… but it is only because I have been taking full advantage of all of my time here in Arezzo (and beyond!). In order to organize my thoughts and accurately catch up on what I have not blogged about, I am going to separate my catching up on a few posts. Since I have not described any of my classes here at the Accademia, I will focus this post on my experiences in each of my classes.
In the theatre program there are 27 students this semester, so they broke us up into Group A and Group B in order to receive more individualized attention in all of our classes (having about 14 students per class is definitely necessary, but we also love when we get to have workshops and classes as a full group). Our regular classes include Voice with the magical Kevin Crawford, Movement with the lovely Claudia Schnürer, Commedia with the brilliant Michele Bottini and Michela Mocchiuti (alternates between the two), Italian with darling Lorenza and Philosophy of Art and Performance with the sweet Emilija Dimitrijevic.
My first class here was Voice with Kevin, who just might literally be a magical human being. My friend Kristen reminded me of the quote Kevin shared at orientation from a man that he had studied under, “No larynxes; only courage”. This inspired me to act courageously in all of my classes. Fear of failure, embarrassment, or any other fear prevents us from realizing our potential too often. Not only has Kevin continued to encourage this type of mindset in our classes by constantly giving us exercises methods to use without question, but this also applies in our other classes as well. I have had very little vocal training, and although this easily could intimidate me since most students have fairly developed voices, each class we begin working with the basics which helps me to feel more at ease. We have learned all sorts of exercises for finding the placement of our voice within our body, working with pitch, time, volume, and color. Often times we work in partners and move throughout the space while working on text, but we also spend a lot of time around the piano with Kevin doing different arpeggios and the like. I have a separate personal journal for my work day-by-day which I will be compiling for my acting journal at the end of the semester, but just to this point I feel such an increased awareness of my breath and placement for both my speaking and singing voice. Kevin has a way of know what each of us needs when he hears us struggling with certain exercises. Whether it is sitting against the wall and pushing into our sacrum (the triangle base of our lower back, directly above the pelvis), or stomping while we sing out our notes, Kevin gives us exactly what we need to improve.
Now onto Movement with Claudia. Where do I even begin? Well we can start at the very beginning, that’s a very good place to start. Our first three days here, Claudia murdered our thighs. Well, it was really only our first one or two classes, but the pain lasted three days, just as our ex-circus performer teacher had told us. We basically did squats onto the floor and back up in three different ways (monkey, Elvis, and English tea – all different pelvis placements to get to the floor) for about two hours. During the class, I barely noticed the workout I was getting. For the most part, that goes for almost every class since then. I become very aware of the strength throughout my body, connect to that strength, and lose myself in the interactions with both the space and my classmates that I feel the exhaustion after class is over rather than during the class. For the first three days almost every theatre student hobbled around the Villa and Arezzo constantly afraid our thighs would give out. Luckily, as Claudia had told us, the pain subsided after three days and although we have been physically exhausted and sore, we have not felt that degree of soreness since.
Commedia- for now, I am just going to say it is challenging, scary, fun, hysterical, and inspirational. I will detail my work so far on a later post.
Italian and Philosophy are our two “lecture” classes which we find much harder to sit through after we have been spending the majority of the time jumping, singing, doing headstands and contact improvisation all day. We also are so physically exhausted that sitting down and not immediately falling asleep is a challenge at any time of the day, whatever the situation. Thankfully, both teachers are lovely people and do their best to keep us engaged and interactive.
I plan on becoming proficient in Italian by the end of the semester so it is pretty easy for me to stay engaged for a two-hour class. Lorenza only speaks in Italian unless we truly need English explanations, and being around Italian in the community certainly helps train our ears for Italian, For the most part, I can get by through the town speaking Italian and I can understand people fairly well. However, working on homework and studying at night after 9 hours of classes, and often some type of evening activity (keep an eye out for the Cabaret blog), is definitely a challenge. Nevertheless, we all encourage each other and work together in order to stay on top of all of our work. The relationships between all of us here were immediately strong. We all have our good days and bad days but for the most part we are a very supportive , loving family towards one another.
Philosophy readings are probably the toughest to do after long days. But I have always been a fan of philosophy so even when its late and I’m tired I do my best to read each reading thoroughly and participate in class. We have read Marx, Nietzche, Plato, Aristotle, Boudrillard, and a few others- not the easiest of reads. We move pretty quickly through each of the readings, spending only one two-hour lecture per reading. However Emilijia has set them up so that each of the readings connect well with each other. This helps us understand their context. I am sure this class will continue to challenge us, but philosophy classes should challenge our thought process and ideas. They force us to think more analytically and become aware of our own thoughts. This type of thinking can and should apply to our work in our theatre classes and our goals for ourselves within our art and our communities.
Since being here we have also had some lovely workshops where we have gotten to work with all of the theatre students here at the ADA, including Master’s students. Two weeks ago we had a contact improvisation workshop as a full community with Thomas, a man who has worked and studied with Claudia. By the end we were probably all a bit too comfortable with touching each other( just kidding, we were just the right amount of comfortable) but I think one of my most important discoveries was how comfortable I felt with myself afterward. I have noticed consistently that all of the faculty are so beautiful, inside and out, and I think a big factor is how comfortable they are in their own skin. Italian culture as a whole radiates an acceptance of who we are as individuals and direct appreciation of personal relationships, and the environment within the ADA just builds upon this. Growing in our awareness of our persons, as well as completely trusting the people we work with develops a sense of appreciation inside ourselves.
These classes exhaust and exalt me everyday, and I could not be more grateful to have this experience. I love all you family and friends, I hope all is well with you!
(the view from my room each morning as I wake up, wow.)
La Vita è Bella 