North Pocono High: Day 4

This has been an incredibly physical day for us. I'd say it stands close to our rehearsal process for

Legal Snarls

for sheer continual physical work. (Though not even close to

Silent Lives

, for which we each became demi-gods of falling down, and from great heights.) In Shakespeare we worked on character archetypes, in P.E. we moved ahead into actual acrobalance instruction, which we continued into the acting class. Most exhausting, really, was the second gym class, for which we have somewhere from sixty to seventy students, the same class we had third period Monday. I could use a good, soothing cup of tea with lemon and honey. Fortunately, my only obligation tonight is dinner with

Friend John Beck

. I'll be sore in the morning, but not for lack of rest and placid recreation.

It was a fitful night of sleep for me, I confess. We were tackling a lot of new stuff today, and I suppose I was still riding out my left-over anxiety from yesterday's interruption. Heather and I allowed ourselves a slow internal warm-up in the process of getting coffee, getting there and getting into a constructive mental space. By the time our first class started filtering in, though, we had found ourselves again, and the class went great. Our sponsor there, Geri Featherby, happened to be there to observe, and wasn't disappointed by the physical characterizations we managed to coax out of that room full of teenagers. It's a lot of fun to explain to high schoolers that, yes, it's perfectly valid to

try

different things, to add their own interpretations to an ongoing cultural conversation. As we explained to them commedia tropes like the dottoring Dottore, full of hot air, and the greedy Pantalone's money-pouch placement (directly over his codpiece), they saw how free they were to interpret a character. Eventually we had a sort of runway demonstration of their contemporary takes on the archetypes. It was very funny, very original, very gratifying.

The P. E. classes were ones we had a lot of uncertainty about. How can we teach safe acrobalance to so many? You may recall that

Friend Patrick

and I had a similar class size at the

KC/ACTF of 2007

, but that was all college-age theatre enthusiasts. Here were we dealing not only with a mixed group of high-school ages, but ones who had neither heard of our work, nor had any immediate context for what we relatively strange persons were about to subject them. In acrobalance, there are inescapable challenges regarding trust. It seemed we had unintentionally set a similar challenge for ourselves and our students simply in proposing to teach them this skill. It went . . . great. Really. It did! My voice may be a little gravelly (read: extra sexy) for a week or more, but the students were attentive and interested and -- and this is really the best part -- daring. We just taught them an angel, the most core move of the style of acrobalance I learned, but that's plenty scary enough. And everyone had a go for at least one turn of basing, flying or spotting (potentially the most important position). Some tried more than one role. We had them in groups of four, created by first having them make a pair and then match themselves to another pair, which I strongly recommend. It saved time, and got people interacting as members of a team more immediately.

As I said above, the day ended with

still more acro!

This time with our theatre kids. We taught them a thigh stand (just to mix it up a bit), and I was reminded of how effective this work can be with ensemble-building. There are all different types in this class, and I suspect all different motivations for being there. In working on thigh stand, we did it all together, one pair at a time, with everyone else spotting in a tight circle. It was a great feeling. The pair was insulated by their peers, and in this way we managed to get some people to participate who might otherwise have quickly bowed out. I would have preferred that everyone try either flying or basing (a couple opted only to spot) but we had a majority anyway, and some tried both positions. At the end, there was a very good feeling of accomplishment in the class, which is something we've been struggling for most of the week with them.

Rest. Meatloaf (the food; not the music). Tiger Balm (TM). Tomorrow we close the show.

North Pocono High: Day 3

Today was, in many ways, unexpected. We ended up teaching two-and-a-half classes today, because just as we were ready to start the second period, the school went into a lock-down. I was confused by this; I'd never heard the term before. For those of you who haven't spent a lot of time around a high school in recent history, a lock-down is a sort of policy enacted in the interests of the students' safety in a time of crisis, or investigation. On notice, everyone goes into their respective classrooms and lock the doors. Well, one of these got timed for today in such a way that we missed out on teaching second-period Phys. Ed. class. To be fair, the announcement apparently informed people that they could continue teaching (it seemed it was simply for a drug check; they brought in drug-sniffing dogs), but they don't get all the announcements in the gymnasium and so we spent over an hour sitting, silent, instead. It's a good practice, given what can happen in a school these days. I was completely unaware of it prior to today.

