Rasaboxes: Day Two

Part of me feels like I've been taking this class for much longer than two days.  Part of me is still feeling slightly jetlagged (but a zillion times better than I was feeling yesterday.)

Rasaboxes is really interesting.  I *love* coming home covered in chalk, and spent the better part of the afternoon rolling around and breathing in different Rasas.  I feel like I will be coming home with more and more chalk on my body.  It's challenging for me to work my way into some of the Rasas (like Vira, which is the hero rasa, and Bibhasa which is the disgust/sickness rasa), but I'm finding that the more we are able to connect with other people in the boxes the easier it is to embody and breathe each different emotion.

When you step into a Rasabox, you have to immediately take on some level of the rasa, and you can't let that emotion go until after you have exited the box.  By the end of the afternoon, we had 6 people in a box, all at the same time, interacting and envisioning the rasa at different points within ourselves and within the room.  It's really a spontaneous, natural "gut" reaction to what is going on around you, and how you are feeling that particular rasa at that particular time.

The process is fascinating, and I'm really thinking that a lot of the ideology behind this technique will be helpful to me as a performer, and hopefully useful in the classroom.  I'm definitely going to try at least some elements of this in my classes next year.

Some of the highlights of the day were not class related...  My roommate Amanda and I ate our lunch outside and walked around the campus, and I am continually amazed by the beauty of this area and of the campus.  The mountains (which Amanda, who is from Washington, informed me are actually only hills) are beautiful, the skies are blue, the sun is warm, there are trees everywhere...  It's very different terrain from what I'm used to in Maryland, and I'm loving the difference.  The campus is well kept, the buildings are expansive and really well maintained, and it seems to be a really pleasant campus to inhabit.

Best part of the evening was coming home from mopping up the chalk-covered floor, and being invited out to dinner with the other women in my class.  Five of us in total went to a local place, and stayed there for over two hours just talking about our experiences with acting and theatre, sharing our feelings about our experiences in class, and thankfully, getting some sage advice from people who have been in the program for a year or two ahead of Amanda and I.  I'm still a little anxious about the intensity of some of the courses, but they're very supportive and shared their experiences and thoughts with us about what we are about to go through as first years.  I'm feeling a lot better now (physically) than I have in a couple weeks, and think that I'm starting to get back to "normal" (whatever that is...)  These are really amazing women who are living truly inspiring lives, and I think I will be able to learn a lot from them.  It's been a really positive evening, and dinner was mostly filled with laughter, jokes, and support for what everyone is going through.

I think (and hope) that I'm very much going to enjoy my experience here this summer, and even when things get tough or "stress-y" it's nice to know right off the bat that I have a strong support group who's willing to help me through the tougher times.