Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow...

Christmas is so close I can honestly taste it. I really want to go home right now, but there are still three more assessments to go through. It’s been a crazy week, especially after Tuesday, but this week is a lot easier as far as the schedule goes. The weather here is also driving me crazy; I would appreciate winter friendly clothes for Christmas :D I just find it hard to believe that it gets so hot in the summer and so freezing cold in the winter. We’ve had a bit of snow here too, which doesn’t help in my walk to school. I’ll have to take some photos today and I’ll put them up later.

So on Wednesday last week I had a lot of Ear Training related stress. In the morning I had my Music Theory Final, which I think went pretty well. It’s hard to say, but I knew a lot of the information for having not gone to very many classes. Then I had an interview with my Voice and Text teacher just to talk about the semester and how I’d done. She told me that I was doing fine and that I just needed to be less polite in class and to let go a little. I anticipated her comments, because I know that I’ve been rather nice this semester and I hope that my shyness will fade in January. After that interview I had my Oral Ear Training exam, which went alright. I had a little bit of trouble with sight-singing, but it’s super hard... So once I know my marks on that I’ll let you know, just keep your fingers crossed.

Then on Thursday I had a regular History class in the morning, in which we learned all about Canadian theatre and the beginning of the Toronto theatre world. It was interesting and we also found out that we’re doing a Canadian play for scene study next semester. After an hour and a half break we had our Shakespeare presentations. All of them were so amazing! Everyone in my class has come such a long way since the beginning of the year. We did six of Shakespeare’s plays: Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, A Winter’s Tale, King Lear, and As You Like It. Each group started off with a dumbshow of the play, which is like a silent five minute physical summary of the plot. They were all really funny and cute. Then everyone did their monologue in chronological order. I was in the group that did Twelfth Night and I performed Olivia’s monologue from Act 1: Sc 5. I felt really good while doing it and I hope that I got all of the direction from Scot correct. He was my teacher for the course and he did give me my highest mark.

Friday was easy, after the morning when we had our Ear Training Written. I feel pretty good about it, even though at the time I was definitely stressing out. The melodic dictations felt super hard and I really hope that I did better than I think I did on those ones. After that class we had Computer (of Facebook) skills class, where we all just finished up our websites. Mine wasn’t the best, but I really just needed to get everything done on it and figure out how to use Dream Weaver on the Mac.

One thing that I haven’t really mentioned was my job; I was ushering for the Sheridan Shows for the past two weeks. I watched The Drowsy Chaperone about seven times and Happy End only once. Both of them were amazing and I could hardly believe that they were school productions. I love love love The Drowsy Chaperone, it’s a fantastic play and totally worth seeing. Even after watching it seven times I was not sick of it in the slightest.

Anyways, the next week on Monday we had our first group of MVP (Musical Theatre Vocal Performance) Assessments. I had a rehearsal for my song, If I Were a Bell, and then I performed it a lot later. Again, so many people have improved so much since assessments! Everyone was phenomenal! I would love to go through everyone’s amazing performance individually, but that would take way to long. The next day, after the easiest Vocal Tech quiz ever, the second group went for MVP. They were all amazing too and it was really nice to see the other class to perform for a change. One of my favourites was John and Jake’s duet of Agony from Into the Woods, it was incredible.

I think that that is enough for one post. I’ll tell you about the rest of the week on Saturday and then, Sunday I’m flying home. I might update over Christmas, but don’t count on it. I fully expect to be engulfed with family happiness and Christmas cheer. Have a Happy Hoidays everyone and I’ll see everyone in BC soon!

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Woah… Those weeks flew by. Unless you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been crazy busy with the end of the year coming up, but I made it. Classes are over and Assessment weeks have officially begun. Sorry about the lapse for 3 weeks, but I’ve been running around like a crazy person. It’s strange that my classes are “over”. It feels like I was going 300 mph and now I’ve come down to a measly 40mph. Considering that you guys have missed so much, let me fill you in with the important things that have happened.

I did my second MVP song, which was “Vanilla Ice Cream”. For those of you who don’t know, the song is from a musical called “She Loves Me” which basically has the same plot as that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movie called “You’ve Got Mail”. It’s really sweet song, which has its funny little moments. While performing it felt a lot more confident in what I was doing. At the end, the teacher and my classmates told me how much I’d improved. We worked on it for a little while, but unfortunately I think that’s the only time I get to perform it, because there’s no time to do a third song until my assessments. I’ve decided that I want to do “If I Were a Bell” from “Guys and Dolls” for my third song and I’m really excited about that.

Another thing that you missed was both of my performances of my acting tech monologue. The first time that I went up I was super super nervous. I didn’t have to be off book, but I still wasn’t sure about how I would do in the performance. Apparently my nerves visible, because my biggest correction was don’t play the victim, which didn’t surprise me. This it the first monologue I’ve done where my character is getting angry. She’s literally telling her sons off and I need to reflect that attitude more. I think that my confidence greatly improved my second time through, although I forgot a few of my words. I’m now losing marks for exhaling while I speak, which is a habit I was unaware of until now.

Now, on to Assessments, the first two days have gone by and I feel like my body is going to fall apart. Yesterday I started with my Dance Tech assessments, which consists of Ballet, Jazz and Tap. I feel like I did a good job on my Ballet; I was very confident the whole time. Jazz was a little more difficult, but I came out smiling and tried my best. Tap was almost a breeze compared to Jazz and all I did was have fun and try to stay relaxed. Later when she asked us our one on one question I did get mine right and I feel like I have learned so much.

Today I started with my vocal tech scales. The first couple were fine, but the last scale is a chromatic one and I think that I landed on a wrong note. But Marie seemed really nice and I think that I did well on the other ones, so I shouldn’t be worried.

After that was our Dance Performance assessment, which was scary but so much fun. We started with our waltz and I didn’t mess up the footing the whole time. In the second round my partner did mess up on the feet a bit, but we kept going and all was forgiven. Then we did our Razzle Dazzle dance, which is a solo Fosse routine and my favourite out of all the dances we learned in the class. I tried to keep everything sharp and the last time that I did it I really felt super confident. Our final dance was our partner Disco routine, which I was unsure of how it went, but I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I might have put out my hip a little bit, but I don’t have any dance classes for two weeks so I’ll be all right.

That’s the start of my week. As you can see, I don’t have regular classes, so you can expect regular updates. Thanks for your patience and I can’t wait to see you all at Christmas!! Only 12 days to go and only 2 Fridays!!

Nowadays... You can like the life you're livin'

Wow… keeping up this blog is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Sorry about the broken promises, I’m surprised I have any time to update this at all. Well, another week gone by, six Fridays left, but only five weeks left, until Christmas comes. I can’t wait till I can start singing Christmas tunes (don’t tell anyone, but have been humming them under my breath since the end of Halloween). Normally I’m not this excited for Christmas, but I’ve been knitting scarves like crazy trying to get all of my presents done while trying to do school too. Maybe that’s why I have no time to update this blog.

So Monday was a pretty regular day. I got to school and discovered that everyone, and I mean everyone, is getting the flu or something. It is crazy. Even though I am unable to get sick I have even had a bit of a cough all weekend. So that was good news. In Shakespeare, the final group went and finished the first run through of the monologues. I got my homework back and unfortunately, I apparently got a lot of the scansion completely wrong, which doesn’t surprise me too much. I’m going to take it in to the teacher tomorrow and ask him what I can do better, because it’s really hard.

Then came Tuesday; the big day when I was going to sing my MVP song for the third and final time. I had a good morning in Vocal Tech and Rep Lab, but I was thinking about “The Light in the Piazza” for almost the whole time. Finally when I got to rehearse with the pianist, my teacher came in looking rather green. She unfortunately informed us that she was going home after she just puked in the bathroom. We wished her the best and then I had to wait until Friday to sing my song.

Wednesday is so long and because of the time change, it’s dark when I leave the school at night now. So after a nice jazz class in the morning I had one of the longest afternoons ever. In Improv we had a really good conversation about status and how to act high and low status. It was an insightful class and showed a lot of people if they themselves were high or low status. It was really difficult for me to act high status, but it was also kind of enlightening.

Thursday finally came, the day of the history test that everyone had been freaking out about since last weekend. It was only three pages long and I am not too worried about how well I did at all. I know that I studied and I pretty confident with most of my answers so what is there to worry about? After Stagecraft and an exciting Dance Performance class, I finally had MVP. I know that there’s still a lot to work on in the song, but Marie said that I’ve come a long way from when I sang it the first time. The main point was to find my confidence, which I something I found myself working constantly on since I came here. I think that I’ve come a long way, but I know that there’s still a long way to go. And hey! I have three years, right?

Friday is the lame day, as you all know, which is nice, because it’s at the end of the week. After a morning of ballet and those other two classes, I had my first acting tech class that was marked. We are finally doing monologues and I’ve chosen mine from “Death of a Salesman” One of Linda’s monologues. I didn’t go this week, because I’m signed up to go next week. Working with Greg Peterson was very interesting and I found that he left a lot up to you to figure out. He asked a lot about where you’re character came from and what happened in the moment before. I’m very glad that I’ll be prepared to go next week and hopefully I’ll kind of know what I’m doing.

So I’ll try to get on it with these updates. No promises, but if I miss Tuesdays and Fridays then I’ll probably update on Sunday. So I’ll talk to you guys later have a good weekend, and hopefully it will be better than mine, which was spent in bed.

Finishing the Hat

Surprise! I have a pretty big break here at school, so I figured I would just update while I’m waiting to go to my acting tech class. Luckily, there have been a lot of absent teachers this week so there’s less for me to talk about. And I also decided I’d be too busy/tired on Sunday to update anyway.

So Monday was so strange. It was the first day back at school since the break and I fell back into the routine right away. Tap was in the morning, it was odd having those shoes on again, but my muscle memory served me well. Then we started to talk about our assessments in December so we would know what to expect. After that class we had an ear training test, which was very ordinary. I don’t know how well I did, but I guess I’ll find out next week. Then later, in Shakespeare, I finally got up to do my monologue! I chose one of Olivia’s monologues from the first part of twelfth night. Apparently I had a good understanding of the text, which surprised me, and then he just told me to work on my breath support. I am really glad that I finally got up. Surprisingly I think this is my first Shakespeare monologue that I’ve actually worked on.

Then on Tuesday morning I had vocal tech, in which we just worked on Analyzing sheet music. Basically we were given a song (“Love, I Hear” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and we have to go through and circle all of the important musical terms and symbols that would help us sing the song. Forunately, I have done exercises like that before, so I understand what’s going on. Then rep lab was completely normal and the group presenting had Sondheim as their composer. It was so great! They had this funny concept about people being an asylum called the Sondheim Woods asylum and they periodically sang through a handful of great songs. It was very funny and I enjoyed it a lot.

Wednesday morning my jazz teacher was sick, so I got an extra ballet class. Yay! Later, in Improv we did some scatting improve, which I found surprisingly easy and fun. Chelsey and I had a great scatting conversation, which was so awesome. Then I sang “Bubbly” again in Pop, but the teacher seems to want me to sing harder songs, which is understandable. Pop makes me so nervous, because I honestly don’t think I sound good singing it. I might try to singing “Taking Chances” if I can get my confidence up. Voice and Text was the same as always, nothing too odd happened in that class.

