The Calm Before The Storm
Jan. 29th, 2012 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tokyograndpaSo, this is my first week back at uni, and with that comes one thing.
No, not schoolwork. Silly.
INTERNET.
Not that I didn't have internet at home, mind. I just had all of my games to distract.
(By which I mean constant level-grinding, of pokemon and chao and cyframes and TOS GRADE...)
(Though now that I mention it, it occurs that the level-grinding is only half of what I've been doing- I've also been doing fucktonnes of research, on RPGs and on Commedia dell'Arte, but more on that in a moment. So, in this way I have been using the internet, not to mention the inevitable tv tropes readdiction for the new project my sister and I started. I just haven't been on any blogging sites or social networking or or anything like that; no tumblr or facebook, very little twitter, no dw or lj...)
But, more importantly, I've also been spending my time on something else: REHEARSALS.
Yes, I'm in a play again! Ah, what a wonderful feeling it is. I've been falling apart waiting to meet with the wardrobe head over it, but sometimes in life we just have to wait for things, yes?
The best part is yet to come though- I have a lead.
A lead. Me!
A lead.
I have one.
It's called Commedia dell Smartass, and is yet another modern-day take on the forms and themes of Commedia Dell'Arte tradition, which I have yet again gone rather apeshit studying. Though, unlike Of Widows And Vegetables, the cast is playing high-schoolers, and also there's only four of us.
Yeah, only four people in the production. It's hard not to be a lead in such a small ensemble, and frankly I'd be the first to admit that my character is probably the most easily dropped from the story. But? I still have the best character. (And, like Widows, I'm playing this fourth-wall-breaking meta character that was assigned to me on first sight, and I am most often complemented onstage by A Cute Guy who has strong physicality and light curly hair. Commedias are the best and I will never have as much fun being in a production as I do in these I SWEAR.)
Where was I?
Let me begin at the beginning, I suppose. I'd gotten the list of plays for the Winter Shorts Festival, which is a two-weekend show of various one-act plays that have been selected by the staff for students and friends of the Drama Studio to partake in.
The shows were almost entirely student-written this year (the Commedia being the exception), and were.... pretty fucking lacklustre, actually. It turns out that one of them is more fun than previously expected, but this is still not shaping up to be a very impressive festival, all things considered.
I still went to audition. I don't know what I was expecting, only that I knew about the Commedia by mention of my teacher last year, and I knew there was a Clown character in it. So I was pretty fucking excited, actually, because it is just impossible to comprehend my adoration of theatre Clowning tradition and and and fooling (especially Shakespearean fooling, which I have observed *_* and want like burning) and and commedia and and cursing teenagers, man.
Uguu.
So I get into the auditions, and the director is like "you, read Girl Scout and you, be Clown" and I was just like "YESS" and we went up.
The audition piece we did was Girl Scout's White House monologue, and my job was to use mime and physicality to respond to and punctuate her plans.
I had about two mimes that were explosively successful, seeing as how every single person in the room burst out laughing, and the rest was strung together by constant involvement and my overall physicality (THANK YOU, movement training! boohyah!). My sister jokingly insisted that she'd sue if I didn't get the part, so overall I'm imagining I did quite well.
And then the email came that yes, in fact I DID get the part, and not only that but I'd be cast against a couple of people that I adore. RM, who is a great friend of my sister and who I'd done a nice intense family scene with in a class last year, and SO, who's a guy that I very much appreciate and admire and am on pretty good terms with. (There was also SM, but he's a newbie, so none of us knew him. Yet.) We later picked up TM as a stage manager (which is good, because we all love him and miss him and also he goes to my college and stuff), and with our director MP (I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting him yet, but I was about to) we were good to go!
The read-through went well, we got along great and made plenty of wisecracks. Also SO and MP showed off the Pokemon cards that they keep in their wallets. DID I MENTION I LIKE MY GROUP OKAY. Our director has a motherfucking HOLOGRAPHIC ANCIENT MEW OKAY, FUCKYEAH. In his WALLET.
