24 February 2013
My Maladroit Elysium
24/02/13 08:09
Remember that time in school when you walked into the classroom, tripped, dropped your books and everyone laughed. Remember that time in your 7:00 class when the teacher put a question on the board. You knew the answer and stuck your hand up. He called on you but as you hadn’t had your morning coffee, rather than saying “The answer is Marie Antoinette” you said “The answer is Auntie Marionette.” Remember that time when you wanted to talk to that person you had a crush on. You went up to them planning to say, “Hi there brown eyes, I’d like to get to know you.” but what came out was “Hi there no-eyes, I’d like to get to brown you”. As my grandmother was fond of saying, you probably wished the ground would open up and swallow you right then. Believe me I've spent most of my life doing this sort of thing. Well, I’ve discovered a wonderful place where this never happens. It’s called the theatre.
You see, when you're acting you have several advantages. First you have what you’re going to say written out. Sure there is improvisational acting but that is a very special skill that few are good at. Which is odd because what we do in the real world all the time is improvise. When you are acting on stage you know what you’re going to say and you get to practice it a thousand times before you try it out for ‘real’ with other actors. Then when you get into rehearsal you get to try a line and if it doesn’t work you can go back, run the scene again, and try it some other way. If you slip on something on the floor or accidentally spill water all over your shirt, or get utterly lost in what you were saying, no problem. Everyone is tripping over things, forgetting what to say, and screwing up. That’s the rehearsal process. Over time you get to know what you’re going to say it by heart. More importantly you figure out HOW you’re going to say it. You get to know your character and not just what they do, but the how and why they do it. It has been a fascinating process for me and I’m having a massive amount of fun doing it.
We’ve been rehearsing the play, Memory of Water, for a couple of months, and we’re still experimenting with things. I’ve learned that rehearsal is more than learning what to say and where to stand. You have to get inside your character. You have to fill out a back story, you have to know what motivates him, you have to understand them thoroughly, even down to little things that aren’t on the page. There’s a popular myth about acting. That actors just say their lines and collect a huge paycheque. I’ve learned that neither is true. Take my character Mike, for example. From the script, we know he’s married, is a doctor, hosts a TV medical program, and is having an affair with Mary, one of the other characters, but that’s all. At first I imagined him like a Woody Allen sort of guy. He didn’t want to hurt his family or Mary. He was a bit of a shy nebbish who just stumbled through life trying to keep the messes from getting too bad. As we’ve been working on the play I’ve found more depth, and spine, to him. I finally wrote a bio for Mike where he’s the son of the Duke of Shropshire, and a thoracic surgeon. An upper crust stuffed shirt who’s mostly concerned with proper appearances and tradition. The comedy came from him trying to stiff-upper-lip his way through totally outlandish situations. Since then though, I’ve discovered he’s deeper than even that. He really does care for Mary. If circumstances had been different he might have married her rather than his upper crust trophy wife. Though it is still a dark comedy, and there are funny bits, there is a certain degree of tragedy about him. In the end he just can’t bring himself to do what he wants to, and it costs him. He’s not one of the central characters. Well, let’s be honest, with only six characters none of them are exactly unimportant. But, how he reacts, how he states things, how he presents himself impacts everyone else. It’s been a fascinating exercise. In another week we’ll leave the rehearsal space and go onto the actual stage, with the actual sets and actual costumes. At that point our performances will have to evolve even more. I’m really looking forward to it.
That’s the thing I’ve come to love about acting. Getting to pretend, something I haven’t done since I was a little kid. Pretending does not mean playing. To a little kid what they are pretending is absolutely real. Similarly while I’m pretending to be a stuffy british Doctor who’s having an affair I must strive to make it as real as possible. This weekend they will be handing out the Oscars. Now that I’ve been working on this play, I look at the best movie I’ve seen in about seven years, Lincoln, (OK, I have to admit that it’s the only film I’ve gone to see in about seven years) and I think how cool it would be to be able to put on that costume and be Lincoln for a few weeks. To get inside his head. To feel, even at a very marginal level what he must have felt. How cool it must be to put on a costume and be Gandalf fighting a Balrog in Moria (which I think was in the last film I saw before Lincoln). I think of the plays I’ve seen and think about how much simple fun it would be to be one of the Pirates of Penzance or The Man From La Mancha, or a character in Wicked or Into the Woods. That I think, is the best part of acting, the simple fun of pretending. Trying to not only say the lines and stand in the right place but to get into the head of the character so you capture the essence of the story. I love the intellectual exercise, and it indeed takes a lot of mental work to get it right. I’ve also come to really love being with a group of people trying to put something together, messing up, laughing, and exploring the characters. Finally, in the end we get it right and it is absolutely exhilarating.