Before all that, though, we had a great Shakespeare class in the auditorium. Our emphasis today was on the improvisation tenet, "When in doubt, breathe out," and we worked with the students on diaphragmatic breathing, enunciation and diction, and projection. I've been using horse stance to encourage the students to have a strong base for their breath, and they kind of hate it, but in a good, collective groan kind of way. It's working; they're really learning to relax the parts of their bodies they're not using, to ground themselves and deliver powerful voice from the diaphragm. After breathing drills and vocal warm-ups, we ran them through a diction drill, using:

"To sit in solemn silence

on a dull, dark dock,

in a pestilential prison

with a life-long lock,

awaiting the sensation

of a short, sharp shock

from a cheap and chippy chopper

on a big black block."

Then we practiced as a group throwing our voices to the back corner of the auditorium and delivering dialogue with power, before taking individuals up on stage with a line from their scene work and working them through clarity and intention in delivery. Heather and I would take turns coaching the student on stage and standing at the rear of the space, checking for clarity and projection. It was continued good work from this early group. Sadly, time got away from us again and we didn't get to everyone, but we made sure the rest of the class paid attention and practiced good audience habits. Hopefully some of what we do will stick, and they'll continue a practice. Tomorrow we plan to explore the use of character archetypes in Shakespeare (which I'm very much looking forward to), and we'll be back in the auditorium Friday to pull it all together.

Our one gym class was abbreviated to just barely a half an hour, so we kept the freshmen and sophomores in their street clothes and sped them through stretching and the most basic partner balances. Everyone was fairly hyperactive after the excitement/anxiety of the lock-down, but we managed to come together by the end of the half-period, and circle push-ups are always good for a bonding experience. We've ended every class thus far with this conditioning exercise. The way it works is that you have everyone in a circle (a rather large circle in our case) and put them in the "up" position of a push-up. When you tell them they only have to do one push-up, they relax a bit. When you tell them we're doing them one-at-a-time, and everyone must stay in the "up" position until we're through, they groan, but don't quite grasp just how hard they'll be working by the end. As it progresses, the energy builds, people moan and groan, but they're enduring together, so that by the end you can give them a choice: to keep it up, or join you in a set of ten or twenty push-ups more. Maybe this seems like torture to you, Gentle Reader? I can only say that, if you're there, you feel the camaraderie afterwards.

In our last class of the day, we revisited improvisation and set some new challenges for the students. We began with more team-building games -- group counting again, and blob tag. After a quick review of the improvisation principles, we set the students to two games: What Are You Doing? and Sit, Stand, Lie. In doing these, we asked them to remember to respond with a "Yes, and" attitude, and all that good stuff. WAYD is good for getting students to react impulsively, and rely on one another for their actions, and SSL reminds the participants that they need to pay close attention to one another if they hope to build a story together. The interesting thing about game play in this context is trying to keep the emphasis more on teamwork, less on competition. The games tend to teach themselves in this regard; they work better when people are working together. However, more inexperienced improvisers need encouragement to leave their safety zones, to trust their scene partners more and more . . . and still more. It was difficult to invite this observation in such a short time, but that's just the nature of a school day. If we get one thing across in our remaining days in this class, I'd like it to be a priority for fostering trust, for creating ensemble. Tomorrow we'll tackle this by way of acrobalance work. The physical can often be a quicker teacher than the conceptual.

North Pocono High: Day 2

Remember when I posted about the infamous "sophomore slump" that inevitably occurs with a second night's performance? (See

8/15/07

.) Of course you do! Well: It's more of a guideline than a rule, actually. Today we had a great day of teaching, in our every class. It would be foolish to try and attribute the success to any one general factor. Suffice it to say that whatever else may have contributed, we knew better what we were about today, and so did the rest of the school, and that seemed to grease the wheels just enough to allow everyone to relax and enjoy more.

In Shakespeare we latched on to the improvisation tenet, "When you get stuck, do something physical." Using it as a kind of theme for the day's (read: 43 minutes') work, we warmed them up quickly, played a quick game, and then ran them through three variations on developing strong physical characterization. Typically, we spend at least three workshops of 2-3 hours each on this part, but we wanted to at least point out the tools for them to return to if they are so motivated in future work. We had them walk the room on a grid, taking away the burden of decision-making a bit, then guided them into different postures using body-center specifics, animal forms and appetites to help them discover interesting shapes, pacing and rhythm. They took to it beautifully. My only regret was that we ran right up against the bell, leaving no time to review and process in stillness. We had also hoped to review their texts with them for physical cues and clues to their characters today. We've decided to attack some vocal work (in the large auditorium) tomorrow, and then integrate both days' work into the text Thursday, instead.

