First day of 'character performance and script.'

It's raining again!
It's like the first week all over again. As soon as I step off the bus, the heavens start pissing on my head.
New group of classmates too. We’ve been mostly mixed up in the rotation.

All the students have individually chosen monologues to work on (based on the portfolios we submitted to gain entrance to the school,) and all are given a key figure in the history of acting to research and then detail in a presentation to the class.

I've scored Jerzy Grotowski.

We viewed a video on an amazing scientist that used her stroke as an opportunity for researching brain dysfunction.
She lost control of the left side of her brain and discovered amazing insights into the right brain.
You'll have to see the vid to get the full gist. She starts off very ‘left brain.’ Straight forward and scientific but then ‘takes off’ with evangelical zeal while describing the right hemispheres functions.
Riveting stuff! Especially how she describes suffering the stroke. Almost makes it sound so wonderful that I want to suffer a stroke to experience it. That said, the way she describes the experience is pretty similar to people describing meditation or drug trips.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

What was a little weird was when a member of the class arrived late. Her excuse was that her granddad had just suffered a stroke and she had been at the hospital that morning.

We've all been giving individual passages to present as monologues tomorrow.

Sat in a park under a tree and tried to commit the passage to memory.
One of the tools the teacher gave us to help in the memorizing, was to read out loud a sentence and emphasize the first word, then re-read the sentence highlighting the next word, and repeat until all the words have been covered, and repeat for each sentence in turn.
Was just about to start when a woman jogger appeared, lay down a towel nearby, and started doing sit-ups.

Have to wait for her to leave
This learning a monologue is as boring as learning the times tables when I was a kid.

Now she's doing push ups.

I've included the passage below. Less for your edification, and more so that by typing in the passage, I've given myself another opportunity to burn the text into some synapses.

Skip the italics...

I was almost killed once in a car accident.
I was drunk and I ran off the side of the road and I turned over four times. They took me out of that car for dead, but I lived.
And I prayed last night to know why I lived and she died, but I got no answer to my prayers. I still don't know why she died and I lived. I don't know the answer to nothing. Not a blessed thing. I don't know why I wandered out to this part of Texas drunk and you took me in and pitied me and helped me to straighten out and married me.
Why, why did this happen?
Is there a reason that happened? And Sonny's daddy died in the war. My daughter killed in an automobile accident. Why? you see, I don't trust happiness. I never did, I never will.

Ok she's split now. Been reading out aloud for five minutes and dog walkers are giving me wide birth.

Now I’m being rained on.