Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Research I forgot to post

Hey all this is some research that I tried to post before but for some reason it isn't posting so here we go again.

These are just some things that I didn't get to involving Combative Homophobia (or Nonviolent Homophobia) and the Mormons. I didn't get to the Mormons too much in my presentation but what I found could fill volumes.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_lds5.htm
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1lacy_nightlinethe-life-of-gay-mormons_news

And here is an interview that I found from the LDS Newsroom regarding homosexuality and Mormonism and how they skirt the issue. Please read this one if you can it is enlightening and gut wrenching.
http://beta-newsroom.lds.org/official-statement/same-gender-attraction
-Jared

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Interesting Videos

This video is amazing! Kevin Spacey doing impersonation on Inside the Actor's Studio. I knew he was talented, but this takes the cake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKKDKAKNH-k

As I was driving to class the other morning this song came on the radio and I couldn't help but think how perfect it is for the play.

The Flamming Lips, "Do You Realize?"

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Retro-Spectacle

So, I am actually quite glad I waited to post this one. My opinions have changed quite drastically since I wrote this on October 7, 2010. I have added more to the end with my thoughts now...


This past weekend we had our class’s community reading of the play we are studying, Charles Mee’s, A Perfect Wedding. This not only got the community involved and got word out about our play and connected us with possible interviewees, but also allowed to hear the words spoken by all different voices. Somehow by simply hearing the words, the play instantly gained a new life and purpose. I was so caught up in all that was happening within the play, even after having read it previously. The reading did however leave me wondering just how realistic some of the characters truly are.

I read for Ariel, a character who seems very much lost and confused about love. She did not seem extremely realistic to me, however. This disheartened me a bit. I am considering using this character for my character study, but at the same time, how am I to find such an absurd literary character in a realistic human form? And once I do find someone with some relevant quality related to this character, how do I incorporate this into the character without completely loosing the character? I can see how there are humanistic qualities to Ariel; lots of people in today’s society are extremely confused about love and what it means and how to express it. Yet at the same time, this character is based on Shakespearean characters, which were not the most realistic characters even then.

There were others that were a bit “out-there” as well, including the priest. There is the argument that no one lives in absolute reality and it is all different for every individual, but it is not quite theatrical realism to be having a mud fight on stage. It is not quite realism to have three entirely different couples as were originally planned couples at the beginning of the play getting married after a few hours, either.

I am very interested in doing a character study, but do not see, just yet anyway, how this is be possible if I choose a character who is not very realistic to begin with. Perhaps another play this would be very helpful, but this play in particular is going to be tough. Having characters not based on real people makes this hard to do as well.



---Now! I think it very foreseeing that I said I didn't see how this could be a character study, just yet. Mainly because I now don't see how it couldn't be. Perhaps Mee isn't going for realism, perhaps my initial thoughts were a bit confused. (Which is more likely than the former.) Now having conducted a couple interviews and having some very in-depth, and random, conversations about the play, love, personal issues and struggles, and just life that are so relevant to the play it is quite frightening. For example, my aunt has always been an open book about her life and I greatly appreciated it, but now every time she and I have a heart-to-heart I find myself trying to take mental note of everything she is saying and how she is saying it.

Also, I have a really weird obsession with watching people's hands and mouths when they talk. I have a person, who I won't name, whom I will find no reason to talk to sometimes just to watch the funny way her lips move when she talks. I find myself trying to mimic it for no apparent reason, and I think it is because I regard her as a very wise, very intuitive person and perhaps if I can speak as she does I will be regarded the same. There is another person who has very specific hand gestures that I often, unknowingly, incorporate into my gestures, as well.

These little nuances are what form a person, a personality, and a character. I feel like, finally, the light bulb clicked on, and DUH! I get it...

Han Solo

This was originally dated September 28, 2010 and is a response written after the class did our first solo performances of original pieces the class wrote after incorporating specific criteria including viewpoints, music, costumes, and a prop piece.


This last week we have been doing our solo pieces, and even from just watching the pieces performed by others in the class, I have learned so much about how incorporating the viewpoints really makes for a much stronger purpose to the acting. Just like playwrights have a meaning and purpose for every word they write, a performer must have a reason for every move they make on stage. Even in everyday life we have specific reasons for doing things we probably never think about, and it wasn’t until I watched other performers that I truly became completely aware of how minute a gesture can be for me to relate to it.

