Friday, March 25, 2011

Friday, 3-25-11

Friday, 3-25-11

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."

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Wednesday, 3-23-11

Wednesday, 3-23-11

Today in Acting we spent all of class beating out the script. We didn't quite finish, but we made it to the end of Act 1 and Act 2 should go quickly on Friday.

Matt thinks that Jason has come to the barbecue with a preconceived notion of what's going to happen; at least as a plan B. I'm not sure that's true.

I think that Jason comes to the barbecue genuinely hoping his family can solve all his problems by welcoming him back. A naive hope? Oh god yes. But I think the more naive the hope, the better-sounding the crash when it gets shattered. And it does get shattered. Very quickly.

But even then, I don't think he knows there is no avoiding drastic action until the beat-change where Jack completely rejects the worth of Jason's becoming a shellback in Scene 2. When it's clear that even that will not buy his father's respect--and in fact it only increases Jack's hate-ridden fear of his own son--he decides that he must do something to try and rescue his family from their vicious cycle of denial and violence.

I think it's on the next page, when Irene suggests charades again, that he solidifies the idea for the sordid game of charades that ends the show. His objective for the entire play hasn't changed, but his tactics have drastically shifted. He still wants to be accepted by his family, to be seen as greater than the crime he has committed, to be redeemed--but instead of relying on his family to provide these things he has resolved to extract them by force. By charades, if necessary.

On Icons: Icons is proving to be... very difficult! But we'll see how the first round of presentations go tomorrow and Tuesday. I know I'll have something to show--I just don't know how mind-blowing it'll be. I'm trying to apply the Laban vocabulary to analyze the Icons' movements so that I can have certain key effort-qualities in mind when I get into each one.



On writing: I'm supposed to be finished with "Bare" by Friday at midnight. I haven't made much project in the last few days, but I believe I can do it!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Tuesday, 3-22-11

Tuesday, 3-22-11

Day late again on this one. In my defense, yesterday was pretty rough, what with recovering from food poisoning and everything.

Anyway, yesterday in Acting we did an improv exercise as our characters getting together for the barbecue. I came late, because I was at Health Services, but when I showed up everyone was already working and Matt just said, "Oh look who just came in!" and everyone rushed me. "Jason, my baby!" "Welcome home, Jay," etc.

So that was a nice way to get thrown into the action. I liked this exercise a lot because it didn't give me time to think--I felt like walking into that room and being treated like Jason was nearly all I needed to get there. All the other characters were giving me all the information I needed. The Jacks were a bit distant and formal, Irene (Jason's mother) over-enthusiastic, etc. I myself (though some of this may have been the exhaustion and dehydration) was closed-off and wounded, purposefully preventing myself from allowing myself to be drawn wholly into the family's party. Perhaps recognizing too much of its falseness, or simply with the knowledge of what he has done hanging over him as he struggles to figure out what to do next.

Matt said that he liked this effort of self-control that Kyle and I exhibited as the Jasons, and suggested we go further with it. He also said to look for strong, vertical energy, which I think works well with my idea for the stag.

We spent the rest of class continuing to beat the script. I find it's useful while beating out a script to look at all the other characters for clues to see if a beat has really occurred yet. If even one of the characters is still following the same line of thought as they have been, the beat change has not happened yet.

On Wednesday we're bringing in more costume pieces and we'll do some more on-our-feet work before we finish beating out the script.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Saturday, 3-19-11

Saturday, 3-19-11

So, yesterday Matt was in New York, so for Acting class we began by going to the Motion Capture Lab and watching our recordings from the week before break. No models had been attached to our recordings, but a rough skeleton had been drawn using the marks to make it easier to see how we were moving.

It was pretty damn cool. We could slow down or speed up the recording to hone in on particular moments, and it was neat to see the moments that most clearly captured the movement of the animal, such as when I twitched my head back and forth on its side or when I stretched out on one leg and spread my 'wings.' Zanny's recording was also really neat because you could so clearly see how her shoulders were thrown back and moved with an undulation that was unmistakeably that of a big cat's.

