Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Blood and other fluids

So how to even begin to explain the theatre school experience?

One, it's all consumming and exhausting. I start at 8:30 am every day and finish usually by 7 pm. Five days a week. I'm always with the same 14 people. I do all kinds of classes, including: Movement (where we flop around and balance sticks), Voice (where we pretend to be fluttering around Elizabethan gardens whispering sonnets to each other lustfully), Audition (where we are recounted terrifying true anecdoctes about the business we're about to enter), Acting (where we, well, act), Articulation (where we discuss the merits of cartoon voices) and Singing (in which we rub our ribs, bounce up and down, and belt out Cole Porter).

And then we have MA Tutorials. This is where all the MA students in our year, no matter what their course, get together and discuss things. Usually violently. Today, for example, we were shown a documentary about an Italian man with terrible teeth who paints himself white and then proceeds to open his veins and bleed all over the stage. In front of a paying audience. For big money. And this is art? Or theatre? Or just crap?

I know what I think- but the debate raged fast and furious to say the least, with much shouting and gesticulating and eternal emnities being sworn. I could offer my two cents re: other theatre I have seen where bodily fluids are released, such as vomit and urine ect. (and yes, I have seen such things - what a very modern liberal complete education I have had!)

I will say this though - this artist is public enemy number one where the blood banks are concerned....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But is it as interesting as Myra's class??

babagenouche said...

Lexi please - nothing could ever EVER be as interesting as Myra's classes, and I'm ashamed and astonished that you even had the gall to suggest such a thing!