I Am Thespian

I spent today with a friend in the first half of our "First Steps In Acting" class at the City Lit. I signed up partly 'cos I was bored and partly 'cos I'd like to see if I'm up for acting as a pastime (and possibly more).

It was pretty much what I expected - some of the best bits of my GCSE Drama class crammed into 6 hours. I think the first class was designed to bring us all out of our shells and lose our inhibitions which it pretty much succeeded in doing for most of us.

The group were pretty cool too; we were told that we were unusually good by the teacher, although I'm sure that had a hint of politeness in it. We were a mixed bunch, both in terms of backgrounds, jobs and ages (I was smack bang in the middle for once!) although this didn't really hinder us in becoming relatively close in such a small time scale; but I guess that comes with the territory. Oh, and then there was Raheal...

Ironically (or perhaps not) for a drama class we had plenty of drama, including one guy breaking down and almost walking out claiming that it was becoming too personal and therefore difficult. Although I saw where he was coming from, I did think he overreacted a bit and that nothing we did pushed our boundaries that much. But then, perhaps I'm lucky in that I didn't feel that way.

Which is a good point about classes like these. Although the main point of them is to learn how to act etc, if they pay attention one can learn a lot about human behavior during the study of drama. For example, needs and objectives apply as much in Stanislavski as they do in real life situations. The class was worth it for this kinda reflective quality and social self-improvement alone.

Anyway, the second and final class is next Saturday. I think that we're gonna concentrate more on conventional acting rather than the emptying exercises we did today, and I'll post a proper conclusion about how I feel about acting and drama then.