Valuables

On Friday, I returned from a 12-day trip to England--a trip primarily made to watch my brother's graduation from Durham University. Of course, that was only one part of one day, so I did plenty of other things, including drinking lots of pints and eating lots of pub food.

I had lots of beautiful things to say to you about England. Words like 'brooding', and thoughts about how it is most certainly Shakespeare's country, even today. But I can't share the sentiments I had then with you now because I don't have them anymore.

We left Wales last Wednesday morning en route to London, with stops planned at Avebury to see the standing stone circle and at Salisbury to see a more famous bunch of rocks, Stonehenge. After a little navigational mayhem, we made it to the first destination. It was cold and misting heavily. While my hair had spoken to me that morning and said "rockabilly", it was quickly veering toward "tribble." (And I'm sorry if you got that joke without looking it up.) The weather made a perfect atmosphere for walking amongst the ancient circle.

 

It also seemed appropriate for what greeted us when we returned to our rental car. 

I remained relatively calm as I realized that my mother and I had been victimized. I was even pretty chill when I saw that my backpack was the only thing that was taken, but when I remembered that my acting journal was in my bag, I lost it.

I remember the day I bought my journal. My movement teacher, Martin, had given my class a lecture about how we should respect our journals and our reflections on our craft, how the spiral-bound notebooks and stapled notebook paper we'd been turning in wasn't good enough. He told us that when he moved to the east coast from California, it was the box of his journals that he was most concerned about. I went to my university bookstore and walked up to the sketchbooks. I knew immediately that it was mine. It was the last one, bright red on a black shelf, with big, empty pages, and a strong elastic around it to keep it closed. I bought it and stapled the pages that I had been turning in to Martin on the first page. The next time I turned my journal in to him, he wrote in it something along the lines of, "I love this book. It shows the importance of what's inside."

When I last had my journal, it had stickers inside the front cover, and the cover was peeling back on the edge where I'd bumped it somewhere. The elastic was loose and pointless. It was close to full. It is a classic case of not knowing what you have until it's gone. You'd better believe I realized what I lost when I walked up and down the road by the car park, literally sobbing, hoping to see it discarded in the ditch. The rockabilly makeup went to hell too. I felt like a fool for not protecting it, for thinking no one would take a bag full of things without any monetary value, for not listening to the signs that the world had given me. 

I cried and cried. I still cry a little. The police took notes and said they'd look for my "bits" but I know that somewhere in Avebury or nearby, the penmarks are melting away and the pages are giving way to pulp in the cold English rain. No police officer, no matter how charming, realizes that one of my "bits" was actually a huge piece of my understanding of myself and my craft. I feel as though I've gone backwards.

This post is partly mourning--literal mourning. It is also partly me asking you to think about what is valuable to you. I saw a dozen signs that day instructing me to not leave valuables in the car. I took that to mean my iPod and my wallet, which were with me, thinking no one would take a backpack with two American Theatre magazines, an extra pair of underwear, and a copy of the French Lieutenant's Woman. I would trade money for my journal any day.

We never got to Stonehenge. Pinched for time after taping a trash bag over the empty window and speaking to the police, we went straight to London. I had planned to copy all those beautiful words about Shakespeare's "brooding" country out of my journal. That's what I meant when I said I don't have them anymore. I only have fragments. I am re-defining the word "valuables" for myself. And maybe--hopefully--for some of you too.

Recent Reads

I have been pretty slack with reading plays post-graduation. And those I read in school were for class rather than keeping up with current work. No more slacking for me. Not just because it's my job to keep up with contemporary work and expand my knowledge of older pieces, but also that reading plays is really the only way to find monologues (novels can be good sources too). True, I have a couple monologue books that I have used in a pinch, but I'm not a huge fan. They take the work out of the play's context, they're not always current, and they make monologues so readily available that the same ones become over-used in the audition room. However, they are good for finding pieces in your age range and type and can therefore point you in the right direction of plays that suit you...

