My Day of Man-Handling

Today was my “Ways of Directing” class which you should all know and remember my weekly schedule. Stumbled out of bed, looking out the window it looked darn cold today. Overcast and drizzling I rugged up like a beast. Many, many layers of clothes and for what? 10 degrees! Boiling hot! (Ha) So it was quite warm today which is encouraging.

Arrived at the class and was invited to get up and active this week (yay). So the class got up and did some lovely stretching and warming up exercises which left me feeling alive and limber. We then broke into pairs and so begins MAN-HANDLING 1. In turn one of us would imagine being very heavy whilst the other person lifted us and then as if we were really light. It did make a difference but yes... I was grabbed and lifted by stranger Simon. Then came another series of exercises where we had to keep eye contact and remain staring at one another with our toes touching – pretty squeezy. Then came MAN-HANDLING 2. as the director would walk around and demonstrate with various people – this happened to be me A LOT. Shoulder touching and the likes which leads to MAN-HANDLING 3. when we were broken into different pairs and had to create two different improvised scenes. One we had to do entirely with voice – no movement and then second with only movement on a totally opposite topic. For example our first scene was a bomb-scare with the president (comical) and our physical was a scene of a couple breaking up (serious). So stranger Max took me by surprise when in our serious scene he pulled me super close as stared right into my eyes before I had to break away. Total surprise. Anyway I just breathed it all out and got over the giggles until the director asked us to perform our scenes – as one. The bastard. This meant that pairs would be acting as children smashing each others’ sandcastles and speaking softly about how their relationship was over. Very amusing but damn difficult as I tried to remember the conflicting movements and hilarity of our scene. It was a really good class today – not just because of my man-contact – but because the lesson was really interesting and invigorating. It’s actually really made me think of directing – who knows?

I didn’t really take any photos today so back by popular demand are more photos of Miranda and I eating desserts! Featured today is Trumpet Cannoli and yukky Plum Pudding...
Oh and I thought you should all know that we don't just have normal milk here, but crazy milk.