Week two

Each week we’re in small groups and have 4½ hours to prepare a short piece on a given theme. On Monday we gave our first presentations — to the rest of the class, some of the afternoon/evening class, and five teachers. The latter had many useful notes to give afterwards, none of them praise. There’s also no discussion — you listen to the comments and we move on to the next presentation. I think this is pretty standard for drama schools but after City Lit’s more discursive approach, where there’s always something positive and encouraging to say, it did feel a little bleak.

We’ve now had all our time preparing the next presentations for this coming Monday, knowing that whatever happens we’ll do things “wrong”. But making mistakes is what it’s all about. I can see working on these scenes getting harder over time — we’re already trying to incorporate what we’ve learned in classes this week, so each week there will be more and more ideas to think about.

We have several teachers during the week — each of our four improvisation classes is taken by a different person for example. I wondered how this would all fit together but they’ve done a good job of making everything feel like a single consistent package, rather than bitty and contradictory. It’s only week two but it’s a good start. The teachers know what’s been happening in the other classes and the ideas all seem complementary. Having said that, it is a little frustrating that the whole class is so big — 34 people — as we’re lucky if everyone gets a single chance to take part in something in each session.

This week I slipped further behind in Acrobatics, but through no fault of my own. The previous afternoon I’d bounced the right-hand side of my body off a moving car, leaving my thigh and ribs painfully bruised (well, they feel bruised but there’s no visual evidence yet). Long story, but my bike was fine, the black car that hit me was fine (stopping a couple of inches short of a brick wall) and the red car whose fault it all was made a clean getaway. Bastard. It was an unpleasant shock, and it was annoying, but I was a split second from colliding with the black car head on and flying down the road, so I’m feeling pretty lucky. Hopefully I’ll also be feeling more mobile next week and ready to get stuck in a little more.

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