Now that I'm done with my monologue book tangent, what I started out saying was that I'm kicking the reading into high gear. I have a ton of plays lying around my room, most are dated, but the more the merrier. My Amazon wish list is ever growing and I will soon be subscribing to American Theatre Magazine (a student ID gets you 10 issues for $20. So hang on to your student ID when you graduate!). I am reading the New York Times theatre section much more frequently to keep up with up-and-coming playwrights. Another great resource for buying plays is the Drama Book Shop in New York City. If you can't find it anywhere else, they will probably have it. If you knew all this, I hope you're not being a slacker like me. If you didn't know, now you do. Start reading.

Here are my thoughts on a few recent reads and what monologues they have in store:

1. The Ruby Sunrise by Rinne Groff: Bought this one at the Drama Book Shop in New York, thinking that the role of Ruby would be a good one for me. The description on the back described her as a farm girl building an early TV in her barn. It sounded quirky and fun, but I was met with something much darker than I anticipated. Not that dark is bad, but I was not particularly enraptured by the storyline of a girl finding an outlet to tell her mother's story while exhibiting similar characteristics to Mommabear (She doesn't call her that. I just made that up.). It seemed a little old hat. It did stand out to me that the daughter's storyline takes place during the Red Scare, and she works for a TV station (and her mom was building TVs.. get it?). I think the crisis of the daughter's era could have been more deeply explored, rather than a focus on already obvious parallels between mother and daughter that result in a fairly predictable ending. Monologues? A couple. Short ones for Ruby ("young, maybe 17") and a longer one for an actress, Suzie ("20s")
2. Eternal Hydra by Anton Piatigorsky: Another Drama Book Shop find (on the faculty recommended shelf). This is a very well-crafted play. It follows two female authors/researchers who are attempting to get books published that vouch for two writers from the turn of the century. As the truth comes forward about the two earlier authors, it becomes clear that their stories overlap more than expected and the repercussions of that discovery echo into the work of their modern researchers. Four actors (2 m. 2 f.) seamlessly move in and out of all of the parts to create a story that weaves between modern-day New York, 1930's Paris, and New Orleans post Civil War. Conversation is evoked about plagiarism and equality of gender and race. This one's a winner in my book. Monologues? Yes. There are monologues for the two women, one of whom is African-American. There are also a few for the middle-aged to mature gentleman playing the author of the 1930's.
3. In The Blood by Suzan-Lori Parks: I love Suzan-Lori Parks. I knew I loved Suzan-Lori Parks by the time I finished the first page of Topdog/Underdog. This play was no exception. It is "a modern day riff on The Scarlet Letter" (as the back-cover description says), following a woman named Hester and her five children, all of whom have different fathers. The role of Hester is the only one that is not doubled (the children playing their own fathers or someone involved in the sexual encounter that produced them), and the children are played by adults. There is also a strong parallel between In The Blood and Mother Courage that begs to be examined further. I bought this play originally for my Women In Dramatic Arts class, but ended up reading Parks' Venus instead (also recommended). Both plays are excellent as a study of the role of women in theatre and in history. Monologues? Yellow light yes. For African-American men and women, and one for a Caucasian female. Mature, rough subject matter. By which I mean sex. And not the good kind. Tread lightly in the audition room with these babies.
4. Hunting and Gathering by Brooke Berman: Berman uses the search for New York apartments as a metaphor for commitment and "finding your place" in a more abstract sense. There are four players, two women and two men, who all have closely connected stories resulting in a staged romantic comedy. I'd say this is a step above your typical Hugh Grant or Ashton Kutcher movie, as the characters struggle with engaging problems that go beyond "I am lonely and this person is perfect." This play is full of laughs as Ruth learns about life while playing Big Buck Hunter and Jesse becomes acquainted with IKEA. This play is a great read for young actors, as all the characters are between 20 and 30. Monologues? Holy crap YES. Each of the characters has multiple direct addresses to the audience that are charming and revealing about their nature. Also great for scene work, as the play is composed of two-person scenes.

Are these mini reviews at all helpful or interesting?  Leave thoughts or suggestions about them in a comment or on my facebook. Thanks for reading and break a leg!