Physical Education was much the same for our first period as it had been yesterday, and today was another day for taking our time to lay a groundwork of physical awareness. Neither period had the immense numbers of Monday's third-period class. In the second period, however, we had our first freshman/sophomore group. They did very well indeed. In fact, it was easier to hold their attentions, by and large. It's clear to me that when we see them again on Friday, we'll need to take it slow, make sure everyone is both supported and challenged. Tomorrow is our big challenge in P.E., however, as we'll only see those two classes the one day. With period three today, we demonstrated some of our acrobalance to give them an idea of what we were training them for. It was well-received, and I think we'll start both classes with that tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe, we'll get to partner-stretching sooner so we can go farther with it and offer them some of the insight the classes who have us twice this week will receive.

Finally, the acting class. We had a much better day today. Our strategy for incorporating more game play certainly helped, but I think also the students had simply come to trust us a bit better over the twenty-four hours between. We began with a very quick warm-up, then played "Grandma's Footsteps" (otherwise known as "Red Light/Green Light"). That got them alert, and we brought them in for group counting up, wherein one person counts one number at a time, listening for their turn, trying to get up to a certain number. This was a nice way of reincorporating them as a team while maintaining a sense of play. From there we moved into some of our standard exercises for learning about rhythm, comic threes and stops, or doing one thing at a time. Still in a circle, we did spit-takes, trying to find a distinct beat in each moment (drink - process - spit) and then a rhythm as we continued around the circle. After that, we did the dollar-bill exercise, wherein the students are asked to cross the room on their way to somewhere, discover a dollar bill on the ground, and make off with it. We spent some time on this, and they accepted adjustments very well I thought, neither fighting them nor cowering from repetition. We ended working on staged trips, and trying to make them spontaneous and an event. They did very well and seemed to enjoy the technique work. Tomorrow we see about working that into the improvisation groundwork.

I'm exhausted and, frankly, expect to be every evening this week. We're having some callbacks for background players for

The Very Nearly Perfect Comedy of Romeo & Juliet

tonight from 7:00 to 10:00., for which I need to be both acute and participatory. I'ma go nap now . . .

North Pocono High: Day 1

Today I and fellow Zuppianni Heather Stuart had our first day as artists in residence at North Pocono High School; we're teaching all this week, four classes a day -- one Shakespeare, two Phys. Ed. (yes, you read that right) and a theatre class. This is our first go teaching under the auspices of the NEIU, and we've been pretty excited about it. So often with the workshops we have to have an intense but brief experience, and never get to follow a progress with a group of students. This week, we'll start what I hope is the first of many chances to help students evolve over some time.

Shakespeare is a new class for us to be teaching, but particularly apt, given our upcoming project. Heather and I decided to offer the students our techniques for developing a show, improvisation and characterization, all through a Shakespearean lens. We were pleasantly surprised to find the students particularly eager and bright at first period. They are working on scenes from Taming of the Shrew, and some have already begun to memorize. Our plan was to review (in a scant 43 minutes) the basic tenets of improvisation, and then structure the rest of the week around those tenets as they apply to exploring and developing Shakespeare. After a quick warm-up, we led the students through a few exercises to get them accepting and building, making the other look good, being specific and breathing and making a physical choice when they got stuck. We ended the period with genres, asking them to perform their scenes in the round and inviting their classmates to jump in to help build the environment when necessary. Then we introduced a genre -- James Bond film, Western, etc. -- for them to adapt the text to. They took to it like they were on fire, and we were very pleased. The rest of the week we can really focus on specific techniques and approaches with this class.

