like painting a masterpiece, it's a work of heart.

This past weekend marked the opening of The Comedy of Errors!!

A shot from Tech Rehearsal!  (Courtesy Endstation Theatre Company)

        Our original opening night was rained out because of a threatening storm that covered the entire East coast (which was a pretty big deal since it was the first time a show has been cancelled in the 4 years of the Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival's existence).  To raise our spirits, a large majority of Endstation Theatre Company enjoyed an intense, two-hour game of Aliens!, which involved a spaceship, a lost captain and crew members, water guns, aliens (duh!), and a cloak of light..
        Saturday, June 2nd became our opening night, and turned out to be a PERFECT day; sunny but cool, and the house was packed!  It was a lot of fun, and nice to see other company members and my old host-family out in the audience!  Now that we've had a handful of preview performances and two "real" performances, it's neat to see how different each audience responds to our show.  

The cast of The Comedy of Errors!  (Courtesy Amy Rauchwerger)

        Macbeth rehearsals have continued, and I am happy to say that I have lines!  :)  It's a small section, but I think it will prove to be a rather intense part of the play.


        This week, I've also started attending the master classes for the Acting Interns.  These master classes occur every Tuesday and Thursday for the rest of the summer season, and are taught by rotating company staff members.  The first was a "Linklater" Voice class, in which we touched upon voice, but focused primarily on breathing, correct alignment/posture, and releasing tension throughout the body.  It was interesting to see how the technique builds upon itself, and also to realize a freeness in my body and a connectedness to my breath.  It always takes a while to get myself to a place of breathing deeply from the diaphragm, and is something that I've been working on all year, so it was nice to focus an hour and a half on just that.
        Our other class focused on improvisation.  Improv is naturally challenging, and has always been a bit of a weakness for me personally (not to mention the fact that it's been a while since I've done it), so the class was... difficult.  But, I'm trying to be mindful of the fact that it takes professional improv actors years and years of training to get good at it.  It's a difficult class to track progress in, but I'm just focusing on doing the best I can, which is probably what I should focus on anyway.  But to make myself feel better, I will say that we've already learned many things from this first class, like creating information that is as specific as possible in each scene.

        Lastly, I've enjoyed growing friendships and having way more fun than I deserve...
Some of this may have been caused by the Disney movie weekend marathon that we happened to create (just Lion King or Mulan would have been enough to set me off!).
Also, the lengthy discussions/listening sessions regarding musical theatre that I've enjoyed may have added to that.
And the fact that I converted 10+ people over to "The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall" 25th Anniversary Performance might have been an added bonus.  

Unfortunately though, I've also had to say goodbye to the Assistant Director of Comedy who is taking on another internship for the rest of the summer!  Good luck with everything Blayze!!