I think that Thursday is super easy after the mornings. After a long morning of History and Stagecraft, I went to dance class feeling kind of defeated. I got to class and started to warm myself up, when one of the second years came in and told us the teacher was sick so class was cancelled. Some of the dancers, me included, stayed anyways and had our own short class. It was fun to just dance around and even do a bit of our own choreography. Then we had MVP, which we have been singing the same song for the third time. I signed up to go on Tuesday, so in the next update I’ll tell you how it goes and hopefully I’ll be able to tell you what song I’m singing next.

Other than Ballet, nothing has really happened today yet. I had a lovely Ballet class this morning, in which we also talked about what we were doing in assessments. Now I’m just waiting for my acting class to start. We’re supposed to work on viewpoints today so I’m pretty excited about that. I might write again this weekend, but if not, I’ll write again on Tuesday. Thank you guys for all your support and I’ll try to get back into the swing of writing these twice a week.

It’s the seventh Friday!!

Anything Goes

Hey you guys! Sorry this post was so long in the making. Unfortunately, considering that I’m pressed for time, this won’t be a very long post. First, let me talk about my break. It was absolutely incredible! I didn’t get to see all the people I wanted, but it was still an amazing time. I spent a lot of valuable time with my family and puppy-sitting Lily. I wish that I’d had the time to see everyone. It just made me super anxious for Christmas. In ballet class yesterday we even listened to Christmas music, which, I will admit, was a little annoying. It’s still only November, it’s not even halfway done yet.

On that note, there are only 7 Fridays remaining!! Then I’ll be back for three weeks and I’ll be done my first semester, therefore less stressed out than I am now. These past two days have been absolutely crazy. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened, except that everyone has been getting sick, and each day feels like a month. I fell back into going to school so easily that it’s hard to believe that it’s been four days.

Sorry for the crappy update, but I have to run. I won’t be able to update on Friday night, but I promise that Sunday there will be another post up. Love you all lots and thanks for bearing with me while everything is so crazy.

Flying Home

Look like this whole writing two times a week thing is harder than I thought. This week has been particularly difficult, because the days have been so long and we’re getting quite a bit of homework that we need to complete. Last week and this week were much like any other. Nothing new really happened. I haven’t gone up for my third time singing The Light in the Piazza, but that will be my last time.

One thing that has really been preoccupying my time is the fact that next Saturday I’ll be jumping on a plane and flying home for a week. I’ll probably only do one blog entry that week, because I’ll be busy spending the rest of the week with my family. I’m really excited to be coming back!!! I can’t wait to see the ocean again, it will be legendary! Unfortunately it will only be for six days, so I won’t be able to see everyone that I want to see. However, I’ll be back next summer so if you miss me next week, I’ll have to see you then. There’s also Christmas break, but I’ll be spending that break with my family for the most part.

Anyways, I will write another entry on Friday to sum up what happened this whole week. Nothing crazy has happened yet, so I don’t think it will be long. Then I won’t write again till next week. Sorry for the delay in entries again.

Luck Be a Lady

Ten Fridays… wow. 10 doesn’t seem like that many, but I forgot that counting down weeks takes a lot longer than counting down days. That being said, this week is already half over, so hopefully after the 10th Friday the rest will all be shorter.

I hope that you all had a lovely Thanksgiving. I had a fabulous weekend full of Turkey and watching Jurassic Park. After a fun Friday night of partying, I spent most of my Saturday grocery shopping and telling my family on Skype how jealous I was that they got to get together. Then, on Sunday morning, I made a spinach salad and head off to my friend Emily’s house. About ten of us had not left for the weekend, so we all met up and had a potluck student dinner. It was so much fun and I really like spending my Thanksgiving with my new friends. After our lovely dinner, I went back to Residence with the other girls and had my first Sheridan Slumber Party!! We watched Jurassic Park (some of them hadn’t seen it, which is just totally crazy!!) and then later ate cookies and had girl talk. It was a lot of fun and a perfect end to my first thanksgiving away from home.

Monday was another do nothing day, which leads us to today. After a three day weekend I was still in a bit of a Turkey coma. Unfortunately for me my alarm also forgot to go off this morning and I only had about twenty minutes to get ready, no big deal… So after a rough awakening, I made it to school with time to spare. The vocal classes in the morning were normal and I watched the third Rep Lab presentation, which was a lot of fun. It featured such songs as “If I Were a Bell”, “A Little Bit in Love” and “Luck Be a Lady”. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed all of the performances.

By lunchtime, I thought that I was finally awake. I was a little nervous, because I knew I was singing in MVP. I went in to rehearse with the accompanist and I found that it was a different accompanist…turns out that the woman we had before wasn’t the regular, instead it is a lovely man named Steven Thomas. He’s a really sweet guy and I felt great talking to him. Then he asked me what song I was going to sing and when I told him “The Light in the Piazza” he proceeded to tell me that I ruined his day. I had completely forgotten how impossible “The Light in the Piazza” was to play if you haven’t played it before. Thank goodness, he made it through and I promised never to spring an impossible song on him again. We’re friends now, but I think that bringing in some Sondheim next wouldn’t be the best idea.

When we worked on the song today the first time I ran through it was good. Marie said that I had taken some of her direction too seriously, but that it was done well. In the scene before, my character is fighting with her mother, who actually slaps her before the song is song. Erin, my acting partner, and I both agreed that we didn’t want a really lame fake slap, so we just had her yelling at me and grabbing me by the shoulders. This worked fine, but Marie didn’t think that it had the same emotional effect as a slap would. So we both decided that Erin should actually slap me, just once, so that I could understand the feeling and the emotion better. I was completely okay with this, but in the split second before it happened, I realized that I had never been slapped before. At first it stung and it hurt a lot, but it made the entire song make complete sense. I will willingly say that I did cry a lot, but I sung through it and that’s all that really matters. It was amazing, but unfortunately, I didn’t record it at all, so I can’t hear what the difference in my voice was. Next time we’ll just have a fake slap, but I’ll never forget what it actually felt like.

