This week was much more tiring than Week 1 and flew by.  First of all, the Q&A with Gregory Hicks & Kelly Hunter (the 2 lead actors from The Winter’s Tale which we all saw in Stratford on Saturday - which you can see pictures of here (https://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/winters-tale/production-photos.aspx) or on my Facebook to better understand my description of the set) was awesome.  Way better than our first Q&A with Brian Cox.  I definitely have a much better appreciation for the show itself and the production that we saw after discussing it with them.  I can’t believe that Gregory Hicks will bounce back and forth between playing Leontes in Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar in Julius Caesar, and Lear in King Lear throughout the week, sometimes in the same day…..and Kelly Hunter also doubles the roles of Hermione in Winter’s Tale and Goneril in King Lear.  And both of them will be traveling with the production when it goes to New York next summer - maybe I will check it out again.

Modern class is tough - Chekhov is effing hard to act, but I’m learning a lot….I will definitely be much better off when Three Sister’s rehearsals start in a month had I not been studying Chekhov at BADA…..speaking of that, I have a good 2.5 acts to memorize by Monday.

At BADA, some people have a “Physical” class and others have a “Movement” class (it just depends on what the faculty members strength is, or how they classify their style of work.  Anyway, I am in Movement and I enjoy it a lot - today we went through various exercises where we had to be earth and air and then apply those physical traits to characters….we were water earlier in the week and we will get to be fire next week…..but then class ended with a good 1 hour game of Mafia….my absolute favorite - not too sure what it has to be with “movement” but I’m not complaining….in the 3rd and final game, I was the Mafia and I won!  I made it to the final 4 with Colleen, Tamar, and Michelle and was able to convince everyone to kill off Colleen and then I killed Tamar - making me victorious with Michelle the loan survivor (I had to save Michelle because she was defending me and thought I was innocent the whole time.)

Shakespeare is definitely my favorite class - my teacher, Lynn, is totally the type of actor that I connect with (less so with my Modern teacher, John Gorrie) but she has an incredible insight and energy that I just feed off of.  My Iago monologue is great and she has given me a comedic monologue by “Ford” from “Merchant of Venice.”  I am also working with a girl in my class, Deanna, on the wooing scene from “Taming of the Shrew.”  We are hoping to add a lot of physical comedy to the scene.

My voice teacher, Andrew Wade, who I adore is only here for the first 2 weeks of BADA, so we are getting a new teacher on Monday, but I will miss Andrew dearly.  I learned so much about language from him, and so many of his exercises brought me back to the days of Voice & Speech and Linklater.

I have audition techniques for the 2nd time tomorrow and Linda Gates wants to see our Shakespeare pieces……I’m deciding if I want to show her Benedick or Iago, but Lynn suggested that I go with Benedick cause Linda will probably say I am too young for Iago….even though Benedick is in his 30s…..I will probably do Benedick (which I worked on with Lynn in my tutorial yesterday, so I have a lot more faith in the piece now.)  And I’m still learning my new contemporary monologue from “Sweet Bird of Youth”…and I’ve pretty much dumped my “Suburbia” monologue after talking it through with Lynn and deciding its not a very well written piece and doesn’t suit me very well.

We had our Masterclass with Fiona Shaw yesterday, and she was absolutely brilliant.  You know, Fiona Shaw….Mrs. Dursley from the Harry Potter films….Hedda Gabler….Medea….incredible Shakespearean actress…….Anyway, she is simply hysterical - I couldn’t believe how funny she was…..She worked on a mixture of contemporary pieces, Shakespearean pieces, monologues, and dualogues. We saw Corey, and NYU grad student who is at BADA, do Coriolanus….the Harper & Joe scene from Angels in America from Jo & Seamus (a Julliard and Yale grad student, respectively)……a Lady Anne monologue from Samantha (who is in my group and goes to Northwestern)….and a Ms. Roj monologue from Colored Museum (a hilarious play that I read in Comedy Styles this year)…..for each scene she brought extras up onstage to give the people doing the monologues someone to play off of……I played a transvestite during Patrick’s Ms. Roj monologue which ended up with him slapping me in the face….it sounds weird, but it was absolutely hilarious, and he made such strides with the piece.

Today was my 2nd of 4 workshops with John Barton…and I definitely got a lot more out of it this week than I did last week…….I really liked the way my sonnet turned out and I think I made a good impression on the faculty and students that were observing the workshop.

Tomorrow is the annual BADA River Party with punting on the river and an open bar, so that will be a lovely evening. And then on Saturday most of us are heading into London - taking a 8am bus there in the morning and hanging out all day….very exciting - I definitely want to see a show…..To quote Hannah:  ”Here’s the plan: 8am bus, then we fucking blitzkrieg London”