After this, we returned to Purnell to get some coaching on the Queens dialect from Natalie. That'll be a challenge--but I'm looking forward to it. One thing that came up though was the way we pitch our voices based on a character's age. Taylor, who plays 15 year-old sister, Jeanann, was talking to me about how she has to raise the pitch of her voice to play younger. This is something that I've thought about considerably, though in my case, I often feel as if for most parts I should be raising the pitch of my voice.

My natural speaking voice is unusually low, and I sometimes feel like that is... well, inappropriate for many characters. In high school I got cast as villains and fathers a lot, but as I look to the future, I'm not sure that's the shape I want my career to take. Should I be practicing putting my voice in a different place for characters my age? Frankly, any male ingenue is expected to have a higher voice too. Taylor said that actors all have signatures, and mine is my voice, but I worry that while, yes, it's certainly a signature, it may also be a limitation.

I was talking to Sam French about this and he was saying that he, as a director, is very conflicted about actors changing their voices for a part. He says that with the exception of clearly stylized pieces, he feels that a dramatic vocal adjustment always sounds forced or alien to him--though he also admitted that this may just be because he is usually familiar with how the actor normally talks.

This is one of the things in my growing understanding of personal acting technique that I am still very unsure about. I should talk to Professor Feindel about it, probably.



As for Jason's animal work, I've been watching videos of stags and I find this one (though very simple) quite telling. The stag notices the camera and positions itself to face it, and then lifts its neck and head to make itself taller and more imposing. When it finally turns and walks away, the head drops. I think that could be a very useful thing to incorporate into Jason's physicality. It strikes me as appropriate because of the power-play he's constantly engaged in with Jack.

Another stag video:


Another animal that could work and I might play with is a big dog, like a German Shepherd. I'm just worried about choosing a domesticated animal because "domesticated" is really not the best word to describe anyone in this family. But there's lots of animal imagery in the show and specifically concerning dogs (the family has a long history with Jack brutally mistreating one pet after another), so I like the idea of tying back to that with a dog.

This is a fascinating guard dog attack-training video with a German Shepherd.



For Icons I think I've found a monologue from "Man and Superman" by George Bernard Shaw. We present our Icons for the first time on Thursday, the first of three rounds of presentations.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Wednesday, 3-16-11

Wednesday, 3-16-11

Today we spent the entire class discussing the nature of objectives and interactions in “Pig” as we began to go through marking the beat-changes in the script. Matt’s definition of a beat-change is when something occurs or information is revealed that immediately causes every character on stage to shift their objective.

One of the things we discussed at length was the nature of abuse in this family… and generally what is commonly observed in the majority of abusive families. Matt noted in particular the way that characters often project their own personal fears onto others, as well as turning tactics commonly used on them back on other members of their family, causing just the sort of cannibalistic deterioration that we see so much of in the play. People also tend to take on established roles, as described by Karpman’s drama triangle.

Karpman’s drama triangle depicts an interrelationship between three classic roles: the Victim; the Persecutor or Oppressor; and the Rescuer, Hero, or Pacifier. These roles have generalized guidelines for behavior associated with them—not as strict parameters, but as empirical generalizations about how these roles tend to be filled: The Victim appeals to the Rescuer and acts defensively towards the Persecutor. The Persecutor attacks the Victim and either attacks or ignores the Rescuer. The Rescuer defends the Victim and attacks the Persecutor, or else simply tries to defuse the conflict altogether.

What is interesting about the drama triangle is that each role is dependent upon the others. A Victim cannot exist without a Persecutor, nor vice versa. A Rescuer depends on both a Victim and a Persecutor to exist. Thus these roles tend to sustain each other in any given abusive situation, all the persons involved naturally taking these roles according to habit or personality.