Also, I will never lose a Slap Bet now… and if I had to choose between ten simultaneous slaps and five slaps anytime, anyplace, I would definitely go with five slaps anytime, anyplace. Then at least I would have time to recover in between slaps.

Don't Cry for Me Argentina!

Oh no! I have officially become a slacker!! I really should have thought more before starting a blog. It’s like having a second job :P Sorry for not writing all week, but you should all just be happy I’m still alive. I survived, although it wasn’t the hardest week of my life, it was pretty tough. I would bore with information about this week, but other than the quizzes it was quite average. Instead I’ll tell you a bit about how amazing Stratford was and then a few weekly highlights. I promise that after Thanksgiving I’ll definitely get back to writing on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Stratford… Wow… Those kinds of shows are exactly what I’m striving for. Both of the shows that I saw were visually amazing. I absolutely love seeing live theatre and I find that shows always inspire me to do better. The first show that I saw was a Shakespeare play called “As You Like It”. For those who don’t know what it’s about, it’s a comedy, meaning that it has a happy ending where everyone gets married. The show is all about miscommunication and men falling in love with women who are dressed up as men, therefore other women fall in love with women, thinking that they’re men, and then some random event happens that makes the ending all good and everyone happy. It would explain it in more detail, but it was too complicated. I loved the production, although the leading man was a little girly. My favourite character in the show was the Fool, he wasn’t exactly funny; the only way to describe him was sarcastically witty. He delivered all his jokes so smoothly and in such a way that I completely understood their significance. Another one of my favourite parts was played by a man named Brent Carver, who I only found out afterwards is a famous broadway acting for came from BC… I think. He was the most amazing actor in the whole thing. All of his monologues were delivered so well, he had me hanging on his every word. And amazingly enough he’s also friend with my Acting Teacher…Awesome!

The second show that I went to was “Evita!” First of all, I want to say that I really am not a huge fan of the music. Other than “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” I hadn’t heard the rest of the show ever before. I found that a lot of it sounded the same and although there was some really good dance songs, they weren’t the best vocally. That being said, all of the singers themselves were amazing for making those bad songs almost sound good!! The chorus had incredibly strong vocals and they made the chorus numbers some of my favourite songs. The actor who played Che, the narrator (by the way, why him? His presence in the story seemed remarkably pointless. He might as well have been some random guy), was the most amazing singer! His voice just made me want to die…He was that good. He hit all of his notes with amazing confidence and accuracy. That fact the he was amazingly attractive also helped. The woman who played Eva Peron was one of the Sheridan grads and let me just tell you, she is amazing. Some of her notes sounded weird, but I think that’s just because the songs are bad. Her belt sounds incredible and she is so beautiful. I really hope to be like her some day, although I don’t think I could ever play Evita. The visual side of the show was incredible. They used a projector for a lot of lighting stuff and I really liked that. The colours were super bright and the set was the most amazing thing. It was an amazing production, although the show itself is kind of off, but it was amazing.

So after that wonderful weekend, I had my birthday on Monday, which was really great. Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and I had a lovely day. The rest of my week was rather boring. I love you all so much and thanks for putting up with my slacking off. I hope this entry is sufficient to make up for missing Tuesday. I hope that you guys all have an amazing Thanksgiving and I’ll write again next Tuesday. I’ll definitely have something to talk about: I’m singing Light in the Piazza for the second times so wish me luck.

You Walk With Me

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

Maybe I should start putting lame quotes at the beginning of all my posts. Actually, I might start writing funny ones at the end if I can find them. I just read that in Tweflth Night, so it seemed appropriate to write it down. It was on my mind. I’ve heard many renditions of that quote and I didn’t realize that it was from a Shakespeare play.

Wednesday was relatively normal. After Jazz class I had about 3 hours to spare. I read some Shakespeare, hung out with some friends and ate my lunch. It was pretty basic for a Wednesday. Later we had our Improv class which was really cool this week. We worked with viewpoints and I found it was a lot of fun. We did some grid work, which is very interesting to watch and participate in. She let us do a lot of watching and I love it when teachers to that. I find watching things is very effective for me, especially when I don’t understand something.

After that was Pop class; I got to watch a couple amazing performances by my friends. I find that everyone has improved so much even though it’s only been a month since we all started in this program. Voice and Text is proving to be a lot harder for other people that I find it. The lessons are a little out there, but my classmates are having trouble understanding some of the concepts. Personally, I haven’t had that much trouble. I’m very open to that method of teaching, so it doesn’t make me super frustrated or angry if I don’t get it at first. I’m having trouble understanding my friends difficulties with it.

I love Thursday mornings… Not! History is proving to be very challenging for me. Those of you who know me well know how much I love history. Luckily, it’s theatre history, but I still find it really hard to take sufficient notes. We already have a quiz coming up next week and I can’t help but feel nervous for it. I know that if I study hard I’ll get a good mark, but I just don’t know if I’ll know enough. So wish my luck with that quiz, because I do find it scary.

We finished our amazing Fosse routine in Dance today, which it sad, because I found myself really enjoying it. We’re having a guest teacher next week, so that will be a lot of fun. In MVP we finally started on the second round of our songs. The last performances were, “Purpose” and “Dance: 10, Looks: 3”. Both were amazing to watch, especially “Dance: 10, Looks: 3” Marie had a lot of fun stuffing Brooke’s shirt in that song. It was very entertaining by the end. I think that I want to perform my song again next Tuesday, hopefully. I’ll have to get together with the Piano player before that and see what she thinks.

Today was good, even though I didn’t do a lot in the morning. Ballet was good and we even had the Vice President come see our class for 2 minutes before leaving. Then we spent the last 40 minutes of class talking with Gillian, who is probably my favourite dance teacher. We talked about the National Ballet School, where she trained in London, and how horrible her audition was, even though she still got in. The rest of the day was really easy. Again I had no ear training, so I spent my break with Victoria and we had some good times. Then there was Computer Skills, where I finished the assignment in an hour and it’s still not due for two weeks.