Fuckin' love these guys.
And, of course, every single one of us has more than the average passing knowledge of Pokemon, because we are all the very best. 8D Like no one ever fucking was.
And we made SM share facts about himself as a penalty because he was late, and also because he was a total stranger to us.
As we got farther on in the play, it dawned on us that this was a heavy play. This was an intense play. This was a raunchy play. This was, as the secretary noted, a Dirty Play. This was not a play to invite kids to. It has about every thing you can think of to incense a parent, and some you didn't!
And it is glorious.
I mean, not only that, but it has pretty much everything a play could or should have! Fights, dances, kisses, stripping, music, a dream sequence, a clown, strong character arcs, love triangles, slapstick, swords, vulnerable character moments, drunkenness, and an obscured storyline whose facts are slowly revealed in the grand conclusion scene. VERY satisfying show to be a part of, and I'm immensely gratified to be able to participate.
(It's definitely better written than Widows, though it doesn't draw its humour from witty dialogue in the same way, so there's something. One point to the zucchini!)
The cast and characters of Commedia Dell Smartass as we know them are as follows.
Henry: The everyman. The Arthur Dent. A sarcastic loser with an alcoholic mother whose greatest dream is to just get to college already. Arguably plays the role of commedia's Arlecchino (or Harlequin to you plebes), and yet arguably is too much of a Sane Man to be any archetype. We're playing up the geeky side of him, with nigh-excessive Pokemon and Star Wars, which is of course wicked fun. SO is much more toned-down in this role than I'm used to... buuut that just because I'm used to him being the de facto leader of the comedy improv troupe, and his past couple roles included a foppish airheaded prince and Peter Pan. So really, anything would be more toned-down. XD But good for him, I say. The kid's thinking about applying to fucking Julliard and you know what? I believe he could handle it. ...He should still step off and let the director direct us though, and spend more time learning his lines than being a frazzled almost-diva. And I kinda don't even care that he might hate me by this point. But hey.
Fencer: Il Capitano, and I'll challenge any who say otherwise. His commedia role is absolutely non-negotiable. If you know anything about Commedia Dell'Arte characters, that should be enough information already, but just in case you don't I'll summarise- a swaggering narcissistic 'jock' who vainly pursues a love interest he'll never end up with. This incarnation though, I must say is far more savvy and manipulative than is typical for the archetype, as has been noted. He's the driving action, and it's his plan that we see unfold. SM plays him, and as it's the first time I've seen him there isn't terribly much I can say. Though I will note that despite being a generally charming fellow, the guy just canNOT read lines. ;A; I want to call him out for being an awful public speaker, but I'm hoping he'll improve enough in time? It's speaking to quickly, slurring lines, and not enunciating clearly. He's also clumsy as all hell, and I jibe him incessantly for the sheer magnitude of times he's hurt himself during this production. (And because he makes me tsuntsun, for no reason whatsoever.) Not to mention that he's rather a terrible kisser- and as the level of cute that he is decreases, the level of desiring to castrate him with the damn foil for not having some strong mint chewing gum increases! And he should stop fucking slobbering, it's like becoming not even worth it to watch him... practice. And he's an ass about SO being a moment killer for his kiss, but then turns around and forgets that his next line is to kiss me. To say nothing of the history arguments we've gotten into...
Girl Scout (aka Girl Guide XD): Her name is revealed to be Sheila, which is important because I have this *thing* about named characters and only she and Henry receive names. She's pretty much commedia's Colombina, not really up for dispute either, in temperament as much as in role. The Girl Scout is an ambitious overachiever, plucky and dedicated. She doesn't socialise much because of all the time she spends working, either selling cookies or volunteering at a substance abuse centre. She starts off as rather a paragon of virtue, but of course every character must be robbed of their innocence in a commedia. At least with Sheila, she steps off her pedestal herself- though she is given a bit of a push, as I think she discovers. Sheila is played by RM, who in our eyes I think follows her character's path. At least, everyone's considered her to be the most mature and reserved, and working with or watching her in this play can shake your conceptions of her if you know her. The kissing is part of that- girl kisses every single character, which I think is still a feat even though there's only four of us. Also the flipping the bird. And the drinking. (We've together lamented how the dance teacher's daughters may never see us the same way again, if they come to see the show. We've also together lamented how little we want to kiss SM again.) I like her, and I'm really enjoying the time we're getting to spend together and I'm glad that we've become friends. Nice girl, funny, thinks I'm funny, good to know her. ^^ Such a bro-sis.
