Drama, Monday, Period 2 [05/18]

[magdaofslovenia.livejournal.com]

"Welcome back. This week, we're introducing ourselves, and examining a little more behind the theory of acting: Method vs. Classical." Sophie sipped her coffee. "If you're unfamiliar with the terms, allow me to explain. Method actors follow the theories of Stanislavski and his adherents, that an actor can only truly act when they understand the psychology and sense-memory of a character, and draw on their own experience in order to portray their actions. Classical training focuses more on what is thought of as the externals: the movement, voice, verse-speaking, combat, theatre history, and understanding of the text. One, it's thought, emphasizes the internal, the other the external. We introduced ourselves last week 'in character'-- please do so today out of character, as yourselves, and also one more thing--"

"Voice." Sophie smiled, and said in a perfect Mid-western American accent. "Not just speaking so the people in the back rows can hear you, got it? But cadences and rhythms, timing and approach." In a heavily Serbian-accented voice, she continued, "People, they believe what zey hear, yes? Zey do not notice it so much. But! An impression, yes, it makes one." She switched back to her own BBC-and-RADA-approved British accent. "Emotion isn't the only thing that gets expressed and judged. So does your intelligence, your education, your geographical background, your likely motivations. Today we're going to play with this, using the Expert Translation game." She smiled, then pointed. "And you will introduce yourself first, and your take on what your voice says about you."

[ocd on its way is up!]

Spy Games, Monday, Period 5

[saveyoulater.livejournal.com]

Sarah was nowhere near as nervous as she'd been the week before as she clacked into the activities hall and waited for class to begin. In front of each seat, there was a set of lockpicking tools, and a TV screen was set up in the front of the room.

"Good morning," she greeted the class. "Today we're learning one of the most basic spy tools -- getting in without an invitation. Usually, it's easier to get in with persuasion, but sometimes you have to go for brute force and pick a lock. It's not hard once you know what you're doing; plenty of people have put up videos on YouTube explaining the technique. Let's watch one. That actually shows how to do it with a bobby pin."

She played the video, occasionally pausing it for comments on the girl's techniques, then quickly demonstrated with some of the locks on her desk and a set like the students'.

"You also want to be able to crack a safe," Sarah said, passing out another set of handouts. "Basically, that's about good hearing and patience. You're spinning the dial until you hear the pins fall, then spinning it again until the pins fall again. It takes time, but you can get good if you understand the knack behind it." She explained more about that, too.

"Our next topic is electronic lockpicking -- hacking," Sarah continued. "I can't teach you how to hack in one class; some of you might be better than me anyhow. But one thing to remember is that people are predictable when they're setting passwords. The most common passwords are things like 123456, qwerty, family member's names, pet's names, sports teams, and the words admin, letmein or password."

"If you need to know one password, that might not help unless you know your target well. But if you just need to get into an employee terminal to access a main server, there's a good chance that the guy with the Red Sox pennant in his cubicle has redsox123 as his password. I'm passing out a list of the 500 worst passwords; if you're using one of them, you should probably change it as soon as you get back to your computer."

"For our activity today," she added, "we're going to practice both kinds of lockpicking. There's a safe set up if you want to work in pairs to try to get into that, and a bunch of padlocks and other kinds of mechanical locks as well. There's also a group of password-protected computer terminals -- if you get in, you'll be able to play a game." She smiled. "I set the password."

"Pass in your homework before you leave the workshop," she added, clearly as an afterthought.