In Acting today we did a really difficult exercise. Unfortunately for you guys, I’m not actually supposed to talk about what happened in acting class to other people. Let’s just say it was an exercise in emotional trust and letting the other students know something about you that you never tell anyone. There were a lot of tears and lot of people have had to deal with some shitty things. I felt good about that class; because it lets you see a side of people you might not have noticed before.

So I think that I might write an entry on the Stratford trip over the weekend at some point, because I won’t be able to fully describe it on Tuesday. I’ll see how awesome tomorrow is and possibly write something. Write again soon!

God That's Good!

Sorry again for missing a post. I must be getting a little lazy. The reason for the late post is actually because I was working on King Lear and unfortunately for you guys, Shakespeare comes first. I've been having another splendid week, although the weather has taken a turn for the worst. Monday is my birthday so I’m super excited about that happening! I’ll be an “adult” officially, whatever that means.

This weekend I went to Toronto again this week. Jessie’s sister was having an adorable get together in her apartment. This apartment has the most beautiful view of Toronto and it was all quite lovely. Unfortunately, I had some McDonalds with Natasha and Erin, so I ended up feeling sick all day. Sunday was spent just studying and reading homework.

I found that Monday seemed very long, even though I finish it a little bit earlier than other days. Luckily, I think I’m getting a better hold on Tap class. It’s just taking me a while to get used to those crazy shoes again. I had my first Ear Training Quiz, which wasn’t super hard and I feel like I did a really good job. Now that I’m done that I don’t have Ear Training for the rest of the week, Yay!

Shakespeare was a great class again, but I got the unfortunate news that I have a Quiz next week on King Lear and Twelfth Night. I also really need to choose which monologue I want to do. After reading Kind Lear, I didn’t find and great female monologues in that. My hopes are pinned on Twelfth Night to provide the comedic monologue that I need. I didn’t have a very good quote for attendance either, because Natasha stole the one I wanted to use from Macbeth.

Tuesday started off really early for me. We had a very standard Vocal Tech class. Then we had Rep Lab and it was very normal as well. The second half of Rep Lab, we watched the first presentation, “Rodgers and Hammerstein”, features such songs as “Younger than Springtime”, “Cain’t Say No” and “If I Loved You”. I didn’t perform a song in the presentation, but watching it was really cool. All of the people who worked on it did a lovely job with the script and connecting all the songs. But I have to say, I loved getting up with the rest of the group to sing “Oklahoma!” it was splendid.

In MVP we had some great songs performed. Marie did a lovely job as usual. The songs sun were, “On My Own”, “Once Upon a Dream”, “Maria” and “It’s Hard to Speak My Heart”. The performance of “Maria” was definitely my favourite, because Andrew hitting the high note just blew me away. It was another amazing class.

In dance, we did more waltzing, which was so much fun. Trying to refine my form was really great, although my partners did keep stepping on my toes… Just kidding. We finally finished the routine to “Let Yourself Go” and it is looking really good. I’m excited for next week when we start a new one!! It will be so much fun, although the teacher won’t tell us what song it will be, yet.

Even though the plan was to talk about Wednesday, I don’t want to mess up the system I already have. I’ll hold off telling you about today until Friday. This time I promise that it will actually be on Friday, I intend to get a good night’s sleep before the trip to Stratford!! Love you all lots and I’ll write again on Friday.

What is this Feeling?

Hope that you all had as good a Friday night as I did. I had so much fun with all my friends last night, but I won’t get in to that now. Sorry for the lack of Friday updates. Turns out that people like to have parties on Fridays, weird I know.

This week has been so fast, I find it hard to remember the order that everything happened in. Wednesday was a pretty good day, although I find it feels like its really long. In the morning I had Jazz, which was pretty good. I really like our “Man in the Mirror” routine, even though there are a lot of twists and turns in it that sometimes drive me a little crazy. Later we had Improv class and I think that class gets more interesting every time I go. We finally started to do work with verbs and things, but the teacher has such a cool approach to all of the exercises we work on.

Wednesday is also the only day of the week that I have Pop class. I find myself always afraid to go. I thought that I wasn’t going to perform this week, but I ended up doing my song for a second time. I think that this time it was better, but I really wish I could have changed the tempo, cause it was a little bit slow. I sang “Us” by Regina Spektor and I think I did it justice, although it is hard to say. The teacher thought that I was more connected to the lyrics and that I was a little more comfortable singing with the microphone.

Thursday mornings are the longest thing in my whole week. Three hours of Theatre history. To be honest, I really enjoying all of the things we learn about in that class. Knowing the origins of theatre is really quite amazing. We have come so far. This Thursday we learned about Medieval theatre and the religious productions that happened in the church. We also learned about Minstrels and wandering troups in the Dark Ages. It was all very interesting. At the end of the class we talked about The Second Shepard’s Play which is kind of boring… Actually it was pretty dull.

In Dance Performance we did FOSSE!! It was super tough and we only got through the first like 30 seconds of the routine, but it was so much fun. I had to dance in my character shoes and I completely forgot about how much they hurt when I wear them. After that we had Musical Theatre, which was awesome again and featured some amazing songs, like “Anthem” from Chess, “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade”. It was another amazing class with Marie, who we’ve all decided is a complete genius.

I also went over to Tasha’s room for dinner. She made the most amazing chicken wraps I’ve had since I’ve been here. They were so so good! It was a very lovely and enjoyable evening.