Also interesting is that if one person shifts places in the triangle, such as a Victim becoming a Rescuer or a Rescuer becoming a Persecutor, it causes all the other people involved in the conflict to shift their positions on the triangle accordingly (beat-change, anyone?)

Much of this is stuff we discussed in class, but it bears repeating. This to some extent at least works as a good model for the behaviors of people in a conflict, especially a contained and ongoing abusive situation.

Jason is an interesting character because for a large part of the show he seems to be trying desperately to extricate himself from the drama triangle. He several times refuses to respond to Jack’s (his father’s) insults, and is clearly doing his damndest to remain mostly neutral for the entirety of his first scene. By neutral, of course, I must clarify that he still has opinions about everything. He’s just keeping them to himself. He’s struggling to keep them from exploding out of him. They nearly do when Jack reacts so unimpressed by his official induction into the order of the Shellbacks (a Navy honor for those who have crossed the equator and survived a ritualistic hazing).

That doesn’t mean he isn’t a part of the power-play. Quite the reverse. Removing himself from the drama triangle is very much a tactic—and a highly successful tactic at that—for gaining power and significance. Refusing to play the game according to Jack’s rules and not rising to Jack’s bait is what makes Jason so very threatening to Jack in that first scene of theirs (Scene 2 of the play). But it’s also something that Jason becomes unable to maintain once Santos enters the picture in Scene 3 and begins questioning Jason’s tribute of the pig.

That’s when Jason snaps. The outsider comes in and threatens to topple the empire of respect he has built in Scene 2, and in order to get it back he pulls the gun and—as Matt has so eloquently observed—becomes his father: Holding the family hostage in the backyard. Of course… Jack did it figuratively. Jason does it with a gun in his hand and in order to prove a point.

So that’s where I’m at right now. For Jason's animal I've come up with the idea of a stag, a male deer. Something with a lot of vertical energy and power but flighty enough to justify his nervous break-down when he pulls the gun.

On a different topic, we’re beginning Icons next week in Movement. So far I think I want to do Bugs Bunny from “1001 Rabbit Tales (1:09:15??)” (long strides, hugely animated gesticulations, and casual style of speech), Jessica Rabbit from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (undulating, lots of Laban ‘wringing,’ smoky, sensual vocal quality) and for my third I want to find someone really light and flitty. Someone that carries all their weight upward and is less smooth in their movement. That’s something I definitely need to work on, and I think those three then present a good contrast.

As for my writing, we workshopped “Time and Time Again” today in Playwriting and I’m going to be making huge changes. I’m cutting the base scene down to 12 pages and adding repetitions so that there are a total of 5 scenes, each with one of the major landmarks of the scene changed. “Bare” is also coming along. Have to finish that by next Friday.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Monday, 3-14-11

Monday, 3-14-11

Today in class we warmed up and then talked about Matt’s definitions for text-work: super objectives, scene objectives, beat objectives, activities, tactics, and actions.

Matt’s rules for objectives are that they must: 1) be phrased in terms of what you want from the other person(s), 2) be phrased as a positive, 3) have a bull’s eye or target with an implied moment of achievement, 4) excite you, and 5) be physically capable of being done but be more than a chore.

The reason I restate these is that to my mind these rules are extremely useful in text work that will support interesting acting. Rule number 1 makes sure that you are always engaged with others on stage, either your fellow performers or the audience. That makes you dynamic, involved, and constantly active. And yes, I believe you can form objectives that involve you directly with the audience. Either the audience represents the audience, in the case of many one-man shows and any monologues that break 4th wall, or the audience could represent some external or internal entity, a sort of model of the dualist self with which one may interact (I would posit this would be handy in a Shakespearean soliloquy, where one is not necessarily breaking the 4th wall but one still wants an active, externally engaging objective).

