Bulletpoints Make Things Easier to Read/Peruse

- So the last two weeks, it's been kind of tough because I've had both rehearsal for The Gathering (a devised show that I'm performing in, basically a movement piece about ghosts and scary things that's being performed on a dark Vassar field late at night this week) and Taming of the Shrew, which I'm assistant directing. I like being able to do both things (although now I can't work with Tommy Kail, the director of In the Heights, but I met him and had a conversation with him and he's really cool). Unfortunately, like I usually do, I have overbooked myself and I have to miss rehearsals a lot. We did our first full runthrough of Taming today, and it kind of bombed. It's opening on Friday and the cast still isn't fully offbook. I mean, to give them some slack, this program is freakin brutal on the actors and they have to memorize a lot and play multiple roles in multiple shows (on top of the four hours of class they have every day), but still - the show can't go any farther if they don't learn their lines.

- The director of Taming of the Shrew is also my acting teacher, also named Brian. He's really funny, in a very nontraditional way - he's like an ADD kid, actually. He bounces around the room in rehearsal and sometimes picks up things and starts playing with them to help him think. Or he'll be like, "Petruchio, I need you to move stage right," and then he'll do a cartwheel in the middle of the stage. It's a lot of fun, actually. And we're really close - he told me at the beginning of rehearsals that I was going to be Boy Brian and he was going to be Man Brian, and I was like, OK, whatever - that's not that bad. But then in the third rehearsal he pulled out Baby Brian, and I was like, great, now I'm screwed. So now I sign my emails to him "Baby B." Oh, and on the official Rehearsal Reports that get sent to the directors of the program, it says, "Present for rehearsal: Boy Brian." Anyways.

- Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I got a whiny email from one of my sisters (you guys can figure out which one, muahaha) so I decided I should like update you guys about what I'm doing and all that. I'm still having an extraordinary time, and I'm still making friends (I say this because Mom pulled a Sandlot in one of our conversations a couple weeks ago), and I still have absolutely no time to do write on this. But I have a 2-hour break now from Taming rehearsal to The Gathering rehearsal, so I decided to use some of it with you guys.

- Speaking of The Gathering, I guess I should tell you what that is. It's based on this art form created in the 1970's called Soundpainting. Soundpainting started when this guy Walter was conducting a jazz orchestra and he wanted them to improvise, and then during the improvisation he heard some stuff he liked that he wanted those musicians to continue but he couldn't figure out how to get everyone to do what he wanted without stopping the music and telling them, so he used hand gestures. And out of that, Walter created this whole sign language based on getting performers to do stuff without sound. So like, Tomi, my composition teacher and the director of The Gathering could tell me to fall down, crawl on the ground with murderous intent like a zombie and grab another person in like 10 signs. Pretty cool. So now we've found or created all these ghost stories that we're going to perform with Soundpainting (some of it rehearsed, some of it improvised) really late at night when it's dark and on this field where there are no lights nearby. It's going to scare the shit out of everyone who comes, trust me. As an example, one of my characters is this Light Monster who is tied to two other actors, and when the light is on, I act like a lifeless doll and just let the other two actors move my arms and legs, but when the light goes off, I "wake up" and make all these maniacal laughs and attack the other two actors. It is SOOO much fun but it shot my voice for like an entire weekend so I had to cut back on the laughing haha. But I'll teach some of it to you guys when I get home, you'll love it! One of my friends says it's the most beautiful art form she's ever seen, because I think she's best friends with a deaf girl, and I might have to agree with her - when it's done right, it's truly awesome.

- This professional photographer has been taking pictures of the whole program, and he put his pictures on Flickr. I'm hoping we can get copies of all the pictures at the end of the program, because Flickr has copyright protection, but in short of that, just enjoy looking at them!

www.flickr.com/thephotoholic

Most of these are pictures of the actors, but the very first one on that website right now has me in it - we were helping young playwrights create a Pirate show that was performed in an art gallery (5619). "Dances at an Exhibition" is a Soundpainted show that my Taming of the Shrew cast performed (all the actors are split up into three ensembles that they do all their projects with, and my did Taming and "Dances"). "Missing Pieces" (when you get to page 4) was a show that was performed last weekend, and it was really cool - kind of experimental but really well done, I liked it a lot.