Friday, finally… Ballet in the morning was just a regular class. Ear Training was just practicing for the quiz next week. Computer Skills was boring. The only amazing class on Friday was Acting Tech. We did a bunch of really fun and kind of scary trust exercises. It was really cool. We also found out that we aren’t getting marked in the class other than our monologues at the end of the semester. Yay!! It’s always nice to know you’re not getting marked for something you might not be very good at.

So that’s most of my week, in a very small nutshell. I have to head to Toronto now, but I’ll write again on Tuesday!

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Hello Everyone!! Holy Crap! Another week gone already, I can't believe it. I've had an awesome three days since my last entry. I really hope that you've all had as wonderful a week as I have had. The weather here is driving me super crazy. Somedays its freezing, but today it is almost like summer out there, I wore a dress today and I'm still super hot. Unfortunately I'm not really going to make a post today, sorry. I'm chilling out at my friend Natasha's house and its anti-social to be on her laptop while she's waiting for me. Have a fabulous Friday night!! Party hard for me and I'll write tomorrow when I wake up, which could be much later...

Hear My Song

The third week begins. Phew… things are starting to get a little crazy. I can’t even begin to imagine what the Second Years are going through. Right now I think I’m feeling the calm before the storm. I keep expecting something to blow up in my face. Luckily, I think I’m keeping up on the homework and I actually enjoy doing it most of the time. Again I’m afraid of looking up pop songs, but hey, I’ll have to get used to it.

Yesterday started with Tap class again. I find myself enjoying tap, but also sometimes it’s a little annoying. I don’t completely agree with the teacher’s method, so I hope I get used to it. It’s not like the steps are really hard, Paula just tries to make us think about the steps in a new way. Retraining my brain is a lot harder than you would think.

In Ear Training we did almost the same thing as last week and we already have a quiz coming up on Monday. I’m not scared for the quiz, I know that my skills are improving and I understand a lot of the things he teaches in the class. It’s not a hard class as long as you pay attention.

My favourite class on Monday was Shakespeare, again. I find that I love that class so much. Again they made us do attendance with a Shakespeare quote. Clearly I’m going to need to brush up on my Shakespeare Quotes. At the beginning of class we watched the first 10 minutes of Richard III (The one with Robert Downey Jr. and Sir Ian McKellen) and I found myself really enjoying it. The movie left me wanting to see more; I really want to rent it so that I can watch the whole movie. Then we learned a lot about the rhythm of Shakespeare, which I found very interesting. I love that hints to what the character is feeling or thinking are in the text.

Then there was Tuesday, or today, I guess. Today was you’re average Tuesday: Singing in the morning, a little dash of grammar and then some dance at the end. I had a pretty decent morning, although we did watch the most boring video in Vocal Tech, I definitely almost fell asleep.

After that boring morning, I walked into the Musical Theatre Vocal Performance classroom terrified because I was singing my first ever song. The first sing through was pretty good, I think, but the acting could use a lot of work. The first thing that Marie noticed was the change in the introduction music and she asked me what kind of emotional change was going on when that music happened. I had to dig into myself to find the right emotion and the last time I sang the song I found tears in my eyes that I hadn’t even noticed while I was singing. Marie gave me so much to think about, as far as my decisions go and my movement in the song. It was an incredible experience and I had a great class. To tell you the truth I can’t wait to get back up there and perform it again… Well after lots and lots of practicing.

That was all of the exciting things that happened on Tuesday. I was saving a review of the new Glee episode for last, but I just realized that you guys might have not even seen it yet. I promise you I won’t spoil it for you, so I might talk about it on Friday. I had a really great Glee hang out with my new friends. I’m having an amazing time here and I hope you’re all having an amazing time at home.

P.S. I think I miss the Ocean the most… the breeze here is a lot different... Less Salty

Singin' in the Rain

Ah!! I missed Friday!! Which kind of sucks, but at least I have Saturday to catch up. I’ll apologize now for missing yesterday’s update, but in my defence I was out partying. Anyways… back to the update.

Wednesday was a wonderfully rainy day, or maybe that was Thursday. I don’t remember now, but it was kind of cold and rainy all week, just like it’s supposed to be in September. Jazz was my first class in the morning and it was the same as last week. Then after that I had my first tutorial. A tutorial is basically a vocal lesson one on one with a Vocal Teacher. My teachers name is Gregory Cross, he’s really nice and he knows so much about singing. Unfortunately he likes to talk and our tutorial is only half an hour long. We spend almost the whole time talking, because I think he didn’t realize that I had already had singing lessons. It was still really cool and I learned a lot, but I wish that I had sung a little more.

After that was my Improv class which was very much the same as last week. Then there was Pop class and I sang my first song. I sang “Us” by Regina Spektor. I was unbelievably terrified, because I was the second last person to perform out of that whole class. On the whole I feel like I did a good job. The teacher was impressed, because the song is kind of difficult. I didn’t get the highest mark that I wanted, but I later found out that she marked everyone’s song kind of low. After Pop class we had Voice and Text. In that class we learned about positioning your body and finding the neutral position. I had heard some of the things the teacher had said before, but it was still an okay class. It was definitely not my favourite. We also all came in late because the Pop teacher doesn’t keep track of the time, so she was little angry with everyone when we first walked in there.

Then there was Thursday, which I’m actually starting to enjoy. I like Thursday because after the really long class in the morning the day goes by really quickly. We had history in the morning, which we learned a lot of really incredible things about Greek and Roman theatre. There are now a lot of cities in Greece, Italy and France that I want to see because of the theatres that are there. The second class of the day was Stagecraft. We got a tour of Sheridan’s mainstage theatre and of the Props, Costumes and Carpentry rooms. They were so amazing. Those classes do all of the backstage work for Sheridan’s productions. Some of the costumes looked incredible (but their burlesque costumes from Gypsy weren’t as good as Amber’s Mezeppa costume)

We had our second Dance Performance class of the week after that. The teacher, Robin, made it into a mock audition. We performed the routine that we learned last week, which is my favourite routine out of all the dance classes so far. Then, after an hour break, we had Music Theatre Performance. This was the class that I was supposed to perform in, but as it turned out my song was in the wrong key with the wrong accompaniment. So now I’m going on Tuesday instead. There were other amazing performances of “Johanna”, “Jimmy” and “Snoopy”, though and I learned so much from all of those songs anyways.

