Today in Acting we watched the rest of the private moments. Largely they were all much more successful than the ones that went on Friday (like mine). People were taking Matt’s advice to heart, I thought, and really letting their animals inform more of their actions. I particularly liked the work Brian Pettit-Schieber was doing with his heron. It was some of his best work I’ve ever seen, and it was all in the way he was putting on his shoes with his feet and putting hair gel in before dancing his heart out on his own private dance-floor. It was truly impressive.
I need to start incorporating more things like that. Physically, my human hands can work both as flamingo wings and as flamingo claws. I can take on more of the behavioral gestures of flamingos too: twitching my head, shaking my foot, stretching contra-laterally, etc.
I’m also thinking of trying a new tack with Florence. I’ve been playing up his nervous, socially awkward side a little too much, and I want to explore the regal pride of flamingos. Yes, they can be chatty and vocal, but that doesn’t mean he has to talk nonstop. Indeed, flamingos are silent for a great portion of their day if they aren’t actively squabbling or calling for their young. Perhaps he is slightly more self-important and majestic, more confident in himself and his flamboyant style. That’s definitely something I’d like to explore more. Plus it presents a different obstacle to his super-objective if he comes off as egotistical or vain instead of nervous and awkward. It sort of relates to the idea of not playing your costume too. My costume, replete with pink and unabashed formality, already says “social outsider,” and “outrageously extroverted.” If I bring in a certain degree of pride in that, a sort of “yeah, I wear pink, so fuck off” mentality, then I think the whole picture becomes much more complex and interesting. And, in truth, far closer to the source material. It’s not like flamingos are self-conscious about wearing pink. They’re loud, brash, flamboyant, and proud of it. Florence can learn something from that.
("Yeah, I know I look damn good. What of it?")
So that’s what I’ll be playing with in Wednesday’s assignment. We’re meeting in groups of two or more to come up with an improvisational situation that could take place in a hospital, and on Wednesday we’ll bring it together for an exercise called, unsurprisingly, General Hospital. My group includes myself, Kyle Wilson and his polar bear inspired Stetson, John Garet and his sea otter, Reggie, and Olivia and her gorilla, Bertha. We’re meeting tomorrow to rehearse for an hour, and I hope to briefly blog about how that goes.
I should also mention that we briefly discussed the CMU production of A Number in class today, and it was noted that it seemed as though each of Denver’s three different characters (each an identical clone), seemed to be by and large defined by an attitude. This is a good way of differentiating between the characters on a starting beat, but I think it tended to take energy out of the performances in the long-run, simply because that attitude came to define every moment of the character’s scene, which was perhaps an unfortunate loss in variety. The performances were nonetheless very strong I thought, but I thought the production overall gave a little too much emphasis to the creepy side of the show, which relates back to the idea that you don’t need to have all the elements of a production saying the same thing. It’s already creepy that this guy discovers he has twenty identical clones. It might have been cool to let that speak for itself and find an interesting opposite to inform other aspects of the design.
(SO MANY BOXES. A NUMBER OF BOXES! Our production looked so much better than this for the record. Scenic Design gets major props.)
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