Playing Catch-up : The End of Term Four

So I was going to start from scratch, more or less, assuming that noone actually *knew* about this blog yet, and then I found Matthew's comments. I have been suitably chastized. Shame on me.

It's been months since I've written on either of my blogs, to be fair. Maybe this should be the official switching-over point where I tell everyone to disregard livejournal and come on down to blogspot. Regardless, there are other, more important things to write about...

I've finished my first year at LISPA. Holy fuck. It's been quite a ride - that last six weeks in particular pretty much sucked my brains out and had them for breakfast. Shall I tell you about them? Ok!

So. Normal, non-theatre schools have exams at the end of the year. Theatre schools have performances. LISPA has performances of theatrical pieces that you completely devise and create and research yourself, along with six to eight other people with whom you may or may not get along. I should say first off, for those of you that don't know, that this whole creating pieces thing is nothing new - every week we've been given a "theme" or "provocation" by the teachers, split into groups, and had 4-6 hours over the course of the week to create something. Every Monday we present what we've come up with, have it collectively eviscerated by the assembled faculty, receive a new theme, and start all over again. Over the course of the year I've helped to devise pieces around "A Place, An Event", "An Invisible Man", "Animals at the Olympics", "The Passions", "Battle of the Materials", "A Fantastical World" (twice), Jackson Pollock's "Summertime 9A", and "The Exodus", among others. This time, we chose our own themes, and had four weeks to research/observe them in the real world. There were four groups: "Smithfield Meat Market", "Buskers" (Street Performers), "Night Workers" (which eventually turned into "Tottenham Court Road from 3am-6am"), and my group, with the alarmingly vague and sprawling theme of "Looking for Love in the Modern World". I should've known I was in trouble.

(to be continued...)