Send in the Clowns/ Baba Louies Half Marathon.

Good evening my sneaky loves.

Here it is- half-way through October and all of the sudden I'm 4 weeks into Conservatory. It's going by so fast! But I'm really learning a lot and I'm excited about all the things we are working on.

Last weekend I didn't post because I was in class all weekend. Specifically the Clown workshop! Clown is (for me) especially challenging and interesting to work on. I was happy that over the course of the weekend I did manage to find "my clown" but it was not easy my friends. The idea of clown is to essentially boil down the essence of who you are as a person and sort of set that free in your Clown work. Clowning requires an incredible amount of energy and pretty much shutting off my brain. A difficult task indeed. It's really hard to explain though... I'm not doing a very good job.

But my clown's name was Miss Henry. She is a very worried and socially awkward clown who just wants to be like all the nice pretty and happy clowns. My teacher said this "its princess... but like princess who has been sitting up in her tower waiting for a loooooooong time eating her toenails..." And after I thought about it I realized my clown was pretty much me at age five. Awkward, cried a lot, liked to wear princess dresses but it never quite meshed right with my bowl chop haircut and giant pink glasses. I WISH now that I had thought of that at the time and added giant glasses to my clown costume but alas...

Other than that we've been doing a bit of work on our scenes, incorporating our critics, voice, movement, and next week we start As You Like It but we still haven't got our parts yet... Monday... eep.

And today the big news is that I completed my very first Half- Marathon distance run! I ran from my house in Lenox to Great Barrington. 13.1 miles took me 2 hours 19 minutes and 30 seconds. I celebrated my personal victory with a delicious dinner at Baba Louies and some chocolate from the candy store. I'm a little sad its getting colder because it's going to be harder for me to run outside. Today was a bit windy and cold- luckily it didn't rain while I was running- that would have sucked. So I'm pretty proud of myself :) I'll be running an official race in a few weeks and then... well I suppose a full marathon of course. I can't really imagine running that far twice at this point but maybe in a few months that will start looking more possible. I dread the winter months that I will have to spend in treadmill purgatory though :(

In other news I am beginning to realize how much I miss having money. I had so much extra money in college... now I am completely broke, and I can't work while I'm doing Conservatory. I long for the day when I won't have to meticulously budget my entire week so that I can have enough to get Starbucks once a week. I also miss shopping. I want to buy pretty things... sigh. Perhaps I have chosen the wrong profession....

Beware the Shakespearean Basketcase

Week two of Conservatory is over and it went by so fast! Let's recap.

This was our first full week and it was pretty exhausting for me. We worked on our jaws in voice class... always an interesting experience considering my jaw is all kinds of a mess. We did our Sonnets and I found some unexpected stuff there that turned me, once again, into a Shakespeare spouting mess of tears (fear not sneaky readers crying is pretty commonplace around here on any given day- nothing to be alarmed about). We got our scene assignments also and I'm really pumped about mine. I get to do the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet with the wonderful Brendan Sokler as my Romeo. We'll sort of be working on these scenes on and off throughout the rest of Conservatory and interwoven with As You Like It once we start that. We still don't know when we are actually starting work on As You Like It or how the casting is going to work so stay tuned.

In general the Conservatory is going great. I really think I'm learning a lot and am confident I'll come out of it ready for whatever's next. So thats a good feeling.

I decided I will be running the 15th Annual Monson Memorial Classic Half Marathon on November 8th. I wanted to run one in another town on October 17th but realized yesterday that I missed the registration deadline so I had to pick another one. It sucks because I was prepping for the one on the 17th and I'll be ready to run it by then. I ran 11.6 miles yesterday and I think I could have done the whole 13.1 if I had wanted to. So what I'm thinking is I may just do my own personal half marathon on the 17th and then just make it a goal to beat my time on the November 8th race. I had such a lovely run yesterday- it was the perfect temperature, sunny, a nice breeze, and I ran a new route. I ran to the next town over (Lee) and came back a different way hoping that it would be about 11 miles and it pretty much was.

I think for my personal half marathon I may try running to Great Barrington. From my house to the Great Barrington Baba Louie's is almost exactly a half marathon, so what better way to celebrate my personal triumph than refueling with a fantastic pizza as soon as I finish?

So in summary of week two: living, baking (two apple crisps and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies I'll have you know) , running, crying, shakespeareing, jaw relaxing, raging, laughing, and keeping in mind that good or bad: this two shall pass.