Day 3.... feeling like week 3

We've started work in earnest... but its strange because if you asked me to describe what I've been doing all day it involved some of the following: standing, stretching, breathing, some game playing, the entire history of Kings and usurpers of the throne between Richard II and Richard III (you're talking 5omillion henrys and edwards) and looking after my fellow actors both physically in the rules of a game and intellectually when they were answering the question 'what is theatre?' There is no space for mocking people at Guildhall and I really believe in that and am glad its a strong philosophy. Everyone has turned up ready to work hard and having in many cases given up a great deal to take part in the course so what would be the point in us being cynical with each other? There's enough of that in every day life!
I can only focus on one tiny aspect of the day in this blog because too much goes on emotionally as I discover why I'm at drama school and just how much I have to learn and experience in these 3 years... I've picked another Patsy moment from today. We started poetry and THANK GOD it isn't the dry english lesson stuff (sorry mum) This is about poetry alive in every person. Patsy explained and we debated poems; at what point we might read or write a poem, when our words might need to be spot on in comfort or love and they are poetry, when those soldiers had to step out into the line of fire what poetry they had written that lay in their pockets...
The moment I want to share was just one that hit me today. Patsy talked about working with a very well known actor in New York on Shakespeare's King Lear. In the year preceding this production this actor had lost his wife, his daughter had been killed in an accident and his son had died too (I think this was a suicide but its neither here nor there). The man was very broken and had, needless to say, really been through it in an unimaginable way. Now, the word 'nothing' occurs many times over in King Lear. It is a theme. On the first day of rehearsals the actor said to Patsy 'You're not going to make me say 'nothing' are you?'...
He really knew what nothing was.
This struck me and had a huge impact on me because I felt in that moment the sheer power of meaning a word; knowing its meaning and saying it with meaning. I want to mean all the words I say on stage - not necessarily because I have been there but because I have taken the time to understand them, their weight, their impact and their power.
The obsession continues...