Intense Couple O' Days

End of a long couple days. Intense final Sam session midday Friday in which we took a reasonably serious scene and then "raised the stakes" considerably. That hit with a bit o' the old blunt force trauma. Then we performed a monologue which we had written for a character we had created. Most of the scenes started out with relatively high stakes. Then Sam guided us deeper - much deeper - into the scene.

There were tears, both in the booth and the audience, and by the end of class, we were pretty wrung out. Amazing what that does to you.

Hung out with David J., Nicki and Annalisa for a twixt-class meal, restored one another a bit and laughed our way back to sanity.

Then we headed back to Voicetrax, and dove into a class by D., who was up from LA and had the goal of making us "Great" on commercial copy. It was a pretty high-level class and I spent the first night just trying to get my head above water. About half the class are working actors and it was pretty clear that the quality of the work was going to be high. It was pretty danged invigorating to be operating in that kind of atmosphere.

It was also a bit humbling. When things didn't go quite right, the errors tended to stand in high contrast. As I've said before, that's why I'm taking classes, right?

Back at it all day today, with a couple of successes and at least finally feeling like I was bringing the right amount of energy.

As usual, it all came down to acting. Or, "Acting"...

Which, as I mentioned above, kinda wrings you out. Which is where I am right now. Gotta go to bed.