27. May, 2021
Coping with Covid restrictions
Light at the end of the tunnel? It has been a tough year for everyone. With theatres shut, there has been no stage work obviously and all actors have been busy looking for film work. Competition seems much tougher at the moment. However, with the slow reopening of theatres for indoor performances, albeit with socially distanced audiences, there is now more optimism that we can look ahead to better times.
I have been working hard on keeping my craft as fresh as I can whilst waiting for my next assignment. Early on, I set myself a daily ritual of exercises: mornings were physical and vocal warm-ups, singing practice and a proper physical workout for an hour. Afternoons were either reading my old study notes from drama school and studying Stanislavski, Meisner and Chekov texts on the art of acting or reading new plays or learning new monologues. On top of that, I undertook further training albeit remotely. This training was in the form of webinars or workshops with the Premier British Acting Academy (PBAA), organised by Gary Owston from BOVTS. I did also do one longer course, Acting For Camera, through PBAA, over 4 weeks, which was led by the wonderful actor/producer, BoJesse Christopher from LA over Zoom. There were 12 of us on the course: 11 ladies and myself so I was rather spoilt as I ran the same scenes multiple times with different actors. We had BoJesse in LA, most of us in England, one lady from Sicily and another from the States. Thank goodness for the wonders of modern technology.