Zoinks, late with the posting this week!  And no excuse to speak of…or does laziness count as an excuse in the swingin’ 21st century?  Let’s just say it does.  Now Claradippity, and I’ll get started with the tale of class number two over at the OSSD.

Chugging along with our level 3 course centering, for the time being, on monologues, we managed an even four students in class this week…myself, Catherine, Rachel and Vanessa, back from a bout of the illness.  As per last week’s instructions, we each had to have a monologue picked out by this week (Canadian, contemporary, and a few other criteria).  I’d settled on a bit from the 2005 Summerworks show THE FILE by Greg Nelson (later reworked into the ’06 GCTC show THE FALL, as it turns out).  Found it in a collection of two-handers I picked up, and the character seemed like a close enough fit to me to give it a go.  Got off-book quick enough…funny thing, it turns out I can get off-book on a monologue pretty damn quick.  On a lark, I tried to see how much I could remember of the bit from ODD JOBS Brie gave me last class, and to my surprise, I still ‘membered the whole thing.  Not bad for 45 minutes of work, eh?

Anyhoo.  Brie gave us all a little warm-up time at the top of class, which we used only sort-of incompetently (we’re new!), before he came in to watch us monologue it up for him.  I went first, and only forgot to breath half the time, otherwise at least getting all the words out.  Vanessa followed with a piece from Michel Tremblay, then Catherine with her bit from Sharon Pollock’s DOC, and finally Rachel with even more Tremblay, who officially won the most-popular playwright in class award for this week.

After, we round-tabled it and explained what we could about our character and why we chose what we did, asked a few questions, basically hashed things out.  Then it was on to a few diff’rent games for the remainder of class…the first one had us pairing up, alternately shouting two nonsense-words at one another (see if you can find them, cleverly hidden in this post!), one meaning ‘go away’, the other meaning ‘come here’.  One person said the word, the other person’s job was to absolutely NOT do the thing being asked.  This was followed by a more wordy variation with a few different scenarios (fighting over a single seat at the theatre, or the last pot in a lifeboat).  They seemed at times like excercises in futility, but what Brie intended was for us to observe the various tactics we tried using to get what we wanted in each situation.  Everyone wants something, he pointed out, and pretty much always.

Which led into our assignment for next week…to go over our plays again, and again, and unearth everything we can about the characters from the text, and find out just what the hell it is they WANT in those monologues, and how they’re going about trying to get it.  A daunting and fun task…I’ve already given mine a good once-over, and really need to schedule another pass in before class.

Oh, and remember to breath.  That would help also.  Now Beekbokkachoy, you mob, I’ve got tea to drink and another post to write once I put this one to bed.  Peace, love and soul,

The Visitor (and Winston)