the cookie was the best part

In my earliest years treading the boards I was certain that I would always want to do, ahem, 'serious theatre'. Now, what I defined as 'serious' was probably fairly limited. I also had not yet had the occurrence of taking an acting job for a paycheck. I remember talking with one of my college professors about 2 years after I graduated.

He: So have you been doing a lot of work.

Me: Yes. It has been fairly steady.

He: It must feel good to be creating art on a regular basis.

Me: Who said I was creating art?

He: (Grin) Can I say I told you so?

Me: (Grin) No.

I had to sit through some excruciating children's theatre last week. Good children's theatre makes me react along with the small people in the audience, bad children's theatre makes me want to wage war on anyone involved in whatever atrocity is on stage. No matter what type of theatre an actor does most, children's theatre may very well be one of the most important forms of art in our field. It is here that we cultivate a love for theatre at an early age. Creating theatre patrons in children is so valuable, yet I seldom see it thought of as 'serious theatre'.

Part of the problem is that, as actors, we feel little need to be trained in effective performance techniques for children. This was so painfully true of the show I saw. The lack of understanding in the performers on how to effectively gain the acceptance, trust and ATTENTION of the audience was blatantly apparent. When I think back to the conversation with my professor, I realize, that while not always artistically challenging, children's theatre tended to be physically and vocally challenging. I had to work my actor tools as well as my improvisational ones, with just as much, if not more, frequency than when performing for adults. Shows for kids were regularly accompanied with a decent paycheck as well.

I have not done theatre for young people in a long time. Performing for children is not my favorite. They can be unruly and rude. They have no understanding of audience etiquette, and many times, no appreciation for the effort involved. But it is the place where they learn all these things. It also has the possibility to be extrememly rewarding, because when done well, the feedback is swift and enthusiastic. In a artistic climate where theatre audiences are hard to lure to a show, it seems to me that we should take a page out of the book of corporate America. Get the kiddies addicted while they are young, and hopefully it will continue on through adulthood. And while we have them there we can entertain them, all the while teaching them without them catching on.

jingle hell

So the madness is in full swing and I will not be posting until next week.

Happiest of Holidays to all...

and now I will say Good Night.

Ye gads I am tired.

who needs helmets and knee pads?

Do some actors get trained out of their natural instincts? Do they get trained out of their edge? I ask myself these questions all the time. I not only think a proper education in theatre/acting is important, I also believe that one should never stop learning. I believe there is always an opportunity to better your craft.

So why is it that, with great regularity, I will see a show that has been able to cast from very well trained actors, but the show, while technically very good, has no passion. It remains, for lack of a better word, safe. The performances are all safe, and it is hard to find fault with them, except to say that there was no spark. The actors did not step to the edge. While I am watching these performances I am even thinking, 'these are good actors, they have all the tools'. So why aren't they using these tools to their utmost? Are they saving themselves from getting worn out for the next show? Do they feel they have made it and now it is unnecessary to work so hard? What is it that creates this antiseptic varnish over their work?

The show I saw this past weekend fit these descriptions. It was a fairly action packed show and no one seemed to even break a mild sweat. There is a distinct difference for me between brilliant acting that is effortless, and safe acting that has no effort put into it.

Stakes people. I have said it before. I want to see some stakes.

you scoundrel you

When you write wickedly good plays it is easier to decry other people's work.

My dear Mr. Mamet. I had no idea I would read this article today, and how amusing that I just mentioned you in the title of the last post. While you are no doubt a brilliant playwright and have very well thought out opinions on the theatre, as far as this article goes I am going to have to disagree with a few key points.

Playwriting is a young man's - and, of late, a young woman's - game. It requires the courage of youth still inspired by rejection and as yet unperverted by success. Most playwrights' best work is probably their earliest. Those prejudices of anger, outrage and heartbreak the writer brings to his early work will be fuelled by a passionate sense of injustice. In the later work, this will in the main have been transformed by the desire for retribution.

There are many examples of the fact that playwrights can get better with age. I will give you one and I welcome anyone else to do so as well. William Shakespeare.

First: plays are written to be performed. This may seem a tautology, but consider: description of the character's eye colour, hair colour, history and rationale cannot be performed. An actor can perform only a physical action. Any stage description more abstract than "she takes out a revolver" cannot be performed. Try it.

Couple of issues here. First of all, simply because a playwright has a clear visual on what s/he believes a character should look like does not require the director or actor to try and 'perform' said description. It is simply the writer establishing a look, and there is no harm in that. I would even hazard that there are as many situations when a director would welcome the insight into the writers idea for a part, as there are times when a director would choose to bypass them. Secondly, it is ridiculous to state that abstract stage descriptions cannot be performed. They have, and they can. This goes along with Mamet's seeming belief that directors and actors are only successful if they don't try to interpret the work. Mamet's belief that actors and directors would be perfect if, and only if, they got out of the way of his words on the page, is utter hubris. His own characters would fail under this rigid belief system. I have long contended that what Mamet purports in True and False is irrelevant, because in the end, what he (like other directors and writers) wants is for his plays to be performed well, and that so long an actor achieved that, Mamet himself would not care about the process that was used to get there.

