Monday, April 16, 2012

N is for Next Level

So on Saturday I attended Staircase Theatre's monthly Next Level workshop, taught by the talented and humble Jerry Han.  There were only four of us in the class this time around (Me, Becca, Arthur and Marianne). Bad for Staircase's revenue, but great for us. We got personalized critique of every scene and were allowed to go off on interesting tangents with our questions.

The topic of this workshop was show craft.  We practiced introducing a show, getting ask-fors, and even putting on an entire show with Jerry as the audience.  For the first time, we had to decide when the scene had ended instead of waiting for the teacher to do it for us. Jerry's comments were always informative, and I helped me imagine how an okay scene could have been amazing.  Hosting was actually the hardest part.  It's much easier to imagine what a character would do, than to stand there and be yourself.  But Jerry reminded me that if I were really hosting a show, it would be completed okay to prepare stuff to say in advance. The scenes are improvised; not everything has to be.

Of course we also had a lot of fun. Through the course of the afternoon I played a sexy french maid, a stroke victim, a chicken, a fairy Mom and Super Mario. Arthur and I performed an opera about prime rib.

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