Happy Thursday! Welcome back to Acting Class Daily. Today we’re personalizing the work with a knicknack themed from this week’s class, a formative moment of magic … and, most importantly, Bauer’s chance to say hello.
Ithaka (NYU, 2001)
As I prepared to close the Elysium Conservatory Theatre, I was presented with a very meaningful gift - the poem Ithaka on canvas, with Elysium drawn in ethereal gold representing our destination.
On the final day of the Meisner studio in NYU, Donna Germain (our voice teacher) asked three classmates (including myself) to sit in the center of the space. We were the three who were graduating (we had started together in the Spring Studio as transfer students) while the rest of our classmates, who sat in a circle around us, still had two more years ahead of them. She had us all close our eyes.
And then she read us Ithaka.
When she was done she asked the class to take a group inhale and release a long, sustained hummmm. And suddenly a vibrating ring surrounded us.
Donna told us to remember that moment.
Remember the feel of being fully wrapped in our classmates’ care.
That whatever we face in the profession, in life … we would never be alone.
She was right.
