She's Ba-ack!

I am a bit better than Friday.  I stayed in bed the whole day and felt really rotten.  The TOC said you were all very good, and that makes me happy!  It is so helpful when I feel like I can trust you to do your work even if I'm not there to watch over you.

Grades 9 and 10:  We're going to start trying accents, so it might be a good idea to listen to people who actually speak with the accents we've chosen to try.  Youtube is a good source for this -- in fact, there are some youtube addresses (is that what they're called?) that actually purport to teach you how to use the accent.  Learning to do a good accent is really a matter of listening and copying.  When I hear an interesting voice, I will often repeat phrases that I like to try out the voice.  If you know someone who uses the accent, that is the best source of the real voice you want.  You don't want the "movie" version of an accent, which is sometimes not what the people sound like at all.  (I told the story about Dick Van Dyke's performance in "Mary Poppins".  He was a very popular American actor, but his character was a London chimney sweep and his accent was idiotic, making his performance really embarrassing.  On the other side of the coin, Hugh Laurie is an English actor but he plays the American doctor, "House", and you would never guess he isn't American from watching his performance.)  We're going to start with the British Isles on Wednesday. Any voice that you can identify as an accent that hails from Great Britain is good -- Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, or any English accent.  I don't mind if you aren't accurate, I just want you to try.

Grade 9's, after your exploration of violence on stage, we're going to end off the year looking at television acting.  I have scenes from the locally produced tv show, "Mr. Young", for you to work on.

Grade 10's:  We're going to try some movie scenes, from two great old movies -- "The Maltese Falcon" (in the film noire style) and "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (a good old horror movie).

In movies and especially tv, less is more.

Grade 8's, after we finish "The Creation of the World" (tomorrow -- be sure to bring music!!!), we will move on to our final project, in which we get to work on real scripts for the first time.  Don't forget that on Monday, you will be presenting your "show and tell" speeches.  Don't think you don't need to prepare -- you do!