New Beginnings

Welcome readers to the blog about me, Keshava Betts.  I cannot claim to be even remotely interested in writing about my entire life, so I'll just skip to the part where I moved to Los Angeles and started training to pursue my passion of acting at a fantastic conservatory, Theatre of Arts. I've only been here for six days, and an impressively large amount has already happened, so I'll do my best to recount my adventures in the most interesting fashion and cut out the filler. Here we go!

I moved into the Ananda Ashram on Saturday and spent Sunday trying to get settled in before school on Monday. As anticipated, getting all moved in took much longer than a single afternoon. Luckily I had my mother with me to assist in the whole process (she actually stayed until Wednesday morning). Monday, and my first day of classes came much quicker than I thought it would.

Monday!

I awoke at 5:45am so I could snag a quick shower before group meditation (chanting starts at 6:10, so I energize at about 6:00). After the meditation and breakfast my mother and I hopped on our bikes and rode to my first day of class. It turned out to be a very easy bike ride, about 15 minutes of relatively stress free cardio, whoo-hoo! As it turned out I only had one class on Monday, Acting 1, so I was only there from 9:00-11:00. But those two hours were like gold! The teacher, Rob Nagle, was an absolute character (it turns out that the majority of my teachers are, go figure!) and I just loved his class! Interestingly enough, the first day of school there were only two other fellows in my class, Gorge (from south Texas), and Toshi (Japan).
(A side note on class sizes: The sizes of each class varies, for some classes different "bundles" of students from further along in the program will join us, so for example, in my improvisation class there are a total of 7 students) After School I went to my new gym which was absolutely fantastic! I got one of the narliest chest workouts I've ever gotten and I had the delight of finishing my workout with a good sweat in the gyms steam-room. mmmmmmmmmh. After gym, it was dinner and shopping (things like clothes, toothpaste etc)
Note on Rob Nagle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bzHKRvKgBQ
Check out this commercial, the dude running from the "red tape" is Rob, my teacher, he's pretty awesome. Also note, this is not his "proudest" piece of work, just something I could find on youtube.

Tuesday:

Tuesday I have three classes, all back to back. From 9-11 I have Movement for Actors with Yvette Tucker. I thoroughly enjoyed her class, we mostly worked on moving in character, but she said that in the future we'd spend the first hour of the class doing Yoga and Pilates before moving into the character movement. Next up after movement was Theatre History; unfortunately this was a little bit dull. We talked about the fathers of drama (the greeks) for the most part. I do realize however, that the things I will learn in Theatre History will be very useful, so I gave it my all. After History was Script analysis, as it turned out, the teacher who would normally teach us was out at an audition, so the lady who did history with us subbed in for him, that class was also a bit dull (but never fear dear reader, for I just had a real Script Analysis class with the real teacher just a few hours ago, and I absolutely loved it, but I'll get to that later). After all my school time I hit the gym, ate some fantastic dinner (prepared by Durga) and once again went shopping for all the odds and ends that I needed before my mother went back to the ranch.


I'll write about Wednesday and Thursday later this evening, but the dinner bell is chiming, and I must answer!

Thanks for reading, and I hope I get the hang of this blogging business soon (bear with me),

Keshava Betts