There was one moment in a student’s piece where while he was describing a stressful situation he placed his index finger on his eyelid and pulled it over to the corner of his eye as if he was massaging out pressure building up in his eyes. I do this exact gesture probably ten times a day, and it is something I would have never noticed if he hadn’t done that gesture with his dialogue which made this brief three second moment so incredibly powerful to me. I could so easily and instantly relate to him and his character.

The viewpoints overall have helped me, especially when I decided to do a four-year-old version of myself for my solo piece. I knew I didn’t want to a caricature of just any little child. I wanted specifics. The way I always fidget with my hands is something I’ve always done. I constantly have hangnails on the sides of my thumbs where I pick at them. The way I sit has been deemed “unlady-like” for years and I refuse to change it for the sake of comfort. The costume helped emphasize this as I do not sit with my legs together or crossed when I sit on the floor, and wearing a dress makes this very awkward, but also very four-year-old like.

When I first began developing a story I had about ten ideas of what I wanted to do. I had every idea in the book of what I wanted to do, but none of them meant much to me. I went back to the paper where we had done the free-writing exercise in class and looked at the phrase I circled and recited in class about being four and missing my front teeth and thought about my four year old mentality of the world. From that came the piece. Having so many guidelines for the piece and only five minutes proved to be the toughest part.

I found that the viewpoints actually helped me block my piece, though. I knew what I would normally do, and the viewpoints made me move out of my comfort zone and really try new things. It was brought to my attention after performing that I stayed in one place a lot, and this is something that is not me at all. I am usually all over the place bouncing off the walls, but for this piece and the context, having the confined area really worked to my advantage. The most difficult guideline for me, however, was the audience participation. I was taught that in acting you can never break the fourth wall, and this was defying the very essence of that rule. I had to find a way to do this and still stay true to my character.

The most difficult part of this assignment in general and overall was the fact I was putting me on stage. Which is something as a performer is my worst nightmare. I finally had to take a deep breath and quote John Lennon, “I write about me, because I know about me.” After that, it came down to what I wanted to discuss from being four years old. I also knew I had to have a story. The story came after about the fourth rewrite. Surprisingly, it was not the first thing I did. I really wanted to get down how I was at four and then evaluate something that I was willing to deal with on stage and something that was meaningful and true in my life. Overall, I was pleased with what I came up with. It is the artist in me that is never satisfied were the piece is, but I have every intention in the world to keep working on this piece and perhaps someday be able to move on from it. But this assignment was probably one of the greatest assignments I’ve ever had and actually was excited for it. It was very challenging and really forced me to do things I was not comfortable with and I had to try new things. Solo pieces may become something I do just for fun from now on. It was very enjoyable and cathartic to work on stage.

Prodigal Blog...

As a member of the Acting, Performance, and Community Class, I have been neglecting this blog-thing-a-ma-do-jit for quite sometime. However, there are some blogs I have written and edited and need to simply post now... so, here goes!

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Imitating Real Life

Recently our Acting, Performance, and Community course began looking at snippets of the interviews that were each conducted individually by different classmates. Our assignment was to interview one (or more) people who have some tie, be it via personality, career, or some other similarity, to the character we will be playing in A Perfect Wedding. I haven’t had the chance to conduct my interview just yet, I will be doing so in a matter of days over the holiday break; but I have had the opportunity to view and/or hear most of the interviews that my fellow classmates have conducted.

I found it to be insanely interesting, and I wanted to listen to more. Being someone who is fascinated with “life” or the psyche of humans in general, I think it is always incredible to listen to interviews about different people’s lives and to read biographies and autobiographies. Unfortunately, we were only able to sample each of the interviews, as this is still a work in progress. The assignment, called our ELP (Everyday Life Performance) is simple: take a small portion of your interview, about roughly 15-30 seconds, memorize it, and be prepared to both perform/imitate the interview and play the same snippet in class.

