ThE eNd

Time flies when you’re having fun. This term has indeed flown, but not so fast that I haven’t been able to catch on and enjoy the ride. This last week was filled with assessments: for Voice, Camera, Dance, and two for Movement. I rather enjoyed these and the sense of completion that they gave.

In our last class before the holidays we watched the short films from our Mike Leigh Project. Some of it was seriously impressive (and entertaining) but a lot of it, and most of my part, was seriously disappointing. In my attempts to be ‘real’ my character had diminished in purpose and importance so that on screen my performance was somewhat uninteresting. However, I learned a lot from the experience of creating a character in this particular way and, after all, the focus of this project was on the process, not the product.

I’m apparently youthful enough to qualify as a high school pupil. My course leader chose me and some others in the class to be involved in an extra project where we were the cast for a mock horror trailer set in a high school. Unpaid, a favour perhaps, but even so this was a fun few hours and I got to try out a London accent, and squirt on some fake blood and pretend I was dying which is always a laugh. Afterwards we discovered that the trailer may be shown at some prestigious places, to some rather important people, which was a good reminder that it’s important to always give 100% whatever the work.

Also this week we showcased the scenes we’ve been working on in our extra theatre classes throughout the term. I pranced around as Henry Higgins in my period dressing gown and slicked hair, with my RP accent, and it was really “quite a pleasure”. ‘Pygmalion’ by George Bernard Shaw is wonderfully written, sumptuous theatre and I love period roles. I hope I will get to do more of that in the future.

I left my end-of-term tutorial with mingled joy and despair. Apparently I started the term quite shy and have become much more brave and confident, which is positive. It’s also hardly surprising since this term has been my first experience of any kind of actor training, and of living in London. I think I can forgive myself for being a bit tentative to begin with. The main thrust of the criticism from my tutors was that I need to start stretching myself and not being afraid to go to the extremes in characters. This is fair enough, and I agree, but it touches on an important issue that I discussed with some of my classmates in some depth. How extreme can, or should, I actually go? Is it possible to be an unlimited, unrestricted actor and also a moral person? Does an actor need to separate their professional life and personal life, and pretend that what they do in their professional life isn’t really them? As a Christian, how can I be the best actor I can be without compromising my faith? I know this is an issue I will continue to face throughout my life. My conclusion was to accept that at any given time I am faced with two clear options, which are often in tension: to do what the world wants or to do what God wants. I am determined to always try to do the latter. Often this will seem strange or foolish to others (my tutors and classmates especially); the world will not understand, maybe sometimes even I won’t fully understand, but the truth is this: in Christ I am “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and therefore to do anything else would be against my very nature.

I’ve learnt so much, I’ve grown, and I’m thoroughly enjoying this course but I am looking forward to being on home soil, celebrating Christmas and New Year with family and old friends and having a good break to recover, and absorb. I finished the week with a Christmas house party and the next morning I was on the train speeding back up to Scotland!

“For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” 1 Timothy 4:8

9

“Hold onto your butts!” mutters Samuel L. Jackson as our heroes start their tour in Jurassic Park. For our research presentation on the visual effects in this film my partner, American classmate Matt Block, kicked us off by saying the same thing to the class. We had a lot of fun with this presentation, maybe a bit too much. We came dressed in shirts, khaki shorts and long socks, I wore a hat, and Matt broke out his wound make-up wizardry to give us each some vicious looking cuts and bruises; as if to suggest we’d just survived Jurassic Park! I hope we don’t get marked down for not taking it seriously enough. We saw no point in making the presentation dry and academic even if that is what the assignment might have suggested. I learned that theoretical and academic research doesn’t have to be dull and dusty. It can be an exciting adventure, complete with dinosaurs!

This week was the culmination of all our work on the Mike Leigh project. We’d all created and developed our own characters, we’d met with other characters and worked on improvisations, as a group we’d written a script, and now this week we shot it. It was very quick. We only had one day to shoot a twenty-minute script so it felt a bit rushed through and before I knew it we’d wrapped, and that was the end of my character.

