2.2 Tae Be Or No Tae Be

So what did I do on Burns’ Night this year? Well, actually I was performing on the stage of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre! Our Voice teacher just happens to be the Voice Coach at the Globe (I know!) so he took us on a little school trip to explore the space and have a go delivering a Shakespeare monologue from the stage. So fun! I did a dramatic belter, where King Claudius calls upon England to help him kill Hamlet. It’s such an inspiring space to perform in; being all at once grand and intimate, cosmic and personal. And we were the first year group of this course to be given this opportunity. I feel very privileged, and now I want to do Shakespeare too!

Speaking of privileged. My great friend Murdo Macleod and his Hungarian fiancé Csilla came to stay this week. He asked me if I’d be his best man at the wedding in October! I seem to remember I had a miniature fit of joy before expressing my willingness. The ceremony will be in Hungary and my speech will be translated line-by-line, which should have an interesting effect on the jokes. I’m tremendously excited. It’s all happening this year…

We have a new Dance teacher who is very- erm… well, shall we say, he’s very good at telling us about himself. It is a very impressive CV to be fair. He’s responsible for choreographing the wand fight in Order of the Phoenix along with pretty much every dance scene in any BBC period drama in the last ten years, apparently. He is a darn good teacher. We’re learning Merengue, Jive, Schottische, a bit of Baroque, and maybe some Tango. Lovin’ it!

On Friday we had an Industry Day where we got to attend a Q&A with two Agents then two Casting Directors and finally two Actors. It was really useful to make contact with the industry, so to speak, and got me thinking about life after drama school and what I need to do to prepare for that. One of the Casting Directors said an encouraging thing. She said there’s too much sensationalist stuff performed at showcases and not enough classical scenes. In short, too much swearing! I loved that, and I quite agree. If I get to do a theatre showcase I plan on doing a scene from a classical text.

Our last class of the week was something of an emotional roller-coaster. It was with the Director of one of the short films we’ll be shooting next term and we had to tell an emotive story from our past, and play a piece of music to go along with it. Most people were a wreck by the end but I felt a bit foolish. As it went on each person’s story was a more heart-wrenching tear-jerker than the one before – when they discovered their Dad had been cheating on their Mum, when they had an abortion, when they lost their best friend – but my story was about a time when I was very young and was given a Cyprus knife, and had great fun playing with it, and then it got broken! Heavy emotional baggage to be sure! In all seriousness, it was another reminder that my classmates, like everyone, are hurt, lost and broken people who desperately need the love of the Father.

I did actually celebrate Burns’ Night. We had a party at our flat as a joint birthday celebration for my flatmate Amy and my classmate Matt and also for Burns’ Night. I cooked some haggis, neaps and tatties, put on a CD of bagpipe music (the good old Harvey Bros) and wore the full Highland rig. I dutifully recited the ‘Address to a Haggis’ and I was thrilled when, later on in the night, we got some Ceilidh dancing going in the kitchen! In honour of Matt’s birthday I composed a song, and in honour of Rabbie Burns’ birthday I set it to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’! It was a great laugh, and I think Matt was rather moved to have a song written for him. I named it ‘For Auld Matt’ and my favourite line is:

“Now where is he likely to be in five or ten years time?
I'm sure he could get to Hollywood if he had a face like mine!”

Needless to say, there was much LOL-ing.

2.1 Escape to Exeter

I have my own profile on Central’s website! How often I did browse through the student profiles this time last year as I considered my future and what it might be like to be on this course. Now I am. Check it out: http://www.cssd.ac.uk/students/profiles/philip-todd

We had to hand in a two thousand word critical reflection at the start of this term. What a nightmare. Somehow, I don’t know how, this fairly simple, straightforward task became a mountainous challenge, which drove me within firing range of my wits end. Maybe it was because I got so used to being told to ‘think’ less and ‘do’ more last term that made sitting down to something academic so difficult. However, after a few very late nights I handed it in, more relieved than satisfied, and started the term with mental exhaustion, sleep deprivation and smothered motivation.

It didn’t help therefore that, for the Performing Research Unit that we embark on this term, the first couple of days were a research intensive. More thinking! Though it was rather nice to be able to just sit in lectures and listen. I suppose that’s what uni is like for most people. I confess it was, on occasion, a fight against drowsiness, especially when the lecturer chose to use very academic or technical language or even just read their lecture from a paper. That annoyed me a bit and if nothing else the two days gave me a good insight into what makes an engaging presentation, and not.

On top of that our project work for this week was to compile and present research for the feature film script that we will be working on for the first few weeks. The script is The Duchess so the period we’re researching is the late eighteenth century, which is actually really interesting but again it requires still more sedentary thinking.

Our first practical class came as a breath of fresh air. It was a new class on Meisner technique with a new teacher called Emett. He’s from Northern Ireland originally and a bit unbelievably nice. I’ve been looking forward to exploring Meisner because I can see in those of the class who have done this work before that it really helps with their listening, intuition and immediacy when acting. And the work is mostly all about using imagination and playing games! I think I’m really going to like this class.

I was glad to have the opportunity to get away at the weekend and visit my second cousins in Exeter. Firstly because they’re wonderful people and I don’t get to see them that often and secondly because I know as the term goes on it will become increasingly impossible to do anything extra at the weekends. My stay was both relaxing and recreational. I played Cluedo, went for runs and ate cake. We went to see Spielberg’s War Horse and immediately afterwards James was able to show me on a map exactly where in Devon they shot it! We went walking in Dartmoor and climbed on the tors where I could lean into the wind and it was strong enough to hold me up, and then I had a juicy Devon steak in a homely English pub. It was great to escape, to see more of England and have a break from the regular routine. Here’s a picture from the windy moor: