This morning there was hardly anyone in the film watching lesson. we watched 'withnail and i'. weird movie. about two actors without any money who spend some time in the countryside and drink too much. it was a bit long. i sort of liked it, but i just get really frustrated watching movies where people constantly take drugs and dont do fuck all apart from drink and think that's cool. it's just so...typical. especially since this story is apparently real. some bits were really good though as well, and apart from some length in it i liked it.

in voice we did the 'voice orchestra', basically something we have done before with zoe, only that patsy calls it differently. basically you use consonants to produce a rhythm or different rhythms ith different people to create a 'piece'. we first had to take a popular song and perform it only 'sung' with consonants, which was quite entertaining. after that we had to take a hopkins poem and create a similar sort of thing with the poem, only taking a few words, repeating the words, making rhythms out of it, saying a whole line or just making sounds. the poem i chose (for our group) is apparently patsy's favourite and one of only a few i actually understood.

i was quite irritated today by a few people. first of all there were an enormous amount of people missing - ill !! yeah, whatever. and then a lot of really ignorant habits. no respect for other people's property, not listening. and generally just showing little sense of understanding the world around them or caring about anything. 'don't know, don't care'. it's very frustrating. sometimes i really don't understand the questions people ask, as if they have no idea how the world works, really really stupid unnecessary think questions. at least i might have some better prospects of finding a job if that is my competition...i hope so.

today i also finally got to chat about my little project of trying to put on a play. i hope i get the right sort of people together who will actually work, get their arses up and get on with it. at the moment i am not convinced about it, but i won't give up, even if i have to make myself really unpopular. i know it's all supposed to be fun but not if nothing comes of it in the end. i want to do stuff, but i can't do all of it on my own. i am having grand plans, but nobody seems to share my enthusiam. we'll see. i got two girls interested, now i need to get them to do something.

After a bit of a boring first day at work first lesson..film studies. john was ill, so no lesson. instead we finished reading shopping and fucking, which has such a weird ending. quite disturbing actually.

next. debbie's lesson. we talked about 'rouch magic' and what we learned from the project, which was quite interesting. i am definitely inspired by it, even though i didnt like some of the parts. i really wanna do something myself now. i think in the past few years i have been too lazy to get my arse off and just do things. i know back in germany it was easy, because i had reliable, creative people to develop things, but still i know i have the drive to get something done. i just need to do it. also more about ucas, we got the codes to apply for things, even though i dont know yet whether i want to. in the end we talked about personal statements. i am so crap at them, i just cant sell myself and make myself sound interesting. nevermind, i'll give it ago for next week.

patsy's lesson. voice. we did our adverts. have the people hadn't done anything. why the hell do i bother spending hours on the internet to come up with something when it is not even needed in the end. we just read them, that was it, and then talked more about shitty adverts. after some breathing we had to do a really weird arm swinging exercise to get our voice in shape for the seductive voice (lower and with long sustained consonants and a bit breathy). i think i did that quite well actually, no idea what it sounds like to other people, but i think i am not too bad at voice overs, apart from my breathing, but i get the right sort of tone to sell the product. we also got an advert for a 'no win-no fee' company and have to do it next time in a convincing, confident sort of voice (i forgot the proper term for this voice strand actually).

After two weeks of project work with the rsc it's now finally back to normal schedule.

great practitioners. Today was actually one of the more enjoyable lessons. We started to look at Meyerhold, who was a student at stanislavski's, but sort of turned his whole theory around. no more psychology, away from too much head-heavy acting. He developed a more physical approach, influenced by biomechanics. It's all sort of repetitive, machine-like movements and sounds. often a whole group would thus create a 'moving picture' (influenced by cinema, too). Today we basically played around with the idea. Everybody invented a movement and a sound and we would then repeat it all together, in a row and later on individually, changing the movements according to certain themes. Different styles of walking, different characters (stereotyped), e.g. old people, chavs, skin heads. Through the repetition it often felt quite ritualised. It was necessary for everyone to really concentrate on the task as rhythm is very important to keep the mometum going. when someone was too slow or forgot their turn the whole thing fell apart, slowed down and lost its energy. it is very much a group thing. we also tried decadence (having different movements -within the same stylised character) and deprivation. I think especially for chorus work it is possible to create dramatic pictures with this.

