Cheating on Antonia

As some of you may remember, last December I was in a wonderful little show called We Won't Pay! which incorporated some very fun mask work.

Today, I spent the first of two days at a free (FREE!) Odyssey Theatre entitled Lazzi Lazzi with the lovely Alex Sidaris.

I have to tell you, after spending 8 hours doing physical theatre, I have never felt more exhausted in my entire life. I now realize how grateful I was that rehearsals for WWP never ran for more than 3 or 4 hours (not to mention the fact that you weren't always the one up there running around). I mean, I thought I was in shape, but we're doing some pretty intense stuff. I definately need to kick up my cardio routine a notch.

After spending most of the day going over the basic stock characters in Commedia del arte, we finally got to do some mask work in the last half hour.

It felt kind of weird though because my muscles still remembered many of the movements of Antonia (from WWP) but they didn't always work with the new mask. It was like having a new girlfriend and realizing that the sex isn't the same as with the last one. Seriously, the bond you create with your mask is a very intimate, almost symbiotic one.

However, I have already learned things in one day that I would love to apply to, oh I don't know, let's say a remounting of WWP (*wink wink nudge nudge Chris). Two things in particular include the punctuation you can get out of the nose and the interactions between your mask and another (like how two masks can't touch, so how would they hug and kiss).

I find physical theatre to be such a liberating form of art, one where you can really reconnect with your sense of play. Alex is a really great instructor too.

I look forward to class tomorrow, although I will be missing the first half since I've been ask to participate on a friends short film.

More on that tomorrow, in the meantime, I leave you with the divine Antonia! She's not pissed at me... I hope...