The second week of classes started with Steven Memel, the voice coach. We had a general session with the two groups together (20 people), which made the studio room a bit packed - especially when we all had to lie down on the floor to do breathing exercises! Someone's feet would be in someone else's face! Pity we don't have a picture of that. But it was remarkable how Steven made use use our voices to do things we'd never imagined possible. A welcome addition to the course.
Margie also had five actors come in and talk to us about their work. They're all working actors and they all previously studied (or are still studying) with Margie. It was good to hear that there are opportunities out there - even for foreign nationals, as one of them was from Australia and another one from Germany. In the picture below, you can see these five actors and visiting photographer Garet (with the glasses). Maybe you recognise some of them! Margie is the blonde woman in the black top.
The acting classes themselves were with Jim this week. Jim is also a working actor and a great guy to work with. He has a lot of experience; he took Margie's classes years ago and is now a teacher at her studio.
The first day we used a scene and broke it down together. He then asked everyone individually to read the scene while he taped it using the video camera. After everybody'd read the scene, the tape was played back and Jim pointed out everybody's weak and strong points. We then had a chance to do it a second time around. As with Saxon's classes, the differences were very noticeable. As people got more familiar with the material, things started to come together...
The pictures below show Jim at work.
The second day with Jim we did an interesting exercise which took all day. The goal of the exercise was to show us that words on a page are not very important if the character's intention is strong enough.
Two actors would do a scene, while the others would be watching them. The two doing the scene were given the instruction to pretend the other person was someone important to them and that this the last chance to tell them something important. They were then both given two copies of a randomly selected script and when the need arose to speak, they would look at the paper and pick a line at random. It was very interesting to see that most of the time, the group got the gist of the communication, even though the words meant nothing in relation to the scene!
The picture below shows the group with Jim and Margie.
On Thursday, we had someone from an actor management agency talk to us about the business of representing working actors. It was very interesting to hear how things are done here from someone on the inside. We were allowed to ask any questions we wanted and Glenn (one of the 6 people working for that agency) was very open and talkative. No pictures unfortunately.
On Friday, we all went to Universal Studios to attend the taping of the pilot of the American version of the IT Crowd, which Margie arranged tickets for. Everybody had a great time there, apart from Alastair and Peter, who didn't make it in time, because they thought they had to pick up some of the other actors from Margie's. However, when they got there, the office was closed and later it turned out that the two girls who they were supposed to give a lift, had already been picked up by Kenan! Consequently, they ended up in a massive traffic jam (without the girls!) and got to Universal just a bit late and were turned away and had nothing to do but to get sloshed in a bar on Hollywood Boulevard, while the others were watching the taping...
The others thought the taping was nice to have been part of. The comedian who was warming up the audience was very funny and it was good to see how professional and well-rehearsed the actors were.
