OPENING NIGHT!!!!!

It's opening night of Edward II. The last few weeks have been pretty intense. I am very much looking forward to having an audience tonight. It will be good to do our final dress/tech this afternoon though. Get out all those last minute kinks...

We are also in the final strech of rehearsals for our american showcase. Come Saturday, a week in NYC will be much desired. Well, here's to the end of the Renaissance! Sounds like we're selling out shows, so yeah! 

Renaissance of 2015

It's been a crazy month since the Globe.

We finished in London with our performance of scenes from Love's Labour's Lost to a crowd that's twice as big as most residency showings at the Globe. I'm so happy my mom got to see it and meet everyone. We then had a nice weekend in and around London. Went to a few museums, saw a show, visited Hampton Court, and even got a backstage tour meet and greet with a couple of my friends from The Rose Theatre in Kingston. 

A month in London was fantastic, but I will say that I was very happy to return to my little room in Glasgow. Upon returning, I had a nice easy week of recovery from the hubbub of the big city. We even saw Bard in the Botanics five-handed touring production of Romeo & Juliet. Very good. Then spent the next week prepping up for Edward II. 

We are now starting our third week of rehearsal. As far as I'm concerned, everything has been going very well. We got through the whole play in about four days for the first crack. I am really loving my journey thus far and my bevy of characters. I'm also looking forward to our vocal support at the end of this week. It's always good to focus and solidify. 

I am also Fight Captain for both Edward II and King Lear. We've now had two sessions with our choreographer and I've been running regular fight calls with the Lear ladies. So that's nice. :-) This past Saturday we had an afternoon session working on devised battle-ography for Edward II. Then on Sunday a few of us dressed up to the nines and had some fancy drinks at the Corinthian Club. Now, back to lines... 

The Globe

Last night I was privileged to grace the boards of the Globe stage for our RCS MACCT culminating presentation of scenes from Love's Labour's Lost. We had double the audience that school presentations usually get. The air was crisp and cold, but the hearts were warm and inviting. What a truly fantastic group of actors and directors I get to work with. I have had a wonderful and challenging time this past month with some of the best educators in the world! Thank you to the staff and everybody at the Globe for making this experience a memorable one. Until next time Shakespeare...

From the groundlings to the gods!

Continuing our work at the Globe, we have intigrated as much of the technique and knowledge as our brains can handle into our scenes for this Thursdays performance. This month has gone ridiculously fast. Last week we learned our jig from the ever-effervescent Huw Prall and we had one our last classes in voice, movement, and singing. 

Yesterday, after what was collectively only about a day and a half's worth of rehearsal, we presented our director's scenes to an audience on the Globe Stage. The three scenes were from Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, Christopher Marlowe's Massacre of Paris, and my scene, Campaspe by John Lyly, in which I played Alexander the Great. I am proud to say that we are the first group to perform any of John Lyly's words on the Globe stage. I am now also completely smitten with his works! 

Today, my mom arrives in London!!! YEAH!!!! Tomorrow I get to perform on the Globe stage again!!!!! 

This week just keeps getting better!!!!

The Globe at my fingertips!

It is currently Sunday afternoon on the 18th of January, 2015. Today is my second day off and end of week 2 in our month of study at Shakespeare's Globe in London. I want to make this very clear:

I am living a dream.

It keeps hitting me in waves. I am studying at one of the best theater schools in the UK and get to learn from some of the best educators and foremost authority on Shakespeare in the world. I also have the amazing privilege to perform twice on the Globe stage AND my mom is making a last minute visit get to see me!!! I am beyond ecstatic. 

We have been doing some really fantastic work with the Globe staff. Everything is relevant and makes me never want to leave this place. I am so glad we a got to have an introductory session with Kate Sagovsky in Glasgow. Her movement work is brilliant. We have spent a lot of time on the 360 degree body and recently began to work with kinespheres and spacial relationships. SPACE IS AMAZING!!!!

Alex Bingley's voice classes have really focused us and integrate so seemlessly with our movement work as well as our singing sessions with Joseph Atkins, who is brilliant. We have learned a round that he composed for the 450 anniversary of Shakespeare's birth. He also composed, just for us, a gorgeous, haunting arrangement for "The Owl and the Cuckoo" from Love's Labour's Lost which we will sing at the end of our presentation at the end of the month. 

Nick Hutchison  is a genius and a so passionate and excited about Shakespeare and especially Love's Labour's. So much insight. Dr. Will Tosh and James Wallace have been an invaluable source of information. If everyone were more like our dance master, Huw Prall, the world would be a better place. The Globe staff in general have been very welcoming and wonderful. 

Outside of that, I have gotten to chill out in London a little bit. Found some good restaurants. I hit up Camden Market last weekend, the amazing amount of period weaponry in the Wallace Collection today and now am just finishing memorizing my lines for our presentation in two weeks. 

Life is good. 

Feel like death? Try Beechams!

Long weeks. Good weeks. We've been working with our professional playwrights these two weeks. We worked on one of their existing plays and this week we got to pick their brains and have our brains picked by them. My fantastic group of seven (Claire, Claire, Siobhan, Kristin, Lloyd, and the ever wonderful Davina) have the pleasure of working with Alan McKendrick. Alan wants to explore violence and its connotations as well as that magical place that exists between violence and comedy, whether it be comfortable of not. We read The Duchess of Malfi and discussed it's themes and plot. We brought in images and characters that turned into improvised scenes adding on to the short string of vignettes Alan wrote for us. Also wached Amateur and an amazing, weird film called Du Levande (You, The Living). 

http://youtu.be/PSqKLizpFPo

The last two days of the term were spent with our Renaissance project casts and directors. I, along with the rest of the men, are in Edward II by Marlowe. Our director, Gordon Barr, had us read the whole play continuosly switching characters. We discussed after each scene and made some nice lists and brainstormed ideas at the end. 

I am proud to say that I will be playing Spencer when we come back from the Globe in February!

After a long challenging term that went way too fast (as well as a week of being sick), we had a wonderful Christmas drinks party! Several faculty members came as well, including Mark, Eve, Ewan, and Lucien!

And on the seventh day he rested. But not for long... I got cast in a short video by one of the RCS film students interested in special effects. We had a rehearsal on the Friday and filmed outside all Saturday morning. It should look pretty cool. There are missiles and explosions and I even get a little hero shot!

On Monday, Cameron, Lloyd, and I trekked up to Glengoyne Distillery and had a grand ol' time!

That night, I went and had some drinks and said a heart-felt goodbye to buddy Cam Cam. He is off home to Colorado for Christmas. :'( 

The next couple of days were spent packing and organizing for my trip to Berlin and Switzerland. Claire and I had some nice tapas and Wednesday night before I left we had a pre-Christmas party with plenty of wine and some fabulous antipasto! Scrumptious cheeses, cured meats, jam, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and balsamic. Mmm... Thanks Claire! Wish you were hanging with me in Berlin!!!!

Coffee break

We are on day three of the first leg of our new writing project. The first two days we got a chance to meet the three writers we will be working with in the spring and now are getting some time time with each to pick their brains and get a sense of their writing style.