Line!
Sometimes this is harder than it looks.
I got through that first off-book rehearsal pretty well, but maybe too well. I took a rest (as much as I can in this 95 degree heat and with this nasty ass cold) and seem to have backslid a bit. Today was a rough rehearsal, I was stumbling over lines I know I know, stuff I've had for ages.
The thing is, I think I was second guessing and double thinking because of a conversation I had last night. One of our actresses and I had a chat last night when she was quite drunk where she sort of laid into me. It's not really worth going into many of the specifics of the conversation, and she did apologize to me first thing this morning, which I really appreciated, but ultimately the debate was over acting styles. She's just come out of a "theatre training school" one which, while I haven't heard of it, she compares to NYU and Julliard. She's very concerned with technique and motivations and homework and theatrical buzzwords. She doesn't like to be talked to out of character backstage. I'm much more about working in the moment, reacting to the person I'm dealing with as things progress, being open to change and intuition, and when I walk offstage, my character ceases to exist. Our styles clash, to say the least. The problem seems to be that while I respect the way she chooses to work, she sees the way I work as lazy and was quite hostile and disrespectful last night.
I can shrug most of that off without too much problem, and in fact, some of the other actors suggested she may be intentionally causing hostility between us, because our characters frequently fight, and she may be using that as a technique for more "realism" on stage. OK. The thing is, she hit me one place that hurt. She attacked my accent (we are using british accents in this piece) and it's something I'm struggling with on this show.
My character is lower middle class, which means that he's going to have a lower class accent. But he's a social climber, in a job that is somewhat above his status, so his accent isn't going to be Cockney, per se, but it's also not going to be posh. It's somewhere in the middle. And I think trying to find this middle ground is muddling me up quite a bit. The one time I feel solid in my dialect is in a scene where I come in drunk, and we've made the choice that since he's drunk, he slips back into more of a Cockney sound.
Anyway, I think part of the problem I was having today was that I kept half-listening to myself to see how my accent sounded, and when I'm as tentative on the lines as I am, plus half-muddled because of this damn cold that refuses to go away, I ended up being kind of a mess. I've now spent the majority of my evening going over my lines again and again, writing them out, speaking them out loud, working with Jenna, one of the other actresses in the show... Hopefully things will be better tomorrow. But it does worry me for when we get to the next show, the one where I have a much bigger line load. But no accent, so maybe that will help.
It never feels good when the one line you get from the director at the end of the night, two days after off-book date, is "get your lines down." But he was right. I was a mess today.
In other news, I continue to melt from the 95 degree heat, my throat has not improved, my cough is worse, and I still miss Erin nearly every single moment of the day.
But I think this will be a good show in the end. And that's what matters. Right?
Oh, also, back home the Drammy Awards were held tonight. Erin's last show, Wild Party, took home three awards - Actor, Actress and Choreography. All were deserved, and it's very exciting for her, especially since she was the Dance Captain, and as such, shares a bit in the Choreography award. On the other hand, Tales of Ordinary Madness and Robin Hood were both completely snubbed, which makes me sad. I was hopeful for Kendall getting another Fight Choreography award for Robin Hood, and the fact that Dalene didn't win an award for Tales means someone just wasn't paying attention. And personally, I thought Tales deserved an Ensemble award as well. Of course, we're all biased toward shows we worked on, so what do I know?
I'm also sad that Emily and Katy weren't recognized in the tech awards. Though I'm not sure who did win, and I'm sure they were deserving. We should give more tech awards. We'd be lost without them, and we barely acknowledge them.
I got through that first off-book rehearsal pretty well, but maybe too well. I took a rest (as much as I can in this 95 degree heat and with this nasty ass cold) and seem to have backslid a bit. Today was a rough rehearsal, I was stumbling over lines I know I know, stuff I've had for ages.
The thing is, I think I was second guessing and double thinking because of a conversation I had last night. One of our actresses and I had a chat last night when she was quite drunk where she sort of laid into me. It's not really worth going into many of the specifics of the conversation, and she did apologize to me first thing this morning, which I really appreciated, but ultimately the debate was over acting styles. She's just come out of a "theatre training school" one which, while I haven't heard of it, she compares to NYU and Julliard. She's very concerned with technique and motivations and homework and theatrical buzzwords. She doesn't like to be talked to out of character backstage. I'm much more about working in the moment, reacting to the person I'm dealing with as things progress, being open to change and intuition, and when I walk offstage, my character ceases to exist. Our styles clash, to say the least. The problem seems to be that while I respect the way she chooses to work, she sees the way I work as lazy and was quite hostile and disrespectful last night.
I can shrug most of that off without too much problem, and in fact, some of the other actors suggested she may be intentionally causing hostility between us, because our characters frequently fight, and she may be using that as a technique for more "realism" on stage. OK. The thing is, she hit me one place that hurt. She attacked my accent (we are using british accents in this piece) and it's something I'm struggling with on this show.
My character is lower middle class, which means that he's going to have a lower class accent. But he's a social climber, in a job that is somewhat above his status, so his accent isn't going to be Cockney, per se, but it's also not going to be posh. It's somewhere in the middle. And I think trying to find this middle ground is muddling me up quite a bit. The one time I feel solid in my dialect is in a scene where I come in drunk, and we've made the choice that since he's drunk, he slips back into more of a Cockney sound.
Anyway, I think part of the problem I was having today was that I kept half-listening to myself to see how my accent sounded, and when I'm as tentative on the lines as I am, plus half-muddled because of this damn cold that refuses to go away, I ended up being kind of a mess. I've now spent the majority of my evening going over my lines again and again, writing them out, speaking them out loud, working with Jenna, one of the other actresses in the show... Hopefully things will be better tomorrow. But it does worry me for when we get to the next show, the one where I have a much bigger line load. But no accent, so maybe that will help.
It never feels good when the one line you get from the director at the end of the night, two days after off-book date, is "get your lines down." But he was right. I was a mess today.
In other news, I continue to melt from the 95 degree heat, my throat has not improved, my cough is worse, and I still miss Erin nearly every single moment of the day.
But I think this will be a good show in the end. And that's what matters. Right?
Oh, also, back home the Drammy Awards were held tonight. Erin's last show, Wild Party, took home three awards - Actor, Actress and Choreography. All were deserved, and it's very exciting for her, especially since she was the Dance Captain, and as such, shares a bit in the Choreography award. On the other hand, Tales of Ordinary Madness and Robin Hood were both completely snubbed, which makes me sad. I was hopeful for Kendall getting another Fight Choreography award for Robin Hood, and the fact that Dalene didn't win an award for Tales means someone just wasn't paying attention. And personally, I thought Tales deserved an Ensemble award as well. Of course, we're all biased toward shows we worked on, so what do I know?
I'm also sad that Emily and Katy weren't recognized in the tech awards. Though I'm not sure who did win, and I'm sure they were deserving. We should give more tech awards. We'd be lost without them, and we barely acknowledge them.
Labels: Barn
posted by Brian at 9:28 PM
1 Comments:
Yes, the Drammys were QUITE surprising and dull this year.
Post a Comment
<< Home