Weeknotes 2024 W29: Bruges

July 15​–​21, 2024
1000 words

Quick bits:

This week, I went on a last-minute trip to Bruges for just a few days to visit my mom. I figured that it would be good to make use of the free time I still have before I start my new job in a week and a half.

I am happy to have been to Bruges while the Triënnale is still on! The city-wide contemporary art installations certainly give another good reason to visit.

In general though, this was a relaxing trip. Good food, good company, and good weather.

I also found the most metal name of an area of Bruges: the Blood Pit. 🤘

The Deutsche Bahn is still a pain. The train to Cologne had a 40-minute delay before I even boarded in Berlin, which turned into a delay of over an hour, which led to a missed connection, and thus I arrived in Bruges two hours later than planned. Oof. At least I can get 50% of my money back for that trip.

The Bordbistro dining car was out of service too, and served only lukewarm coffee and lukewarm soft drinks. Eww.

At the train station’s Reisezentrum1 in Cologne, the staff told all travelers who missed their connection to Brussels to take the Eurostar instead. The staff were adamant that the Deutsche Bahn ICE tickets were now valid on Eurostar as well. This is not true, and the Eurostar staff were particularly annoyed (and quite unfriendly) at the swarms of people needing to go to Brussels. Why the hell would the Reisezentrum make that claim? Surely it is not the first time this situation arises?

At least I made a friend along the way, and we traveled all the way from Berlin to Ghent together. That was fun.

Last weekend, I took part in an acting workshop, about eight hours in total.

Soon, I will have accumulated about 100 hours of experience, which feels like a decent start. Plenty more to learn, though, of course!

This workshop took a more direct approach than I am used to, focusing on putting scenes on the stage. Given the time constraints — a single weekend — I think it makes sense. I was able to put what I learnt in other courses to good use, and even help my scene partners improve their work. The teacher said it was clear that I had prior experience, which I am happy to hear.

I liked this workshop a lot, and already signed up for an eight-week course in September, run by the same teacher.

This eight-week course will end in a public performance. That’s something I haven’t done before. I’d probably rather spend more time practicing before putting anything in front of an audience, but a public performance will be a useful learning experience as well.

I’ll probably share the details of that public performance once it’s closer — but right now, I hear a little voice in my head saying “nooo you’re terrible aaaahhh you should not invite anyone.”

That voice might be very hard to get rid of.

When teaching acting, there are two opposing schools of thought for how to handle the script: either you stick to the lines (and carry the script with you during practice until you know it by heart — or “off book” as they say), or you improvise the bits you don’t fully remember while still sticking to the meaning of the script.

I generally fall in the “stick to the script” camp. This is despite being pretty bad at memorizing, and despite the fact that having a script in hand limits the ability to act truthfully and in the moment.

In part, the reason why I prefer to stick to the script is because I am a writer. A lot of time has gone into fine-tuning the dialogue that I’ve written, and I’m not fond of the idea of making spontaneous improvised changes.

But the main reason that I prefer sticking to the script is that when my scene partner improvises, then by necessity I need to do so too; without the correct lines, it is difficult or even impossible to come in on cue.

In this two-day acting workshop, improvisation happened more than I’d like. Still, for such a short acting workshop, it is expected: there isn’t really all that much time to learn the lines, and it is also not the greatest use of time to memorize a set of lines that you’ll most likely never use again.

It’ll be interesting to see how similar or different this will be in the eight-week course I’ll attend in September.

I published a small update to Denis’ Solitaire, with more polish and a few bug fixes. Download it and give it a try!

The stacks now really look like stacks, with a nifty 3D effect:

Links:

Tech links:

  1. Travel center. ↩︎

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