Even with such small portions of the interviews, it was an incredible and didactic process to watch every action, every gesture, every facial expression, and hear every sound…observing people, regardless of religion, race, creed, culture, or beliefs, in an unbiased and objectively analytical format. The real treat was watching my classmates try to imitate their interviewee’s (an action I feel will be quite a challenge once it is my turn), and the process that was made through our ensemble work and help. By coming together as a group to give feedback, we were able to pick up on more things and enable the performer to fully comprehend and interpret their interviewee, down to the most minute details. I can definitely say that after watching each of these interviews, and the in class ELP’s, I am very excited to get my first interview down and begin work on my own!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Seeking Interviewees and Community Collaborators

Below is an announcement I posted on our Facebook page. In terms of the group we're looking to build and the process we're trying to use and develop, I think these lines from the play explain our purposes nicely:

MERIDEE
that's the whole point of a wedding
to reach out across the abyss
and embrace someone who is different

EDMUND
Exactly:
this is how it is
for all human beings everywhere
understanding who they are
and reaching into the depths of their own particular souls
and the civilizations they have come from
to find even a deeper connection
as they reach out across the gulf
and through the courage of reaching out to each other,
rediscover their self-confidence
this is why people cry at weddings probably
because they are so happy they can hardly bear it
that two people have done
what the whole world needs to do if life is to go on!
So, please feel free to send the message below to anyone who might be interested. Forward the link to this blog, or copy and paste the message into an email, or get the word out however you can. And please come join us on December 8 for performances and discussion and a workshop!

Here it is:

"Hello, everyone. We are hard at work on building characters for the spring production of A Perfect Wedding at UofL, and some of the actors are still seeking interviewees. The following is a list of characteristics we're interested in exploring. If you know someone who might be interested in working with us, please get in touch! (You can email Amy Steiger at amy.steiger@louisville.edu, and I'll put you in touch with the students).

We're also working on building a group of people from all over who are interested in participating in our community engaged rehearsal process. Our hope is to create a new community made up people with different backgrounds, experiences and beliefs to give feedback on our work and join our conversations about some of the important ideas and experiences represented in the play. Everyone is welcome, and there are lots of ways to be involved!

For more information see communitybasedacting.blogspot.com, or again, email Amy. Thanks!

Among the interviewees we'd like to meet are:

Wedding Planners

Funeral Directors

People who have been rejected, "jilted at the altar" or had a proposal turned down

People who have had broken engagements

People who have strong opinions about "love" and what it means

People who are getting married soon

People who are completely cynical about/opposed to marriage as an institution

Radical Faeries

People who would like to get married but are not legally able to do so

People who have specific philosophic interest in social theory (Marxism, etc.) and how our identities are shaped by institutions

People who were in heterosexual relationships and ended up with gay partners

People who have been through divorces

People who are in interracial relationships

People who practice particular faiths, specifically Islam and Catholicism

People who are from India or whose parents are from India

People who are or have been Catholic priests

People who can related to issues of gender as they relate to body image

People who think of themselves as extremely masculine

People who identify as "independent women""

Workshop/Demonstration on December 8

Anyone interested in the Spring 2010 production of

Charles L. Mee’s
A Perfect Wedding

should come to our FREE workshop on
Wednesday, December 8
University of Louisville Belknap Campus
Strickler Hall 101 (Middleton Theater: see map below)
6:00 pm

The first half of the evening will be a presentation of the character study performances students have developed as part of the “Acting, Performance and Community” course this semester.
The second half of the evening will be a Viewpoints workshop for people interested in auditioning in January for the remaining roles.

For more information, visit communitybasedacting.blogspot.com

or call or email Dr. Amy Steiger
amy.steiger@louisville.edu
852-8446


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Saturday, November 13, 2010

First Work on A Perfect Wedding

Over the past couple of weeks, we've begun work in earnest on A Perfect Wedding.

We began with all of the actors choosing a particular area of research that seemed significant to the play, and bringing in presentations on what they discovered. Since we're working as an ensemble, it seems useful to have everyone engaged in research on the play as a whole, and it seems like the information everyone presented enriched our understanding of it. At this stage, none of the actors was focusing specifically on character. For example, there is a character in the play who is a priest, and so one student did research on priests, but we have not yet cast that role. Another student did research on female genital cutting, because the character Djamila in the play announces that she has been circumsized and has had a "ritual deflowering," but he is not the actor playing that character.

One unusual thing about this process, which I'm sure I've already mentioned, is that the actors in the class are choosing the characters they will play based on their own interests; based on which characters they think are most different from them and from whose identities they might learn the most through the process; or whom they might never be asked to play in another context, but with whom they feel a particular affinity for some reason other than surface assumptions (that is, an actor who is a woman may have an interest in playing a male character who shares her passion for nature and the outdoors, but would never be allowed to play that character in a different context).

