Papa Loves You And You're Pretty

We are going into our third week of classes at the Academy and it's starting to get a lot more involved and intense. It's been wonderful working in such a safe and supportive environment with people that are so passionate to learn about acting. Last week we performed our monologues for the class. It was really interesting to see how different everyone was and I must say we have some incredible talent in our class. It amazes me that so many people who have never acted before in any capacity are so in touch with their emotions and truthful in their portrayals. I loved watching everyone and it gave me a chance to see why everyone is here at the Academy.

We've also been doing auditions in our Vocal Production class. Everyone has to bring in a song and sing it in front of the entire class and many of them have had no singing experience. After we sing, Mr. Hart vocalizes us and assigns us a song to work on. It's been really amazing to hear those without experience discover how good they really are. Some of my classmates have really incredible voices. One girl, Erica, has had opera training and here Soprano voice astounds me. Then there's Tupua who is this 6'5 teddy bear with a beautiful voice. He was assigned "Soliloquy" from Carousel, which is a really long and powerful song for the main character Billy. Having recently been in a performance of Carousel with the one and only Josh Darnell playing Billy, I have very high standards for the song and I know he will meet them. I was assigned "How Could I Ever Know" from The Secret Garden which will be a HUGE challenge for me. It's way out of my comfort zone and is really high, but apparently Mr. Hart thinks it will be great for me. I have to trust that he knows what he's doing.

I love Mr. Hart because he is so blunt and honest with us, but he always has a sense of humor. His mantra for us is, "papa loves you and you're pretty." A lot of the notes he gives us are very critical and he wants us to know that it's not personal and it doesn't mean he doesn't like us. "You have no self-esteem and the industry will tear you apart so grow a backbone. You're too nasal and you crap out at the end of the song. Papa loves you and you're pretty." He always makes fun of me because I apologize for everything. "I'm sorry for cracking on that high note. I'm sorry for existing." I feel like his class is going to be really helpful for me and I really enjoy his teaching. It helps that he's really funny, looks like Joel Gray, and is apparently friends with Michael Cain. Awesome!

We are studying The Glass Menagerie in Mr. Solin's Acting class and we got assigned our first scenes this week. I am of course playing Amanda and will be doing the Gay Deceivers scene with two different girls playing Laura. He really took us through the characters objectives and feelings today and I now have a much, much better understanding of the show and my characters motives. I also realized that I relate more to Laura's character which really surprised me. I can't wait to start working on theses scenes and it's going to be really interesting because we aren't allowed to work on them outside of class other than learning lines. The point is to be active and present in the scene and we'll be doing a lot of improvisation with the scene, a tactic I'm not really used to. We'll see how it goes!

I leave you with a few pictures of my room at the apartment, which I'm really excited about! It's very... bright, and cheerful.

~Lucy~