The F Word

I never considered myself a feminist. It had a negative, bra-burning connotation to me. I was never particularly proud to be a woman, nor was I ashamed of it. I just considered myself to have landed on this half of the population and I believed it had no effect on my life. At the end of this past summer, I checked my courses online and found that, without warning or notice, Makeup Design had disappeared. The first time I signed up for that class, they rescheduled it to a time slot when I was in a class required for my major. This time, no rescheduling, no apologetic email. Nada. Just a very frustrated short person. I had no real interest in an elective outside of my department and the only other option was with the teacher who had me in five previous classes and was about to have me in two more, even if I didn't take her elective. Finally, I registered for the class, figuring that if nothing else came up, I had survived taking 15 hours at a time with this woman before (my friend aptly named it the “Sharothon”). Nothing else came up. And I was stuck in Women in Dramatic Arts.

It ended up being the most influential class I took.

Yes, we read Aphra Behn and Clare Boothe Luce and talked about the women in Ibsen's plays, but we more importantly gained understanding about the true circumstances concerning women—that the Equal Rights Amendment has yet to be ratified, our pay is not equal, our sexuality must be hidden behind pantsuits to be taken seriously, and in other countries, women are treated as less than equal—covered up, beat up, shut up. I was fortunate to share ten weeks with a group of women that shared their thoughts and experiences with each other as we studied the history of women in Western theatre from the Restoration forward. We had good laughs, good cries, as each of us began to understand where we stand and that maybe it's not where we thought we were, that it has every effect on our lives.

I'm not saying there aren't other soapboxes to stand on, but I like this one. It has given me a sense of identity as well as a group to identify with. It has given me a plethora of playwrights, many of whom have been tossed aside in history. It has given me an outlet. I can volunteer at women's shelters or donate or do whatever good samaritan deed seems right for the day, and maybe I will. But what is so fantastic and timeless about theatre is that it doesn't take money and it can go anywhere. It delivers a message and connects people on the same topic. Theatre can be used as your soapbox of choice.

A couple nights ago, I finished Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World by Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues, founder of V-Day, and a huge inspiration to me. In Insecure, she wrote:

Theater insists that we inhabit the present tense—not the virtual tense or the politically correct tense. Theater demands that we truly be where we are. By being there together, we are able to confront the seemingly impossible, we are able to feel that which we fear might destroy us—and we are educated and transformed by that act.

Theater is sacred because it allows us, it encourages us, as a community of strangers, to go someplace together and face the issues and realities we simply cannot face alone. Alone, we are powerless, translating our suffering and struggle into our own private narcissistic injuries. When we become a group, these issues become social or political concerns, responsibilities, a reason for being here together.

James Cromwell spoke with us at the Savannah Film Festival and expressed his thoughts on the broken state of our industry and our country. “Everything's broken,” he said. “We have to start over, build from scratch.” He spoke on creating theatre in a community to tell its story. That there is no competition in your hometown and “what is most important is what you have to say.”

I'm biased, but I consider our art to be the most powerful. Theatre has caused people to be outwardly angry, started riots. In the case of Eve Ensler, it has also raised $50 million for grassroots organizations around the world. It is the megaphone of the arts. What we do with it should be selective, personal, and benevolent for the sake of ourselves, our art, and the soapbox of our choice. For myself, I think it should also make a little noise.

Ensler, Eve. Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-obsessed World. New York: Villard, 2006. Print.

Want to know more about Ensler's V-Day Foundation? Check it out at http://www.vday.org/home.

Cookie Cutters

I was tinkering on facebook when I found that one of my friends had posted this,
a series of short pieces which illustrate classic film types with the help of people like Tilda Swinton, James Franco, and Natalie Portman. Give it a look. They are lovely portraits of classic characters that we all know.

