I am in a massive garden, beautifully landscaped. Trickling streams crisscross the stone paths that lead to small wooden arch bridges. This is the garden of Yu Wu Lu, Chinese peasant and robotics genius. His creations wander the hedgerows. Today there is a festival (or does this happen everyday?) and his garden is having an open-house. There are some tables set up with spare parts, and children are invited to create their own machines. The children squat in the pathways, watching their contraptions. They all look down to the ground, absorbed. All I can see are the backs of their heads and their bowl haircuts. They all wear athletic gray sweatsuits.
I am in a black, windowless room with a high ceiling. I am in theater class. Brandon the instructor tells us that we'll be improvising award acceptance speeches. One of the walls lifts away revealing a gigantic green screen. The green is so vivid it's like having lime juice sprayed in your eyes. In front of the green screen is a diminutive podium (or is it a lectern?). The relative scale is something similar to that of George C. Scott standing in front of a monumental American flag in the opening scene of Patton.
Showing posts with label theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theatre. Show all posts
13 August 2010
23 April 2010
Day 113
Everyone loves a good villain.
Three years ago, I remember my high school put on a production of Miss Saigon, a musical adaptation of Madame Butterfly, but set during the Vietnam War. As you might imagine, the production fell a bit short of representing the complexity of the Vietnam War in its entirety, though I was secretly hoping for something more Rushmore-esque. Anyway, during intermission people were leaving in droves and not coming back. But I stuck it out. Was it for the hit-and-miss singing? No. Was it for the choreographed Viet Cong dance scene? No. I stayed for the Engineer.
Within the world of the play, the Engineer is a trafficker of sex slaves. The Engineer was also the most compelling character on the stage; the actor who played the Engineer had far more conviction in his role than anyone else. My point is, he was fascinating to watch.
Well, we're doing monologues in my intro acting class right now, and I've been assigned the role of a psychotic stalker-type. Though most people might simply write off my character as "evil" or "crazy," I've found that I've been forced to really think about what it is that pushes him to the edge.
The other night I spent some quality time with Anthony, my character. First he was in the bathroom mirror, and later he was staring at me through the window. There were some moments when I felt pretty uncomfortable making eye contact with him. That guy just gives me the willies.
Three years ago, I remember my high school put on a production of Miss Saigon, a musical adaptation of Madame Butterfly, but set during the Vietnam War. As you might imagine, the production fell a bit short of representing the complexity of the Vietnam War in its entirety, though I was secretly hoping for something more Rushmore-esque. Anyway, during intermission people were leaving in droves and not coming back. But I stuck it out. Was it for the hit-and-miss singing? No. Was it for the choreographed Viet Cong dance scene? No. I stayed for the Engineer.
Within the world of the play, the Engineer is a trafficker of sex slaves. The Engineer was also the most compelling character on the stage; the actor who played the Engineer had far more conviction in his role than anyone else. My point is, he was fascinating to watch.
Well, we're doing monologues in my intro acting class right now, and I've been assigned the role of a psychotic stalker-type. Though most people might simply write off my character as "evil" or "crazy," I've found that I've been forced to really think about what it is that pushes him to the edge.
The other night I spent some quality time with Anthony, my character. First he was in the bathroom mirror, and later he was staring at me through the window. There were some moments when I felt pretty uncomfortable making eye contact with him. That guy just gives me the willies.
11 April 2010
Day 101
Today I spent about an hour talking to myself. I normally try to project the conceit that I maintain some semblance of sanity, but no one else was home, so I decided to spend some quality time with myself in front of the mirror. I was trying to work on this self-written monologue assignment for my theatre class, but it wasn't really making any progress. So I thought that I'd have a conversation with myself to work things out.
It's been a long time since I've sat down with myself and had a nice, long talk. To be honest, it was a lot of fun. To be narcissistic, I'm pretty damn charming and witty. There were times when I couldn't but help burst into laughter. Maybe I really am crazy.
Well, I ended up burning through the better part of an hour without making any real progress, but the exercise itself was satisfying. It blew off a lot of people-anxiety stress that I accumulated at work yesterday. It was a much needed chance to make faces and talk in funny voices. I really don't think I'd ever need a TV if I just had a mirror. I wonder if that's what old people mean when they say that they had to make their own fun when they were young.
It's been a long time since I've sat down with myself and had a nice, long talk. To be honest, it was a lot of fun. To be narcissistic, I'm pretty damn charming and witty. There were times when I couldn't but help burst into laughter. Maybe I really am crazy.