Adventure Assignments

So in Comp class (for a reason I'm still not exactly sure of, but it's an awesome assignment so who cares?) Tomi had us pick names out of a hat Secret Santa style and design an adventure for that person to go on in the next week. I got this girl Erica, and I made her throw water balloons at every playwright, director, and teacher - which would have been hilarious, but she got sick the day before the adventure was supposed to be completed so she didn't hit like half the people (out of a total of 14). So she failed her adventure. My adventure was to go to the cemetery at night and try to have a spiritual connection with one of the dead people, which sounds really scary and was slightly but it was an almost full moon and I kept imagining how it would be during the day so it wasn't that scary. I had to light a candle and "feel" the dead person, but I found it kind of difficult and I don't think it worked - although I did get really depressed when I started thinking about how insignificant life and death was. So we all decided to do the assignments again, and I just got my new one today - and it's a killer. Basically, I have to have a sleepover with a different person for the next six nights, and I have a list of people I can choose from for each night. I have to give my key to the "messenger" at midnight, as well as the name of the person I'm going to sleep over with, and I have to take a picture of the person with my cell phone (for date and time) to prove I really slept over with them. Pretty ridiculous, right? So I have ten minutes to get out of my room so I should probably go, because I need to brush my teeth and stuff. Tonight I'm sleeping over with my friend Emmie, who's really cool and she was totally fine with it. But I had to like move my sheets and stuff and it was so annoying. Anyways, there wasn't really a major thesis to this post except to update you on the fact that I will no longer be sleeping in my room for the next week and I thought you guys would find that funny. I'll let you know if anything hilarious ensues from this adventure. And maybe I'll post the pictures from the sleepovers!

Backwards

HEY so I know I haven't posted in a while, and I'm very sorry, but, what can I say? I don't really want time to post, except at 3:31 AM when I can't sleep (check on the timestap on this one...) So thank you everyone who's supporting me on this crazy adventure I'm going through right now, and I am quite sorry if I don't have time to post or call - nothing personal - but know that I think about each of you every single day.

Anyways, now that I've got all that sentimental shit out of the way, I wanted to tell you guys about the second show I directed last weekend! The first, as you remember, was A Pleasant Day for Happiness, written by the young Jacob Axelrad, and whaddaya know, apparently the gods think that we work well together because I got paired up with him to do the site specific pieces as well. Basically, the four playwrights had the assignment of writing a piece to be performed somewhere on campus, which is kind of a difficult decision on a campus as beautiful and interesting as the Vassar campus (in case you didn't know, the campus is a National Arboretum, meaning that it is LITERALLY ILLEGAL to climb the trees... But very fun at the same time!) So Jacob picked this awesome spot that I totally loved, and wrote an Absurdist piece based off of it (he had just finished reading Waiting for Godot three days before he wrote it... just my luck...) No, but in all seriousness, it was a very impressive script and a wonderful spot. It was called Backwards, and it was set at this one spot where there is a road, and then a 3-foot tall rock wall next to the road, and then for some reason no one could figure out, there was a bench on the other side of the wall in the midst of the jungle (check the picture). Like, no one would ever sit there, because they would just be staring at a wall of foliage. So Jacob wrote this amazing script where two guys are sitting on the bench, wondering how they got "turned around," and wishing that life could be like it used to be because now they were backwards. Except one of the characters actually liked it, creating tension with the other character that was basically the entire show. I would go into it in more detail, but honestly, you guys wouldn't understand unless you read it - so just take my word that it was a very interesting script.

So I basically had all my free time last week to direct this show. I had two actors - and can I say, if I haven't already, that all of the actors here should pursue a career in acting??? They are SO incredible, I'm learning so much about acting and I'm not even an acting apprentice. But anyways, these two guys worked very well together and I was really happy with working with them. I was really nervous though, because when I first read the script, I was like, oh, this could totally be a comedy - and then I directed it like a comedy, and it wasn't funny. So I felt like I had failed in the rehearsal an hour and a half before the performance. But then the weirdest thing happened - the audience thought it was hilarious and they loved it! I was like, why are you laughing??? It's not funny! But they were like, no, Brian, it's very funny - congratulations and good job. So that felt really good. And the other three site specific pieces were also very good and interesting - one was set in the Shakespeare Garden, where every plant ever mentioned in Shakespeare's works is planted, another was set literally around an entire lake, where the characters were chasing each other around the lake (it was so funny), and the third was set at this tiny shed and the story was about how a husband had left and come back and his wife had miniaturized the house. Also very funny. So it was just a really good set of plays, and I felt really good afterwards and I was happy with the work my friends and I had done.

