First Week of Summer Shakespeare

I finally got to start doing Shakespeare this week, and I am thrilled! The company is great, the classes are exciting, and the script is hilarious. Right now, we’re just working on The Deceived; the professional company has yet to arrive, so it’s just the students taking classes and rehearsing.

I met the rest of the Young Company at a little barbecue NDSF threw last Sunday before things really got started. We have 3 guys from Northwestern and one from Ball State who are actually in the show, plus a few others in the shop and stage managing. They all seem really talented and fun to work with; it should be a great summer.

On Monday, we started our classes with Movement, taught by a woman named Gulsh. We are learning Commedia dell’arte for the Young Company show. Commedia is a theatrical style that developed in Italy from improvised performances based around a stock set of archetypal characters. As Gulsh explained, the great thing about archetypes is that they transcend cultural boundaries and our universally recognizable. So far, the things we have worked on are having extremely high levels of energy and commitment, making strong entrances and exits, and building characters from the outside in, meaning focusing on the physicality of characters before their psychology. The class seems like it’s going to be challenging, but I think Gulsh is a good teacher, and she comes off as very excited to work with us. I know that the things I’m learning are going to stretch me as an actor, so this should be a fun process.

Yesterday, we started our other class, Voice. The voice teacher is the same one who was taught it the previous two years, so I already know a lot about the class. It’s going to be great to have it this year though while I’m working on my Spanish accent.

The schedule up until today has been classes in the morning from 9 til noon and rehearsal at night from 6 til 10. The time in the middle of the day is normally time off, but about once a week we have to come in either to work in the scene shop or to help with publicity. Once we get a little further with Commedia, we’ll also be able to use that time for one on one work with Gulsh. Due to the fact that we’re rehearsing an outdoor show and that the sun normally goes down between 9 and 10 at night, they’re changing the schedule a bit so that rehearsal will go from 3 in the afternoon til 9 in the evening.

At this point we haven’t gotten very far with the show. We’re blocking right now, and we’ve made it about halfway through the script. I’ve only did about a scene and a half yesterday. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me playing two characters who are both very distinct and both have the potential to be very funny. According to Gulsh, the nature of Commedia means we have to give 150% or we’ll look like idiots.

On a sidenote, I think it’s funny that I’ve been working for three days and I’ve already been told to watch about five different movies: The Big Lebowski, Enchanted, Marx Brothers movies, Buster Keaton, and Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther movies. Luckily I’ve already seen plenty of Pink Panther.