The Swing of Things…

Where to start… where to start?  Oh yeah, how about by posting regularly?  Right.  That.

Brief round up of things in motion.  April was dominated by heavy emotional blah.  But there were a number of highlights – E’s epic birthday for one.  I also (as previously mentioned) earned free life coaching from the awesome Tim Brownson.   And at the end of the month I started a six week intensive at the Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown studio in Santa Monica.  I also was selected for a fitness bootcamp/infomercial thing.  Which meant spending two weeks eating really healthy and spending an hour in a group training session with a personal trainer M-F for two weeks.  I rocked that and am working to integrate what I learned from it into my life.  It was a great start to healthier, fitter me.

And oh my six week intensive!  Wow.  We meet three nights a week for a “three” hour class.  I don’t think I’ve spent less than four hours in class.  Tomorrow will mark the end of week four.  And I am delighted with how much progress I’ve made.  The last few classes I’ve managed to connect very well with the emotional side of things.  And I’ve been coming up with creative circumstances and set dressings.  Which is both fun and helpful.  This all has me excited and feeling very positive about the evaluation we’ll be doing come next Tuesday.

The evaluation is where they either invite me back to continue the training or not.  We just found out a bit more about this process on Tues.  It sounds pretty straight forward, both of our teachers do a little write up about us and gives it to the office staff.  One of the staff sits down with us, reads what has been written about us and we go from there.  The significance of being invited back rests in the studio’s strict Meisner program.  While modified to meet California’s regulations, the program is carefully crafted to replicate Meisner’s two year teaching program.  This first six weeks is designed to give actors a solid foundation they can take out and use in the business.  It is also roughly the equivalent of about a third of Meisner’s first year program.  If you get asked back, the remainder of the first year is covered in another six months.  Class meets only twice a week, rather than the three times a week we’ve been doing for the intensive, but not much else changes – we just go deeper.

After that there is the second year.  Don’t know much about it yet.  My understanding is that it takes about nine months.  And I will cross that bridge when I get to it.  Meanwhile, I have a scene to nail.  Further improvements to my exercise habits to incorporate and a couple of coaching sessions to write up (and a couple more to put to good use!)