Acting class
25th of March 2003
I attended my second acting class this evening. I dropped by Franks Diner on the way and ate dinner, as I paid I chatted a few moments with the waitress and when I told her that I was on my way to acting class she asked me if I could perform my monologue. “I will do so the next time I am here,” I told her.
For today´s class I had memorized the slides (script) from Boomtown a series I have never watched or even heard of. We got the script the week before and had the week to memorize the lines.
Before class began, Spencer and I went outside and practiced the peformance. He had not really looked at the dialog at all, so he had the pages on his lap while we went through it. I thought that I would do alright, but memorizing the lines alone and saying them to another person looking at you is very different, so I am glad we were able to go through them a few times before class. Spencer gave me a few tips as well, mainly look him in the eyes while saying the lines, just like any regular conversation. This was supposed to be a conversation between two cops that worked together. One was questioning the other trying to figure out if he had any connection with the death of another police officer.
Class began and I noticed that three more had joined class, so that we now were 8 students.
Spencer and I performed the cop piece first. The first run through in front of class we both had the slides on our laps. He was using it a lot while I glanced on it on occasion. After the performance, Jules our instructor asked us to lose the slides and perform without them. I was more hesitant with letting it go than Spencer, but we got through it. Spencer did not do too well, but I did alright. We performed one more time this time trading places so that I sat in front of the camera. Spencer did not want to screw it up for me, as he told me, so he got the slides, while I performed without. A feeling of letting go came over me this time, really getting into the role of Vince from Boomtown. As I got through I realized how much of a thrill it was to be play a role feeling his emotions as if they were almost my own. As I get more practice I will be able to let go even further, and also get through a barrier in myself that I have had for some time. I enjoy performing and I got some nice comments afterward from Jules and a few of the others. They found it interesting to watch how different it became with the scripts in hand and not. To notice how free I was without holding the script. It felt wonderful to be able to mix in my own words with what I had memorized so it fit in better for me.
It was a lot of fun!
It was also interesting seeing the two other guys perform their memorized lines. When the three new guys did their cold reading it was interesting to see how Celab made changes as he had partly memorized his lines.
It was another interesting evening in class with Jules.
I spoke with her son, Andee who had come along this time, and discovered that he is interested in fantasy and games like Baldur´s Gate. I told him that I have/had been involved with the Baldur’s Gate community for a long time.
I spoke with Andee and Jules for a while after class. About God and how we are guided in what we do in life. Jules said to Andee. “tell him what you told me”, and he told me that he wanted to see more as he watched me on the screen during the recording when I did my performance.