Sweetie darlings

Well overdue for a new post!  This time I'm not at Fabs, but snuggled up at home in my tracky dacks as the sun sets and Milo - the cat - cleans himself.  He likes to do this at the apex of two doorways, for maximum exposure.

There's something undeniably hilarious about a cat cleaning itself.  I think it's the surrender of dignity for the sake of necessity.  There's just nothing elegant about licking your stomach, let alone the dried up nuggets of fur that used to contain your balls.

So, anyway, I scored the Absolutely Fabulous shoot at USC.  This was an exercise for the director - Michelle - in calling the shots in a studio with three cameras, which is the standard set-up for sitcoms.  The whole class participated, taking on various roles from camera operation to vision switching to looking after the props.  I played Patsy - the Joanna Lumley character - and an American actress, Angela, played Edina.  She did an excellent British accent, in fact I forgot she wasn't English.  We had a ball, lots of sweetie darlings and sipping of sparkling cider (standing in for the Bolly, darling) and physical comedy.  This isn't something I'll be able to add to my reel, but it was such fun, totally worth it.

On Monday night I joined my friend Bruna at a rehearsed reading -  a fundraiser for the Red Cross - of a play called 110 Stories.  It's kind of like The Laramie Project, if any of you know that play.  The script is a series of testimonials from survivors of the 9/11 attacks on New York; from office workers in the two towers, to firemen called to the buildings, and people involved in the clean-up such as a woman working with a cadaver dog (a dog trained to find dead bodies, buried in the rubble) and a masseur who helped treat the firemen, iron workers and other physical labourers on site.  It was fascinating - if a little too long in the end - and gave me insight into aspects of the event and its aftermath that I hadn't considered before.  Such as debris falling from the buildings that flattened people on the street, and the high incidence of lung disease and respiratory problems among those who participated in the clean up.  The air was highly toxic with a cocktail of aviation fuel, dust and the fumes of so much melted metal, glass and plastic.

Tuesday night was my regular acting class: The Sport of Acting.  This week we did an on-camera exercise, taking a significant moment from a monologue we've been working on, and delivering it on camera.  The idea is partly to simulate the experience of the disjointed manner in which film and TV is recorded.  Sometimes you do the wideshot of a scene and then the close-up is done the next day.  Or maybe you start with the close-up, the big moment, then you do the rest of the scene.  So Vinny gave us a workout in finding fast and effective ways to get into that moment, the questions to ask yourself to focus you and remind you where you are and where you're coming from, and tips on creating entry and exit points for maximum effect.  We did several takes, with Vinny coaching, and then watched the difference between our first 'undirected' take and the last, learning along the way how much work we must do as actors to hit the best take.  Ideally, you want to be able to do your best in the first one or two takes because on a TV set particularly (especially as a guest player, as opposed to a series regular) that is all you're gonna get.  It was great to watch other people working too, especially one of the more experienced actors in the group, Dedee, who has done a LOT of professional work.  This woman has had guest roles on Seinfeld and Friends, was a regular on Cybill and has appeared in several feature films.  It's humbling to see someone with this level of talent and experience still coming to class and working on her craft.