The Given Circumstances.

One of my favorite parts of working on anything scene-related is pulling it apart based on the actions and words of the characters and figuring out what happened to these people before they got involved in whatever they are getting involved in.  What makes these people tick?  What are the possibilities?  I often don't like it when people go to far and make up some story about a character losing a dog and how that affected them terribly... blah, blah, blah.  It's cool if you lose a dog and that helps you get to wherever you need to go, but don't waste my time with your fanciful bullshit.  The answers are in the text.  granted sometimes a text modern needs some fleshing out; that's fun, but whatever the case may be, doing the detective work really turns me on.  I remember back in undergrad, my very first Chekhov scene that Svet had assigned me was between Masha and Vershinin from 'Three Sisters'.  That scene was a fucking puzzler, and my room-mates,who were grad students at the time and had already dealt with it were strictly pulled aside and told not to help me out.  That Svet is a crafty one.  The whole major action between the two characters happens off stage and is never directly referred to; it's alluded to.  I look back on it now, and say to myself, "Obviously.  Of course, that's what happened.", and really appreciate the lesson.  I won't spoil it for you.  Most of you probably know exactly what I'm talking about, but for those of you who don't, read it; check it out.  It's good stuff.  I mean, Chekhov, right!?

Toni Ann and I are working on 'Mourning Becomes Electra' right now in Andrei's class.  I am the Orin to her Lavinia, which is great because back in ancient Greece, she's the Electra to my Orestes.  It might be a bit of a cheat, but the great stories are often stolen and reshaped, and you can't go wrong with 'The Oresteia'.  Aeschylus for the win.  I will admit to you, that the scene was a bit of a last-miutepick-up for me, so I haven't read the three plays entirely through; we're still muddling through that.  Naughty actors... tsk, tsk.  So I, in need of putting up the scene for the first time had to go off of what I know about the play, generally, and my more extensive knowledge of it's source material.  Thank god that Andrei's the type of teacher that gives you time to get yourself involved with  what you're about to do before you launching to it.  I get some time to write in my manuscript, converse with my dead father and get in touch with my own personal inner-guilt demons.

Our scene today was a pretty rocky first start.  Getting to work with another actor in a company for the first time is alway s a bit of an experiment: finding their own rhythm, jiving, learning how they work and how to best work together.  It's very jazz.  I'm more the kind of guy that mostly likes to learn lines; know my own business; lay a ground plan; throw in some environmental surprises, trust the other actor and let fate and discovery decide where things take us.  Now there is a "plan" in the script; Romeo and Juliet never get a happy ending because I feel like it, and eventually some traffic patterns loosely form.  I like to know that I can move "off the rails" when the perfect opportunity strikes, but, in the end, most of the time some general foundations are laid (a nice balance between knowing what's coming, but still being able to be caught off guard).  Like, I said, it was a rocky start, but we each learned something and after some post-mortem and another kine-rehearsal, I'm really excited to give it another go tomorrow.

What's really great about tracing the clues back to their possible foundations is not only the chance to play detective (after all, part of my draw to this form of start telling is that it is, to me, a social science), but also getting in touch with the need to think about why people in the world of the text and, by extension, the real world are motivated to do the things that they do.  It's a whetstone that, with use, can very finely hone a person's sense of compassion: something that, I would argue might be in somewhat of a short supply (even if the world were full of compassion, I might still argue it; can you really ever have enough?).

Personally, I have been dealing with a challenge for the past several months.  This is going to get honest, probably more so than I ought to in this forum, but it was an experience and applies to my point, so here it comes.  I have a friend for whom I, admittedly, care a great deal.  We haven't seen much of each other over the last several months, but there has been a growing antipathy between us for this time that we have not... been in each other's social sphere, let's say.  There has been talk by third parties of how one dislikes the other, conversations tend to be awkward, bordering on not-so-subtle (yet socially polite) enmity.  There was a mild confrontation that left me more than a bit cross yesterday after dinner.  My entire bus ride home was filled with thoughts of how this had all come to pass.  What led the two of us, two people who once got along quite well, to a state of dissolution.  It occurred to me in my tracing of the lines that there had been times where I had been trying to rebuild a bridge and had been rebuffed, and times when she had been boldly extending the olive branch, only to be spurned by my recently singed feelings and pride.  It was a disconsolate cycle in which we had mired ourselves.  The fates had provided an opportunity to steal away for a quick, private chat today; we seized it and allowed for us to share sentiment and cleanse and salve the wounds that we were perpetually inflicting on one and other.  I believe, now, that miscommunication and, perhaps, some external bending of the truth were the source of the problem, but fortunately, it no longer matters the given circumstances no longer hold sway.

