Shouting in Poland
As some of you know, I came home from Poland some days ago. I attended a course called ’Your Dramatic Voice’.
Well, let’s begin at the beginning;
I had a quiet comfortable flight to Poland, (slept all the way) it’s about an hour by plane from Copenhagen. From the airport I had to go by bus, change to a metro, change to another metro, and then by bus again, and then I would get picked up. Problem was; the last bus never arrived, sat around for two hours, untill Inge, who held the course sent, me a text asking how far I was. When I explained my predicament to her, she told me that two of the girls who too was attending the course, was arriving at the airport in two hours, and that they took a cab the whole way, so why didn’t I go with them? I was quick to decide that that was a great idea. So I rushed back to the airport at met with the girls, got in the cab, and two and a half hours later we arrived at our destination, exhausted… Now it was half past eleven pm., so we shook hands with the rest of the attendies, (we were seven) Inge husband and Inge, grabbed some goodnight food and went to bed.
The following morning we started by saying what we personaly wanted to get better at, I wanted to ’find’ my voice, get the right support for it, and explore the possibilitys that lay in my voice. Other than that, I’ve noticed that when I’m doing work in front of a camera I’m acting ’to the camera’, which I hate. So I wanted to get better at that to.
So we picked various text, songs, or poems, whatever we wanted to work on. A had brung two text, chose neither. Instead I chose a Shakespeare monologue that I’d worked on with Scott, our Shakespeare teacher at New York Film Academy, it’s a part from ’King John’ the character is ’Lewis’ or ’Louis’. Really glad I chose that one.
The whole week we learned different ways to get your voice warm, and worked with different voice quality’s, the bear, the loving hero, and so on.
While we were doing this we were still working on our texts, did it in front of each other and got comments on what was working and what wasn’t, what we had to work on, and suggestions on ways to go with it, really interresting. It was hard work, and some days I just felt like watching tv all day, but I worked harder. Then the day before last, after a lot of rehearsing my monologue, we filmed it. And because I had worked so intensly with it, and were focused on my partner, I forgot the camera, which felt really good, knowing now what to do to make the camera go away. Can’t wait to see it!
The last day was up, and I had told the others how much I was afraid of singing, but had said that I wanted to conquer my fear and sing. So by telling the others this, there was no way back, now I had to sing, cause I know my mind well enough to know that it’ll try to trick it’s way out of something horrible. The good thing was that I wasn’t the only one who felt this way about singing, and I felt really confident in the group. So I chose to sing ’Fly Me to the Moon’ by old blue eyes. It wasn’t that long, and I pretty much knew the lyrics. When I got up there, I was nervous, but it went okay. When I was done, they told me to try and dance while I was singing to get it into the body more, and that way relax more. I did that, and it worked like a charm. It felt so good slaying my old enemy, my old fear of singing. I think I sang it four times, one of the times I even tried to hit a high note, but failed big time, and didn’t even feel bad, I just thought; ”well, at least I gave it a shot”. It was the best thing that happened to me in that week. It felt so good.
So thanks Inge for a great course!
When I got back home it was time to move in to my new room. As most of you know, I’ve been living in my friends living room for the last nine-ten months, and now Henrik got enough of it, he’s moving in with his girlfriend, so I get his room. So wonderful to finally get a room to unpack in to! So when I got home from Poland I had one day to move my stuff from the living room and to Henriks room, assemble all of my furniture, and move my stuff from boxes to shelfs. And I love to unpack and decorate my place with poster and pictures. Unfortunatly I only had one day to do it in, so far, cause then I had to go to work on the boat, which is where I am now, and will be the next 12 days. Just can’t wait to come home to my new room!
That was all for now, a bit different post than what you’re used to, right?
Hope you’ve enjoyed!
All the best,
Lucas Alexander