we then started to read 'greek' by berkhoff, who was influenced by meyerhold. i'm not sure about this play. i have seen other plays from berkhoff, like some of the style and find them often very effective, but this one was just a little bit too obscene, in a pointless sort of way. just swearing, lots of spunk, degradation of women etc. i dont know. just a little bit too unsubtle to be interesting for my taste.

in alternative techniques we are going to stop the improvisations and will now read modern plays and then act scenes from them. today my group read 'shopping and fucking'. jesus, what is going on in that play. half the time i dont know what they are talking about, although it's very intriguing. we played one scene and i actually felt quite good doing it. it felt very natural, not like 'acting'. i think i am becoming more realistic and believable in the way i play. reacting better as well. i really wanna read the rest of the play now, cos we never had time to do that in the lesson. the other plays were 'blue/orange', 'shakers' by john godber, and something like 'on the road'...? they were all really enjoyable to watch, with good dialogue. i think i am beginning to like modern theatre more and more.

Today we watched Play It Again, Sam. In reminiscence of last week's movie. it was a bit of a piss take of casablanca, but also a homage. it was a bit lengthy and only partially funny. What's important though about woody allen movies is the way he shoots his movies. there are very few cuts within a scene, the actors seem more like they are in a play. they are actually playing whole scenes without interruptions, which probably makes a ncie change to the constant 'cutting in', different camera angles etc one is used to from other movies. allen is giving the actor an opportunity to actually play. quite interesting.

then we watched city of god. apparently it is all quite real, most of the actors are not really actors, but realy people acting their parts. it's about drugs and crime and poverty and violence and gang wars and power. and nearly all the people 'acting' in the movie are now dead. it is a good movie, but horrible to watch, especially keeping in mind that this is very close to reality. we only got through half the movie, but that was probably more than enough.

in voice we talked about our u-coming assigments, which are very soon. we are mainly dealing with Hopkins, whose poems i do not understand at all. everybody sits there going 'hm, wonderful, beautiful', while i just think 'what the f...'. i just dont get it. so, i'll have to research him and read some of his poetry to then be able to perform one of his works. not looking forward to that. the other assignment sounds loads more fun. it's the voice overs for adverts. we spoke a bit about the four different strands and then came up with a gazillion examples of bad adverts. the only worry here is that my voice is not gonna be any good for it. the accent, the consonants, the tone, the breathing, everything is gonna be so wrong. i hope it's gonna be fun, but it's not gonna be good. which is no good considering i really need to get some good marks this year.

This film studies thing seems to be a bit of a waste of time. john looked at some people's work, i sat there the whole lesson read through scenes, learned my monologue and tried to think about other film scenes i'd like to try. that was it.

debbie's lesson was quite a shocker. we talked about next year. newcastle college is doing a top-up, but they only accept 10 people (they also have another 10 places for directing) and we have to compete against the rest of the country, it's not just for us. i thought, if i dont find a job i'll just stay on, but now this does not seem to be that easy. we have to go through ucas, the whole application process again, also i dont know whether i can afford it, my german money support thingy is running out after this school year and then...i dont know. i will have the same problem with other universities as well and then the prospect of moving again. i jsut wanna start getitng work, but is that possible without a proper degree, but then i have a degree, so i could do a postgrad, but will they take me, cos it was in a completely different field of study. all this is quite a daunting prospect. i am thinking about just giving it a go to form my own company and see what will happen. but then i need money for that and people. how hard can it be? i just need to do it? get a nine-to-five job and produce plays in the evening, once that is working and it is making some money i'll do it full-time. maybe do some TIE, there's always money in education. i think i just need to take a risk.