Well, I ended up burning through the better part of an hour without making any real progress, but the exercise itself was satisfying. It blew off a lot of people-anxiety stress that I accumulated at work yesterday. It was a much needed chance to make faces and talk in funny voices. I really don't think I'd ever need a TV if I just had a mirror. I wonder if that's what old people mean when they say that they had to make their own fun when they were young.
05 March 2010
Day 64
I just got back from a play. It was an independent production put on by my school's theatre department. I still feel a bit disoriented. It was all over the place, touching on topics like labor rights, gender, sexuality, and the demon that is memory; a veritable boiling pot of psychoses dreamt up by college students. I think my favorite character, as listed on the playbill, was "The Sausage Man," a strange anachronistic apparition that haunts the dreams of troubled minds with his hand-held sausage grinder. I think I liked it best when his big bug eyes popped out from beneath the brim of his bowler hat, the clanking gears of his sausage grinder doing the talking for his fiendish smile.
If I let my imagination run too free, sometimes I forget where I am. Leaving the playhouse, walking back to my apartment, I traveled through an amazingly surreal world as the reality slowly began to seep back in. It more like percolated, really. It had to gurgle out of my mind and come back in splotches.
Friday nights in Berkeley, especially around the Telegraph Avenue area, are always filled with life. There are bubbly packs of girls in skirts. There are surly stags, waiting on street corners, cell phones in hand as they wait for the call. There are sirens blazing down the street to somewhere else, and it doesn't worry anybody because the sirens are headed somewhere else. There are the hot dogs sizzling in the hot dog shop (Top Dog is a Berkeley institution), and there are people dressed for a soirée clacking by.
I guess I better go to sleep now; I have work tomorrow.
If I let my imagination run too free, sometimes I forget where I am. Leaving the playhouse, walking back to my apartment, I traveled through an amazingly surreal world as the reality slowly began to seep back in. It more like percolated, really. It had to gurgle out of my mind and come back in splotches.
Friday nights in Berkeley, especially around the Telegraph Avenue area, are always filled with life. There are bubbly packs of girls in skirts. There are surly stags, waiting on street corners, cell phones in hand as they wait for the call. There are sirens blazing down the street to somewhere else, and it doesn't worry anybody because the sirens are headed somewhere else. There are the hot dogs sizzling in the hot dog shop (Top Dog is a Berkeley institution), and there are people dressed for a soirée clacking by.
I guess I better go to sleep now; I have work tomorrow.
12 February 2010
Day 43
Today after theater class I got totally lost. The class is held in Zellerbach hall, which is also a working stage/performance hall. The class meets in a subterranean practice room, which we refer to as Room 7. Everyday, I enter Zellerbach hall through the side stage entrance, show my ID at the security desk, and proceed to descend four flights of concrete stairs into the bunker that is Room 7.
When we met for class today, we found that some of our prop furniture (plywood blocks that we refer to as "acting cubes") was missing, so I was sent on an expedition to purloin replacements from Room 317. Let me begin by saying that whatever crazed phantom designed Zellerbach must surely have had quite the affinity for cement as a construction material. Surely, no sturdier hall has ever been built, for even when I was on the third floor, the dingy, gray hallways always gave me the feeling of being underground. The endless twists and turns through the labyrinth's identical hallways and stairwells left me utterly disoriented inside the concrete beast.
After a final flight of stairs, I made it to the fabled Room 317, a strange parallel universe of Room 7. Then began the business of returning with the borrowed acting cubes. It was a good upper body workout. I had a sweat going by the time I made it back, navigating the narrow, claustrophic hallways and their fireproof steel doors.
At the end of class, I had to return the acting cubes, so to save time I tried to use the freight elevator. It finally arrived and I undid the metal latch that sealed the elevator's gaping steel mouth that opened horizontally down the middle and the big steel plates slid away. I loaded my freight of acting cubes and headed for the third floor. It had a pretty creepy aura inside the elevator, what with the graffiti and the rickety clanging noises and the open-air roof, a glimpse of skylight in the distance.
I made it to the third floor and undid the steel latch. I slid the thick steel plates apart and I found myself immediately confronted with a small, bare space: a fluorescent ceiling lamp and a set of double doors, chained and locked shut.
East of Eden completion: 66%
When we met for class today, we found that some of our prop furniture (plywood blocks that we refer to as "acting cubes") was missing, so I was sent on an expedition to purloin replacements from Room 317. Let me begin by saying that whatever crazed phantom designed Zellerbach must surely have had quite the affinity for cement as a construction material. Surely, no sturdier hall has ever been built, for even when I was on the third floor, the dingy, gray hallways always gave me the feeling of being underground. The endless twists and turns through the labyrinth's identical hallways and stairwells left me utterly disoriented inside the concrete beast.
