Christmas in New York

I know, I know, I'm a horrible person.  I know.  It's been over three weeks since my last post.  I'm sorry!

I've had this post half-done for weeks, but I was too lazy to get around to posting it.  So before Christmas is too far gone, I thought I'd get this together and get it out there.  

Without further ado, Christmas!

Christmas in New York means lights!  Columbus Avenue is lit up from head to toe in Christmas lights, strung painstakingly from every single tree visible to the naked eye!  Take a look around the Lincoln Center area, and you'll be dazzled.  I had to walk down that street every week all month to get to my voice lesson, and I still couldn't get over the absolute beauty of it all.  

And let's not forget the Christmas Trees!  We now live in a society where most families have invested in a fake tree which can be easily set up and put away with no mess, and used over and over again for years to come.  

That being said, it warmed my heart to see real Christmas Tree stands on every block all over New York City.  Even in the hustle-bustle of the city, it looks like New Yorkers haven't forgotten about this age-old tradition quite yet.  All through December, people walk through the streets with a Christmas Tree on their shoulder.

One of the many festive Christmas Tree stands in New York.  Trees range in price from $30 - $50 ish, depending on the size you're looking for.

And that would be Christmas in New York!  My New Year's Resolution for 2015 is to update my blog more regularly!  I'm so sorry for the long hiatus.  Look out for January, because I've got posts just begging to be written.

For now, I bid you adieu!  Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa ...

And a Happy New Year!

AMDA Stratford Arms Tree

Columbus Avenue Tree

AMDA 61st Street Tree

 Love,

Little Me

Midterms Are Upon Us

Midterms are the bane of every college student's existence.  Set right in the middle of the semester, you're two months in and you know you have over two months left, classes just decided to start piling on the work, and then they throw a heavily weighted exam at you.  How can anyone survive?

If you go to any normal college and study ... well, anything, your Midterm preparations probably look a little like this:

Regular School Midterm Prep

However, I go to Theatre School.  So, instead of textbooks, notes, and every colored highlighter in the rainbow, my Midterm preparations look a little like this:

Theatre School Midterm Prep

Hairspray, makeup, and dance shoes.  All have to be in perfect condition if you want to stand a chance of surviving midterms in Theatre School.

Here at AMDA, students are highly encouraged to wear makeup to class every day.  They want their students to appear performance-ready at any time, because after all, our teachers now could be our future employers.  Every day is basically an audition.  And when midterms roll around, it's time to break out the bright red lipstick.  Nothing says "actress" more than dramatic vampire-after-feeding-time lips.

With four dance classes, an acting class, a vocal production class, and a musical theatre class, there's a lot of performance involved in midterms.  That means, if you get sick, you're doomed.  So keep up on the vitamins.

And, of course, on top of two weeks of midterms, every teacher wanted to schedule a makeup class for what we missed during Thanksgiving.  So, no weekend to relax, either.

Just two weeks until Christmas Break.  I can do this ...

Love,
Little Me

Midway Revelations

Today officially marks the halfway point through the semester.  By February, the first quarter of my college experience will be over, and time is passing far too quickly.

Today, we turned in our Practicum, which is a “class” consisting of logging every hour you spend doing anything that could be remotely related to musical theatre.  Doing homework and watching Broadway shows is included in this.  There is only a minimum of seven hours that must be logged, but my average is somewhere around eighteen hours a week, and that’s without even trying!

With every week of hours, we have to write a 100 word minimum reflection to go with it, and there was one reflection that I wrote in a fit of inspiration that I felt should be shared with the world.  In a few words, it’s a summary of everything acting class is.

Everyone should take an acting class.  

Because this is not an acting class.  It is a class in knowing yourself, in understanding how you would react under any circumstance.  It is a class in vulnerability.  It is a class in focus.

It is a class in being human.

We don’t learn to act here at AMDA.  We learn how to be human, and then to apply those skills to scenes and etudes.

For Acting 1: Foundations, the first semester acting course, the entirety of the first seven weeks were spent working on four etudes, each of which focused on a different sense.  We were instructed to play ourselves, at our own ages, under circumstances that we would realistically find ourselves in.  This way, we could understand that “acting” is really just living under imaginary circumstances.

For example, if you have to drink coffee from a cup in your scene, you don’t pretend you’re drinking coffee.  You actually drink coffee in your rehearsal time, and you analyze your reaction to everything that happens to you when you drink the coffee, and then when you get on stage, even if there’s not actually coffee in the cup, you are still actually drinking the coffee, and you can realistically react to it.

   

Simple. (sarcasm)

                                                                                                      

This is what I’ve always loved about acting.  It’s literally living someone else’s life.  You can put yourself into a world you’ve never seen before, and you can actually live in it, not just pretend to.  And in the process of learning this skill, you become so incredibly in tune with yourself and with others around you, that you really begin to understand what being a human is like, and all of the intricacies and complications that come with it.

Actors aren’t the only ones who should be taking acting classes.  I think everyone should take an acting class, to better understand what it really means to be a human.

Because being human is not as easy as you’d think.

An Assignment for Acting: Go to Strawberry Fields (just around the corner from home) and stand there for twenty minutes, taking note of everything your body does as you just simply see.  It was supposed to be partly a study on how the body reacts in the cold ... but it was about seventy degrees that day ...

Love,
Little Me