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!!