Second week of Rehearsals for Assassins

Classes this week has been one of the most eye-opening (as well as the most tiring) weeks so far in Grad school. First time getting our Shakespeare scenes up, learning a ton of things in Stage Combat (which, may be tiring but it gives a very nice physical outlet for any stress that is building), introduction to Lecoq neutral masks, and some really awesome ass things going on in Voice Class.

Voice Class- Linklater Voice Work

Okay, so we had Linklater voice for the first two quarters last year, and not saying anything bad about that class, I consider everything that is going on in this class really eye opening as well as frustrating. I thought I had a grasp on what was going on, but I keep learning new and new things that keeps letting me experience new and frightening things, but it is leading to new ways of approaching text/voice work.  If you are interested, I highly recommend looking into it. Cool stuff.

 Lecoq Neutral Masks

Lecoq class has been very hit and miss all quarter. I don't really understand what is going on, bar some little glimpses. The main question we are asking is "What story is my body telling". Using Masks, we are able to experience our body in a new way. 

  

Assassins

This starts our second week of rehearsals! Starting to see how the show is forming, and everyone involved is starting to see how awesome the show is going to be! Sunday is our first stumble through. Looking forward to it..as long as I get rid of this cold first. 

Rehearsal Photo

Rehearsal Photo

Rehearsal Photo

Best view in the new building

New year, new building new show, new works....

M.F.A 2

So it has already been a month into my second year at DePaul. I could not be more excited, and I am really starting to feel/notice a difference in my classwork/scene work.

I am working on Sondheim's Assassins, where I am the character Giuseppe Zangara, and needless to say I am thrilled. This will be the first for: A Sondheim show, first show at DePaul, my first show at the new DePaul building, first time playing a person who existed in the "real" world. Super exciting stuff. We are about a week into rehearsals and I can already say the show is going to be incredible. Incredible team incredible cast. Get tickets quickly if you can!

2nd year in the masters program deals with a lot of Shakespeare Text. I consider this one my biggest challenges in the whole realm of the theater world (Lots of places tend to do Shakespeare) and although worried, I'm up for the challenge and hopefully will grow to love it. I already have learned so much and there is so much more to go.

New Building

This year is the grand opening of the new theater building at DePaul  and it is pretty god damn amazing. Check it out by checking the link here.

It is a great space, kinda "sterile" right now but that is to be expected. Can't wait to see what the future holds.

New Works

So I decided I am going to start brainstorming some shows that I have been really itching to write. The main one being some sort of show of the impact of suicide (dealing with Todd Casper). Not really sure where that is going to take me, but I've been mulling it over and I think it is time to take the next step. 

I am also very pleased to announce that I am working on a Doritios Crash the Superbowl commercial for my workshop piece this year (meaning full support) and I am so excited to get an idea that I have had for a long time FINALLY off the ground. I will try to keep that updated on here!

That is it for now, see you in probably 6 months when I decide to write again...

I'll just write next week.......annnnnnnnnd it's summer.

So, I've always not been very good at keeping a written record on anything, so I'm not surprised that when school work started to bare down I was kept away from this.

Anyway, first year at DePaul was awesome, I learned so much in such a little time, and I can't wait to go back. The last quarter got insanely busy, but I made it through!

I'll try to post some more updates and such on here during my summer, which I will be spending back in Ohio. I have to do some things there, and I'll be shooting a film!

Spoken Word Workshop with Idris Goodwin

So, I mentioned in my last post that we had a workshop involving spoken word. It was with Idris Goodwin, who is an author of both spoken word and play scripts. It was an awesome workshop, and I really got a lot out of it. We were told to bring a "riff" on our name, and that was it. I chose to highlight the fact that I'm the last son with our last name, and my Italian-ness. After we went through that, we were separated into groups and got about 8 minutes to make up a group piece. That was really interesting, throwing some people together, give them a time limit and see what they come up with. The next day, we were given 15 minutes to write something about a niche that was different. I chose gaming.

It must have stuck with me, because when I came home and took a shower I got an idea, jumped out of the shower and starting writing.

I used a past experience involving someone cheating on me while I had a kidney stone. It just kinda wrote itself and I'm very proud at the final product.  I showed it to a few class mates, and decided to read it at an "theater open mic night" called No Shame Theater located at Lincoln Loft. Super cool chill thing. You get like 5~6 minutes to preform anything you like.

So, I went and preformed! Really proud how it turned out. Here it is! Be share to share it if you like it!

Also check out Idris's blog here.
and Lincoln Loft's facebook page.

Month back into things.

So, awesome stuff going on. Tons of workshops. One learning about puppets, and the other learning about Spoken Word Poetry and how we can turn that into an on stage piece. More on that in another post.

Self Generated Project "Waiting Room" Rehearsal 1

We've started work on the self generated project, which so happens to be my project. I thought I could keep track of it here for anyone who cares to read it.

Rehearsal 1

We gathered in room 201, a room where the heat can be set so we would not be hindered by the wacky and unreliable temperature that floats around the Theater School. I thought that this would have a more desired atmosphere which would lead to more desirable results-That is, everyone having fun instead of freezing/sweating to death. 

