The Final Act and Just the Beginning…

I’m back home.. a very tired me and yet extremely satisfied and happy me. Today was the final presentation of Joe Hasham’s class Acting for Beginners and I can’t tell you who thoroughly thrilled, happy and proud I am of that class, and to be in that class. We have come a long long way since the very first days of class which was in February. So we had 10 grueling weeks of learning the surface of what acting is about. Now that it has come to an end, I feel rather upset and happy, for no longer will I see these people every Saturday but at the same time happy because we managed to survive all the classes. They have been tough, even if it is a beginners class but it is tough. Todays presentation was basically showing the audience – friends and family – what we have been doing for the past 10 weeks, what we’ve learnt and what we have to show for it.

It started of with us standing in the ‘actor’s position’ which is just you standing perfectly still and focusing on to one point. Your feet are shoulder width apart and hands down to your side. Standing in this, you can stand apparently for hours…thank goodness we only stood for 10-15 minutes. The purpose of the exercise is for you to prepare yourself for the physical and emotional actions that are to come. If say I were asked to move in any manner I would be ready to go. If I were to feel some sort of emotion I will be focused enough to go. Followed by that we then got into the appearances, which I had blog about earlier. . Praise God for finally finally for once, we managed to get the appearances worth watching! I was so happy when I finally FINALLY FINALLY got lust done. For over the 9 weeks I had never not once, shocked or made Joe smile for that appearance, particularly because I was not brave enough. Even if my movements were sharp, it doesn’t make much of a difference because I hadn’t done it well enough to make someone in the crowd squirm. So the images I’m going to show you are the things we did had to do for appearances (but these aren’t so clear, i’ll get better ones later). In this order. Joy, Sorrow, Anger, Fear, Love, and of course Lust. Doing this exercise, gets you to feel the emotion in your belly and see how you can project it to the audience using imaginative ways with your body. Wait I take it back I’m not going to show it yet But I will show Anger for now. Click to see our expressions.

After appearances we had the short little skits where we were paired up into groups. Doing the scripts entitled “I am”, “The Park”, “Roses In The Rain” and “Before Now”. All done with our interpretation of the text. Followed by another teamwork effort of “I Am Me” where we in groups of 3-5 we all had to be the same person. The last thing we had to do was a piece called Chapter 6, where we all are following one script and we are seeing the same thing. Flow is key here. Finishing the class, is such an enormous accomplishment and once again I’m so terribly proud of the group because everyone gave it their all and for some of the people I know, they have grown and matured to be more disciplined in the things they want or need to do. It’s about commitment and whether or not you want to do this thing called the arts. For those who were once so incredibly shy, they are now very open and willing to give all they can to a part. No longer are they shocked by certain things or afraid but they or rather we have taken a huge step in this learning process. We got to wear specially made academy shirts and or course were given our certificate of attendance. ^_^

So once again CONGRATS TO THE ENTIRE CLASS OF 2008!!!!! While the class may have ended… The show doesn’t end there of course… ^_^