Starting to feel like a proper Visitor again…got to see some GCTC over the last few days, got the giddily anticipated UNDERCURRENTS festival to hit in the next few, and wednesdays are class days again!  All is, at least momentarily, well.  I poked about a little during the day…got the last issue of Buffy season 8, and a sweet new copy of the Grant Morrison documentary I’m going to watch as soon as I finish writing this post, so let’s get this over with, whaddaya say?

Hit the OSSD for level 2 acting class number 2 after a spot of reading and some tasty beef patties from the Piggy Market down the road.  Never hurts to prepare!  There were nine of us again today, with Justin being mysteriously absent (J!  What up with dat??), but last level classmate Rachel making her slightly late return.  Big Cheese Brie Barker ushered us in, and we made introductions again, this time with some alliterative theatricality added on for fun.  That led into about 20 minutes of games, some centering around all our names, and getting increasingly tricky as we went.  Looking at someone, and deliberatley saying someone ELSE’S name, it turns out, is extremely difficult.

The games culminated with a bizarre game of ‘band-aid tag’ that had most of us panting for breath, and Brie sent us on a circular walkabout to shake it off.  Then, as we walked, he narrated a little story, which we all had to act out on our own sans sound.  The story, an odd tale about a prince named Hector, a talking cricket, and playing with fire, was a positive joy to act out.  I was totally getting into it, and was a little sad it didn’t go on for the whole class.

however, this excercize did lead Brie into our final big push for the nite…splitting us into teams of 3 and assigning us the task of creating and performing a five-minute-ish fairy tale all our own.  I got hooked up with Vanessa and Daria, who were positively THRILLED with my suggestion that we do something about dinosaurs and cavemen.  Thrilled, I tell you!  Well, they refrained from striking me, which I thank them for.  What can I say?   I’m a  little kid at heart, and still think dinosaurs are cool.  They’re lucky I didn’t bring Batman into it.

But creative differences aside, I think we put on a pretty entertaining little show about a stalwart cavewoman, tracking her dinosaur-kidnapped mate through the tundra.  Daria certainly threw herself into her multiple roles of caveman, wind, rain and wolf (again, sorry ladies!).  The other groups were rock-solid as well, with a dark supernatural tale of crime and punishment balancing a fluffy love story between a leprechaun and a pixie.  Then Brie had us redo each of our scenes, but in only a minute.  Then, fifteen seconds…you get the idea.  And boy, you learn quickly how to strip your story down to the bare essentials, a rather valuable eye-opener.

We finished with another walkabout,each taking one physical aspect from our respective characters in the shows, paring it down, and committing it to memory.  It turns out we’ll be slowly building a character, each of us, over the run of the course, then letting him/her out to play with others.  It sounds exciting, and I think I officially like the way Brie Barker thinks.

I lingered a bit too long after class…finally gave the Big Cheese that hello Nancy Kenny asked me to pass on a while back, then promptly had a panic moment where I couldn’t find my keys.  Eventually discovered them and had a nice walk back to my bus stop….fuck me, but it got mild out!  Almost stopped in at GCTC, but opted to save it for tomorrow when I have my first UNDERCURRENTS 2-bill night.  Can’t hardly wait, yo!

And that’s all I wrote tonite…off to expand my mind with a little Grant M.  Peace, love and soul,

The Visitor (and Winston)