Friday morning starts with Ballet. We had a great class, even though the cute little old woman who’s our accompanist didn’t show up. We ended up using CD’s instead. We had a great bar and then when moved into the centre. After one question we had a class discussion for the rest of the day about competitions and how getting three firsts and two seconds is not fair. After that class we had Ear Training, which I find very easy as long as you pay attention. The unfortunate thing about the Friday class is that my teacher’s voice is kind of annoying and hard to listen to.

Computer Skills is turning into the easiest class. It’s pretty self explanatory and nothing too interesting happened so I’ll skip right to Acting Technique. We did an exercise that was an example of how many different acting techniques there are. We were all asked to perform a very short monologue one at a time. At the end of that we talked about what acting is. Gregory Peterson’s definition is “Acting is the art of communicating a universal truth” (I think, I might not have remembered it properly.) Then he proceded to tell us about many of the great actors, actresses and other artists, like Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonara Duse, Anton Chekov, Constantin Stanislavski and Uta Hagen. Those are only a few, but there were a lot of names said. I really liked that class, because Greg Peterson is such an amazing teacher. He’s so hilarious and I love listening to him. It was a really good end to a week.

After that we had our Icebreaker with the 3rd and 2nd Years, which I won’t go into now. It was all in all a great week. I had a wonderful week again. I’m a little scared because of how quick the week went by. If from now on they’re all this quick it will be Christmas in no time. I hope you all aren’t too mad at me for the late update. Love you all so much! Thanks for the support!!

Catch Me, I'm Falling

And the second week begins. Along with actually accomplishing things in classes, homework has once again begun to rear its ugly head. Luckily, I want to do most of the work that the teachers have given me so far, so that’s a good inspiration to finish the work. I’ve also been listening to more musicals that I ever used to. I think that I just had a relapse of my old musical craze. I love that Tuesday mornings I get to walk to school and sing for my entire morning. Already I’m getting ahead of myself; let me start with my weekend.

This Saturday, as some of you already know, I went to Toronto for the first time. It wasn’t as “scary” as a lot of people told me it would be. It was actually really cool. I loved that one part of downtown that my friend Andrew described as a mini Times Square. The International Film Festival is going on right now, so there was a lot of paparazzi and rallies going on. Andrew and I walked from the Go Station down to the Reference Library, which is an amazing library. There are five floors of every book. On the top floor they have an incredible amount of librettos and music scores. I really wish that I could take some of them home with me. I spent most of my day in the library, but one of Andrew’s friends showed us where the Theatre Books store is. I was very very tempted to buy some music there. My trip was very short, but a lot of fun. Toronto is a really cool city and I can’t wait to visit again.

Sunday was a study day, so we’ll skip over that day and move straight on to Monday. I had Tap class on Monday morning, which was really great. A lot of Tap came back to me, which I found really surprising. It was a fun class. Then we had Ear Training, where we just worked on singing exercises, learned a lot about rhythm and the origins of dictation.

The class that I loved the most on Monday was our Introduction to Shakespeare class. When the teachers took the attendance everyone had to answer with a quote from Shakespeare! It was a lot of fun and I learned so much even in just the first class. After the introduction from the teachers, we talked a lot about the structure of a play and the structure of a monologue. Then we talked about the four genres of a play: Tragedy, Comedy, Romance and Historical. For the last twenty minutes of class we were split in to four groups and we had to re-create each genre in a one minute play. It was tons of fun and a lot of interesting plot lines, like The Dance Audition: A Tragedy, and Love for Sheep: A Comedy. There was also a one minute recap of the beginning of World War One, in which my favourite line was “Sacre Bleu!” I was a worthwhile class and I honestly can’t wait till next Monday.

Our last class on Monday was Music Theory, which is boring, so I’ll just skip it and move right on to Tuesday. As I told you last week, Tuesday is a very vocal day and it is still my favourite day. We begin the day with a Vocal Technique class. Then we had vocal repertoire class. In this class we each have to do a presentation with four other kids in the class. The groups and presentations are already picked for us and they all have songs by a specific composer, or lyricist. For example, in class today we worked on the music for presentation #1 – Rodgers and Hammerstein. We did classics like, “If I Loved You”(which is now one of my favourite classic songs) and “I Cain’t Say No”. We also ran through the group harmonies of “Oklahoma!” again. Then we had Grammar, which I think is self explanatory.

In Musical Theatre Performance, Four people went today and they all did incredible jobs of their songs. Marie, our teacher is so great to work with. The songs that were sung today were: “Your Daddy’s Song”, “Role of a Lifetime”, “As We Stumble Along” and a very quick “Johanna”. I have to say that the song with the biggest difference was “Your Daddy’s Song” which almost had everyone in tears at the end (yes it was that good). I also signed up for Thursday and I’m really excited for that. I’ll tell you all about it on Friday.

Dance Performance was more interesting today than last week, because he started to teach us how to do the Vietnamese Waltz. It was a slow process, because sometimes it takes a while for people to get the steps right. I can’t wait till we get to do the dance with partners.

That’s all of the exciting things that have happened so far this week. I don’t feel quite as overwhelmed writing this on Tuesday and Friday. I’m just happy that I can tell you guys more of the details this way. So much happens every day that it’s hard to say everything, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of telling you all the important things eventually. I’ve still got Thirteen Fridays to get it down. Can’t wait till Friday!

