ACTORS FIND LIFE IN THE CLASSROOM

“Pa- pah ! Te- teh ! Che- cheh !”

It was definitely not just another ordinary day at Occidental College.

Five actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company had arrived on campus as part of their eight week/eight university tour (next up is Cal State Fullerton), as well as a dozen student workshops and seminars.

One of those classes, “Movement and the Actor,” was in progress earlier this week, as company members Lynsey Baxter and Alan David led the 35 participants through their own rigorous warm-up regimen.

Included in the two-hour workout: breathing on tiptoe (“str-r-retch up; down; drop--and uncurl slowly “), rolling the head from side to side (“because we carry so much tension in our neck and shoulders that it restricts speech”), up-down/front-back shoulder flexes, and energetic arm-swinging.

Even facial muscles got into the act with some all-important articulation rituals: cheek massages, chewing motions, light face-slapping, tongue wiggling (“I can’t do that at all,” sighed David), the “Ma-May-Moo” lip-buzzing vowel exercise, and “with as much power as possible,” the unvoiced explosives--”Be- beh . De- Deh .”

Across campus, Patrick Godfrey was discussing “The Actor and Samuel Beckett,” with “Krapp’s Last Tape” as the subject under consideration.

“I feel that he (Krapp) should be Irish; I don’t know why, but I do,” the actor ventured. “He alludes to places and things in Ireland that it’s not likely other people would know. So, as an actor, I’ve made the decision to play him as an older, educated Irishman.”

On some overlapping imagery, “I think there’s resonance, a double-meaning to be found in ‘sing,’ ” he noted, “both as (musical) singing and in terms of life, love and achievement.” And in response to a student query: I believe, yes, that the pauses here are very deliberate; surely you ignore any of these stage instructions at your own peril.”

Later in the afternoon, Godfrey elaborated on the company’s interaction with the students, “a wonderful give-and-take; it really is a two-way process where we learn from each other,” he said earnestly. “And they’re constantly saying things to me that I can later use in my own program!”

The actor also happily referred to the range of other student-input classes, including “Lovers and Love Scenes” (earlier that day, he and RSC member Jennie Stoller had enacted a work-in-progress balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet”) “because looking at Shakespeare is one thing, but doing it is something else”), “The Performance of Poetry,” “Miracles, Mysteries and Histories,” “Period Style and Behavior,” “Readings From Doctor Faustus and Everyman,” “Acting King Lear” and “The Voice of Ulster in the Modern Poetry of Northern Ireland” by Gerard Murphy.

Of course, it does take quite a lot of doing,” Godfrey admitted readily. “But we are getting ourselves educated .”