Scraped and Sore

Wow. Last night was an intense physical and emotional workout.

We started out by giving the teacher some feedback on the class so far. Nobody wanted to say anything, so I started out by saying I'd rather not do the class barefoot, partially because I'm not big on being barefoot most of the time, but mostly because the floor that we're working on has god knows what all over it - dust, dirt, nails, paint chips. It has already cut my foot once, someone else's foot once, and I think something snagged a hole in my shirt when we were doing floor exercises last week (either that, or the shirt had a hole in it when I bought it which would make me very sad). I understand that we either need to all be barefoot or nobody can be, but I'd rather not be. Which then got the ball rolling - people asking questions, making comments. I never thought of myself as an instigator or a leader, but I guess sometimes, when I have to be, I can be. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

The rest of the class was incredible. We started to make progress - taking the things we had done in previous classes, and applying them to story and character and dialogue and improvisation. There was still lots of running and jumping and playing, but there was also fighting and fury and fear. The good kind of fear. I don't think anyone was ever concerned about their own safety. I did, however, manage to scrape my arm on the wall, and I did something in a fit of rage that left my right thumb feeling, well, not right. But it was great. I loved being able to tap into all of those emotions.

We also had an opportunity to watch our classmates work (we were split in groups, so we watched the other group) which allowed us to provide and receive feedback on what we were doing. I found this extremely helpful. One of my issues with the first repetition class was I wasn't sure if what I was doing read to the audience. Last night, I got feedback that some of the things I was doing were reading, and were reading really well. So that is encouraging.

It was also interesting to see the different personalities of my classmates in a very real setting and very real situations. Up to this point, we have interacted with one another on a very physical level, but with almost no verbal interaction. Last night, we had to discuss our ideas and plan out our scenes. It was interesting to see what ideas people come up with, who is more dominant, who is a leader, and who is a follower. I left kind of wondering what my other classmates thought of me.

I like this class. We have next week off, but then one (possibly two) more. That should give the scrape time to heal, and should perhaps give me time to build up a thick enough skin that I don't even notice next time I cut my foot.