The Perils of Performing Plays
May. 25th, 2009 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladymirthSo, about the play.
You know, the really fucking depressing adstract hyper-complicated experiemental one that looked so much like the inside of Tennessee Williams own head that it freaked his audiences out the door. The one that he spent ten years writing and couldn't make work even after revising the script three times. The one that no director in the Western hemipshere had been able to produce successfully even after Williams' death. The one that has only two (batshit insane and drugged) characters in the entire play. The one that I was cast in without having had any prior acting experience whatsoever, and where my co-star was a 52-year-old ex-college law instructor who hadn't appeared on stage since high school. The one with that fucking tiara in it.
According to the few portions of the script that remained un-cut, my character is supposed to strut around with a tiara stuck on her head while throwing screaming diva fits at her playwright brother. Then he chases her around and makes her surrender it to him (meta, subtext, meta) so they can start the play-within-the-play. We did not manage to procure the tiara until just before the preview performance for the university kids. Therefore, we did not have a chance to realize that tiaras were fragile and flimsy things that Williams had evidently never handled in his life if he thought that a woman can have hysterics on stage with one on (that wasn't fixed onto her head with ten dozen hairpins) and not smash it in the process.
So: we found, much to our dismay just before the preview, that the fucking thing couldn't possibly stay on without hair pins and tentatively fixed two pins to the sides. This didn't quite work out, since the pins dislodged themselves early into the first act and the tiara was left to flap around hanging by my left ear until I was forced to hold onto it as though it were a flowered hat in a gale. Which led to me accidentally detroying my hair do, causing tendrils of hair to cascade over my face and eyes. This reportedly reinforced the "demented vibe" of my character quite well, but it is not easy to emote effectively when half your face is obscured by hair and you come within an ace of knocking yourself out with your own walking stick. Despite these difficulties, Boy gave the overall performance of the first act an 8.8 out of 10, and the second act an 8.5. Even though I hadn't had to grapple with the head accessory from hell in the second act. Weird.
Opening night was supposed to be Friday, but it was unceremoniously cancelled. Two of the main roads were closed due to the End-of-War Victory Parade and Presidential Address, which meant that the entirety of Colombo traffic was forced to take the smaller roads during rush hour, resulting in utter and complete gridlock in the streets. Nobody could have turned up to watch anyway.
Saturday night saw me calm and without nerves. I was so without nerves that I began feeling nervous about not being nervous, since things never go as well as when I'm being nervous, when I'm not nervous. The tiara was wrapped firmly around my cranium,so it would not escape my head that easily muahahaha, looking vaguely like a shiny alien mind-control device. I went on stage with little expectation and disconnected my higher brain functions to focus solely on keeping the fucking thing on my head this time and not smashing it. Luckily, my mouth and facial muscles had been programmed into auto-pilot mode and were capable of getting themselves through the whole play with minimal input from said higher brain functions.
This was a good thing, because my higher brain was kept busy trying to cover up and improvise on the myriad of other things that kept malfunctioning on set. The cork got stuck on the whiskey decanter (which had been filled with hot tea) so that instead of coolly pouring myself a glass of "straight scotch" I had to re-enact Leonard Hofstadter trying to open the mustard bottle. Then I put the glass down on the wrong place and forgot about it, so when I was supposed to hurl its contents at my co-star's face, I couldn't find the damn glass and had to make a feebly threatening gesture at him while hunched over the piano. When my co-star was supposed to slip my shawl from my shoulders, he somehow managed to snag both ends in his fingers, trapping me in it like a flailing salmon in a drag net which took some manovering to extricate myself out of. When I was to collapse dramatically on the floor, I ended up dropping butt-first onto the walking stick we had left lying around - which hurt!
And most of all - that damn tiara came loose again!
It was all worth it though. Boy said that the first act rated the "elusive 9" out of 10 and he came in after the second act saying, "Man, that ws brilliant!" He NEVER said that before, not in any of the rehearsals till then. The rest of the auidence seemed to share his enthusiam - everyone was using words like "fucking brilliant" and "excellent" and Professor Carlo Fonseka gushed to me for ten minutes how much he liked my performance. I couldn't believe it. It was euphoric and I finally realized that this moment was what made all those months of grueling work worth it. Dad unfortunately had had to leave with my brother after the first act because my brother had started stimming and making noises. The rest of my family agreed that it was "excellent", except for my Mum. She found it too dark and violent for her taste, but wasn't sure how she could get away without offending the director.
Mr. Weeramuni: So, what did you think of your daughter's performance?
Mum: Oh, well, uh, she's....very pretty.
(Note: I was still smeared in the stage makeup that was supposed to make me look like a wasted 40-year-old. I fell about laughing.)
Dad told me once I got home that I was excellent in the act he had watched and that he was proud of me. I waited two hours for the punchline. My family never usually gives open-handed compliments like that. We always give backhanded compliments and sparse verbal approval. In some ways, we're very like the Bat-family.
Dad came to watch the last night though. Pavi had come on opening night, but the rest of my she-peeps and peeps turned up last night (only the handful that could make it, between their exams and competing plays). With the perfect ten under my belt from last night though, I had a lot ot live upto. Suddenly, I was nervous. My thorat was scratchy. Reviewers were in the audience. How was I supposed to score another ten if I wasn't even sure what I had done right?
As it turned out, it all came down to that fucking tiara...
