by krisis
theatre
Good lord, if i had to write seventy five hundred highly critical, super observant words about theatre every term i think i’d grow to loathe it altogether. I mean, for heaven’s sake, they’re made up people! And, i have to have them act the whole damn thing out in my head, since i only directed one scene from the damned play.
Anyhow, three days spent largely locked in the house with Erika, and 17 of 30 total pages due-by-Friday complete in my campaign to get Winter vacation started sooner than later.
Speaking of whom, we decided a few things while we were in the mall for five hours on Black Friday. Namely: The 80’s are not coming back, no way, no how, we deny that anyone even contemplated it. The color palette was too all-over-the place, the fashions were altogether unflattering, and the music was drenched in too much reverb. We realize that we’re on a two-decade spin cycle, and that the 90’s just rehashed the 70’s, but we don’t care.
Furthermore, women’s clothing with a single initial letter monogrammed over the breast is fucking dumb. I repeat: fucking dumb. We reserve the right to mock any such walking fashion faux-pas until she bursts into mascara-trailing tears. However, please note that giant letters worn across the whole of your chest are highly acceptable, as long as they are at least two thirds as wide as they are tall.
And, for the record, eight straight hours of dissecting a single nineteen page play is not good for one’s overall sanity. Or eyesight. It is good for one’s desire not to write the other thirteen pages starting on Thursday after Friends, though.
I am not a terrific actor. I have zeal, and am unafraid, but i always balk at surrendering myself entirely to a persona that is not wholly my own. Acting, for me, is a series of motions, and when i am acting i string them together as fluidly as possible. Sometimes, though, i know the movements and the words so cold that i stop speaking and let the character speak through me. Those are the moments when i am truely an actor.
Despite not thoroughly mastering the art of acting, i am slowly becoming more aware of the acting of others. I can see, now, the vast difference between motions being gone through and characters. This sight has turned live theatre into something much nearer to a sporting event for me, but what it has truly revolutionized is the screen. No longer can i appreciate overwrought dramas or lightweight sitcoms, where the actors are just punching the lines in all the right places; acting is not pummeling. No longer can i endure even the most viscerally executed CG action sequences; not if i have to suspend my disbelief in the characters doing the fighting.
It might sound like a revolution of criticism, but that’s only because the standards for what we call “actors” have sunk so low. Suddenly i get the point of the Academy Awards — they are not to award the most favorite actors for the most fun roles. No. They are for the actors who chose not to appear in their movies, instead letting their characters speak for themselves.
I wish i could do it, but for the time being i am content to appreciate it. I am more than content to drink up masters like Ian McKellen, who skips from playing fairytale heros and villians to portraying the imperfections of real life without skipping a beat. I love ensembles, like the one on West Wing, who are so in on the show that i have trouble watching them on talk shows and award ceremonies when they are just being themselves.
I like that I can see this all now, a layer beyond the story and the movement and the words. Yay for college education.
Watch as six pounds of Roma Plastilina clay (hopefully) becomes a 1/2″ scale set for Prometheus Bound, neatly bound up in the form of an irregular polyhedron.
Either that, or i’ll wind up doing a Gumby and Pokey skit in Production class tomorrow…
Clay under my fingernails now, even after a thorough hand washing. Serves me right for taking a class that involves visual art.
Bill couched it carefully to me… Production Design… it would help my emerging directorial conception. Very useful for identifying and bringing forward the thematic elements of a play. Close textual analysis of a Greek tragedy of my choosing, as well as The Tempest. Assurances that my less-than-meager skills as an artist would not limit my academic success (and threaten my near 3.7 GPA).
All of the couching in the world, though, could not have stemmed my alarm at spending forty whole dollars in an art supply store this morning. As for the clay, well… i do have that GPA to protect.
The first project sounded fairly simple. Pick a geometric solid and create it in any medium of your choosing. Pick a play. Create all of your set-pieces out of that geometric solid so that they can be puzzled back together into it. Simple enough; i bought bricks of super-light clay. It still makes sense… it will never solidify, so i can tweak it up until the last minute, and it will be easy to squish back together if i make too awful of a shape. I choose an irregular polyhedron that resembled two pyramids crashing into each other — figuring that something essentially square would be much easier to deal with than something that resembled a multi-sided die.
There i was, thirty minutes ago, in my sculpting glory: making a sturdy rectangle of clay, marking off the lines i need to cut, slowly peeling away the outer layers until i was almost there — one more slanted side to uncover with a quick slip of my newly purchased modeling knife. And, slip it did, directly across the knuckle of my left thumb, leveling off the entire side of it.
To my credit, i did not panic, even when the innocuous-looking flattened side of my knuckle turned quickly into seeping red. I calmly held my hand away from the clay and finished the cut to complete my polyhedron, and then walked to the bathroom and scrubbed the clay off of my hands. I intermittently passed my thumb under the water, transfixed by the way the steady running stream carried away the blood, leaving my thumb looking perfectly fine except for a vague squareness.
Satisfied that i would not lose my appendage to some strange clay-based infection, i left the bathroom only to be faced by my unsteady geometric solid, all-but tottering in place amidst a pile of scraps. I could see my mistakes immediately… too rash in tracing the sides, my crashed pyramids looked more like rectangles caught in the act. So, before heading off in search of a bandage, i decided to piece my clay back together into a rectangle so that it would be ready for another try sometime tomorrow. There i sat, bleeding thumb held back away from my hand in an attempt to forget that it was conveniently opposable, pressing together the clay i had just so painstakingly cut apart.
And this is only 5% of my grade…