The theater, and the power to share stories of kings and beggars and losers that win, can be a truly healing place; a triage for the soul.  Today, and the lessons of the days leading up to today sometimes afford us the opportunities to heal ourselves with solicitude; warmth; love; tenderness; mercy, leniency - Compassion: the very best of given circumstances.

"Compassion brings us to a stop, and, for a moment, we rise above ourselves."
-Mason Cooley

Tonight, my heart is full.

-R

Corrective Lenses.

Today's post will, I pray, be brief.  It also will, I'm sure, continue what I hope will maybe be a theme for the work of the study that occurs outside of the classroom.

There are personal rhythms that occur in me.  Moods wax and wane.  I was told once that Pisces are what are known as "dual signs" and tend to have, as a trait, pretty binary rhythms.  Now that I think about it, I think it was explained to me when I was dating someone who was a Libra.  I was complaining about never knowing what to expect. The girl who was explaining it to me, was like, "She's a Libra.  She's a dual sign and bound to be fucking crazy.  Libras, Geminis and Pisces."

"I'm a Pisces.", I said.

"Well there you go.", she winked, "You're fucking crazy too.  Maybe it is meant to be!"

Point of information:  it wasn't meant to be.  Anecdote over.  But there are these natural personal rhythms that I tend to follow, and I've been noticing them in my classmates.  We've been together for a month now, and in that time I have been able to begin to start to scratch the surface of what these people are really about.  Patience on certain members' parts have worn a little thing for certain things that occur during the day, and when in the right (or wrong) personal rhythm these things can play out in a few potentially catastrophic ways.

There are two things that I should mention right now before I go any further.  Two facts that I imagine are rather obvious, but are necessary to address before we I move foreword:

1 - I wear glasses with corrective lenses.  I can't wear contacts because I have a silly fear of poking my eyes out.  So I go through life being able to see (aided) with such astute clarity or (naturally) relying partially on my vision and leaning more on hearing to get me through the day.  I'm not by any means blind; I'm near-sighted, but I know that when the frames finally fall onto the bridge of my nose that there is such a sharp contrast between whatever is in front of me now and immediately before that a whole new world of exploration opens up.  The same thing happens when I take them off.

2 - I can be a bit glib.  If you haven't met me, you should know this about me now.  I believe that I have a deep well of genuine sincerity in me, but I also think life is tremendously funny, and that you can't spend all day being so damn serious.  I think I may have mentioned that outlook in some previous posts.  I feel that I tend to be pretty relaxed in most situations.  I freak right the hell out in others...  I think those are two fair and accurate statements, but generally I deal with things with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.  That's me.  That's the lens that I tend to look at the world through most often. It causes some problems, but it also averts many other social disasters.

Today my pat led me to being accosted by a classmate over what turned out to be a misunderstanding.  Everything was resolved pretty rapidly between us, but before we had that, there were a few solid minutes of absolute peevishness between us.  During the final few minutes of just being utterly pissed off and itching for a fight, I remembered something that Svetlana once said to me in a private conversation in her office my senior year of undergrad.  It was a while ago, and I'm definitely paraphrasing here, but she said this:

"I think that you are dealing with things absolutely rationally for how you are perceiving the world.  I hear your words and your logic makes sense, but you are viewing everything through a warped lens.  You are not seeing things clearly.  Try to look at what is happening through a different lens.  Shed yours and look through a different one; you will see that what you are taking in may not be an accurate representation of what is truly going on.  Think on that."

And that was the end of the few minutes of feeling like I needed to avenge myself.  I started wondering what the cause for my treatment was.  Maybe there was an old would that I had inadvertently pricked?  Perhaps it was simply the end of a bad day?  For all I knew, it could have simply been the slip of the tongue.  Where it could have led to a further altercation, or some festering hostility, it did not.  We found each other and took each other arm in arm and walked the streets of Morningside Heights... and talked.

Micro-confrontations, such as the one I just shared, have been increasing in volume over the past week, or so, between the members of the class.  I think that sometimes we actors gets little too involved in what we are "getting" from people and how it affects us and the dramatic sense of the fucking injustice of it all.  I know that I , myself, will sometimes go the easy route and find someone to sound my frustration to in the hope of hearing a pleasing echo.  I do.  But if we can only allow ourselves to shift perspectives, we can open ourselves up to wisdom and compassion and understanding.  It's my lesson for the day.  One revisited, and perhaps one that should be revisited as often as possible.

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion."
-Dalai Lama


Breathe in.  Breathe out.

-R

Orestes, Electra, and a Messenger Walk in to a Bar.

Today was probably the shortest day of grad school that will ever occur.  Ever.  I think everyone was a little thrown off before savagely attacking sweet, sweet freedom like a pack of starving hounds on the scent of a fleeing rabbit.

