people walk. We had to make sure we didn’t crash into anyone else and everyone sort of had their own unique little walk. Andy’s was particularly funny – his posture is so long and lanky he just sort of swaggers around the room. And Mr. King-of-the-stage almost looked like this gorilla swinging his arms brusquely as he charged through the group…
Anyhow. Tomorrow is a new day…
Love,
Aubrey
The Theater Door 