Physical Education we were, I must admit, a bit nervous about. We've taught highly physical classes and workshops before, but never have we needed to incorporate the specific goals of a P.E. program and environment. We would have two rather large classes (30 to 70) in a row in a large, echoed gymnasium, and the classes we see Monday and Tuesday we meet again on Thursday and Friday, due to their rotating-day scheduling. Our approach then was to spend a good amount of time on the stretching and preparatory activities for partner balance, then instruct one-to-two acrobalance moves later in the week. We had the whole class form a circle, and led them through some of our more interesting stretches, making a point of first running them through some aerobic exercises to shake out the initial hyperactivity. It was surprisingly effective to keep the group focused simply by staying in the middle and pausing at key points; Heather and I stayed back-to-back, eyes watchful as though we were defending a hill. As the group warmed up and became accustomed to the activity, we switched to partner stretching, getting them adjusted somewhat to physical contact and communication. The students paired off by approximate height and we took them through pulling assisted stretches. The response was good. In that environment, the most hopeless response you can get is apathy, and we had very little of that. Afterwards, we heard good feedback, which is all the better for us as it spreads into the halls and informs the approach of our future students in these classes.

The last class of our day was a theatre one, after a break, and we also endeavored to teach the students the tenets of good improvisatory theatre, this time in a bit more detail. We were a little surprised to find this class a good deal more bashful than the first period. But then again, it was a greater mix of ages, and by seventh period some of the hyperactive energy so critical to good teenage productivity has worn thin. We warmed them up, then took them through more advanced improvisational exercises than those we used earlier in the day. They responded well, but we still had some showing fear at the end. Our goal with these students is to train them toward learning to work in Zuppa del Giorno's style, to regard a scenario, or a string of actions, as their script and to get a little more comfortable with putting their own ideas into what they're creating, making strong choices that are unique to them.

It was a good start. Tomorrow we have some modifications to add to each class, based on what we learned today. In Shakespeare, we plan to begin looking at methods of creating a strong physicalization for a character, using a combination of textual clues and personal physical exploration. Gym will be basically the same approach, but we'll have our first freshman/sophomore class, which should tell us a lot about how to proceed with the rest of the week. We may also do some demonstration of where our work with them leads, showing off a few of our more impressive acrobalance moves. For the theatre class, we intend to incorporate more game play, to disarm some of their defensive responses and get everyone into a team mindset. To this end, we're teaching some of our comic techniques: threes, one-thing-at-a-time, lazzi and the like. If they get comfortable performing their own work for one another, they'll be a hair's breadth from doing it outside the classroom. There's a strong possibility for our returning in the spring to work with them on their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream; the potential for tracking so many students' development over such a prolonged period of time is a very exciting prospect indeed.

"This is me breathing . . . "

says John Cusack's character, Martin Blank, as he prepares for his ten-year high school reunion by almost unconsciously loading a clip into his handgun and checking the chamber. I love

Grosse Point Blank

. It's an incredibly irresponsible movie with nothing but reverence for a by-gone era, some violence, and a whole lot of cynically glib dialogue. Love it, love it, love it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I'm constantly searching for open calls for the casting of

GPBII: Son of Blank

. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Movie quotes play through my head with about the same frequency as songs do, so there's nothing unusual about having one take up residence there for a little while, and the more I enjoy a movie, the more I've seen it, and there you go. Still, I try to take notice when one seems particularly stubborn about hanging onto my hippocampus, and this is one that has done just that. I'm not saying that a quote is recalled just for the purpose of trying to communicate something to myself. Rather, I think that when I do recall a quote, or snatch of song, some part of brain is working tirelessly away on some worry or other and recognizes the meaning. The old gray matter can be like a room full of people, and one of them can recognize something in another and say, "Oh man, don't leave yet. So-and-so's just

got

to meet you." And so, on the three-hundredth and sixty-second internal repetition, a connection is made.

This is me breathing . . .

I'm a nail-biter. I don't mean that as a colorful expression of my anxious personality. Rather, I am literally a nail-biter. I try to be better about it. I generally fail. It's called chronic onychophagia, by the way, and only about 10% of men past the age of 30 engage in it. It's a rather complicated little symptom/condition. Lots of theories surround it. It's often coupled with other supposed compulsive behaviors, such as hair removal, skin removal, excessive washing, etc., and so often associated with obsessive/compulsive disorders. But it can also be diagnosed as a simple ingrained behavioral response, or an addiction, or as a kind of sublimated grooming instinct. I don't know quite what to make of it, except to say that I do it when I'm bored and when I'm anxious, occasionally without conscious thought, and that I find it enormously gratifying for some reason. I'd also like to stop.

This is me breathing . . .

