Friday, May 16, 2008

Young Lady from Rwanda Journal - Week 3, by Miriam Hyman

Week 3

To start this week off, Elizabeth Pool, our dramaturg for this show, set up a meeting for me to meet with a woman from The Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, an organization that assists foreigners from many different countries to become permanent PA residents. I was fortunate to have met with a woman from Sierra Leone. I won't share her story but I will say that she gave me much more insight as to what my character was feeling during her troubling times. I incorporated this insight and applied it to my character development. I'm off to learn lines and study blocking.

Young Lady from Rwanda Journal - Week 2, by Miriam Hyman

Week 2

We are up on our feet. This week the director David Bradley will begin to block myself and David Ingram, the other actor in the show. We will begin to understand the space and there is an example of the set sitting on the director's table. We start to form the beginning of the play and slowly work through all the scenes, figuring which blocking is interesting and/or a problem for sight lines. Again, another difficult part of the process because we are performing this piece in a three-quarter stage, meaning that the audience will be on three sides of the stage. So we have to engage all sides at all times.