Rule number 2 is to keep us heading towards something instead of away from something else. Not only is this stronger, but as Matt said today: often focusing on a negative just causes you to collapse into the thing you’re avoiding. For instance if you tell yourself not to do something, your brain has no alternative to focus on and so ends up doing it anyway.

Rule number 3 keeps you on track so that you know exactly where you’re going at all times. Perhaps there are multiple ways a character could achieve a given objective, but depending on the one you’re pursuing at the time, your tactics will change. Having an exact and concrete notion of what you want from moment to moment keeps your actions specific.

Rule number 4 is possibly the most important. Choosing an objective that is intrinsically exciting to you as a performer ensures that your performance will not be boring; it will instead be exciting! Something that excites you will excite higher stakes and higher energy in the pursuit of that objective. High stakes and high energy is what the audiences pay the big bucks to see.

Rule number 5 ensures that your objective is not so abstract or spiritual that it cannot be pursued effectively or specifically through physical choices and our interactions with others.

Another thing we discussed in class was how to choose objectives in such a way that they are never achieved. Though this sounds counter-intuitive, the reasoning is simple. If I choose an objective and it is fulfilled at any point in any scene, even the final scene, for the remainder of that scene I have nothing left to do. I can only smile. I literally cannot continue to act because there is nothing to act upon. And the performance flat-lines and becomes boring until the merciful blackout occurs. This makes sense to me, since if you choose your scene objectives carefully in such a way that you always have something more to strive for, it will produce a more consistently interesting and thrilling performance. On the other hand, this worries me because it seems as though it might be possible for a play to have an arc where a character’s journey is defined by his finally achieving contentment. Obviously contentment is not particularly interesting, but the way it is achieved might be, and in that final moment of the play it seems as though the pursuit of an objective is almost in definitional opposition of ‘contentment.’ This is just one hypothetical example I can think of where I wonder if there might be an exception to the rule. And probably there are others. Or maybe I’m wrong about this. I would be interested to discuss it with Matt sometime.

Certainly though, I agree that if a character’s objectives are ever met, even temporarily, either they need to get off stage or the show needs to end immediately.

For Jason, I’m leaning towards thinking that his super-objective could be something like, being seen as redeemed in the eyes of his family. I’m not sure if that is as exciting as it could be though. But I’m also not sure how to hyper-charge it, and maybe it doesn’t need to be. Redemption is a powerful thing to strive for, and is thus a powerful motivator.

As for the spine of the play, or the overarching super-objective that all of the characters may share, I feel that it must have something to do with wanting a sense of permanence, a recognition of their lasting significance and efficacy by everyone they encounter. I’ll keep thinking about that though.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

The Bi-Weekly Challenge

So I've been on Spring Break, hence the lack of updates with my Acting Journal. But I'm sitting in an airport in Vegas and thought I'd blog.

The next thing up in Acting is Play Projects. Each class chooses a play and then each student gets cast in a role; some of them often having to share their role with another student or two. Then it gets rehearsed and put together for presentation by the end of the semester. We're supposed to incorporate the work we did with Animal Projects (obviously, since we're supposed to be incorporating everything we've learned as we go along) and our class is keeping a Research Blog for the play as well.

"Pig" Research Blog




The play Matt chose for us is "Pig" by Tammy Ryan, which is about an extremely dysfunctional American family having a barbecue when their son suddenly returns from the Navy after 4 years of absence. Secrets, grudges, and past violences all emerge and return to wreck this family during the 5 scenes that occur consecutively with little break.

I believe I'll be playing Jason, the returning son, but it hasn't been made official yet.

Also, I want to briefly announce something I want to do this semester. I'm challenging myself to write a first draft of a new play every two weeks for the last 8 weeks of the semester. This is the Bi-Weekly Challenge. I'm currently working on "Bare," and after that I have a myriad of other ideas that I just really need to get onto paper. That's why I think this will be good for me. Giving me deadlines will make sure that I'm writing consistently and producing new stuff, and finishing what I start.

So we'll see how that works.