Just to let you know, some things coming up for me - I've started rehearsals on The Taming of the Shrew, which I'm assistant directing and spending most doing; I will be shadowing the director of a professional New York Stage and Film Production in a week, Shoe Story, which is (wait for it!) directed by the original director of In the Heights! Rob is going to be so jealous. As well as everyone else in my class who saw the show in April. So that's going to be awesome and I can't wait to just dig into his brain. And then, in my directing class, we're still working on The Three Sisters (it got really interesting today... apparently the whole play is about the horrors of inaction and never acting on your desires, which is possibly the most depressing subject in all of theatre). In my comp class, we're creating "experiences" based on The Three Sisters, like the 30 second music assignment except with The Three Sisters. And we're still going through all of the scenes in acting class. But coming up, my entire directing class will be directing Woyzeck to be performed the day before I leave, and I came up with this idea two days ago to get a 10-minute play festival going, because I really want to direct this David Ives play, The Philadelphia (thank you, Christie!). Oh, and on top of all that, the artist-in-residence, Eric, has written more site specific pieces for all of the directors - he came up to me yesterday and was like "Do you want me to write you a play?" and I was like,"Um.... don't you have stuff to do?" and he was like, "Not really." So I told him to write me a romantic comedy, and tonight when I got back from rehearsal I had a brand new romantic comedy posted to my door for me to direct! So I'll probably work on that this weekend and maybe see if I can get it performed in the next week or so. SO THAT'S EVERYTHING I'M DOING AND I LOVE YOU ALL AND THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH FOR THE BOX IT MADE MY DAY!!!!! I hid the cookies in my closet because I don't want anyone to find them, but I know it's only a matter of time.

:)

A few more pics from Backwards:

Classes

I've been taking three classes in my time here at Vassar - and I absolutely love all three of them. I wanted to just talk a little bit about what I'm doing in them and all that so you guys knew how I spent the majority of my time. Each class is two hours, and on Monday and Wednesday, I have two classes, and on Tuesday and Thursday, I have one class. The classes are Composition, Text, and Acting. So today, for example, I had my acting class from 9 to 11 with Brian McManamon (who I will also be working with on Taming of the Shrew as an assistant director... more on that in about a week when the rehearsals actually start, but he's a super cool guy and very fun to work with).

Composition - My composition class is with Tomi Tsunoda, this amazing woman who basically teaches us about the aesthetics of a scene and how to convey a message to the audience. So far, we've been learning the different ways of telling a story on stage - we don't use texts or formulas, so it's all very organic and improvisatory. My assignment for yesterday was to take 30 seconds of music (any music of our choice) and convey the feeling of that music to the rest of the class without using sound. I chose the first 30 seconds of "Riders on the Storm" by the Doors, which is like the coolest 30 seconds of music ever composed in my opinion, but I didn't have to go yesterday because we ran out of time, so I have the whole weekend until Monday to revise my project. I think I'm going to have everyone lay down and close their eyes, because it's a very dreamlike sequence, and then I want to like flick water on their faces or something I don't know. I'll let you know what I end up deciding.

Text (otherwise known as "Anton Chekhov, you are one crazy bastard!") - Text is my favorite class, because it combines very deep textual analysis (English class!) with ideas for staging and performance (Theatre class!) We're working with Chekhov's The Three Sisters, which, when I first read it, gave me a headache and a sudden desire to go to Moscow, but now that we're getting really into it I'm really starting to like it. The class is taught by Anthony Luciano, who's directing Twelfth Night, and he is incredibly smart. Like, in our very first class, he took LITERALLY the first 11 lines of Hamlet and we spent 45 minutes examining it until he basically used it as a metaphor for the entire play. It blew my mind away. Then we did the same thing with a scene from Twelfth Night (he's a Shakespeare fanatic), and now we're doing the same thing with The Three Sisters. It's really exciting to work with him because he's made me realize how much I miss when I simply read a play. Although, he does assign a lot of work... He has this crazy way of, in the last 30 seconds of class, just dropping hours and hours of homework at our feet in kind of a passing comment. Like, "So, yeah, I just kind of want you guys to investigate the role of the dead Father in The Three Sisters, and maybe like go through the whole play and mark every line where there's a reference to him and maybe just kind of explain the significance of that line and it's contribution to the scene." The first homework assignment (which I still haven't finished!) was to go through the whole play and write down, for each page - and the play is four acts - what we learn and what happens in each line. I'm on Act 3 and I've already spent at least 7 hours on the assignment. But the thing is, it's helped me understand the play so much that, instead of bullshitting the last two acts and just not doing it, I know I'll be missing out in class if I don't do it. So what I'm trying to say is that I feel like everything I'm doing has a purpose, and that is the perfect feeling to have in a class.

Acting - I think Tom Pacio, the director of the program, is absolutely brilliant for having the Directing and Playwrighting Apprentices take an acting class. Personally, I already know a lot of what I'm learning in the class from Rob, but there are several people in the class that just never got the fundamentals of acting, and this is obviously necessary experience when working with actors. We've been working with contemporary stuff - for example, I performed a scene today that I've been working on for about a week from an almost brand new play by Lucy Thurber, Scarcity. And I remembered all my lines! That was good enough for me. But Brian McManamon is really talented as an actor and I'm learning a lot from him that I can't wait to try out next year at AIS.

Well, that's all for now - I want to update about the Gala last Saturday and other stuff that's going on but I'm going to see if I can get any pictures from that before I write about it. Love you guys!