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!
I agree Natalie, the Every Day Life Performance was very exciting and interesting. I enjoyed watching our class members imitate their interviewees. In everyone's interviews, people said some profound things. I especially liked Kelly's interviewee comment on love, it was so deep-his whole idea about sacrifice being critical in a relationship. Also your interviewee thoughts on how marriage is equated to loss of one's identity struck a cord too! I look forward to viewing how the ELP assignment will be translated into our character studies.
ReplyDeleteI also have to agree with you Natalie... I found the ELP work extremely interesting. Moreover I feel like interview work is conducive to acting. So many times I have seen actors performing using generic dialects for their characters. The generality of these dialects in my opinion makes the performances seem sloppy and uninspiring. But thinking about this in hindsight it makes a lot of since. When we act in a play our goal is to present three dimensional characters. So, it only makes sense to base characters off of real people. This being said there are more benefits from this type of work than just having a believable dialect. As Natalie said, it forces you to get inside a real person. It forces you to carry yourself like them, move like them, use the same gestures they use ect... . Using interviews as a way to develop characters is a tool that I will use from now on. Furthermore I’ve learned how great of a tool it is to build performance art pieces!
ReplyDeleteThe ELP work has been the most beneficial to me in so many ways. It is a project that I wasn't actually really excited about before I did it. I think Natalie makes a good point in describing the ELP process as "observing people, regardless of religion, race, creed, culture, or beliefs, in an unbiased and objectively analytical format." I think this is very important in just listening to what people say rather than judging it. And it came up for me in class--there were some interviews where I people spoke of things I completely disagreed with. But that is not what ELP is about. It's about attempting to recreate the differences of others. It's about taking the time to step out of our own shoes and step into another person's. In a way, the ELP performances have taught me to be less judgmental.
ReplyDeleteThe ELPs were nuts! Amy was so right when she said that this assignment will make us so frustrated. I always thought of myself as being very intuitive and really paying attention to people. NOPE! I have become acutely aware of how not only is my attention spam horrible, but I also am the world's worst at listening not hearing. I have always thought of hearing as just sort of skimming off the top of what people are actually saying- not really paying full attention and mainly hearing what I want to hear. Since doing these, I am so much more engaged with people when speaking to them. i don't know if it's just me, but I feel like latter on this will really benefit me.
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