I have many habits. I have a lot of trouble distinguishing between my habits and possible compulsive behaviors. I'm just not sure where one draws the line. My chronic onychophagia (it's just a fun way to say it) is probably the most physically destructive h/pcb I currently engage in, though my sincere and abiding love of good beer is obviously not a huge benefit to my person. I've had worser ones in the past -- such as smoking -- but really, most of these behaviors are a little more mental than demonstrative. They may occasionally creep out in behavior, like finger-tapping or object-arranging, but as I've matured (ahem: grown older at least in terms of years) these demonstrations have lessened, either by will or accident. Because the h/pcbs can be so inexplicably internal, I often wonder just how unique they are, how many others experience them in the ways I do? I know I'm not alone. I know that. But is it maybe everyone, in their own ways? Is there a norm after all?

This is me breathing . . .

They sometimes say (They being rather fond of sweeping generalizations) that life happens in cycles, and not just the easily observable variety, such as birth-life-death, or spring-summer-fall-winter. Coincidence, in the purest meaning of the word, occurs over and over again. When a celebrity dies, we await the next two to follow. Read a book about little people and, though you'd swear it's never happened before, you'll notice nearly a dozen just going about your day. The cause-and-effect is difficult to track here, though plenty of people will chalk it up to simple mental association. The brain does have a habit of seeking out patterns, rhythms and symmetries. Yet I'm inclined to believe that the world outside our minds meets us halfway, more often than not. I'm not proposing anything particularly mystical here; linear logic simply doesn't explain everything. Take, for example, weddings. What is the explanation for my attending four weddings in the next four months, including my own, and the three others that friends of mine are attending during that same period? Incidences align, and it seems to me that attributing such alignments solely to human behavior is at best naive, at worst arrogant. It's just that we're a little obsessed with ourselves, and a little in love with answers. We're also a little in love with mystery, which I admit keeps me returning to a sense of wonder when I'm given the option.

This is me breathing . . .

I've been using

The Big Show

to help motivate me in recent efforts to curb my chronic onychophagia, which is in one sense apt, and in another, ironic. The last time I was particularly successful in ceasing the mania was during rehearsal for

The Glass Menagerie

, way back in 2002. I was playing a guy bent on self-improvement, who cared a lot about the impression he made on others, and it helped. Wherefore, then, ironic? Because one thing I have figured out about this behavior is that it is provoked by anxiety. When I got my first job, with a moving company, they told us that the two most stressful occasions in a person's life are a moving day and wedding day. Well, I'm here to tell you that the days leading up to said day are no piece of cake, neither. Planning a wedding is rife with reasons to return to old, comforting cycles, from the politics of negotiation to the inner-searching of a person preparing to make the change of his and/or her li(f/v)e/s. God bless. It's enough to make a fella' return to smoking.

This is me breathing . . .

Where experience and discovery meet, that's good acting. You want your performance to be informed by all you've seen and done, to be true to your understanding of the world, but also to embody the questions that live in a new, first-time moment. Acting in the theatre can satisfy both my compulsion for repetition and order, and my appetite for surprise and wonder. The ultimate balance between the two is an incredibly fragile thing: It only exists for half moments, most of the time, and most of the time such moments can't be savored, lest one risks destroying them. They must simply be, and then pass. As a younger actor, I became pretty obsessed with rehearsing a role to mechanical perfection, with making good choices and being able to reproduce them exactly. The majority of my adult craft has been a process of learning about the other side of that coin, about the incredible necessity for surprise and improvisation. Hell: You can't possibly see enough possibilities to be effective without inviting forces of chance to have their say. We're at the mercy of chance -- from found money to global financial market crises -- every moment of every day, so it is in some ways natural to value ritual, to seek cycles.

This is me breathing . . .

We are not, however, our cycles. (Much as we may sometimes like to be.) We're not even our choices. (Although I imagine most of us would desperately insist that is exactly what we are.) No, we're something altogether else, a synthesis of choice and chance, a combination of forces creating . . . what, exactly? Well, us. I don't know how else to say it. With every inhale, and every exhale, forces are at work, within and without. It's a little frightening to think of things this way, but fear and excitement are a couple of those component forces. When I look at things this way, it seems apparent to me that my habits are in substance simply misdirected energy, force that could be applied to making more choices or, perhaps, appreciating more chances. Then again, maybe they're leading me toward their own chances and choices. The best one can do is to keep breathing, through whatever may come.