Clown: And at last we come to the best part. I was given hints of the later commedia's beloved Pierrot, and the research I've accumulated has only reinforced that assumption tenfold. Clown is not only the most visually entertaining character in the show, and imo the most fun to play (though perhaps not by much XD), but Clown provides the biggest source of audience surprise in the whole show. And that is awesome. Frankly, you can tell the Clown is the best character because I can describe everyone else really well without dropping too-massive spoilers for them. And Clown? Not so much. You may notice that I have not yet referred to Clown with a pronoun. This is because I'm not sure of gender, mostly if Clown is trans* or not. A girl who is referred to with male pronouns by peers and binds her breasts (scripted!)- but is also a VERY active performing artist and mime who doesn't speak, even to correct wrong opinions. So it could go either way. (Also, due to multiple ways of playing each the kisses with Girl Scout and Fencer, sexuality is just as easy to reinterpret as gender identity.) I am personally playing the Clown as a female, because that makes sense to me, but if someone asked my opinion of the character, I'm not sure that's what I would say... There's a lot I'm not sure about, considering I decided to make up some backstory for her (such as that she, like myself, has no problems with portraying a male and sees the value of breastbinding in everyday life. Also that her ~meaningful~ name is Petra Deburau.)
The facts of the matter, however, are such: Clown dresses like a froofy commedia valet Clown every day, a fact which is not unnoticed by high-school peers; Clown does not speak, except in mime, a language in which s/he is very proficient; Clown watches local community Little League baseball games on Friday nights, and also plenty of TV, like a normal kid; Clown prides 'her'self on being a good listener and secret-keeper, and is not afraid to tease people who forget that s/he doesn't talk; Clown has a full water pistol in 'her' schoolbag, and can easily be said to keep other good silly props with her for maximum clowning; Clown likes making people laugh, takes joy in bringing people entertainment, and considers it 'her' way of making the world easier; Clown likes attention; Clown has personal space issues, physically as well as emotionally, and doesn't like people prying into 'her' life or stealing 'her' hat; s/he has a big loneliness complex that is superficially offset by 'her' best friend, Girl Scout; and s/he has a huge weird onesided crush on 'her' bully/abuser, Fencer. (My director made her ringtone for him Bad Romance, and I actually agree with this decision strongly. XD)
Guys. Guys Clown is best of all bests and and and guys. Guys. ;3;
So yeah.
Clown is a new experience for me as an actor, for a few reasons.
1) It's really been ages since I last managed to connect with a character I played, especially like this.
2) I have never bound my chest.
3) I have never been stripped in public to the degree that people would be able to tell or not, especially in a sanctum for minors like the studio.
4) I have never stripped/been stripped.
5) I have also never been kissed.
6) I have never kissed a girl.
7) I have never kissed a boy.
8) I have never had so much 'screentime' and audience attention without any lines before.
9) I have never had the chance to tap into my freewheeling theatrical movement nature before.
10) I have never actually done mime.
11) I have never been able to be this successful at making people laugh before.
...Also 12) I have never shattered a prop in half before, or into three parts, though that's more an accidental pair of Crowning Moment of Awesome, resulting in high-fives and apologies (and a reward-for-badassery-hug? from SM) (and splinters in my hand, which led to more unnecessary tsuntsun from me towards him because that is just how I tend to roll 8|).
I... Guess that my remaining thoughts on the show are just about the production members, aha, the dick jokes, and more about the experience of working with them all in crunch time, and that's not really relevant. So.
I think that the story had a good beginning, but we're still rehearsing and I don't have an ending yet.