Second: in a good play, the character's intentions are conveyed to the actor, through him to his antagonist, and through them, to the audience, through the words he speaks. Any dialogue that is not calculated to advance the intentions of the character (in the case of Othello, for instance, to find out if his wife is cheating on him) is pointless. If the dialogue does not advance the objective of the character, then why would he say it?

Answer: Just to say it. Is it me, or does this then rip to shreds tons of avant-garde and abstract work? More importantly I seem to remember a great short play by... oh who was that writer...oh yeah... David Mamet, called Deer Dogs that had no advancement, but was fantastic in its simplicity. Showing the audience a window into a different life can be riveting. Beckett's Footfalls does not advance the lives of the two women, but in their stagnation we understand their plight, and through that understanding, reach a catharsis.

I am not trying to issue an announcement of 'No one dis Williams', nor am I declaring war on Mamet. For one thing, I really like his work. I do not believe that any artist has thought every piece they have written to be perfection. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I am entitled to disagree with them.

Bye.

did mamet get the title from him?

I go through phases in my reading. I will hit fiction for a spell and then move on to nonfiction (history mostly), then get tired of that and start reading plays. The play issue is of course, how to lay my hands on all the ones I want to read. I keep an incredibly long wish list on file with Amazon so that I can work my way through it a couple at a time. Buying plays gets extremely expensive. I almost never buy books. I just borrow them from the library or friends. I can't always do this with plays. When it is a fairly new writer, then I am buying the play, or the collection that it comes in. Sometimes it is from some really obscure publishing house so I don't get the play until a month later.

One of the collections on my list is Pinter's work. I have read a couple of his plays, but want to broaden my knowledge on what he's accomplished. For those of you who have not yet heard about his Nobel remarks. It is really worth reading.

He begins his speech talking about something he wrote in 1958

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

he goes on to say...

"...the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many."

Here is the link to the actual speech.

Enjoy.

on pointe

Does anyone have the inside scoop on getting some cheap tickets to see the Nutcracker with ABT at the Kennedy Center? Is there even such a thing as discount tickets to ABT?

someone sprinkled crack on that

Confession of an addiction.

Harry Potter

Oh, and by the way J.K., I know who R.A.B is.

not being linear is crazy fun

One of my first auditions out of college was for a theatre known for their highly theatrical style. They were doing a piece with a lot of movement, as they are known to do, and after seeing my monologue and singing a short song they asked me to be a monkey. It went much like this:

Me: (conclude song)

She: (with Russian accent) Ok/ good/ now be a monkey.

Me: Ok. (Proceed with being a monkey, a small capuchin in my mind)

She: NO! A BIG MONKEY! A BIG MONKEY!

Me: (Change to being big monkey, a large gorilla in my mind)

The audition went well, they called me back, but in the end I took another show and it conflicted with theirs. I will never know if my monkey was what they were looking for.

I must admit that I love telling this story. I had fun when I was there, and it is fun to reenact. It usually gets a laugh. Last time I told the story was to some cast mates, one of them was absolutely astonished that I had so quickly jumped into being a monkey. She said that she could never have done it. This surprised me. Being a monkey was so benign, and hey, animal imagery was a helpful part of my acting training, particularly with Shakespeare; but I learned a long time ago to respect the lines actors draw for themselves. If she was not comfortable being a monkey, then so be it. Most actors I know have a line they won't cross.

I am constantly struggling with that line myself. When I first discovered Sarah Kane I fell in love with her savage almost unbearable work. As I began Blasted I was immediately drawn to Cate and as I read on I was mentally ticking down to my line. Saying to myself "I could handle this, I could work toward this", and hoping that she would not cross my actor line, so that the possibility of playing this part could happen one day.

Do writers, and directors struggle with this line as much as actors? In the end they are not the ones who have to do the deeds, just the ones to tell us to do it. When Kane wrote Blasted was she thinking to herself about an actor having to get raped and have his eyeballs sucked out? Most likely not. She was simply creating. What staging did Frank Wedekind imagine for the circle jerk in the middle of Springs Awakening? The same jerking off competition echoed for me when I later read Naomi Wallace's War Boys.

There will always be actors willing to do anything. Just ask Cherry Red. But that is not my question. I want to know if a writer struggles with the idea of sending an actor to those places or does the drive to attain a theatrical moment supersede any worry? Is it even a factor in the writing of a play?

Does this line become an issue when a director weighs whether or not to do a show? Is it more than just staging feasibility, cost, and passion for a piece? When a director falls in love with a script, does part of the weighing process include acknowledging that an actual person has to enact these moments?

We continually navigate these lines in the creation of an art that is collaborative. There is no solitude in the formation of theatre. It is pretty cool to think, that even with all these lines drawn, we still find synergy.

muzak is like novocaine

Working a lot. Running to and fro a lot.

I need a quick break.

Will post more next week.


Till then, be nice - or naughty - whatever floats your boat.