I'm a Salamander

Yesterday I had my first of ten workshops with Salamander Theatre's Shakespeare Young Company. I have to say I was surprised at some of the responses I got when I first told people I was accepted into this group. The general vibe was that this was juvenile, that the caliber of work wasn't going to be very high, and that it was a waste of my time and money.

Well you know what? Those Negative Nancy's (not to be confused with Nancy Kenny, who never "whines, complains, or looks at the bad side of things," evah! :p) can bite me. I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for me. I feel that as a performer there are quite a few areas where I find myself lacking and I want to continue to improve.

Those areas include, but are not limited to: Shakespeare, singing, dancing, various areas of stage fighting, performing outdoors, ect.

Things we did yesterday: approximately two hours of singing and a two hour introduction to some of the basics of stage fighting.

I was very impressed. Things started at two o'clock on the nose and, with the exception of a short ten-fifteen minute break, went dilligently through until six. By the end of it, I was beat and feeling muscles in my body that probably had not been used in quite some time. But I also left there with some vocal warm ups, a very short song (or "catch"), plenty of reading material (including the first folio of Measure for Measure, the play we will be putting on this summer), new physical warm up exercises, and a variety of basic stage fighting moves.

That seems like a pretty good start to me.