We’re reaping the benefits of our fundraising already—we have our own acting coach, her fee is part of the cost of the iPOP convention. What do you think of when you hear the title, “acting coach”?
That first day we sat in our classroom waiting for the coach. Anticipation. I really hoped that it would be an experienced actor/teacher.
A small, exuberant woman with a bleached blonde, asymmetrical hair cut blew into the room talking non-stop. Her energy was astounding, and her animated facial expressions seemed almost, well…cartoon-like.
She immediately thrust out a colorful soft-cover book, “Look my book has just been published!” She flipped through pages, “See, this is a photo of me, and in this group photo I am here…” She rapidly described her experience decades ago as a singer and dancer on a weekly, TV variety show featuring cast members from the Brady Bunch show.
I looked at Maria and James, the three of us wide-eyed and speechless. Clearly, she had an interesting and varied show-business past. I wondered how this learning experience was going to play out for us as acting students.
Now, it has been many weeks since that day. It turns out that our teacher is a veteran in acting instruction, she also did years of study at the
Our class is small, made up of the “out-of-town” students. (All the other participants live much closer and meet on a different day.) We three live two hours away, three others students travel about 6 hours one-way from the eastern part of the state to participate. The six of us are getting great personal coaching in such a small classroom setting.
We each have two assigned commercials to memorize. We deliver it to a video camera and watch the playback for practice. We each also have a monologue to act-out. It is like a dialogue between two people, but the other person is “imaginary” so the actor speaks and reacts in a way that is, hopefully, entertaining and that reveals to the audience the events of the scene.
It has been so much fun to be in this group with my son, James, and daughter, Maria. Things are going great, I am remembering how to memorize scripts once again—it’s been awhile; and having fun bringing out nuances in my acting.
The monologues are funny, and Maria and James do them well. They laugh when I perform mine, thankfully mine is also a comedic script and they are not just laughing in embarrassment at their mother. Okay, pretty sure they’re not…
Soon to come, we will be assigned acting partners for a “scene”, oh, and James and I went to a recording studio. I’ll share that with you soon.
I’ve added this blog to Digg.com, you can search under “Densley” or use the link in this sentence. If you “recommend” this blog on Digg.com it will help us pass this on to more people. Thanks for all of you who have donated to our trip; we are still using Paypal for that. Thanks, thanks, thanks!!!
