Today in Acting we finished beating out the script.
For play projects, the students playing Jason and Jack share that role with other students. For instance, Kyle Selig and I are the two Jasons, and Chris Douglass, Michael Reep, and Michael Campayno are the Jacks.
But we're doing something interesting with how we divide up the parts. Instead of a clean break where one actor leaves and the other takes its place, multiple Jacks may be on stage at a time, but perhaps just one of them is speaking the lines. Kyle and I share Act 2 Scene 1, and Matt suggested that we meet to divide up those lines ourselves, based on which lines reflect Kyle's Jason and which reflect mine. Kyle's Jason is the one primarily in control for Act 2, remorselessly forcing all the secrets out into the open. My Jason is the one who still feels connected to his family, still hopes that they can solve his problems.
In fact, we're thinking about working it so that I never leave the stage, and when Jason shoots himself at the end, Kyle shoots himself, and we both die.
I really like this division of Jason's character. It makes a lot of sense both in light of the play's spine and in my analysis of Jason himself thus far.
The Jacks don't make quite as much sense to me yet, but then I'm not giving that division as much thought as the actors actually playing Jack.
One question that has danced around my mind for a while is this: Does Jason like Uncle George? George is a really important character. He is the only non-blood relative that is still a relative. He has an in to the family but he will forever be an outsider. He is the ultimate peace-keeper but cannot keep his own peace. As we've been going through the script, I have gained more and more respect for this character. He faces his wife's family with remarkable bravery and aplomb, all things considered, and he seems goodnatured and reasonable up until the hostage situation arises. At that point his claustrophobia takes over.
But just because George is one of the better (and by that I mean, 'morally, psychologically, and emotionally healthier') characters in the play doesn't mean Jason would like him. Matt was talking about how people tend to distrust things that are different, especially in family circumstances. So the fact that George is less mean than everyone else in the family might just serve to make him more of an alien than he would otherwise be. He does seem to try and fit in and takes up some of the petty, vicious tactics of the family, but not with any real degree of seriousness or consistency.
The reason I think it's important whether or not Jason likes George is that it's a very important endowment, especially considering that midway through Act 2 he shoots George.
My current theory is that perhaps my Jason likes George but Kyle's Jason does not. That way we can react differently to accidentally shooting him and that's a contrast that will be very apparent and cool. I'll have to talk to Kyle about that.
Today we also played a new Matt Gray game. He threw his keys down on the floor, and then one of us would stand on the other side of the room and be blindfolded and we would have to walk directly to the keys, bend down, and pick them up. No hesitation, or groping around. Obviously this can be tricky. I myself wasn't very good at it today, but the rest of the class was actually quite successful. More than a few of my classmates got the keys, and Ashley even managed the advanced version of the game where, still blindfolded, you walk to the keys, pick them up, and then walk on to a chair, turn, and sit in it. This exercise is supposed to get us in touch with our non-visual senses, as well as increase our awareness of our physical instincts which know better than our intellectual instincts where everything in the room is. The better one is able to trust one's physical instincts, the easier the exercise becomes.
On a writing note: I have failed my deadline. I'm about 30 pages into "Bare" and there's no way I'm cranking out another 30 pages tonight. I'll try and have it finished over the weekend though, and I'm not letting myself off the hook for my next deadline because of this. I'll just need to write that much more. Which is, if nothing else, a lesson I could take away from hearing John Wells talk today. (John Wells just donated a ton of money to the Directing program here and he's been speaking the past few days.)
"You just have to write. It sounds obvious but it isn't."
No comments:
Post a Comment