Bard Day!

I seriously don't know where time goes. Approximately 39289827 times throughout the week I think to myself, "Self, you should write in your blog this eve!" And then I watch as my friend Amanda wins me a ticket to Hair, or I watch Glee or I sing in the piano lounge with Nick for six or seven hours, or I go to the bakery down the street and buy a cupcake.

All of which are LEGIT. But not so much conducive to updating you on my life.

I had my first week of classes this week. And they were HARD. I literally came home from my first day and couldn't decide if I loved every minute of it, or if I wanted to quit and fly home immediately. But it got better.

Monday: Acting, with Irma Sandrey. Initially I was excited because my teacher's name is Irma. She is a tiny little woman and she seems very self-contained. The classes are structured so that everyone can take any class, so experienced people are in with new students, so I was surrounded by a lot of people who totally knew what they were doing. I was uncomfortable. Yikes. Four hours of relaxation exercises and sensory-perception exercises and scene-partner assigning. LONG TIME.

Tuesday: Acting, with Lola Cohen. Lola is my new obsession. She is warm and loud and passionate and fun and I love her. But the class is essentially a repeat of the day before with one notable exception. Lola had me do an improv with two other (experienced) people in the class and at the end, she said to me, "Great improv work today. You were really great. And anyone good at improv is going to be a marvelous actor." Yay!
Movement for the Actor, with Michael Ryan. I didn't expect to actually sweat - I expected that I was going to be told that I stand with too much tension in my shoulders and lower back and that I should learn to walk better. But we got to dance and jump and frolic. A good time was had by all.

Wednesday: Vocal Production, with Bruce Baumer. To sum up the class, the goal is that I will leave being completely capable of performing in a 350-seat theatre, without a mic. I hope this happens. We didn't actually do much in class, just talked about a lot of random things, like how much the teacher loves Neil LaBute (gag me with a spoon).

Thursday: Dialects, with Barbara Rubin. SO EXCITED. All we did was learn the vowels in the International Phonetic Language, but I will eventually walk out of this class capable of: Standard American, London, Cockney, Irish, Scottish, Australian, French, Spanish, Italian, German, South African and a few more dialects. Hooray!
Singing, with Jan Douglas. The most notable thing that happened was that I discovered that Jan is a man. I had no idea.

And repeat next week. Except I have Monday off, because it's Yom Kippur! Hooray Jewish High Holy Days!

This week was also INCREDIBLY exciting because Nick and I FINALLY saw Hair!!! I wasn't even there for the lottery - our friend Amanda put her name in to aid the Help Kelly and Nick See Hair Fund. And she won!

Needless to say it was amazing. Obviously I don't have the emotional attachment to the show that Nick does, nor have I been living and breathing and waiting for the show for approximately ten months, but it was still brilliant. Beautiful singing, wonderful characterization/total commitment from the actors and an emotional impact made it a fab experience. I couldn't really see the stage, ever, but I got my hair and body touched not once, not twice, NOT THRICE but FOUR TIMES BY ACTORS IN THE SHOW.

Plus at the end, Nick and I got to dance onstage during Let the Sunshine In. I made my Broadway debut this week, haha. (Stay tuned for circa four to ten years and I will hopefully have a REAL Broadway debut.)

This week we also went to a Playwright Panel put on by Back to Broadway. Sarah Ruhl, Keith Huff and Tracy Letts were all in attendance. They wrote In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), A Steady Rain and Superior Donuts respectively. (Tracy is also a man - this seems to be a motif in my life recently.) This panel was fascinating for me, because one of my favorite things in the world is to listen to the writing process of other writers. Kelly equals big nerd. But I like hearing how each person's writing process differs from mine. Because I'm a nerd.

And today we woke up early (Nick's favorite activity - ...sometimes) to rush tickets for Hamlet. We have gotten up early twice thus far and I have not been ready on time either time. (Anyone surprised? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)

Hamlet was also amazing, in a completely different way. It was a well-done Shakespeare in the sense that I understood everything that was going on in spite of what can probably be called a Serious Language Barrier. Jude Law was amazing. He was a very physical Hamlet - he did a lot of hopping and laughing and jumping and frolicking. Rollicking good time for everyone. Except Ophelia.

(Speaking of, she was the only serious disappointment in the show. The woman who played Ophelia wasn't quite as committed as everyone else and her singing was not as fabulous as it could have been and it was sad.)

The light design of Hamlet also did exactly what The Runner Stumbles tried to do, haha. Specific blocks and shafts of light. Luckily in Hamlet, you could actually see faces. I consider this a plus. Broadway: One. Forrest Hutchins: Zero.

I'm sorry this is so horribly long all the time. I get easily distracted during the week and forget to update. I'll try to be better about it. I really will. Cross my heart and hope to die. (But if you put a needle anywhere in, on or around my eye, I will cut you.)
Love you all, Kelly

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