I headed out of the apartment and hopped onto the J then the F to get to Bryant Park and 42nd St. For some reason, I wasn't in the best mood and felt that a coffee and sitting in the park would make me feel better. It did. (However, Starbucks did give me a caramel macchiatto instead of my carmel mocha, but hey.) I sat and read and wrote. I'm keeping a journal like the one I had in Moscow because that one proved to be extremely beneficial. Anyway, interesting people in the park. The sun shining, on a day when it was supposed to rain, was just amazing.
The best, and weirdest part of my day, was getting yelled at by a bum on my way home. He was pushing his shopping cart of cans and bottles and stopped for a second and so I went pass him and he sped up. So I stopped, let him pass, and went to my apartment. Then he starts yelling at me about something like Us people come into his neighborhood nad don't say hi, hello, shalome, nothing, and he fought for 13 years to save my a** and if we were in Manhattan, I'd shoot him, and then I just went inside. I don't know what he was getting at, but I thinkhe was yelling at me because I was white in a predominantly black and latin community. whatever. he was weird and drooling from mouth and definitely on something. No worse than the bums in Detroit that would harass me. ha.
Class was amazing. I know I keep saying that so far, but it's so true. I know I'm going to come out of this with exactly what I need, and that's an awesome feeling. I'm glad I followed my instincts to come here. Anyway, last night we had to pick a word from a pile, tolerance, positivty, self respect, etc. and then we had to be the word without acting it out and still responding to the group. The next was to pick an image from a pile and tie the two together. It was really interesting how the whole thing unfolded and how we all worked together. Really really cool. It sounds weird, but if I explained it better, you'd understand. A lot of times when actors go into charatcers they pick images, whether an animal, an object, whatever, and they take on this object to help them with the character or a line or a motivation or whatever. It's very helpful and really works. One of my more successful monologues was that of Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons and my imagery was a snake.
We continues with ensemble exercies to work as a whole group as one. One of the exercises we did was to count 20 as a group. Only one person says a number at a time and if two people begin to say the same number, you have to start back at one. We did this exercise in Moscow. You need to really be in tune with the group and be listening to them entirely and wholly in order to get through to the end. It's pretty sweet. At the end, Per told us how he structured his classes - by structuring the subconscious instead of focusing on the intellectual aspects. Ending from the same point we began from and having a central point to get to in the middle. It's pretty remarkable and I think gives us more freedom, as well as a guideline because nobody's saying this is right or wrong, you just go with what you feel, which is important for that organic feeling onstage. I always have so much energy when I leave those rehearsals and then I get home and just absolutely crash. so funny.
Today, I get to work at the wonderful Macy's on 34th Street in Herald Square from 1-5 then shimmy my way over to class in Brooklyn from 6-10:30. Long day, but a productive one. Hopefully, I'll do well at Macy's today with sales.
Alright, I'm off to make breakfast. Hope everyone is doing well. This post was kind of boring, I apologize, I'll make the next one better. :) And, one day I'll go do something touristy so I can give you the lowdown on how that is too. Peace
P.S. this is me in Central Park last week. I like to go here and chill - read, write, talk on the phone, ya know. :)