After a final flight of stairs, I made it to the fabled Room 317, a strange parallel universe of Room 7. Then began the business of returning with the borrowed acting cubes. It was a good upper body workout. I had a sweat going by the time I made it back, navigating the narrow, claustrophic hallways and their fireproof steel doors.
At the end of class, I had to return the acting cubes, so to save time I tried to use the freight elevator. It finally arrived and I undid the metal latch that sealed the elevator's gaping steel mouth that opened horizontally down the middle and the big steel plates slid away. I loaded my freight of acting cubes and headed for the third floor. It had a pretty creepy aura inside the elevator, what with the graffiti and the rickety clanging noises and the open-air roof, a glimpse of skylight in the distance.
I made it to the third floor and undid the steel latch. I slid the thick steel plates apart and I found myself immediately confronted with a small, bare space: a fluorescent ceiling lamp and a set of double doors, chained and locked shut.
East of Eden completion: 66%
27 January 2010
Day 27
I suppose there are several things to remark upon today:
First. This morning I had theatre class, and we focused on sensory experiences, in which we paired up, with one person blindfolded and one person leading the other around campus to show the blindfolded one "snapshots." Walking without sight is pretty daunting at first, but I got to trusting my guide pretty quickly. The snapshots I got to see were of birds and squirrels hopping around campus, doing their business, along with a really green patch of ivy. I suppose the sense deprivation made the colors pretty vibrant, because I don't recall ivy ever being quite that green.
Second. I have a lot going for myself: not only do I eat three meals a day, but I also have access to hot and cold running water. Additionally, I live with four walls and central heating, I have a soft bed, and I receive a heavily-subsidized public university education. Things are going pretty awesome by global/historical standards. That said, I still kind of want to live in a yurt on the steppes.
Third. Today I added a friend. No, not on The Facebook, but in The Reality. Julie the Marine Scientist will be there for me in physics lab/discussion when I need to talk to someone about the geomorphology of islands or NPR. Which is pretty freakin' sweet, because those two-hour long labs/discussions sure get awful lonely when I only have my old pal, Newtonian physics, to keep me company.
First. This morning I had theatre class, and we focused on sensory experiences, in which we paired up, with one person blindfolded and one person leading the other around campus to show the blindfolded one "snapshots." Walking without sight is pretty daunting at first, but I got to trusting my guide pretty quickly. The snapshots I got to see were of birds and squirrels hopping around campus, doing their business, along with a really green patch of ivy. I suppose the sense deprivation made the colors pretty vibrant, because I don't recall ivy ever being quite that green.
Second. I have a lot going for myself: not only do I eat three meals a day, but I also have access to hot and cold running water. Additionally, I live with four walls and central heating, I have a soft bed, and I receive a heavily-subsidized public university education. Things are going pretty awesome by global/historical standards. That said, I still kind of want to live in a yurt on the steppes.
Third. Today I added a friend. No, not on The Facebook, but in The Reality. Julie the Marine Scientist will be there for me in physics lab/discussion when I need to talk to someone about the geomorphology of islands or NPR. Which is pretty freakin' sweet, because those two-hour long labs/discussions sure get awful lonely when I only have my old pal, Newtonian physics, to keep me company.
23 January 2010
Day 23
I had my first theatre class on Friday, and I have to admit that I'm pretty pumped for the coming semester of acting. For a long time, I was pretty apprehensive about the whole idea of acting, taking an even puritanical view in thinking that it was a form of fakery or deception. I thought that it would be insincere, fake, and, worst of all, phony, to pretend to be anyone but myself.
I've come a long way since then in terms of how I define "myself." In my Tibetan Buddhism class last year, I even toyed with the idea of tossing out the whole notion of self altogether. I've evolved my definition of self to encompass a wider range of personages and identities, each with an appropriate application depending on my company, the weather, my mood, the alignment of the stars, and so forth. So I'm a whole lot less troubled these days by the fear that I might be that dreaded word: phony.
I'm looking forward to discovering and developing new selves, as well as meeting all of the other interesting sorts of characters in my class.
I've come a long way since then in terms of how I define "myself." In my Tibetan Buddhism class last year, I even toyed with the idea of tossing out the whole notion of self altogether. I've evolved my definition of self to encompass a wider range of personages and identities, each with an appropriate application depending on my company, the weather, my mood, the alignment of the stars, and so forth. So I'm a whole lot less troubled these days by the fear that I might be that dreaded word: phony.
I'm looking forward to discovering and developing new selves, as well as meeting all of the other interesting sorts of characters in my class.
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