Acting class

I attended my first acting class yesterday. My first one in a long time, at any rate. I’m still buzzing.

For the record, the class I am taking is Scott Sedita’s Nuts & Bolts beginner class.  Check out the Scott Sedita Studio.

I was nervous going in.  It’s been so long since I’ve done anything.  And I’ve recently come to question the quality of what little training I had before.  Plus, class full of strangers, teacher I’ve only met once & only briefly, opening up and being vulnerable right out of the gate.  I was excited for the unknown adventure, but also a bit scared that I would shut down or not be able to access my emotions.  Which is probably a silly fear for me.

Thankfully, the class was small and filled with wonderful talented dedicated people.  Patrick, our teacher, is very supportive and good at coaching in the moment.  I found it easy to relax into the warm up exercises and let my emotions come up.  Up and through me.  Best of all, I was having fun.

This is what I came for.  Acting!  And once class started I found myself just slipping into the rhythms of the class.  I did find myself getting nervous all over again towards the end of class.  We were doing dramatic improv in pairs.  Once I started thinking about it I felt myself get nervous all over again.  And my partner and I ended up going last.  Which given that there were only six of us and thus only three pairs, didn’t take that long, but it did let me get all kinds of knots tied up inside.  But on stage, I dropped into the situation we had developed and found the emotions.  The class dropped away and my scene partner and I went for quite the emotional ride.

After each scene Patrick discussed what happened with the performers.  It was really fun to watch and learn from my classmates and try to apply the lessons in my own acting.  It was inspiring to be part of a class where everyone was so open and willing.  I also had a big takeaway: I need to work on getting really strong with my wants and intentions.  Not just having them, but making strong active choices in pursuing them.  I found the emotional core of our scene, but I did not move it forward in ways that I could have.  Thinking back on it, there were multiple opportunities for me to move the scene with my want.

I have my focus for the next week, want.  Right now I WANT to be back in class already.  Since there is a week before that happens, I’ll be doing other acting activities, reading, scene breakdowns, exercising my want in other ways.