what comes after the foundation..

So I guess I'll try to talk a little bit about what I do here, that is if I can put it in words...

I can't get over waking up and opening the shutters to see a Tuscan countryside. There is no central air and yet the villa stays cool, warm even. The villa feels as ancient as Italy, and my mind boggles to consider that its older than the established United States of America.

My instructors are brilliant. Every morning the students wake up around 8am for breakfast and warm-ups. Warm ups are lead by the dance instructor who, through a series of stretches and movements, shows us how to lengthen our spine, strengthen our core, and "air-out" our hip sockets. After warm-ups we split up into our respective concentrations: the theatre students go to the Teatrino, the dancers go to the Sala Danza, and the film students occupy a Godiola studio.

As soon as we enter the Teatrino in the morning we turn to face the three open windows that look out over the hills of Tuscany and the town of Arezzo, and our instructor Daniel leads us in our four sun salutations. Yep. It's amazing.

After two hours of working tirelessly to conceptualize the intricacies of theatrical art, we break for lunch. And after lunch we are at it again for another two hours. To sum up, we are reworking our vocabulary to change how we view the craft of theatre. We are sensing, articulating, experimenting, sharing, watching, seeing, viewing, repeating, and exploring. Daniel best explained it in the words of Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an art it is a habit." And so we are creating habit....it's very exhausting.

After dinner we perform in the studio for two hours to rehearse and practice what we did in class, then we socialize in the common rooms, and most of us go to bed. Susannah and I usually stay up to talk a little bit and marvel at our fluctuating emotions and frustrations. Sometimes we have interesting moments....this morning we woke up to find two spiders situated over our beds and Susannah swore they were our good luck signs. I thought it was a remarkable mundanity.

...I'm noticing more and more with this work that my eyes are opening to the world around me and I'm seeing a lot of things for the first time.