Singing at Carnegie Mellon

So, I'm just going to go through the list I put on the "Acting at Carnegie Mellon" post and continue to tell you about the wonders here. Right now, I'm currently sitting in a big comfy armchair in the laundry room waiting for one of the washing machines to open up.

Okay, so singing at CMU is obviously a big deal. Because this is musical theater we're talking about here. Okay have a singing class with around 10-12 people and then you can opt to get a private vocal coach here for some money. I have both.

My singing class is taught by the wonderful Claudia Benack. I thankfully have a class of all girls, so we get to learn and grow from each other in a pretty cool and unique way. We do indeed have a spectrum of voices: trained to untrained, soprano to alto, dark to bright, etc. It's also fun to hear all of the repitoire and unique songs my peers are bringing to class. We have a good time gossiping about adorable students that work here, Claudia's match.com blunders, and our fabulous shoes. :) It's a great class!

My private voice teacher is Patty Donohue. She's a mezzo-soprano with a love for the words "boobs," "uterus," "bra cups," etc. She's eccentric and I love her. She plays and sings for a Jewish group and a Catholic group, so she has all of the religious affiliations covered. She's teaching me a stronger head voice using a more operatic and legit way to warm me up and train my voice. She is so kind and has twice given me some food because I was about to fall over after being EXHAUSTED after ballet class. I'm going to miss her hilarious sense of humor and great technical help.

My audition for singing in on Thursday, August 6th at TEN IN THE MORNING! I'm starting to get nervous and I am going to try to sleep at least 8 hours every night until then. We'll see how long that works out! :)

Acting at Carnegie Mellon

Acting is the single most stressed of the three disciplines at Carnegie Mellon. My acting teacher is a GODDESS. Her name is Jill Wadsworth and she has changed my life drastically in the last four weeks. Her playfulness, focus, and determination to help us succeed in our "goal setting" has shown me so much about myself as an individual and an actress.

(Me and Jill Wadsworth)

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I wake up bright and early to get to class at 8:30 am (1/2 an hour earlier than the rest of the program because Jill wants us for as much time as possible) to warm-up and wake ourselves up. We work in the magnificent Rauh black box theater in the Purnell Center for the Performing Arts. The building is GORGEOUS and the facilities are like no other. It is truly a dream come true. Somebody is going to have to pull me kicking and screaming away from this place. ANYWAY, After warming up, we then read and discuss the New York Times, work on action exercises, play some games to get us out of our heads, and work intensely on scenes. Right now, we are in the middle of our scene work. I'm doing a piece from Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, during which I confess my love to a woman dressed as a man. Because of the specific style of the piece, I have to wear a corset every day we work (see on the left), and on the off days I rehearse in it. I never understood pain until this class! :) The workload for this class is crazy intense. Jill sends us lists every night of what we need to get done, and we do it without question because it's what we love to do, but it does take a lot of hard work and staying up late. I love every minute of it, though. I mean, it's why I'm here.

Another class that has to do with the acting discipline is Audition. I have it with the brilliant Doug Mertz. Let me try to explain Doug Mertz to you. On the first day, we learned eachothers names by writing our name with our butts for everyone. It was brilliant. Doug is an intense actor and knows his stuff... well. We read Michael Shurtleff's Audition... which is like the BIBLE of audition technique. If you are an actor/actress or aspire to be one... pick it up now. NOW. Our class consists of working on monologues, cold reading, practicing introductions (which I constantly mess up by infamously flipping my hair around), talking about the "guideposts" in Shurtleff's God-like wisdom, and fixing resumes and headshots. I have a lot of fun with "Moug/Mug Dertz" and the rest of the girls and have learned a lot through the class.

(My Audition Class!)

My Acting audition is on Friday, August 7th at 1:00 pm for Carnegie Mellon's College Drama Program. I'm nervous out of my mind, but enthusiastic that I've had this brilliant opportunity so far.

I'm off to bed, as it is 1:15 a.m. here and I have a vocal lesson, acting rehearsal, BOAL rehearsal, and lots of work/ shopping to do tomorrow.

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE,

Caitlyn

Life in Pittsburgh

If there is anything I've failed in the past month while I've gotten ready and been at Carnegie Mellon, it's keeping up with this blog.

I'm currently lying stomach down on my bed in my dorm room eating my new favorite snack, white cheddar popcorn, as my roommate works on a Power Point she needs to make for her BOAL piece. I've been here for a month now. It's been the fastest month of my life. I leave CMU in two weeks and I feel like I haven't started yet. I want to catch you up on everything, so this might take a few posts. I kind of want to dedicate each post to one aspect of the program so I can focus myself a little bit.

This post will be dedicated to just the LIFE here.

Lessons Learned:

1. Carry an umbrella with you all of the time in Pittsburgh. It's probably the most A.D.D. weather I've ever experienced. I was talking to my friend, Tamer, on AIM the other day and we started talking and I remember looking out the window and it was bright and sunny and hot. About five minutes into our conversation, I look outside and it is dumping BUCKETS of rain.

2. Steal apples, not computers. In order to save some money, I steal apples from the cafeteria. I don't think they mind, because they aren't O.C.D. about leaving the cafeteria with food like UCLA is, but I'm sure they wouldn't be happy little pumpkins if they found out I was smuggling at least 20 apples a week into my dance bag. HOWEVER, I am indeed an UNhappy little pumpkin because exactly two weeks ago my laptop was stolen from the third floor of the drama building during a rehearsal. Thankfully, I was able to get a new computer and have my pictures backed up, but I'm still sad my baby of 2 years is gone. May she rest in peace.

3. In dorm life, 2 A.M. is the new 11 P.M. Seriously, I know of no one who sleeps before 1:30 A.M. here in the dorms. I mean, our lives are crazy busy, but never thought about homework and stuff until I came here. Chadwick looks like a joke compared to the amount of stuff I have to do. Right now, I'm surprisingly done with homework, which is why I have this pocket of time to write in the blog, but yeah. Life is ridiculous.

4. Middle-school style cliquiness never leaves us. There are a couple of intense cliques here and I like to meander among some of them, primarily one though. It's weird, because I'm friends with like 1-2 people from each clique so I feel odd, but I guess I "belong" to one. The people here are really great and it's amazing to share my passion with SO MANY TALENTED PEOPLE. I love it.

5. I am spoiled. My dorm room is HUGE. I can try to capture the size in picture form, but its like... a beast. We have so much floor space it's ridiculous. I absolutely love it.

Well, that's all I have for now. I will go on to post the other specific blogs right now.

:)