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October 19, 2004
Bad Actor
I didn't know my lines tonight. And we're supposed to be off book. Of course, we only found out a week ago that we were supposed to be off book as of Sunday (because the stage manager was waiting to give us the schedule until she had tech week ironed out and hadn't thought of giving us the rest of the schedule when she got it). But I should have known my lines anyway.
It doesn't help that the scene we worked is one in which I have a number of non-sequitirs and repetitions (with slight variations) and monologues from nowhere. Lines are so easy to learn if I know why I say them, and this scene, for the most part, has always seemed to come from Mars, as far as my character is concerned. So even working the lines over and over had done nothing to make them stick. We spent a lot of time tonight trying to figure out why I say what I say. And, of course, as soon as those things were clear, the lines just tumbled out of my mouth, no problem.
I always need to know why I say my lines. What I want. And when it's completely unclear to me (because I'm well-adjusted and a thinker, not a crazy, dysfunctional reactor), I can repeat and repeat and repeat my lines and they won't mean a fucking thing.
So I come home from rehearsal feeling guilty, because I wasted everyone else's time because I didn't know my lines. And I'm the professional. I'm the graduate student. Everyone should be able to rely on me and trust me and look to me as an example. And I failed them. Just as I will fail them tomorrow evening when we cover the other scene like this one. Big chunks of page that are all me with pointless monologues about my childhood and craziness and random thoughts. Fortunately, the director and I are meeting for lunch tomorrow, to talk that scene through so I'll have that information before rehearsal. But still. I'll have to find time to go over and over and over it sometime between then and 6:30, and that time is all pretty much booked.
Why is Shakespeare so much easier to memorize than modern prose? The meter, I suppose, for a start. And the fact that nobody hides anything. It's all perfectly clear. You know why a character is saying what they're saying. They tell you why. They don't play Scrabble and talk about their childhood and sleeping in "a heaven of white sheets" on the living room floor when they really want to say something else. What else they want to say is, of course, never made clear, so I have no way of knowing what the subtext should be. GAAAAAAAAH!
In other news, Poly was weighed at the vet on Saturday (and oohed over and fondled). He weighs 8 1/2 lbs. That's what Quickly should weigh. He's HUGE.
Posted by sally at October 19, 2004 10:06 PM
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