We started off with Niky training at oh-nine-hundred, as is the norm in Friday mornings before being dispersed to our own devices while a few of us were wiring to be summoned by Ulla to work on our Greek monologues.

I'm working on Orestes from The Libation Bearers where he's recounting the plan to murder Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.  I love me some Orestes.  That's a fact.  The house of Atreus is all-around pretty awesome as far as ancient Greek drama goes, but Orestes and Apollo set the tone for modern law.  You really can't get much better than that.

I've been trio-ed with Toni Ann (whom I posted about yesterday) and Ethan "Win" Nguyen (who is a stud, pay attention, ladies).  Toni Ann is working on Titular Electra by Sophocles and Ethan has been working on a monologue from Euripides' Acelestes and stands in as the apogee of awesomeness as Pylades... a friend of the house.  Ulla had us set an empty stage with some random items to play with and commence exploring the space, text, and each other; working through each piece in turn.  I have to say this now: beware of caps...

THIS IS WHAT I CAME HERE FOR!!!

Seriously, this is what I've been waiting on.  Don't get me wrong, so far all of the professors have been incredibly warm, generous, and insightful, but this... THIS is my flavor right here.  We work a little bit (by that I mean I pretend to be Orestes and deliver some poetry); then she says "Stop!"; breaks down some real amazing, simple ideas and then says, "Go."; and we're off again, working, working, working, "Stop!"; and then we repeat the process.  This is my flavor.  I worked like this with Sveta at Cal State, Fullerton.  After that experience, it's the only way I ever want to work in lab.  It is sort of what I expected the entirety of the program to be like, but I am still so excited about what happened today.  Ulla is brilliant.  I mean, truth nuggets fall, fully formed, from her mouth and into your brain.  It is incredible.  I was watching her work with Toni Ann and Ethan (who are incredible, in case you were wondering) after she had finished up with me, and all I could think about is, "I need to work with this woman as much as possible over the next three years.  I want to be her acting-child."  I might be a little in love, I dunno.

That's all for tonight!  It's Friday, and that means I'm taking the weekend off from writing, so look back here Monday for more updates on how things are progressing.  There should be some ripe thought after Larry's added class tomorrow morning and a very special gathering of dudes from the class for "Bro-toberfest" at the Bohemian Hall Beer Garden tomorrow night.


“Success is transient, evanescent. The real passion lies in the poignant acquisition of knowledge about all the shading and subtleties of the creative secrets.”
-Constantin Stanislavski


Until Monday!

-R

Science.

It's been a while since I've made a post, but with this sexy new computer, I admit to you, my dear friend-reader, that I no longer have any excuse to not barrage you with bloggy thoughts.

I grew up in a non-religious household.  My mom was a non-practicing Catholic and my father was rather lax Mormon.  It was once explained to me that the spawn of such a union wasn't really welcome in either faith (an opinion that, strangely, has since been retracted).  There was a god just like there was an Easter Bunny, but we didn't really "find" religion until my teenage years.  My more formative years were spent with something much more digestible to my young mind.  I'd like to share it with you now; ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...


THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD:
Ask a question.
Perform background research.
Compose a hypothesis.
Experiment against the hypothesis.
Analyze data and draw a conclusion to the validity of the hypothesis.
Communicate data.


To this day, I still label myself a scientist.  I'm not spending my time reverse engineering dinosaurs out of chicken embryos or developing ways to communicate natural light to underground parks or working out constants for how mass bends space/time... I'm acting.  Just in case you're new to this blog... that's way I'm up to; that's what this is about, but I consider acting to be a social science; the study of the human condition with all sorts of delicious variables.   The rehearsal space has become, to me, a laboratory for exactly what we (humans) are capable of in varying circumstances and a way to examine the consequences of the actions one might take in a safe environment.  Also, it's a great way to meet women.

There are all sorts of tools to employ when doing this sort of work, you may be familiar (if not a BELIEVER!) in one or more of them.  These tools come from Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Strasburg, Meisner, Adler, Alexander... the list goes on and on.  In my youth, I had always had a distaste for Method Acting.  I always got a sort of sick feeling when hearing the pushers peddle their mystical wares.  It never took.  It wasn't until Sveta introduced me to Stanislavski's System and explained to me the fundamental differences between the System and the Method that I went, "Aha!  Now I see."  A light switch had been turned on in my mind, and had ignited a fire in my soul.  So yes, if my body were a house, it would be a really kitch one with a light-switch fireplace.  "This is science!", I said to myself.  Observation.  Test: does this work?  No?  Reformulate.  Simplify.  Eradicate the superfluous circumstances.  WHAT'S GOING ON HERE!?!?!?  I was addicted...  I should mention that I don't look down on other methods; everyone has their own flavor, this is mine.  It's delectable.

Lately, I keep getting these warnings:  "It's going to get tough."; "Honeymoon's going to be over soon."; "Blah, blah, blah, negativity, blah."