That and of course, knowing what to say to pretty girls.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: Spring is creeping into view
You see, when you're acting you have several advantages. First you have what you’re going to say written out. Sure there is improvisational acting but that is a very special skill that few are good at. Which is odd because what we do in the real world all the time is improvise. When you are acting on stage you know what you’re going to say and you get to practice it a thousand times before you try it out for ‘real’ with other actors. Then when you get into rehearsal you get to try a line and if it doesn’t work you can go back, run the scene again, and try it some other way. If you slip on something on the floor or accidentally spill water all over your shirt, or get utterly lost in what you were saying, no problem. Everyone is tripping over things, forgetting what to say, and screwing up. That’s the rehearsal process. Over time you get to know what you’re going to say it by heart. More importantly you figure out HOW you’re going to say it. You get to know your character and not just what they do, but the how and why they do it. It has been a fascinating process for me and I’m having a massive amount of fun doing it.
We’ve been rehearsing the play, Memory of Water, for a couple of months, and we’re still experimenting with things. I’ve learned that rehearsal is more than learning what to say and where to stand. You have to get inside your character. You have to fill out a back story, you have to know what motivates him, you have to understand them thoroughly, even down to little things that aren’t on the page. There’s a popular myth about acting. That actors just say their lines and collect a huge paycheque. I’ve learned that neither is true. Take my character Mike, for example. From the script, we know he’s married, is a doctor, hosts a TV medical program, and is having an affair with Mary, one of the other characters, but that’s all. At first I imagined him like a Woody Allen sort of guy. He didn’t want to hurt his family or Mary. He was a bit of a shy nebbish who just stumbled through life trying to keep the messes from getting too bad. As we’ve been working on the play I’ve found more depth, and spine, to him. I finally wrote a bio for Mike where he’s the son of the Duke of Shropshire, and a thoracic surgeon. An upper crust stuffed shirt who’s mostly concerned with proper appearances and tradition. The comedy came from him trying to stiff-upper-lip his way through totally outlandish situations. Since then though, I’ve discovered he’s deeper than even that. He really does care for Mary. If circumstances had been different he might have married her rather than his upper crust trophy wife. Though it is still a dark comedy, and there are funny bits, there is a certain degree of tragedy about him. In the end he just can’t bring himself to do what he wants to, and it costs him. He’s not one of the central characters. Well, let’s be honest, with only six characters none of them are exactly unimportant. But, how he reacts, how he states things, how he presents himself impacts everyone else. It’s been a fascinating exercise. In another week we’ll leave the rehearsal space and go onto the actual stage, with the actual sets and actual costumes. At that point our performances will have to evolve even more. I’m really looking forward to it.
That’s the thing I’ve come to love about acting. Getting to pretend, something I haven’t done since I was a little kid. Pretending does not mean playing. To a little kid what they are pretending is absolutely real. Similarly while I’m pretending to be a stuffy british Doctor who’s having an affair I must strive to make it as real as possible. This weekend they will be handing out the Oscars. Now that I’ve been working on this play, I look at the best movie I’ve seen in about seven years, Lincoln, (OK, I have to admit that it’s the only film I’ve gone to see in about seven years) and I think how cool it would be to be able to put on that costume and be Lincoln for a few weeks. To get inside his head. To feel, even at a very marginal level what he must have felt. How cool it must be to put on a costume and be Gandalf fighting a Balrog in Moria (which I think was in the last film I saw before Lincoln). I think of the plays I’ve seen and think about how much simple fun it would be to be one of the Pirates of Penzance or The Man From La Mancha, or a character in Wicked or Into the Woods. That I think, is the best part of acting, the simple fun of pretending. Trying to not only say the lines and stand in the right place but to get into the head of the character so you capture the essence of the story. I love the intellectual exercise, and it indeed takes a lot of mental work to get it right. I’ve also come to really love being with a group of people trying to put something together, messing up, laughing, and exploring the characters. Finally, in the end we get it right and it is absolutely exhilarating.
That and of course, knowing what to say to pretty girls.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: Spring is creeping into view