Language

Yesterday, DaYouth (yes, I know, another monniker) and I spent several joyful hours together. Annie came along at the beginning to try a few things from her workshop for Berlin, I followed with some of my workshop bits. We will both be using theatre exercises for warm-up and group building, our group had a laughter-filled time with some of the basics.

My workshop is based on Newspaper Theatre concepts and my challenge now, after trying a few things yesterday, will be limiting the blah blah blah (talk) and increasing the interest level for non-English speakers.

Language! This year I've dabbled in Italian for a visit there - becoming quite adept at ordering un bicchiero di vino rosso, per favore; I tried Latvian in prep for my month in Malpils, but I didn't get the hang of it. I did learn a few words in Russian! воображение (phonetically - veebrahjheena) was my favorite. It means imagination and when you hear it repeatedly from your Russian director, it lands.

Yesterday, I was trying to coax my mouth, tongue and throat into cooperating with the distinctive sounds of German, long dormant and rusty. The r that is there, but not-there. The soft ch, the harder but not-t-the-point-of-fur-balls ch. w=v, p=b, g=k, d=t and vice versa, most times. St or sp = sht or shp.

My sheet of about 15 phrases, including Ich comme aus Kanada and Wie vil costet das might have seemed impressive (Aaron asked incredulously, "you know all this?") but I recall the time I played the German boy in a scene from "13 Ways of Looking at a Madman" for Cafe. It was performed for a table of native German-speakers. They were very polite, but genuinely had to snicked when I fumbled Vor- und Rückwärtsbewegung and completely massacred sodas zwansig solcher. You try a German tongue twister!

Foreign languages aside, I'm also trying to master a Scottish accent for one of my monologues in Four Actors. One would thing that an accent on my first language might not be so difficult. ACH! It is! As foreign to my tongue as German, possibly.