Movement with Yo-Cassel: Day 4 Prejournal

I'm trying a new experiment for my first return to movement with Yo-el and the Comm Shakes apprentices after my four day hiatus, blogging before hand my thoughts and feelings coming in to the class.

As you might have read previously, last session we all participated an hour long exercise in observation in Boston Common, and as you might have further gleaned, I didn't have an easy time with it. I think Unpacking the experience just now in the shower (which was a continuation of an on going process starting with the exercise itself) I think I had an epiphany. My difficulty in the exercise could be boiled down to an inability to get out of my head. That I was having difficulty at all was ironic, because to be frank, I'm a very experienced people watcher going back at least to when I first discovered poetry in high school... but maybe even further back, to when I was young and would sit by myself at recess or lunch and just watch the other kids or adults or what have you. At a certain point, I started connecting this activity to my craft as an actor as my craft itself began to expand and open up, I found ways of applying casual observation and more focused "people watching" in my everyday life, and this practice has definitely affected my work. But the thing I've learned to watch for and try to puzzle out is not necessarily the other person's physicality, as is the focus in this class and which I have done at times but less than the times when I've tried to watch for another person's mental state. How are they feeling? What are they thinking about? What are they looking at, how does that thing make them see or feel? And in the case of this exercise, I was watching the people and trying to answer the questions on my survey "what's dance like about their movement, what are their surroundings, is there a soundtrack, are there any props"etc. The first thing which happened was I lost sight of the act of observation. Instead of just observing, I was trying to observe and trying to find answers to these questions and subjects with compelling responses. The second thing was the observed individual became aware of me watching them. Third, I became aware that they were aware of me, and this brought me even further into my head, until I completely lost the exercise except for a few cursory notes on some homeless guys' physicality and mannerisms as they thought some guy was trying to narc on them, which made me feel even worse and stranger and more in my head about the whole voyeur relationship I was sort of forcing onto these people.

And then at the end, I did have a meaningful and uplifting experience, like many of my classmates when I found the saxophone player in the public garden, beautifully and simply playing a jazzed up rendition of "You Are My Sunshine". I'm not sure if Yo-el wants for us to think ahead about what elements to include in our pieces, but I do know I want to somehow incorporate that melody. And moving forward in my work, an increased awareness of physicality in my everyday observation, not trying to observe physicality but just seeing it in people and feeling it, instead of thinking it. This brings me back to my motivation in the first place for taking the course, getting out of my head and into my body from moment to moment in my life and on stage. Here goes!

Another Epiphany!

Increasingly I suspect that these blog posts about Three Sisters and my character work on Tuzenbach are only interesting to me... but who knows! Maybe not! Someone must read them, even if it's just my Mom. (hi Mom!)

Well, anyway tonight was our first Three Sisters rehearsal in like two weeks. I can't think of the last time I had that much of a gap between rehearsals of a play, unless it was like a read through. In the meantime, I've been off in the land of improv and auditions and seeing shows and stuff, you know? In fact, in the time since we last rehearsed, I rehearsed and shot a presentation of another show, joined the cast of another, had three auditions, and went to four theatrical performances.

So tonight, I was dropped back into the world of Chekhov and those three crazy sisters, amIright? I'm still figuring out how aware Tuzenbach is of how creepy his obsession with Irina is because it's pretty... yeah, I want to say delusional. We talked in rehearsal in the contrast between Tuzenbach and Solyony, both of whom are in love with Irina. In his mind, Solyony has cast himself as the romantic lead in his own story and he lashes out at people who don't share or contradict that viewpoint, whereas Tuzenbach on an almost metaphysical level (since Chekhov has written him this way) has been unwittingly cast as the TRAGIC lead in a romantic love story, one seemingly modeled on... wait for it, The Sorrows of Young Werther. Oh, wait wait wait! That's why he's German... he's an echo of Goethe's Werther! Arguably the original and quintessential tragic romantic hero, whom when he is unable to possess the affections of his beloved, kills himself. Just like Tuzenbach. Sad, I know.

I think the literary universe of Chekhov is very interesting. The plays are full of these allusions. I think my case for Tuzenbach as Werther is supported by Chebyutkin who references a group of intellectuals discussing him. Likewise, Ron (aka Vershinin aka Astrov) and I were discussing in Uncle Vanya Telegin's line "A plot worthy of Tolstoy" and it's ability to always get a laugh. Then in the Seagull there's this whole thing of Konstantin being compared to Hamlet, etc. Clearly the guy was very well read, as were the characters in his plays. Tuzenbach's counterpart Solyony is always comparing himself to Lermontov, who Scott (who's playing Solyony) told me wrote this one sort of adventure novel about this guy who fights duels and sleeps around, which is essentially what Lermontov was doing at the time and Solyony wishes he were doing.

Well, I could keep going, but I won't. In other news, the next few days will be busy. Tomorrow night I have a call back for Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead at Apollinaire, Tuesday is the first rehearsal for that show I joined up with, then my acting class with Carolyn Pickman then my first jam session with some musicians I found online. Then for the rest of the week... who even knows! I'll try and blog about it after it happens.