(continued in Part 2, because I have to rush off right now)
You know, the really fucking depressing adstract hyper-complicated experiemental one that looked so much like the inside of Tennessee Williams own head that it freaked his audiences out the door. The one that he spent ten years writing and couldn't make work even after revising the script three times. The one that no director in the Western hemipshere had been able to produce successfully even after Williams' death. The one that has only two (batshit insane and drugged) characters in the entire play. The one that I was cast in without having had any prior acting experience whatsoever, and where my co-star was a 52-year-old ex-college law instructor who hadn't appeared on stage since high school. The one with that fucking tiara in it.
According to the few portions of the script that remained un-cut, my character is supposed to strut around with a tiara stuck on her head while throwing screaming diva fits at her playwright brother. Then he chases her around and makes her surrender it to him (meta, subtext, meta) so they can start the play-within-the-play. We did not manage to procure the tiara until just before the preview performance for the university kids. Therefore, we did not have a chance to realize that tiaras were fragile and flimsy things that Williams had evidently never handled in his life if he thought that a woman can have hysterics on stage with one on (that wasn't fixed onto her head with ten dozen hairpins) and not smash it in the process.
So: we found, much to our dismay just before the preview, that the fucking thing couldn't possibly stay on without hair pins and tentatively fixed two pins to the sides. This didn't quite work out, since the pins dislodged themselves early into the first act and the tiara was left to flap around hanging by my left ear until I was forced to hold onto it as though it were a flowered hat in a gale. Which led to me accidentally detroying my hair do, causing tendrils of hair to cascade over my face and eyes. This reportedly reinforced the "demented vibe" of my character quite well, but it is not easy to emote effectively when half your face is obscured by hair and you come within an ace of knocking yourself out with your own walking stick. Despite these difficulties, Boy gave the overall performance of the first act an 8.8 out of 10, and the second act an 8.5. Even though I hadn't had to grapple with the head accessory from hell in the second act. Weird.
Opening night was supposed to be Friday, but it was unceremoniously cancelled. Two of the main roads were closed due to the End-of-War Victory Parade and Presidential Address, which meant that the entirety of Colombo traffic was forced to take the smaller roads during rush hour, resulting in utter and complete gridlock in the streets. Nobody could have turned up to watch anyway.
Saturday night saw me calm and without nerves. I was so without nerves that I began feeling nervous about not being nervous, since things never go as well as when I'm being nervous, when I'm not nervous. The tiara was wrapped firmly around my cranium,so it would not escape my head that easily muahahaha, looking vaguely like a shiny alien mind-control device. I went on stage with little expectation and disconnected my higher brain functions to focus solely on keeping the fucking thing on my head this time and not smashing it. Luckily, my mouth and facial muscles had been programmed into auto-pilot mode and were capable of getting themselves through the whole play with minimal input from said higher brain functions.
This was a good thing, because my higher brain was kept busy trying to cover up and improvise on the myriad of other things that kept malfunctioning on set. The cork got stuck on the whiskey decanter (which had been filled with hot tea) so that instead of coolly pouring myself a glass of "straight scotch" I had to re-enact Leonard Hofstadter trying to open the mustard bottle. Then I put the glass down on the wrong place and forgot about it, so when I was supposed to hurl its contents at my co-star's face, I couldn't find the damn glass and had to make a feebly threatening gesture at him while hunched over the piano. When my co-star was supposed to slip my shawl from my shoulders, he somehow managed to snag both ends in his fingers, trapping me in it like a flailing salmon in a drag net which took some manovering to extricate myself out of. When I was to collapse dramatically on the floor, I ended up dropping butt-first onto the walking stick we had left lying around - which hurt!
And most of all - that damn tiara came loose again!
It was all worth it though. Boy said that the first act rated the "elusive 9" out of 10 and he came in after the second act saying, "Man, that ws brilliant!" He NEVER said that before, not in any of the rehearsals till then. The rest of the auidence seemed to share his enthusiam - everyone was using words like "fucking brilliant" and "excellent" and Professor Carlo Fonseka gushed to me for ten minutes how much he liked my performance. I couldn't believe it. It was euphoric and I finally realized that this moment was what made all those months of grueling work worth it. Dad unfortunately had had to leave with my brother after the first act because my brother had started stimming and making noises. The rest of my family agreed that it was "excellent", except for my Mum. She found it too dark and violent for her taste, but wasn't sure how she could get away without offending the director.
Mr. Weeramuni: So, what did you think of your daughter's performance?
Mum: Oh, well, uh, she's....very pretty.
(Note: I was still smeared in the stage makeup that was supposed to make me look like a wasted 40-year-old. I fell about laughing.)
Dad told me once I got home that I was excellent in the act he had watched and that he was proud of me. I waited two hours for the punchline. My family never usually gives open-handed compliments like that. We always give backhanded compliments and sparse verbal approval. In some ways, we're very like the Bat-family.
Dad came to watch the last night though. Pavi had come on opening night, but the rest of my she-peeps and peeps turned up last night (only the handful that could make it, between their exams and competing plays). With the perfect ten under my belt from last night though, I had a lot ot live upto. Suddenly, I was nervous. My thorat was scratchy. Reviewers were in the audience. How was I supposed to score another ten if I wasn't even sure what I had done right?
As it turned out, it all came down to that fucking tiara...
(continued in Part 2, because I have to rush off right now)