in voice we did some deep breathing, first on teh back, then curled up on our knees. we also hummed and aaahd in the different positions and then talked to the wall. indeed, talked to the wall. my voice sounded a lot deeper after all that humming and breathing and aaahing. in the curled up position the breath had no space to get into the lungs or the stomach, so it found it's way deepr into the body. once the breath is somewhere near the bottom the voice becomes deeper. We then did some calling. ssshhh sound, then drop the jaw and then we called: hello, away, indeed (or something similar), also with an 'o'-sound. we did that in a few different ways, straightforward calling, sirens, shaking. we then had to read some lines and do the whole calling thing again, then stand towards teh wall, facing downward, pushing into the wall and continue calling, then we had to read again. all our voices sounded different, better articulated, deeper, well-formed and intonated. calling is definitely the way forward.

My god, this must have been the most boring session ever. Great practitioners. how are they great, what did they do? i don't understand anything in this lesson. it just doesn't mean anything. one pointless exercise after the other with a minimum of explanation. are we here to guess? all we learn about the great practitioners is theoretical. i wanna try things, not know how it's supposed do be done. Stanislavski has quite a range of exercises and ideas, but frankly i don't know how to apply any of them, so i don't know whether they'll be any good, whether they can actually help me. We are doing improvisations on Naturalism i have done back at school or in my drama club. at this level i sort of expect a bit more. but i should stop whinging. maybe it'll get better, maybe this is the sort of kick in the butt i need to do my own individual studying, to get on with it. oh, i don't know.

in john's session, which i usually enjoy, because we get to experiment, we read the tempest. i know it was nice to read it with different voices, but i could have read that on my own at home, too, and had a proper lesson instead. not sure about the tempest yet. it doesn't grasp me as a play. i don't have anything against it, but somehow i am missin something.

Today we watched the all time classic Casablanca. no, i didn't cry an it wasn't all that impressive. Interesting sort of story and i wasn't quite sure in the end whether ingrid bergmann was only playing it, if it was for real of whether she was happy that bogart took the decision off her and sent her away. at least she could have a clean conscience now. hmm. some really bad ham acting there though. the importance of this film in terms of acting was that bogart introduced 'method acting' acting on screen. he doesn't actually do anything, apart from smoke and drink, no silly faces or big gestures. but he is the most real character, maybe it's just so intriguing because he is the only actor who is not doing everybody's head in by overacting. the only thing that really annoyed me about him was that constantly repeated phrase: here's looking at you kid. they could have cut that out for my liking.

in our voice class we had a room mess up so we only got our feedback from our reading. My voice does not seem tohave changed much, because i am still having the same 'faults' as when i started. haven't i learned anything last year? jaw tension, sustained consonants (probably due to my accent), good drum beats. at least she didn't say anything about my tone, maybe that did improve then.

Film Acting was a bit of a waste. we were sort of waiting for john to come around and have a look at our work, but he had to deal with some other issues so that we ran out of time. so he spend a whole three minutes with me without actually giving me a lot of feedback or room to try. it's quite frustrating. he did explain a little bit about camera work though. it is quite a lot of multi-tasking involved. the main thing is to know your lines inside out, then you have to really quickly memorise the markings and the blocking and how to get there without looking at the floor markings. dealing with props, frequent line changes, new cast, where is the camera, etc etc. seems quite a lot of hard work without the reward of the audience's reaction. so that lesson was over rather soon.

in professional practice we talked about different employment opportunities for actors besides the obvious ones (stage, tv, film). there is quite a lot out there, one only has to find it or create own opportunities (T.I.E., corporate work, street theatre, voice over, radio, location based re-enactments, tour guides, video game animation etc). talking like that it also really hit home that i actually need to be a lot more pro-active in finding a job or creating a job. this is going to be a lot of hard work for the rest of my life. constantly hunting down opportunities. it also means i have to really think hard about what it is i wanna do with this whole career.

