crackerwax

I went to the second of my acting classes last night and what fun it was! We did a few warm up exercises, which were excruciatingly embarrassing to do initially but soon became fun, and then we had to do a spot of group improv.

The initial gist of this was that we were split into four groups of six and each group had to come up with a short piece, set in a doctor’s surgery. To make matters a little more complex we had to portray a series of emotions during the piece. The emotions were disappointment, happiness, sadness and anger. Our group were to start with disappointment.

We came up with a stonker of a little scenario. We would all be in the surgery attending a support group, I would be the group leader and would begin by talking about how I felt when I found out I had been diagnosed with cancer and how it had shocked me, I would then go around the group and ask them to describe their feelings on being diagnosed. Their feelings of course would be disappointment which would all have been described through the use of the acting.

The plan was then to move on to me describing my recovery and everybody would become upbeat and happy, then there would be the dawning realisation that perhaps for some of us it was too late, before finally moving on to expressing the anger we felt at being robbed of our lives early.

Gripping stuff I’m sure you’ll agree? Well, sadly we never got a chance to do the whole thing. It seems that everybody else was having difficulty coming up with ways of incorporating all four emotions into their pieces. The outcome of this tragedy was that we’d be doing our initial emotion only! Pah, lightweights.

Still we did our bit, everybody really made an effort and we ended up doing a fantastic job. Spot on!

Next on the list was Shakespeare! We each had a chance to look through a few of his works and decide whether to do a solo or a group piece. I chose Act II, Scene V from The Tragedy Of Cymbeline, King Of Britain and it goes a bit like this.

Is there no way for men to be, but women
Must be half-workers? We are all bastards;
And that most venerable man which I
Did call my father, was I know not where
When I was stamp’d. Some coiner with his tools
Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seem’d
The Dian of that time. So doth my wife
The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance!
Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain’d
And pray’d me oft forbearance; did it with
A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on’t
Might well have warm’d old Saturn; that I thought her
As chaste as unsunn’d snow. O, all the devils!
This yellow Iachimo, in an hour, - was’t not? -
Or less, - at first? - perchance he spoke not, but,
Like a full-acorn’d boar, a German one,
Cried “O!” and mounted; found no opposition
But what he look’d for should oppose and she
Should from encounter guard. Could I find out
The woman’s part in me! For there’s no motion
That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
It is the woman’s part; be it lying, note it,
The woman’s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;
Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
Nice longing, slanders, mutability,
All faults that may be nam’d, nay, that hell knows,
Why, hers, in part or all; but rather, all.
For even to vice
They are not constant, but are changing still
One vice, but of a minute old, for one
Not half so old as that. I’ll write against them,
Detest them, curse them; yet ’tis greater skill
In a true hate, to pray they have their will.
The very devils cannot plague them better.

How cool is that? What’s not so cool is that I’ve got to perform that in front of my class in seven weeks time, sans script.

More news on my acting odyssey next week!