I hate theatre, harsh I know. I thought it was cheesy and who in the duck can memorize an entire script anyway? But this is my year of trying new things and getting out of my comfort zone so I signed up for an adult acting class at the community theatre.
Class one was cool. There was about 7 people in the first class and I warmed up pretty fast. We did some emotional exercises and some warm ups but all together it set up a good feel for what was to come.
Class two on the other hand was a bit more surprising, about 12 people showed up. All races, ages and mixes. A real melting pot, which is cool. Class started like normal –a warm up to get our creative and emotional juices flowing, we had to circle around passing the emotion. Then came the weird stuff…
We were given a monologue directory at the end of the first class and were told to at least memorize the first sentence of a choice monologue. We then performed the first sentence of our monologue whilst thrusting different emotions from our hips. Imagine dry humping the air with your hips and hands, palms up. (I know my mom will eventually be reading this and probably seriously reconsider sending my kid brother there for any form of drama camp but it isn’t as bad as it sounds.) It actually, surprisingly made a lot of sense. We did a 10 count of thrusting – counting, then we made some weird noise while doing it, then we said our line. We did, happy, sad and angry. It made you try the line in different emotions and stop thinking about what you were saying and just go with it. It did make for an awkward conversation when I got home and C asked me what I did in class…
Just go with it. If I can dry hump my way through my monologue in front of a live audience, what else am I capable of?