AND that's how I've been spending my time!
No, not schoolwork. Silly.
INTERNET.
Not that I didn't have internet at home, mind. I just had all of my games to distract.
(By which I mean constant level-grinding, of pokemon and chao and cyframes and TOS GRADE...)
(Though now that I mention it, it occurs that the level-grinding is only half of what I've been doing- I've also been doing fucktonnes of research, on RPGs and on Commedia dell'Arte, but more on that in a moment. So, in this way I have been using the internet, not to mention the inevitable tv tropes readdiction for the new project my sister and I started. I just haven't been on any blogging sites or social networking or or anything like that; no tumblr or facebook, very little twitter, no dw or lj...)
But, more importantly, I've also been spending my time on something else: REHEARSALS.
Yes, I'm in a play again! Ah, what a wonderful feeling it is. I've been falling apart waiting to meet with the wardrobe head over it, but sometimes in life we just have to wait for things, yes?
The best part is yet to come though- I have a lead.
A lead. Me!
A lead.
I have one.
It's called Commedia dell Smartass, and is yet another modern-day take on the forms and themes of Commedia Dell'Arte tradition, which I have yet again gone rather apeshit studying. Though, unlike Of Widows And Vegetables, the cast is playing high-schoolers, and also there's only four of us.
Yeah, only four people in the production. It's hard not to be a lead in such a small ensemble, and frankly I'd be the first to admit that my character is probably the most easily dropped from the story. But? I still have the best character. (And, like Widows, I'm playing this fourth-wall-breaking meta character that was assigned to me on first sight, and I am most often complemented onstage by A Cute Guy who has strong physicality and light curly hair. Commedias are the best and I will never have as much fun being in a production as I do in these I SWEAR.)
Where was I?
Let me begin at the beginning, I suppose. I'd gotten the list of plays for the Winter Shorts Festival, which is a two-weekend show of various one-act plays that have been selected by the staff for students and friends of the Drama Studio to partake in.
The shows were almost entirely student-written this year (the Commedia being the exception), and were.... pretty fucking lacklustre, actually. It turns out that one of them is more fun than previously expected, but this is still not shaping up to be a very impressive festival, all things considered.
I still went to audition. I don't know what I was expecting, only that I knew about the Commedia by mention of my teacher last year, and I knew there was a Clown character in it. So I was pretty fucking excited, actually, because it is just impossible to comprehend my adoration of theatre Clowning tradition and and and fooling (especially Shakespearean fooling, which I have observed *_* and want like burning) and and commedia and and cursing teenagers, man.
Uguu.
So I get into the auditions, and the director is like "you, read Girl Scout and you, be Clown" and I was just like "YESS" and we went up.
The audition piece we did was Girl Scout's White House monologue, and my job was to use mime and physicality to respond to and punctuate her plans.
I had about two mimes that were explosively successful, seeing as how every single person in the room burst out laughing, and the rest was strung together by constant involvement and my overall physicality (THANK YOU, movement training! boohyah!). My sister jokingly insisted that she'd sue if I didn't get the part, so overall I'm imagining I did quite well.
And then the email came that yes, in fact I DID get the part, and not only that but I'd be cast against a couple of people that I adore. RM, who is a great friend of my sister and who I'd done a nice intense family scene with in a class last year, and SO, who's a guy that I very much appreciate and admire and am on pretty good terms with. (There was also SM, but he's a newbie, so none of us knew him. Yet.) We later picked up TM as a stage manager (which is good, because we all love him and miss him and also he goes to my college and stuff), and with our director MP (I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting him yet, but I was about to) we were good to go!
The read-through went well, we got along great and made plenty of wisecracks. Also SO and MP showed off the Pokemon cards that they keep in their wallets. DID I MENTION I LIKE MY GROUP OKAY. Our director has a motherfucking HOLOGRAPHIC ANCIENT MEW OKAY, FUCKYEAH. In his WALLET.
Fuckin' love these guys.
