Week Day!

Unfortunately, I have not written in this blog for a week. I'm not sure what I did instead, but somehow it managed to take up ALL OF MY TIME.

Work has been pretty good. All the women in the office are super fun and super marvelous. Pat and Joyce are married à la Lauren Perry and Kathleen Egan, and Joyce and I spend most of our time speculating that Emmelina is trying to steal Pat away. There has also been some chaos because every student EVER decided to wait until the last minute to register for classes and everything. So right after orientation has always been super busy.

I had my Strasberg Institute orientation on Friday, which was really fun. I was put in a group with about fifteen other people, and I was the only American, haha. There were tons of accents (including a South African one that made me miss Ruth Goveia) and I was actually feeling slightly out of place. Very odd.

The teacher who ran the orientation was named Hope Arthur and she was a) very talented, b) talking about how she has been teaching at Strasberg for the last 125 years and studied under Lee Strasberg himself and c) slightly batty. (Read: HILARIOUS). She had some serious presence. She walked in wearing a polyester pant suit decorated with palm trees, done in the same colors as my phone – pinks and lime greens and oranges. The pants and the shirt were the same pattern - sensory OVERLOAD. But we learned a bunch of relaxation techniques and some Strasberg history and about how we are going to be taught to lose our "habits of inexpression". Which I am all about.

But it was funny, because she talked about how no one makes any big gestures anymore. She talked about how no one completely extends their arms to gesticulate when talking and how people don't express anything anymore. And I thought to myself, "Obvi, Hope Arthur and I do not spend enough time together." And then later on in the day, I accidentally smacked a man while I was telling Nick a story and I felt really bad about smacking this (slightly intimidating) stranger. So I scampered away right quick.

We've also seen lots of shows recently, including Naked Boys Singing (yup, they were naked. And they sang and danced. I knew it was going to happen, but there was no time to emotionally prepare. They entered on stage in the dark, and they were NAKED - I was NOT READY for such gratuitous nudity). It was really funny, even though only about half of the boys were good singers and only one was ridiculously attractive (there were about four more who received admirable but not excellent scores on the standard 1 to 10 scale and the rest were all of "take it or leave it" quality).

And we saw A Steady Rain, which has just begun previewing this week. Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig were both excellent and the writing of the show was FLAWLESS. All in all, an excellent experience. We are going show-viewing CRAZY, which I do NOT hate. But my RA paycheck betta arrive soon, because if not, Imma run out of money quite soon.

And last but not least: TODAY! We went to Coney Island! A dream come true for me. I ate funnel cake, rode the CYCLONE and saw all the locations in the season finale of Law & Order: SVU where Stuckey killed all those people. We saw the scary ride that Finn and Munch rode together and everything. It was really cool, actually, even though it sounds kind of lame. I’ll be the first to admit it: I am obsessed with SVU. It might be unhealthy.

So I paid eight dollars to ride a roller coaster today, and I do NOT regret it. TOTALLY worth it. It was slightly rickety, but fab anyway. LOVES IT.

My first day of classes is tomorrow, and I'm very excited. Acting from 1:30 - 5:30 with Irma Sandrey. Hopefully I learn a lot and make new friends! Yay! But there is a strong possibility that I will be trying to perform scenes from The Glass Menagerie with someone who has a strong Eastern European accent. This is potentially a win-win situation. :)

Miss you all! Sorry this is slightly long and unnecessary. But I wanted to update one week in one post. Kinda difficult. Hopefully I’ll be better about writing from now on. Because so much happens all the time, and I want to be able to tell you all about everything.
Love, Kelly