"Bring on the challenge!", I say, "The 'honeymoon' is the breath before the plunge, and, let's face it, negativity is the aegis of the weak-willed; leave it at home."

Now we, the class, are here to learn.  That's a fact.  I strongly urge you to try to find someone within the group that came here for something other than the pursuit of additional knowledge and a greater understanding.  There might be some other influencing factors in an individual's "Top 5", but I seriously doubt in my heart of hearts that anyone is dropping a few hundred grand on ego alone.  I do have faith in that.  I very well could be wrong (which is always exciting).  Despite all these warnings and heraldings of the doom-time, what has become to me, in these last two weeks, the largest obstacle is the sense that there is a "way" to do things.  A single, solitary way.  My only interest is that whatever path is chosen, it leads to the truth (preferably in he most economical way possible).  I have born witness to several instances recently where "truths" are reached in hurried and unrefined ways, whether it be the opinion of a teacher making some harsh criticisms about the quality of that student's character after failing to observe that he followed a command to take a half a step forward; the classmate who railroads an other classmate over how to approach a project because he/she KNOWS how to go about it; or the girl in the bar after class who makes broad statements to a person she just met based on the actions that she's observed other people perform, coming to  a hard "theory" of human nature and, perhaps, the basic understanding of the self and the projection that has to occur to justify the understanding.  There is a faith in these things.  I call it faith because it is a concept that goes unexplored or is questionably underdeveloped.  I wrote earlier in this very paragraph that I had faith that there was not a soul in my class that was an ego-maniacal asshole.  I'm not without it.  I also said my faith could be misplaced.

Now, I'm not calling in to question the theories of Kristin or Andrei or anyone else on staff.  As I said, I'm here to learn.  That's the point.  It is my hope, and thus far my opinion based on observation, that, even now, personal philosophies that bear the names of these people are malleable; in a state of flux.  They may vibrate ever so exiguously around a certain frequency, but the foundation is there.   The product still feels accesible.  But, outside of that, there are these slights to my beloved science which create an environment where no experimentation can occur.

I, as I imagine you do, have this strong sense that most of the things that I "know" are true.  After all, they've gotten me this far, they can't be so bad, yet there is an understanding that personal truth is perception and perception is subjective.  If I wander into an opportunity where a truth is confronted and threatened, I usually have two clear and immediate choices:

1) take a defensive stance; or
2) question, observe, and experiment.

I was reading an article earlier this week that at CERN there is evidence on file that muon->tao neutrinos had arrived in Gran Sasso roughly 60 nanoseconds earlier than they ought to have.  Big deal?  Yeah, because it means that they were traveling faster than light, which is IMPOSSIBLE!!!  At least that's what I thought.  I scoffed into my morning oatmeal, "Fools!  How dare you question Einstein!"  I was defensive.  Then I started to think, "There's a problem here somewhere... obviously."  Then I got excited, "Does this mean time-travel is possible without the aid of an 'I'm going to crush everything ever conceived- size (massive) object?   What does this mean for causality?  Did physics just die?"  Everything that I knew was true about the physical world just fell apart in front of me at breakfast.  But truth is perception and perception is subjective... always, and I was reminded that I'm not above it.  It got me thinking about outcomes to our little problems in the acting class.

Outcomes may tend to show that one perception is true and the other false, but more often than not that both are true, yet unrefined as to show a deeper truth, OR most excitingly, that neither truth is true and that both need to be set aside in order to find the truth (but with a partner scientist!)  What I'm getting at is that there have been some not fully open minds within the program that I've come across... hold on a second.

Statement:

I am not perfect, but just as I challenge you to find a person who is not truly in my class to learn, I challenge you to find a time, when I'm not willing to put something; anything; everything to the test.  If you catch me, not only will I get wide-eyed enthusiastic about what you are telling me that you feel I am unwilling to examine, but I will also buy you a coke (or other reasonably interchangeable beverage of your choosing). 

That being said, I had been left perplexed by certain instances where the chance to develop ideas and examine the status quo have been brushed aside in an effort to "get it right".  I was left aggravated that I was hearing that something is "wrong" without getting chance to live and experience "wrong" for myself.  Michael Jordan once said, "I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."  I couldn't agree more.  Also... look at me quoting athletes!

So I am left with questions:  Will this change?  Will I grow to fight it more feverishly?  Will that go over well?  Can I be diplomatic about it?  Am I wrong to question it?  Are science and art so estranged from each other?  Will I look back on this post one day and laugh at my own naiveté?  Breathe them in; breathe them out.  That is, after all, why I'm here, right?  Questions, questions, questions.  Or as I have accepted it to be... Step 1) Ask a question.


I think I have plenty of time to perform the necessary background research.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.

-R