Day 58

So, Day 2 of my excursion to the great city of Amarillo, TX for ACTF. Today we got to watch two shows instead of just one. First off we saw "Awake...and Sing!", which is surprisingly not a musical. It's a drama...set in the 30's....about a family and their dog Tootsie...yup. Well, the dog isn't that important (although for like 2 minutes they had a dog onstage, and during one of the most pivotal moments of the play, everyone in the audience was freaking out about the dog...not good). The show was not good. The script was so-so (not gonna lie, I'm not a big fan of dramas about the Depression) but it had potential. The acting was just very melodramatic and not real at all. One guy, who played the grandpa type character, was really really good, but everyone else was mediocre or bad. The set and lighting was cool, but it didn't mesh at all with the production. It's like they didn't even read the script; they just came up with a random design and tried to apply it to the show. I was disappointed that the show could be at the Kennedy Center, representing our region. It shouldn't, and hopefully it won't advance because I'm sure there were much better shows before we got there.

Then we took Day 2 of "The Lueger Method", and it was awesome because no one else from the day before showed up, so it was basically a mini-workshop for just our group. We started applying some of the things we learned into random improv movements. Something just clicked inside me when working on this. I seemed to just get it, and the instructor seemed very impressed. It wasn't anything momentous, just random movements and sounds, but I was able to just let go and let my body and voice just move. It felt great. I wish I could have stayed longer to apply everything we learned to actual text. I would love to try it on my own, but with some sort of mentor or instructor to lead us in the right direction, I think it would be very difficult.

The last show we got to see was "The Machinal". We just learned a little bit about this play in Theatre History on Tuesday, so I was super excited about it. I knew it was an Expressionistic play, so I warned everybody that it was going to be "different". I actually enjoyed it a lot. It was my favorite play out of the 3 that I saw. They relied heavily on music and spectacle, which totally worked with the show. The opening scene was brilliant and got me super stoked for the rest of the show. It kind of went downhill from there. They lost a lot of energy and now, looking back, some of it was very messy and uneven. They had a lot of great moments though, and I enjoyed how they modernized some bits of it. I would definitely love to act in it or even direct it some day. It was a great show.

That best sums up my trip to Amarillo. I absolutely loved the trip and am so glad I went, even if it was only for two days. I learned so much and got to see three shows I maybe would have never seen. I hope next year I'll be able to get even more people to go, or even get the department to excuse us so we don't have to "skip" class.