in voice we looked at each others reading pieces, because patsy had to make notes and find out what little issues we have with our voices and body energies. after that we looked at resonance and played with tuning forks, holding them to different parts of our body to feel the vibration. when you hold the fork to your tooth you can actually hear it singing (it's really loud in your head, but also audible when other people do it). that was quite amazing and a bit freaky. we then had a general chat about resonance, which was quite interesting and very informative. e.g. they use music in movies to support the emotional flow. on a stage this is not necessary because the vibration we send out when we act is received by the audience, we actually make them vibrate. this is obviously lost in movies as it is a flat recorded medium. next week we will learn how to control our resonance and make people vibrate the way we want. another interesting fact was that we usually can talk best to the people who have the same 'vibrations' as we do (either head, oral or chest). if people are really different from our own range we can often find them quite annoying.

In Great Practitioners we were supposed to watch a TV version of Strindberg's Miss Julie (which we are reading at the moment), but due to some technical problems that never happened. Instead we were exploring Stanislavski, i guess. None of the exercises particularly seemed very much like Stanislavski, judging from what i have read about him, but there you go. First we had to pretend to look out of a window and see certain things she would describe. Then, in pairs, one person would receive a letter and react to it (without speech), then the other person comes in and has to react to the seen reaction. this was quite difficult, because there could be a million different things, so you just sort of hover along until you get a clue from your partner. then we had a situation where one person is in a room and gets told that they have to shoot the next eprson entering that room. so you react to that and see what it does to you. the person entering the room turns out to be relative. shoot them or not? if you don't shoot them you will be shot. i couldn't do it, so prepared myself for my end. quite interesting, but it would have been nice to go through a few different reactions.

another scenario was that one person would be the child and the other the evil aunt who is taking away a favourite toy, later on the aunt would be old and fragile and the grown-up child would meet her again. again, different reactions.

so far the whole thing seemed a bit pointless, because we were not really exploring anything in a lot of depth, just hitting on a few different points. even the discussion afterwards about the usefulness of emotional memory was sort of cut off. i am not sure about this whole emotional memory. i think in a way actors are automatically tapping into it, because it is the easiest available resource, but if you are programming yourself to recall memory of feelings that you have experienced it might all become a bit stale and the feelings repeated instead of created. also if you are drawing too much from your own experience the actual character might suffer and both blur into each other. There is also a certain sense of vulnerability by opening the most intimate feelings to the public that is quite concerning. Another important point is that as actors we are pretending to be the other person not trying to become it for real. i am not sure about the whole thing and i think one should be quite careful of manipulating one's own emotions like that.

then we continued to read miss Julie and started to work on it in pairs. next week we have to present it in a naturalistic way.

in the afternoon we had alternative techniques. we were given two subjects and a place (ignorance,chocolate, street) and had to come up with a little piece. ours wasn't that inspired by it worked quite well, i had the benefit of being able to eat chocolate, whilst being ignorant and blabbering on about stuff while others were busy with their own thoughts. for the second part of the exercise we had to keep the same dialogue, extend it, add the issue of euthanasia ad change location to the zoo. since the whole point of the exercises is to break rules of the theatre and performance we came up with the idea to be in a rehearsal situation. so we started the whole thing as a performance, then stopped it to correct something, or change something or go back a little bit or discuss how to do it. first people thought it was for real (and were quite shocked, oh my god, you should really know better as second years), but then they got it. we were quite subtle with it, so it really worked quite well.

one of the other groups was quite brilliant in connecting tragedy and comedy within the same scene, simultaneously through a person on a plane sleep-talking. others were enacting the thoughts/ambitions of the persons waiting in the dole queue (who were keeping them to themselves). quite some hilarious individual performances in here of the mad guy who was eating paper.

wednesdays are great. in the mornin we always watch movies and then we play around.

