Monday, November 10

Wilder! Wilder! Wilder! went rather well this weekend. After the Saturday performance, the actors did a talk-back with the audience. I love attending talk-backs. Getting different perspectives on a piece, both from the audience and the cast, enriches the entire experience. And I'm a big fan of this production anyway, but that talk-back made me love it even more. I'm proud to be a part of it, even if it's only in a small way.

Today was our dark day for the show, and I didn't have class. That meant it was the day to get everything else done.

I met with Iceman in the morning to work on things for Movement class. We started with partner stretches. I was a little worried at first about how they'd work, as Iceman is about 8 feet tall, and I'm used to stretching with people my own size. But luckily, it went off without a hitch (i.e. neither of us fell down). After that, we used our Movement monologues in God/Creature. Iceman is a really great partner, both to play God and Creature to, with either text or movement. I think my favorite is being the Movement Creature to his Text God. And miraculously, no further damage was done to my hip in that process.

In case you're curious, the text I'm using is from a monologue called "Mother, Mother" by Florence Gibson. My chunk is as follows:

How should I know who you're going to talk to? That's not my job, I mean, she comes in here, eleventh hour, all blood and f***ed and a coma and it's time to talk? I mean we controlled the bleeding as far as I'm concerned - and this is why I went into surgery in the first place, so you guys could do the talking. She's crazy, she's neurotic, and I'm supposed to fix that, fix her like you fix the damn cat? I'm fighting her, I'm holding her down and all she can say is, "I f***ed up so bad, with my kids, with my life." And I'm supposed to talk about this? Talk while I'm ramming a tube down her throat? And then, from the chief, "Have I got kids?" Well no, sir, no, sorry, but I don't, my mother had enough for them for both of us. You think I don't know how far from that park bench I'd be if I was running around crazy after kids? She's nuts, she's psych, she grabs me by the stethoscope and says, "You wear this instead of a necklace?"

The full piece is like 4 pages long. I don't love the cutting, but I think it's going to work for the assignment.

Today, I started with my daily 30 minutes of walking on the treadmill (or, as I called it when talking with Iceman, "the walking machine"). It was kind of boring. I had my iPod with me, which helped. But as I'm not supposed to go too fast, and I'm not supposed to have any resistance, it's kind of blah. I'd almost rather be jogging. Almost.

I've had a couple of meetings this weekend with my new Viewpoints group (Me, Killer, and O.D., under the guidance of Director A.). Today's meeting yielded some cool stuff, but we're not confident that we'll be ready to perform on Wednesday morning. :-/

This assignment involves using text along with Viewpoints. The text we're working with is A Number by Caryl Churchill. It's a play about a man, his son, and clones of his son. It seems to be a good piece for what we're doing. The assignment also involves working outdoors.

In rehearsal today, Killer bloodied up his foot in a nasty fashion. He didn't seem to mind working despite his gashes, but the rest of us did (his foot was covered with blood... it was hard not to be concerned).

Hopefully we'll be able to figure it out well in rehearsal tomorrow night at 11:15pm, after Wilder (it's the only time we can meet).



Off to finish my homework assignment on Heartbreak House.

~A~