And, of course, every single one of us has more than the average passing knowledge of Pokemon, because we are all the very best. 8D Like no one ever fucking was.
And we made SM share facts about himself as a penalty because he was late, and also because he was a total stranger to us.
As we got farther on in the play, it dawned on us that this was a heavy play. This was an intense play. This was a raunchy play. This was, as the secretary noted, a Dirty Play. This was not a play to invite kids to. It has about every thing you can think of to incense a parent, and some you didn't!
And it is glorious.
I mean, not only that, but it has pretty much everything a play could or should have! Fights, dances, kisses, stripping, music, a dream sequence, a clown, strong character arcs, love triangles, slapstick, swords, vulnerable character moments, drunkenness, and an obscured storyline whose facts are slowly revealed in the grand conclusion scene. VERY satisfying show to be a part of, and I'm immensely gratified to be able to participate.
(It's definitely better written than Widows, though it doesn't draw its humour from witty dialogue in the same way, so there's something. One point to the zucchini!)
The cast and characters of Commedia Dell Smartass as we know them are as follows.
Henry: The everyman. The Arthur Dent. A sarcastic loser with an alcoholic mother whose greatest dream is to just get to college already. Arguably plays the role of commedia's Arlecchino (or Harlequin to you plebes), and yet arguably is too much of a Sane Man to be any archetype. We're playing up the geeky side of him, with nigh-excessive Pokemon and Star Wars, which is of course wicked fun. SO is much more toned-down in this role than I'm used to... buuut that just because I'm used to him being the de facto leader of the comedy improv troupe, and his past couple roles included a foppish airheaded prince and Peter Pan. So really, anything would be more toned-down. XD But good for him, I say. The kid's thinking about applying to fucking Julliard and you know what? I believe he could handle it. ...He should still step off and let the director direct us though, and spend more time learning his lines than being a frazzled almost-diva. And I kinda don't even care that he might hate me by this point. But hey.
Fencer: Il Capitano, and I'll challenge any who say otherwise. His commedia role is absolutely non-negotiable. If you know anything about Commedia Dell'Arte characters, that should be enough information already, but just in case you don't I'll summarise- a swaggering narcissistic 'jock' who vainly pursues a love interest he'll never end up with. This incarnation though, I must say is far more savvy and manipulative than is typical for the archetype, as has been noted. He's the driving action, and it's his plan that we see unfold. SM plays him, and as it's the first time I've seen him there isn't terribly much I can say. Though I will note that despite being a generally charming fellow, the guy just canNOT read lines. ;A; I want to call him out for being an awful public speaker, but I'm hoping he'll improve enough in time? It's speaking to quickly, slurring lines, and not enunciating clearly. He's also clumsy as all hell, and I jibe him incessantly for the sheer magnitude of times he's hurt himself during this production. (And because he makes me tsuntsun, for no reason whatsoever.) Not to mention that he's rather a terrible kisser- and as the level of cute that he is decreases, the level of desiring to castrate him with the damn foil for not having some strong mint chewing gum increases! And he should stop fucking slobbering, it's like becoming not even worth it to watch him... practice. And he's an ass about SO being a moment killer for his kiss, but then turns around and forgets that his next line is to kiss me. To say nothing of the history arguments we've gotten into...
Girl Scout (aka Girl Guide XD): Her name is revealed to be Sheila, which is important because I have this *thing* about named characters and only she and Henry receive names. She's pretty much commedia's Colombina, not really up for dispute either, in temperament as much as in role. The Girl Scout is an ambitious overachiever, plucky and dedicated. She doesn't socialise much because of all the time she spends working, either selling cookies or volunteering at a substance abuse centre. She starts off as rather a paragon of virtue, but of course every character must be robbed of their innocence in a commedia. At least with Sheila, she steps off her pedestal herself- though she is given a bit of a push, as I think she discovers. Sheila is played by RM, who in our eyes I think follows her character's path. At least, everyone's considered her to be the most mature and reserved, and working with or watching her in this play can shake your conceptions of her if you know her. The kissing is part of that- girl kisses every single character, which I think is still a feat even though there's only four of us. Also the flipping the bird. And the drinking. (We've together lamented how the dance teacher's daughters may never see us the same way again, if they come to see the show. We've also together lamented how little we want to kiss SM again.) I like her, and I'm really enjoying the time we're getting to spend together and I'm glad that we've become friends. Nice girl, funny, thinks I'm funny, good to know her. ^^ Such a bro-sis.