The Music and the Mirror

What an incredible week. It was on of the most amazing weeks of my whole life. I loved so much of it. I can’t believe how wonderful this program is and how much I love the people that I’m doing it with. I’ve been having such a fabulous time I can hardly contain my excitement.

On Tuesday we started the day with our vocal technique class. Our teacher Marie, is a sweetheart. She is a really great teacher in musical theatre and technical voice. Unfortunately we didn’t spend a lot of the class doing things, but we did a really great breathing exercise at the end of the class. Then we went to straight into our vocal repertoire class. The teacher, Gail, immediately introduced herself and sort of half explained the course. I’ll have to fully describe it another time, because I have a lot of other things to say in this post. But after the intro, we started on our first ensemble number… “Oklahoma”. Personally, I find that really exciting because we were working on the beautiful choral number at the end of the show; it is one of my favourite parts. Then we went to grammar, which is boring, but necessary.

After lunch we had Music Theatre Vocal Performance, which is so far my favourite class. I love it. The whole class gets to watch Marie work with one of the other kids in class. She is an incredible teacher and a wonder to watch. I can’t wait till I get to sing, but I still haven’t had a chance yet. I really want to go next Thursday, so I’ll tell you next week how it goes.

Our last class of the day was our Dance Performance class. We did a lot of broadway style jazz music. We started a routine to a Kristen Chenoweth song, that I don’t remember the name of. I had a blast in that dance class. It was so much fun. I really liked the teacher; he was very…. Energetic.

Then came Wednesday, which started with Level 1 Jazz for me. It was quite a fun dance class. It was a lot more fluid and lyrical than I imagined, but I had a great time. We also did a routine to “Man in the Mirror”. After that we had an Independent study period, which is pretty self explanatory.

We had lunch and then went straight to improv class. The teacher was really hilarious. She basically told us that everyone is crazy on some level and then we proceeded to trash the classroom during a very eye opening exercise. We did have to clean it up afterwards, but it was totally worth it.

After that was Pop class. I don’t want to go into details for Pop class until next week, so you’ll just have to wait until then. The day ended with Voice and Text class, which was interesting, but we didn’t learn very much in the first class. There was a lot of introduction. I’ll tell you guys more about it when I know more about it. So that was our Wednesday. I think it was fun, but so far Tuesday is still my favourite.

Thursday was the longest day so far. History of Western Theatre was our first class and I found the first hour pretty boring. Then after we had a little break in the class the teachers showed us a clip from a play known as Marat/Sade, if you’ve heard of it. It was a really intense clip that showed a lot of insane asylum patients started up a riot. It was pretty graphic and extreme. Then we had one of the most incredible class discussions I’ve ever had. Everyone had different feelings and opinions on the clip and the play itself, which is meant to be a study of the sexual pleasure of pain and carnage. It was pretty intense and it definitely made the class a lot more interesting.

After that crazy class I went to Stagecraft, which seems like a pretty easy course. It’s only an hour long, so the teacher didn’t get to say much. Then we had dance performance with an amazing Jazz teacher. She has the more amazing hardcore warm-up that still has my abs hurting. We also did a really lyrical routine to a song called, “Jar of Hearts”

Then there was Friday. It was kind of a nice and easy day today. Ballet was this morning and it was nothing more than your standard ballet class, complete with bar and center work. The teacher, Gillian, doesn’t do any specific style, she kind of likes to do a mix of them and I found that I really like that. After ballet we had Ear Training, which seems like another easy course. I’ll tell you more about that after Monday, when I’ve had my second Ear Training course. Computer Skills was right after that and I found that it didn’t seem too complicated. We didn’t get into the details of the course really and the teacher made us all do a powerpoint presentation of ourselves…which I thought was a little juvenile, but I still had fun doing it and looking at other peoples presentations.

The last class of the day was Acting Technique, which I was the most interested in. Unfortunately for me, we didn’t spend a lot of our first class doing much acting. We all introduced ourselves to each other and the teacher. Then we basically just told everyone a little bit about ourselves and that took an hour and a half. It was still a lot of fun. I learned some things about my new friends that I didn’t know before and that was really exciting. The teacher, Greg Peterson, is amazing so far and I can’t wait to learn more from him.

So that was my week, in the smallest amount of words possible. My brain is about to explode. I think that next week I might do an update on Tuesday and Friday. Then I can fit in all the stuff that I do this weekend and a lot more of the things we do in class. Thanks to you all for reading. I’m so happy to have all your support and I’ll write again on Tuesday!!

Something's Coming

Thank goodness it’s finally Friday. It feels like this has been one of the longest weeks of my life. I flew in to Toronto on Monday and have been adjusting to the time zone ever since. It’s been a very interesting first week at college. I’ve been having a blast especially with meeting so many new and wonderful people. Going in to a Musical Theatre program I thought that all of the people in my program would be loud and boisterous. Fortunately, I was completely right. I have never met a louder crowd of people in my life. I’m also so happy about how supportive we are of each other. And everyone is so talented!! They’re all amazingly incredible, as I have seen from both our Acting and Vocal Diagnostics. I just love every minute I’m spending with them.

The first thing that I noticed about Sheridan was how ridiculous the campus layout it. It doesn’t make any sense to me yet, but I’m sure after getting lost a few times I’ll get it. The teachers so far have been really cool. I can’t wait till the real classes start. From all of the orientations I’ve been to I really just want the REAL programs to start. I’m sure that after they do I will definitely eat my words. From the sounds of it all of the classes are very high pressure, which I’m sure I can handle, but I expect it all to be quite difficult.

I have to confess that one of the more academic classes that I’m super excited for is the Introduction to Shakespeare!! I can’t wait to learn all about it. I’m also excited to pick my monologue for that class next semester. So far there isn’t that much new information to tell you about. This is an overview of what I’ve learned and I hope it will satisfy you all till next week. Can’t wait for the real thing to begin!!