Missing

I miss school and sitting in a classroom where my only worry was squaring an imaginary number and trying to make it real.

Failure #2

Today I quit the Berkoff play.

 

It had been causing me a lot of stress.  I was shooting off energy in all sorts of directions, not sure where to go or what to do.  It didn't seem feasible to be learning an entire play as well as learning four monologues and working before the end of the year, so after much deliberation, I rang up and quit.

 

And what a relief.

 

I have to have a bit of a think before I go barging on again.  I have a tendency to throw all my energy into a certain path, only to realise I've been heading in the wrong direction.  Such is the nature of total madness!!

 

But I am determined to head lightly this time, going a bit slower, and a bit more carefully.

 

Sydney

Haha, I was reading through the previous post and I can't remember what I meant to say (like who the hell is C and D??). But updating it the best I can -

So the third show I saw on the Friday of the Edinburgh festival was Ruhe. Ruhe was this beautiful German production, a mixture of choral music and monologues from people who went through the war. The audience was sat in a round and when everyone was seated, a men's choir stood up on their chairs, scattered around the audience, wearing plain clothes, and singing in angelic tune. As the strains of Schubert floated over the heads of the audience, two actors would interject with their monologues and walk through the audience. It was really a grand experience. The last show I saw on that day was Edges, which was a woeful experience which left me very disappointed and disenchanted. Edges was the show that my friends had written in New York, and that I was trying to get up in Sydney, but after watching that disastrous show I don't think I want to put it on ever unless I feel like I can do it right. All four actors were supposedly musical theatre graduates but lo, were they woeful. The main guy couldn't even sing in tune. The songs in the show are so truthful and honest and these guys ruined it completely. I wouldn't have minded so much had they been some kids who were just trying to give it a go, but the fact that they were graduates ruined it for me. When someone pours their heart and soul into writing such great music and lyrics, it's offensive not to be the best vessel/instrument possible you can be to deliver the text.

Anyway, all was not lost. The following morning I went to see Pornography, a new play by Simon Stephens about the London bombings. This was an inspiring experience for me in terms of the translation of the text to performance. The performance was structured such that the seven or eight characters in the show overlapped their various monologuey bits, often crossing into each other's space and revolving around each other on the stage. When I opened up the play having happily bought it from the Traverse bookshop, I realised that the text was written entirely as seven monologues, not cut up or disjointed at all. The play I saw didn't even start with the same character as indicated in the text, nor with the same lines. A small note at the bottom of the page noted that the play could be performed in any order, by any number of actors. This was truly eye-opening for me, and made me think about new ways I could structure a play. Afterwards, I was having lunch with friends when I ran into one of the actors from the show. I had seen him perform before on Broadway, and had thought he was quite cute and talented. Anyway, so I started chatting to him and turns out he was just a normal working actor. So I had a good yak then added him on Facebook and realised he's like the same age as me, which I think is a really great thing that now I can see all this acting stuff is becoming more of a reality for me, in that I no longer get starry eyed when I meet a normal working actor and that I am in it enough to be able to be friends on Facebook.