I decided that I wanted a fun filled environment much like we had in Improv class, so I started with some improv warm-ups until I felt like everyone loosened up from the long day of classes and we sat down in a circle and began. 

I wanted everyone to pick their own characters instead of me choosing them. I thought that in this way people would be more open to who the were, instead of being forced to playing a part that they had no desire to be. I didn't know if this made any or much of a difference, but everyone went along with it. 

Next was a read-through. Scripts typos and grammatical errors everywhere. It is interesting having your script read through for the first time. It made me very excited to move forward. 

We were soon done with the read-through and a general discussion took place on where I wanted to take the project. I really had no idea, only saying "Where-ever it goes, that is where it is going to go". I know I wanted to improv to explore the world that I set out, but that was about it. Cool ideas were given, and we chose to have improv sections in the piece, where during read throughs, we would improv scenes in between scenes/beats. I like this idea a lot, and I think there is some promise.

That's it for now! 

2nd week back, sorting everything out and getting into a rhythm

So, 2nd week back and everything is falling into place.

Acting has been really eye opening, learning to react from what our partner is giving us, and not just what we want in the scene. This is going to be huge in auditions and what not, so its exciting.

Feldenkrais was more atm work. Had two atms, one was called making a smile with our foot, and making a rainbow. Both involved laying on a side and preforming tasks. The most I get from this class is how I limit myself. It's interesting, but rather hard to explain.

Meisner, much like acting, is focusing on responding to what our partner does. We added basic movement on our Wednesday class. Again, hard to explain.

Speech- Learned the phonetic English consonants, and moving onto vowels

Voice- Learning about our soft pallet and how it moves. I wish I had this class before I sang a note.

Workshops start this week! Super excited.

I'm also going to try to get into better shape by going to the gym at least 3xs a week. We'll see how that goes.


I'll probably be adding more talking about how my rehearsals for my piece go! Yay for all 0 of you who read this.

First week complete!

First week complete!

Just kinda was dropped into everything that we left. Worked on our scenes with Dexter, where I have to do two because of only having nine in the class. I actually love being able to work with two, it gives me an opportunity to work twice on everything we are learning.

The scenes I'm working on are:
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Strangers, Babies.

My partner and I are doing the first scene  in Strangers and Babies. A baby bird flies into the glass balcony window of our flat and May (my wife) is incredibly worried for the bird and wants to take care of it. I (Dan) am trying to keep May from being upset and getting overly attached to the bird. There are undertones of the perturbed past of May, and the strain it puts on our relationship.

Dinner with Friends.

I just rushed over to my best friends house (Gabe) after having a fight and hatefilled sex with my soon to be Ex-Wife. I'm coming over to Gabes house to tell my side of the story of why I cheated on my wife. It comes out that I cheated because we've lost our spark, but the scene is really between how Gabe reacts and handles/treats everything.

We have this incredibly awesome breakdown, and added with Dexter's coaching, its really eye-opening.  Can't wait to see how the rest of the scenes go.
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Feldenkrais

We did two ATM (Attention to Movement). First was trying to put a book on the sole of our foot, then without holding the book, try to move it around the room. It was quite frustrating but fun at the same time. Learned a lot about how we think when given a problem, and the progression of using our bodies to fix said problem when given restrictions (No crawling, hoping, etc.)

Second ATM was laying on one side, and trying to see how we move our legs on both sides of our spine. How we did it, how far we could do it, how efficient we do it were all explored. We also were given a task, on one side we had to press the floor with our heel, then the other our toes. It made me realize that I limit ourselves and not thinking about how we can go in two planes.

Linklater

After our first day of reviewing last quarters work, we started exploring how our tounges work, and how much tension we hold in it. It was really interesting, and really hard to explain.

Stage Speech

This is one of the new classes! We are learning how speech is actually formed. It seemed incredibly difficult to understand, but once it was explained I think I'm following.
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/consonants.html

There is a website going over what we learned. Click the symbol and listen to the sound. Basically we learned how those sounds are made with how we move our mouth. Really cool, and going to help with dialects later on! Coolness!

Yoga

Yoga. I yoga'd.

Meisner 

Wiki that. It's really cool, a new acting technique that we are learning. Also hard to explain.

Seminar

Big quarter of learning Shakespeare basically. We had our first class learning the history of theater from the greeks to the Renaissance.

That was my week! Tried to explore the city, but wasn't out too long. Cleaned up the apartment and just settling in to being in the city again.

Back from break!

So, sorry for the hiatus, I'm awful at keeping blogs, I'm hoping to change that to journal my experiences so when I look back I can go "Yes I can remember that", or whatever. 

So I'm back from break! Long 6ish week back to Ohio to hang out with my dogs, help my family at the house and do whatever odds and ends I needed to do. Also volunteered at my old highschool helping students with drama and theater! It was very rewarding and actually quite fun. 

This semester I'm working in all the same classes as last year, except for no more improv =(

Instead! We have Meisner Technique, which is exciting, and also Stage Speech! 

On top of our master classes/workshops, the MFA class is going to start doing our own projects, and we are going to work on a play I wrote. Exciting!

I'll keep you posted as much as I can!