Clown: And at last we come to the best part. I was given hints of the later commedia's beloved Pierrot, and the research I've accumulated has only reinforced that assumption tenfold. Clown is not only the most visually entertaining character in the show, and imo the most fun to play (though perhaps not by much XD), but Clown provides the biggest source of audience surprise in the whole show. And that is awesome. Frankly, you can tell the Clown is the best character because I can describe everyone else really well without dropping too-massive spoilers for them. And Clown? Not so much. You may notice that I have not yet referred to Clown with a pronoun. This is because I'm not sure of gender, mostly if Clown is trans* or not. A girl who is referred to with male pronouns by peers and binds her breasts (scripted!)- but is also a VERY active performing artist and mime who doesn't speak, even to correct wrong opinions. So it could go either way. (Also, due to multiple ways of playing each the kisses with Girl Scout and Fencer, sexuality is just as easy to reinterpret as gender identity.) I am personally playing the Clown as a female, because that makes sense to me, but if someone asked my opinion of the character, I'm not sure that's what I would say... There's a lot I'm not sure about, considering I decided to make up some backstory for her (such as that she, like myself, has no problems with portraying a male and sees the value of breastbinding in everyday life. Also that her ~meaningful~ name is Petra Deburau.)
The facts of the matter, however, are such: Clown dresses like a froofy commedia valet Clown every day, a fact which is not unnoticed by high-school peers; Clown does not speak, except in mime, a language in which s/he is very proficient; Clown watches local community Little League baseball games on Friday nights, and also plenty of TV, like a normal kid; Clown prides 'her'self on being a good listener and secret-keeper, and is not afraid to tease people who forget that s/he doesn't talk; Clown has a full water pistol in 'her' schoolbag, and can easily be said to keep other good silly props with her for maximum clowning; Clown likes making people laugh, takes joy in bringing people entertainment, and considers it 'her' way of making the world easier; Clown likes attention; Clown has personal space issues, physically as well as emotionally, and doesn't like people prying into 'her' life or stealing 'her' hat; s/he has a big loneliness complex that is superficially offset by 'her' best friend, Girl Scout; and s/he has a huge weird onesided crush on 'her' bully/abuser, Fencer. (My director made her ringtone for him Bad Romance, and I actually agree with this decision strongly. XD)
Guys. Guys Clown is best of all bests and and and guys. Guys. ;3;
So yeah.
Clown is a new experience for me as an actor, for a few reasons.
1) It's really been ages since I last managed to connect with a character I played, especially like this.
2) I have never bound my chest.
3) I have never been stripped in public to the degree that people would be able to tell or not, especially in a sanctum for minors like the studio.
4) I have never stripped/been stripped.
5) I have also never been kissed.
6) I have never kissed a girl.
7) I have never kissed a boy.
8) I have never had so much 'screentime' and audience attention without any lines before.
9) I have never had the chance to tap into my freewheeling theatrical movement nature before.
10) I have never actually done mime.
11) I have never been able to be this successful at making people laugh before.
...Also 12) I have never shattered a prop in half before, or into three parts, though that's more an accidental pair of Crowning Moment of Awesome, resulting in high-fives and apologies (and a reward-for-badassery-hug? from SM) (and splinters in my hand, which led to more unnecessary tsuntsun from me towards him because that is just how I tend to roll 8|).
I... Guess that my remaining thoughts on the show are just about the production members, aha, the dick jokes, and more about the experience of working with them all in crunch time, and that's not really relevant. So.
I think that the story had a good beginning, but we're still rehearsing and I don't have an ending yet.
AND that's how I've been spending my time!