today's film: alien. yes, it is very educational for our purposes. the intersting thing about the whole film is that, although perceived as a sci-fi alien movie you can actually only see the alien for about one or two minutes. the rest of the movie lives of the suspense. some of the music to be honest is a little bit too obvious to create tension, but generally it is quite well done. It is more of a psychological thriller, playing with the tension that something terrible might be happening any minute. still in parts i found it quite boring an the robot thing was just hilarious. But praise for sigourney weaver, that being her first role and for this being the first female 'action figure'. probably changed a lot for future film making. next week's movie...casablanca. this is so cool, i am getting to watch all these 'must-see' movies without paying a penny. i am probably the only person that hasn't seen any of the films shown.

voice and speech: today we tried to expand our breathing space, by breathing through the bum and pulling our ribs further apart.

we first started in partners to minimise the breathing space of the lungs and the stomach by sitting on the partner, so that the air had to find a different space, which resulted in the bum actually heaving up and down and breathing. then we were doing the same with the ribs (while lying on the side), the created tension then caused the ribs to expand further. Lots of women actually never expand their ribcage to the side, because the think it makes them look bigger. so this society that is driving so many women into madness trying to look slim actually makes them breath wrong. how crap is that? anyway, afterwards we played with musical instruments. next week we are going to explore resonance.

today in film studies all we did was read scripts and choose one to work on next week. we could have done that at home really, but nevermind, nobody would have done it anyway. there were a few nice monologues. i picked one from erin brokovich, which sounds alright. the aim first is to do it in our own voices, even though it is an american movie. the other one i had chosen to do (from dangerous beauty) would have only sounded cool with a russian or italian accent, which i can do later on in the module. also someone else had already chosen that (two people in fact) and i rather don't want to compete with them (as they are weird).

then we had professional practice. this module is basically teaching us how to find a job in this industry, or at least to prepare us for it. in this lesson we have the opportunity to do an 'alternative performance', which has to be a live performance with a real audience and can basically be anything we like, thinking out of the box, other forms of employment. i am a bit scared of it, because it really puts you on the spot and you don't have the security and familiarity of the stage, but it will be a good learnin experience.

in voice and speech we talked about our body. the bones mainly. first we drew a skeletton ourselves, trying to put names to bones and then we got a quick intro to the framework that is our body. we also talked in more detail about the vocal cords, how they work etc. quite interesting. she re-emphasised again that the hwole body is important for our voice and that we have to take care of it as it is the only instrument we can use as an actor. then we did some spinal rolls, just to have a look at the way our partner's spine is formed. some other interesting bits of information included the story of a woman who can push her nose into her skull and the discovery of the penis-bone...

Monday morning. Great practitioners. After the usual warm-ups we discussed the internal and external according to stanislavski. the whole thing was a bit confusing, because everything that effects us internally is an external influence and it proved difficult to distinguish the two. in the end i think i understood the following. the teacher is not very good at explaining things, she does not fully understand most of the questions we ask, the internal is more connceted ot the past, while the external is the present (which then becomes the past, thus making it internal and the person we are or the character for that matter). the external is mainly the plot of a play and things the character has no influence about. the internal is what makes the character.

we then read 'miss julie' (i got to do some sight-reading (miss julie), which i got complemented on by my fellow students for doing it well - very nice). afterwards we analysed the characters, their relationships and internal/external influences. all this is leading us to stanislavki's system. we have to find out as much as possible about a character in order to be able to play it realistically and believable. it was quite interesting discussing with the other studetns what they thought about the characters, cos there was a variety of different opinions. i really like the content of these lessons, but unfortunately i am not so convinced of the teacher yet. we'll see.

then we had alternative techniques. usually the lessons with this particular teacher are mindnumbingly pointless, but this one was actually quite good. we started off by talking about peter brook's 'the empty space' and his four different categories of theatre (dead, holy, rough, immediate), which sounds quite interesting. we are going to do a lot with this text in the near future. the aim of these lessons is to come up with new, interesting ways of making theatre, exploring it and finding alternative techniques.

