You do some weird sh*t in drama school

This would be prime real estate for one of those Perception vs Reality memes, but I couldn’t find a subject-specific one* so I’ll just have to use my words instead. (Words? In a blog?! Heaven forbid!) Let’s start at the beginning, which is that both of my degrees are in the theatre arts. My BA is in drama, and my MA is in — wait for it — puppetry.

Pick yourselves up off of the floor, darlings, and stop laughing. It’s unbecoming.

Now that you’ve gotten that out of your systems, let’s get on with the startling realizations. The first thing you will do when you get into any drama program is lie down. No, really. You will do A LOT of lying on the floor with your eyes closed. The floor-lying will have different purposes at different times and in different classes — sometimes it will be about focus, or breath control, or as a relaxed way to work through character development — but it will be a constant in your life and you get used to being covered in stage dust pretty quickly. In fact, it will become second nature by halfway through your first semester and you’ll start to feel strange when you’re not doing it. You’ll also learn to do it in cramped spaces, in places where theatre technicians are walking around you trying to do their jobs, and wherever you happen to be working on a part or monologue — though I don’t recommend you do it in public places outside of the arts department, because the employees at Starbucks get really confused.

In one of my acting classes my senior year of undergrad, we were expected to be lying down when the professor, Dr. Fowler, came into the theatre. One delightful day a classmate was late. This was not unusual for this particular person, but what was unusual was that on this occasion, even though he was late, he had still managed to beat our professor. Something to note about this classmate was his ability to mimic voices. Naturally, when he walked in and saw us all lying on the stage as we were supposed to be, he put on his best Dr. Fowler voice and started into the doc’s usual opening spiel. We were convinced until he started laughing, at which point the jig was up and we managed to get our giggles under control before the REAL Dr. Fowler showed up. Of course, when he did, and he started in his big, booming, old-man voice with his traditional, “Breathing easily…” we all lost our shit. I’m pretty sure no one ever told him why.

One of my floor-lyingest classes was a Fitzmaurice class, also my senior year. If you click through the link you’ll get a much more comprehensive description of the technique and its uses, but the basics are that it promotes breath/body cooperation and can help you tap into emotion more easily once you find your groove in the connection between your breathing and the rest of you. Sounds hippie-dippy, I know, but it’s kind of incredible. In any case, the study of this technique involves a lot of lying on the floor, breathing and warping yourself into odd positions to stimulate your golgi tendons into a tremor, then allowing the tremor to affect your breathing, et-mind/body-cetera. So, one day in class I was lying on the floor (what a surprise) with my legs in butterfly stretch — soles of the feet together, knees splayed out. It is worth noting at this point that I am incredibly bendy, especially in my hips, so my legs tend to go much further towards the floor in this position than other people’s might. I was copying the position our instructor (a grad student in the MFA acting program) had demonstrated, which did not call for having your legs spread-eagled. As a result, there was some tension in my abdominal muscles as I had to engage them to keep my legs where they were supposed to be. Ben, our grad student, was making the rounds, checking in on everyone, and when he got to me he put his hand on my belly and said, “Okay, good, but let those go and relax.” So I did my best impression of a frog that was run over by a car mid-jump.

“Eeeaaaugh!”
 
Ben jumped about four feet back. I looked at him and said, “Yeah, that’s why.” He was still looking at me like he expected me to start screaming in pain any second, but when it became clear that wasn’t going to happen he gave himself a shake and said, “Jesus. Yeah, okay, never mind. As you were!”

Poor guy.

One more, and this one actually has nothing to do with lying down! Remember a couple of weeks ago when I made mention of one of my Shakespeare acting professors hitting me, and how in context it made sense? Here’s the context! Picture it: Dr. Cohen’s Shakespeare acting class, one afternoon in early spring. We’re working on the first scene in Hamlet where the guards on the castle walls first see the ghost of Hamlet’s dear old daddy. Dr. Cohen (or Coco, as he was affectionately known) was fond of using the members of the class who weren’t actually participating at that moment as a sort of Greek chorus, so as I’m pacing back and forth imagining fog and shadows, everyone else is making cricket and owl and wind-whistling noises. It did lend an ambiance, of course, but Coco wasn’t satisfied with my delivery of a certain line — apparently I wasn’t startled-sounding enough — so he started playing against me. He kept himself in my blind spot so no matter which way I turned I never really caught him, and he whispered ghostly things, and then, out of nowhere, he hauled off and smacked me bang between my shoulder blades.

It worked.



*Seriously, meme-making people, WTF? I don’t know how no one has made this yet.