This part of the process may be jarring for audience members who are used to the idea that actors must always look like the characters they are playing; the standard of "believability" is key in our understanding of how theater works, most of the time. But we are hoping that because of this extended research process into which we are inviting outside members of the community, and because the play lends itself nicely to ideas of defying expectations, people will be able to put aside that expectation and think in terms of the value of actors working against their supposed "types." How can this help us and audiences think in terms of finding surprising similarities with other people, while also appreciating the attempt to bridge the gaps raised by difference? (See this blog entry from last year's version of this class for some of the inspiration for this idea).

After the research presentations, the students prepared scenes from the play so that we could start talking about their initial perceptions of these characters. After they finish compiling and performing their character research, the idea is that their understanding of the characters will probably change drastically, and they will make different choices based on interviews, feedback from interviewees, and other research. We also used Viewpoints to play around with their initial understandings, and were fascinated by how just changing the physical layout of the scene changed their impressions.

I'll use one of the scenes as an example. In the play, there is a young couple, Meridee and Amadou, who are engaged to be married; the beginning of the first act entails the leadup to what is supposed to be their wedding. Amadou's parents, Djamila and Vikram, arrive sometime through the first act, and the actor who is playing Djamila performed this scene for the class with help from someone not in the class who played Vikram. Essentially, this scene represents the first meeting of the young couple's parents. But the scene is immediately surprising, as Vikram right away begins to discuss women's bodies and what he finds or does not find attractive. Eventually, Djamila reveals that she has been through a ritual deflowering and a circumcision. Vikram becomes uncomfortable, and Djamila brings up the fact that he was allowed to talk about women's bodies all he wanted - as he says "We are not secret people with things to hide!" - but he tells her to be quiet when she begins talking about her own experience.

This scene raises so many questions that will be significant to our production, and so many concerns that could lead to really valuable community discussions, I think. First, the actor playing Djamila is not Indian, has not had a ritual deflowering or a circumcision; this is, of course, a major difference. We also have discussed the possibility that she was raised in some branch of Islam. But this is a sensitive issue that we'll be representing on stage, and the question of perceptions and misperceptions of Muslim women is raised. We also can use this as an opportunity to learn about the history of Islam in India, and the difference between civil law and Islamic law for members of the Muslim faith. For a small part of the play, these are bigger questions that can extend beyond the scope of our work, but what we learn should inform our choices here.

In addition to this specific question about identity, the two biggest issues that arose for me were about gender: women and their bodies; and what is or is not appropriate to discuss in public, and why - what is considered appropriate and "normal" and therefore okay for public disclosure, and what is supposed to remain secret. The question of gender, what is or is not "normal," and what is appropriate for public conversation is raised again and again in the play, and because it ultimately deals with marriage this is incredibly significant. What kinds of physical relationships are sanctioned by social convention, what kinds of physical processes get celebrated in public, and who determines what is and is not okay to discuss?

One of the most compelling things that came out of this early rehearsal, for me, was related to gender and staging choices. The first time the actors staged the scene, Djamila and Vikram stayed together, and their argument about these things seemed to be a more personal marital dispute. The second time, I had them choose a different spatial relationship, and we added the other characters who are present onstage - all male - into the scene. The actors chose a configuration in which all of the men stood together with Vikram in the middle, and Djamila was alone on the other side of the stage. The scene then became a conversation among the men about women's bodies, and there was a definite "boys club" process happening, in which they all played off and reacted to and tried to impress each other, while Djamila became increasingly uncomfortable off on her own. We aren't sure what choice we will make in production, but we're hoping that this research and discussion process will inform what we ultimately choose. Nonetheless, it was very exciting to see how the physical form onstage automatically affected how the actors behaved and the meaning of the scene.

We worked on three other scenes in class: one pivotal scene in which the group of couples who are gathered at the beginning get lost in the woods and their relationships get all thrown into chaos by this new natural environment outside of the expectations of civilazation; another scene in which two of the four Radical Faeries talk about the possibilities for turning the planned wedding into a funeral; and another monologue in which Willie, a young son of Djamila and Vikram, launches into a diatribe against marriage - another moment about gender and appropriate conversation. But I'm fully aware that I have been the dominant voice on this blog all semester ... I'm waiting for the students to join in the discussion and post their own initial impressions of these characters and scenes, so I'll leave it to them for now.

If you'd like to read the scene of which I was writing above and give us your thoughts, you can find the play here. The scene is about two-thirds of the way through the first act, I think, and I recommend beginning with Edmund's line that starts "The main thing in love, I think, is trust ..."