today we got a quote. first we had to discuss it, then come up with a performance. our quote was 'loneliness is a crowded room'. we had a really good fruitful discussing and came up with a lot of good ideas. at the last minute we decided to just come into the room (four of us) and sit amongst the audience, without speaking, then leave again at some point. we didn't rehearse it, we just waited for it to happen. it was rather weird, laughter, funny looks, what's going on here sort of reactions int he beginning, then uncomfortableness. then we left. it was quite powerful and it was weird to leave the audience just hanging in there. but we got the point across.

for the next exercise we had to do the exact same things, but thinking that we were in our own personal nightmare. so we ran into the room, some were hiding, some were just shockingly still and irritated, one person left immediately. without portraying an actual nightmare or using distorted faces we made the audience feel our uncomfortableness and unwillingness to be in the room.

all this sounds like a really interesting lesson, let's hope it stays that way.

yes, it is already the end of the first week. very weird to get that much time off. well, i dont really get the time off, cos i'm working.

today in great film practitioners we were watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I had not seen the movie before and was quite intrigued by it. i can now understand why so many people think it's a great movie, cos it is. quite shocking at times due to its realism, often hilarious and very moving. it covers quite a broad variety of issues in human relationships as well as showing a greater picture of a society where difference is not tolerated and the attempted rebellion against this status quo. unfortunately we did not have enough time afterwards to discuss the movie, but maybe next week. one comment our teacher made was that this movie changed american film-making forever. hopefully he will expand a little bit on that.

loks like every week we will be watching a movie and then discuss it. sounds great. we probably get the whole collection of must-see movies.

This morning we had another sort of class. Intro to great practitioners. After name-games (yup!) and sock throwing (that's right) we had to introduce another person and tell the rest of the class about what would put them of achieving something this year, what do they want to achieve and a claim to fame. My biggest problem is usually general laziness and procrastination, leaving things to long and then somehow getting them done on time, although i could have done so much better by actually putting in the extra time and effort. oh well, see how it goes this year. what i want to achieve is to be more realistic about what i can do and can't do and be more confident in my own abilities, cos usually i think i suck at everything. who knows, maybe i do, but with that attitude i'm not gonna make it very far in this profession i guess.

donna (the teacher) then put out some sheets with names of Great Practitioners out and we had to write down things we know about them. Stanislavski. Check. David Mamet. Check. Brecht, anyone? Unfortunately that was it then, no idea who any of the other guys were, but since they are probably really important i guess we will hear about them in the future (Meyerhold, Grabowski??, can't even remember them all).

Then we waited, waited and waited to finally enrol (5 minutes that took) and then we waited some more for our last lesson: voice and speech. now, usually i am dreading everything concerning my voice, because i don't like it and i am not at all confident with it. but these lessons might actually be quite good. we will do a lot of voice over work, which should be fun. she seems very harsh and talks a lot, but i think i'd appreciate someone who is actually enforcing punctuality and general work ethics. also she said she might be starting a choir. lots of information to take in. today i am a lot happier about the course. our group seems to actually become a proper group. hopefully i will learn lots and it is gonna be fun. the whole year seems a lot more focussed, so, it might actually be quite good.

wow, first day back at college after nearly four months. first that seemed like an awful long time, but now it feels like i haven't done an awful lot over the summer. anyway, now i am back. ready to learn, ready to improve, ready to take the stage, ready to take the world...

well, not quite. today we filled in forms. and more forms. and another few forms just because it's really exciting and now that we are getting quite good at it we might as well continue.

after hanging around for a while and discovering some new features of the college (like a new restaurant, spa and beauty treatments) we actually did have a lesson. film acting. we got a whole load of film script snippets and within the next few weeks we are going to re-enact them and eventually we will make our own movie. how cool is that?

apart from that nothing much happened. good news though, we already have our timetable and we have thursdays and fridays off. looong weekend. in my head i had already booked several city breaks, but then remembered that this time is probably better spend on earning some money or, now there's a thought, studying.