My Adventures at the Lee Strasberg Institute - Week 4

~ contributed by Sandra Costanzo, Social Media Intern

This week was my fourth week at the Lee Strasberg Institute Of Theater and Film.

In the first class which was TV and Film, we started off our class with vocal warm ups. This is to make sure our pronunciation and dictation is enormously clear. After we were relaxed and focused, we started on new scripts. We once again worked on the new scripts as mock auditions.

Mock auditions is an audition process to make sure we are comfortable with it. During this process, we practice being greeted by the person doing the audition and then we are introduced to the person working the camera along the person who will be reading the other character part in the dialogue. This only applies if there is more than one character in the script. Then we run through the script on film. After we are done with the script, we go through ways to make it better and run through it as many times as required. Once we are comfortable with the take we watch it on the television and see where we can make any corrections.

Every student in the class gets to perform their script and watch their mock audition on the TV.

In the next class, I worked on a new script as well. This script was with a scene partner not filmed on camera. Instead of working on the camera, we read our scripts with our scene partner if we have one or alone on the stage. Once we read our script, the teacher gives us suggestions for improvement and then we try it again. This is to make us as comfortable as possible in front of a small or large crowd and with the spotlight on us. After we were done with our script reading, the day was done.

After class the school’s adult theater department was putting on a production of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. The Seagull is a slice-of-life drama set in the Russian countryside at the end of the 19th century. The cast of characters is dissatisfied with their lives. Some desire love. Some desire success. Some desire artistic genius. No one, however, ever seems to attain happiness. The play was an exceptionally good production and the entire cast an amazing performance.