Also this week I met up with a very friendly agent and actress called Joanna Hole. She is almost certainly the most useful contact I have but it was so refreshing just to meet up and chat as real people. I didn’t feel I needed to ‘make an impression’ or ‘network’ in any way, we just genuinely got to know each other a bit. And that’s what it’s really about. I do think a career ought not to be built just on contacts with people that you know a bit or have worked with, but on real relationships.

I love Christmas. And I love singing. So imagine Carol Services. Actually the best thing about Carol Services for me is that they’re an excuse to bring friends along to church. All three of my flatmates came along last Sunday evening. I was part of a small group singing Silent Night in English, German and Mandarin! This Sunday two of my classmates came along. All Souls do awesome Carol Services. Joyful arrangements of carols with a big orchestral accompaniment, powerful musical performances, and an engaging talk about the real meaning of Christmas where the Gospel is explained loudly and clearly. Just perfect for bringing my non-Christian friends along to and it always led to good chats later on.

What were the odds that I would end up living right next to the work place of one of the only people I know in London, a primary school teacher called Alice? What are the chances that she would be responsible for putting on a nativity show and would invite me to come in and help? What is the likelihood that it would actually happen? Not high, but it did. I love being with and working with children so much, and I really miss it when I’m studying; there’s too many people of a similar age about. I need to spend time with some like-minded primary school kids to get things back in perspective. So I went in one day, watched them rehearse the play, gave them some suggestions and played some drama games with them. I enjoyed it just as much as my course work. It’s been said before: acting is child’s play. So maybe this is another option for the future. As Alice put it in a text afterwards, “You had a real natural flair with them – if you don’t make it to Hollywood…”

Pieces of Eight

The things I get to do! My character, for our Mike Leigh project, is in a band with some of the other characters and our task this week was to write and rehearse a Christmas song, complete with dance routine. Somehow I managed to write some lyrics and music in a few hours and then we spent an afternoon choreographing a little performance. It was so ridiculous and so fun that I could hardly believe it was course work. Later in the week we came together with a few other characters to write a script and we performed our song for them. I think at that point we all realised this isn’t just a comedy... it’s a carry on.

My first visit to the University of London’s Senate House Library was great, and I got some useful resources for my research project on the visual effects in Jurassic Park. Our visit was scheduled on the morning of a teachers strike for pensions, so we had to cross a picket line to get in. Research is easier in a library. It’s an environment that encourages exploration, and plundering a pile of big books is so much more satisfying than scrolling through text on a computer screen. It’s also an impressive building with an interesting history. Apparently Hitler liked the look of it for his prospective headquarters and it’s supposed to have been the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.


Our Voice teacher dropped a very exciting bombshell this week. He works at Shakespeare’s Globe – the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s original theatre – and for next term we are going to learn a Shakespeare monologue and give it from that stage! Just now my goal isn’t necessarily Shakespeare, or even theatre, but even so the thought still sends a little tingle down my spine.

I’m a jammy dodger. I slept in this Friday – for the first time so far, so that’s quite impressive – and woke up at nine. It just so happened that this was the morning an outside director (and therefore potential employer) was coming in for some practise auditions. I hurriedly got up and sprinted in. Had this been a normal class there was no way I would have been admitted. Even if we’re ten seconds late for a class then we have to miss the whole thing. However, because he was seeing each person individually, and I was halfway down the list, I made it with half an hour to spare! Ironically in Movement later that morning we were exploring different levels of tension and the circumstances our tutor used was sleeping in and running late. I had some recent experience to help me with that one!

Markoesa, my Dutch flatmate, introduced me to her traditional Winter holiday ‘Sinterklaas’. Prior to the Sinterklaas celebration on the Fifth of December everyone writes a little list of gifts they would like. Similar to a secret Santa everyone gets someone else’s list but nobody knows who has who. For that person a gift is bought or made, a short rhyming poem is written, and a surprise of some sort is prepared. Then at the celebration everyone receives their gift, poem and surprise (from Sinterklaas), eats lots of traditional food, and then can try and guess whom it was actually from. Markoesa and I did it once with our two flatmates and then again with almost our whole class. It was very fun and a great reminder to me that I’m living with, and working with, some very wonderful people. I’m praying that this Christmas they might come to understand why we give gifts...