in the meisner class we’re taught by a guy who studied directly under sanford meisner, so i feel quite priviledged. in this class we have done ‘word repetition’ since school started. that’s 6 hours a week of returning word with your partner and saying them the way they do. then he added in the fact that we had to make it personal, so if someone did the first bit and made an observation about the other person and said ‘you’re wearing brown shoes’, i’d have to say ‘i’m wearing brown shoes’, which would then come back as ‘you’re wearing brown shoes’, etc etc you get the point. then it turned into a personal subjective observation, so ‘your brown shoes make me wanna puke’, which then goes back as ‘my brown shoes make you wanna puke’. so, yesterday’s lesson involved lots of fucking water. the teacher, james price, gave selected people squirty water bottles, which they could use when they felt the urge to use them. oh, by the way, the comments going back and forth can change if you get a feeling to change it, or if it’s untrue. so, for example, ‘your brown shoes make me wanna puke’ would go back as ‘my brown shoes make you wanna puke’, ‘your brown shoes make me wanna puke’, ‘hey, you’re not wearing brown shoes!’, ‘hey, i’m not wearing brown shoes’. and so on and so forth. and so, the squirty water bottles were used for fun mostly, but to get a reaction out of the people that don’t look alive or give enough energy to the exercise. or, in my opinion, to those who also he thinks should be pushed harder whether they’re working or not. which i think was me yesterday. he always likes when rebecca and i do our repetition and always comments on it being excellent, so i think he was just trying to wind me up yesterday by giving rebecca the water bottle. i did react for the most part, and tell her to ‘fuck off’, ‘fuck off’, ‘fuck off’, but the word fuck is used so many times in this game. it gets annoying after a while, so i changed it to ‘god, i hate that word’, ‘god you hate that word’. so, i never got the water bottle, which is annoying, but i lasted the task anyhow, and got completely drenched. yes, this is school by the way. NOW, to make it evern harder, we have to come up with a task to do which is difficult for monday’s class, which we have to do whilst doing the repetition exercise. i’m thinking i’ll get some needle, thread, buttons, etc etc and sew something for the teacher. he said the task had to be difficult (for the most part) and not time consuming, like a jigsaw puzzle, or a rubik’s cube. he suggested people bring in stuff to break and put back together – let’s see how many people do that. i saw a guy today walking round with a mop. i asked him what the hell he had that for and he said it was for the repetition exercise. god, i love school, so much random shit happens.
speaking of random – zenon, our acting technique teacher – made ting cry on friday. not only does he make us do sadistic leg and ab exercises which absolutely kill after an hour of doing them, he makes you work stupidly hard in class and expects a lot. he made ting cry because she has a monologue about an abortion and losing her husband, and she had to perform it. she did it and we all thought it was good. obviously, we were wrong(!) zenon, made her do this task where 4 of the boys in class had to act like a cage around her, and she had to pretend she was a frantic lion trying to get out of the cage. obviously she’s not going to get out, because there were 4 guys trapping her in. but, he made her work for it, harder and harder, until she fell to the floor screaming “i can’t do it!”. he made her get up and continue. she continued and finally he saw the results he wanted. she was not only getting tired, but he was mentally abusing her by physically abusing her. she started to cry and he made her do the monologue again. this time it was sheer perfection. we were all stunned. that was possibly the most weird and seriously cool lesson we’ve had so far. for this class, after my o-ren ishii monologue, i’m doing a scene with james on the end of ‘the crucible’. bought the play a few days ago, so i’ll start reading it now. this is due for next friday.
film study has been a selection of different classes taught by different teachers, spanning directing, producing, camera, shots, lenses etc. there are still loads more of these lessons left. but, they are the most boring because it means three classes sitting together (when it is only normally one – 12 people in our class) on chairs listening to someone ramble for three hours. our normal lessons are much more active and personally/intensely involved. so these classes drain you easily.
scene study class is taught by dj mendel, who is an insanely cool teacher who doesn’t take shit from anyone. if you’re late, you have to wait for the break (an hour and a half in) before he lets you in. to be fair, most of the teachers do that. they can’t stand people not being punctual, because if you actually did that on a set, you’d just get sent home/be replaced. so, i guess it’s good practice. for this class i am now working with hussein, who lacks a lot of motivation, energy and creativeness, so this is going to be so much hard work. we have to present what we have done so far, on tuesday, and i gotta spend a lot of time with this kid, so we’ll see how that goes.
in monologue class (taught by kate gleason) we’re preparing for a performance on the 26th of october. got a monologue which is about 3-4 minutes long, which is just hard to do. i have to be happy and jolly about everything my character says, even though she discusses some seriously depressing shit. might sound easy, but it’s not. gotta learn this piece (taken from ‘hush’, by april de angelis) by next wednesday.
acting for film class (taught by norman schwartz) is fun, but also boring. we’re filming our work and watching it over for continuity and speech delivery, whilst at the same time learning about the camera, boom and slate. the only problem is that norman writes the SAME GODDAMN SHIT on the white board every lesson. it’s like he just likes to write on the board or something. also, he’s like 172 years old, so he talks slow anyway. i mean, he’s great on paper (put his name in imdb), but a seriously weird choice for a teacher.
voice and movement class (taught by mary workman – she used to date the guy who just won an oscar for writing ‘sideways’) is fucking brilliant! we’re singing, and dancing around and having a ball. she’s teaching us how to move and speak, and where the sounds come from and how to adopt accents. she’s telling us how to pronounce things from different parts of the world and where they use their mouths and in what ways to get their accents. jolly good phun. my class moment was when she said british people say ‘guvner’. i had to correct her and tell her it’s ‘guvnah’. tut tut. haha, she’s a good sport though, she didn’t take offence.
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as for general news; i’ve been out dining with curtis, drinking with classmates – but i haven’t seen much of the astoria lot who i hung around with when i first got here. kraki came over today, which was cool, so we hung out and he was telling me touristy things to do with benny when he gets here tomorrow! yay!
right, got a monologue to perfect for tomorrow and then need to sleep – not been getting much of that recently.
sleep tight you widdle monkeys.
over and out.
the guy from london that i met here has already had a movie shoot – i’m jealous 
but, apparently he said he got it because he’s been in a few short movies before. dunno if he got recommended or if he read it off the noticeboard, however.