3 December
A terrible thing is happening. I'm becoming one of those actors that I hate. Not hate, but laugh at and despise a just little.
I'm sitting here at my desk and I can't wait to get to rehearsal tonight! I hate rehearsing! I find it a bore! I think that actors who are in love with rehearing are tiresome idiots! You know, unless they are my friends and they read this.
Also, I am doing the supremely ridiculous thing of staying in character off-stage--I don't mean walking around town, but when I leave the stage for a page or two in the show, I go backstage to hide, and by golly I hide! I have never done that in my life!
Well, once actually, but there were extenuating circumstances. I was doing the show The Man With a Flower in His Mouth and if you know the show and are now saying "There is no female character in that show!" you are quite right, I was added. You see, the guy telling the story talks about his wife on several occasions, and Le wanted me to cross the back of the stage like a ghost whenever he mentioned me. It was highly effective.
Anyway, the wings were very shallow, only about four feet deep, and there was no-place for me to go, so when Scott had to walk to the wing where I was standing and scream at me, I was right in his face, so I would cower and shake and crouch against the wall.
One time he thanked me for acting with him, even though the audience couldn't see me, and I said that I was so close to him, what else could I do, make faces? Stare into space? Spit in his eye? There was nothing else to do that wouldn't have been very bad actor manners but react to his lines and give him something to play off of.
Well, in this show, nobody is onstage acting with me off, but still, when I run to hide, I cower and shake and crouch against the wall. Maybe it's the wall. Maybe I just like the cowering. Who knows.
It's not just that, you know, there is more. I pretty much get into character when I walk into the rehearsal and don't drop it until after I have gone. I'm in character for notes. I'm in character eating my bagel. It's all very obnoxious, though I don't think that anyone can tell but me, as it's not really obvious.
It's not as actory as it sounds, though, it's just that the characterization that I have chosen is about two steps away from me, if that many, and yes, I am aware that the character is an insane homeless woman--the characterization is of someone hopelessly in love but cannot tell the person how she feels.
Sound familiar?
This characterization is not in the script, but is absolutely supported by the text, and I'm not being entirely obvious about it anyway. In fact, one of the things that I have decided that I like about doing this show with Brian rather than Omar is that I barely know him. We haven't exchanged more than a couple of sentences off-stage, and this rehearsal process has been so short that I haven't had a chance to get to know him. And since my character absolutely is completely in love with his character, but she doesn't really know him, it's more of an idolization (just my style), it's absolutely perfect that I haven't got anything real about Brian crowding my head. He's big and cute and nice and that's all I need to know. Specifics would just make me have to work harder.
And the best bit, I think, is that neither Herman the character nor Brian the actor have a clue as to how my character is feeling. Neither, I think, does the director. No-one knows what I have decided that this play is about. It's my secret.
I'm being so emotional with this part, and I'm not an emotional actor, I'm very technical, I can follow a note like "Take two steps, turn on that line, pause between this word and this word," but the other day Laura told me to speed up my big speech, and I didn't know if I could do it? She said that I can't play the end of the speech at the beginning, there has to be a journey, which is a note that I would give, but all I could say was, "I'll try, I might not be able to do that right now."
Man, I am the director who always tells her actors, "You cannot pause meaningfully on every single line, or nothing means anything, you have to pick your moments," but now I'm the one who has imbued every line with such meaning that I think that maybe I am guilty of that very thing. I need to be vigilant against self-indulgent acting. Me! I find this to be completely startling.
I find myself constantly reaching out to Herman, he is my true north, I find my hand always reaching towards him. That's a psychological gesture, that is, which is a movement that you make instead of the thing that the character cannot say, and it's so psychological that I didn't actually realize that I was doing it for quite some time.
You see, the show is about my homeless character, Rose, and this doorman, Herman, who lets her stay in his building at night, and I figure that he is the only regular straight person who treats her like she's real. Every other line I have is about how she worries about him getting hurt or losing his job, and I think that she thinks that he hung the moon--she would walk in front of a truck for him without hesitation.
The worst thing that she can possibly imagine is him losing his job, because if he loses his job maybe he'll end up on the street like her, and he doesn't know how to live like that--he'd probably die. She knows that her being in the building jeopardizes his job, but she can't stay away, and not only because it's so cold, but because she must be near him in order to live.
She also knows perfectly well that she can never have him, it's not even something that she considers, it's like loving a movie star. She can never be normal and live a normal life, and what does she think, that he'll take her home to meet his parents and say, "Mom, Dad, this is Rose, we met when I tripped over her on the sidewalk one day!" Of course not. And his becoming homeless is out of the question. And it's not as though there is any future anyway, it's all about the now, am I hungry now, am I cold now, am I with Herman now.
So it's all about being near what you can never have, but cannot stay away from. It's about reaching but never getting, it's about yearning and wanting and not having. This will not be what you see when you read or see the play, you will see a story about two homeless women given shelter on the coldest Christmas Eve on record by a kind doorman whom they reward by promising to show him a miracle, it will not be what the other actors or the director sees in the play, but it is how I am performing the play.
This may be the most actory thing I have ever written. You want to know the inner working of an emotional actor's mind? This is it, baby. I'm just a visitor here myself.
But I do want to make clear that if anyone ever catches me talking seriously about "the craft" you are quite free to shoot me in the head.
Today's
horoscope:
Your friends give you an opportunity to try something new. Keep an open mind."
One year ago today:
"Ah, the brave little soldier, what a Spartan she is, laughing through her tears, the sad clown!"
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Last Updated Mon 3 December 14:14:09 2001