There is something about the concept of types that I see actors latch on to, possibly because it is something definable, or because it is one of the few things we can control or shape. My college performing arts department has a particular fetish with “typing” it's students, which often leads to actors scrambling to perfectly define themselves in appearance. I'm a bit of a rebel when in comes to practices like this, but after I had been pegged as the “Juno” of the department, I found myself showing a picture of Ellen Page's haircut to the hairdresser. (Admittedly, Ellen and I both can rock some cute bangs.) I even recall students who knew what they were going to wear to an audition before they knew what monologues they were going to use. Understanding your type, how to dress to it, and looking like the best possible you are all crucial. There, I said it. You have to look good. I hate superficiality, but there it is. As someone who loves a good pair of sweatpants and has heard “You are such an Ellen Page!” or sometimes “You are so Anne Hathaway!” a few too many times, I approach types a little cautiously. Here are some thoughts:

1. Beware the list of types.
In an audition techniques class during my study abroad in Provence, I was assigned to read parts of a rather helpful book called How To Be A Working Actor by Mari Lyn Henry and Lynne Rogers. In their chapter “Getting Your Act Together,” there is a section on image types based on the concept of “universal style” created by image consultants in the 1990's. There was a list of styles followed by keywords to help you define yourself. They were...

• Sporty: friendly, casual, unpretentious, comfortable with who you are, likeable
• Traditional: businesslike, conscientious, loyal, organized, reliable, trustworthy
• Elegant: refined, polished, cultured, poised, discerning
• Romantic: caring, compassionate, charming, sensitive, vulnerable, nurturing
• Alluring: provocative, body conscious, seductive, sexy enticing
• Creative: adventuresome, free-spirited, imaginative, original, fearless
• Dramatic: commanding, confident, intense, self-assured, sophisticated.

In class, we were given time to pick which one we were, and then we stood in front of the class, one at a time, and the class determined which best suited us. I went last and there I stood, in 100 degree weather in southern France, rocking some cargo shorts, a t-shirt, and my Chacos, probably sweaty, with my hair in a tangled pile. Essentially, I was a hot mess. The rest of the students could do nothing but eliminate “Alluring.” Eventually the professor ironically guided them into a combination of “Romantic” and “Elegant.” A year and a half later, I am still not satisfied with that. I lean towards those categories, but I can find one or more keywords in each of the others that describe me.

These lists are meant as an initial guide, not as a stamp to declare precisely what you are. Henry and Rogers even say “It is important to realize that we comprise all the styles to a greater or lesser degree.” You are not a Christmas cookie stamped out of a sheet of dough. There are not a dozen just like you. My recommendation? Take a look at one of these image type lists, get an idea of where you stand, and forget about it.

2. No one can define your type but you.
There may be teachers, fellow actors, mentors, etc. who might guide you in a certain direction. Consider their advice before taking it. If you think what they suggest shapes your appearance in a way that doesn't feel natural and reflective of your personality, please fortheloveofgod don't do it just to please them. They can handle it if you decide that that's not really the route you want to go.

3. Take pages, not the whole book.
I'm actually very pleased about my shared qualities with both Anne Hathaway and Ellen Page, both suggested by my peers and professors. I love both of these actors and how they present themselves, particularly how Page can move between quirky layers and a fabbity little black dress and Hathaway's use of color and texture. However, I'm going to steer clear of her use of the sheer:

4. If you like it, buy it.
If you have the money, that is. I've found that I don't have the “Sweet baby Jesus I must own this” reaction to clothes that don't suit my personality well. Buy to fit your personality, not your type. (I am currently pining over these wedges in bark) Trust your instincts. Unless your instinct is to go on a shopping spree you can't afford. Or go bear wrestling.

5. In the end, you're your own type.
I was lucky to have the opportunity to enjoy speakers at the Savannah Film Festival for a few years and over and over I heard casting directors, actors, agents, say the same thing, reiterated at last by James Cromwell. “There are no types.” A different version of an already-famous actor is not nearly as interesting as your completely unique set of appearance, skills, and personality. Instead of refining yourself to be someone else, refine what you have to become the best possible version of yourself.

All this being said, I am writing this down as much for myself as anyone else. Anyone who knows me knows that my wardrobe is not exactly fabulous, so if there are any extra thoughts you want to add on types, defining yourself in appearance, or just getting dressed in the morning, pop it into a comment!

Henry, Mari Lyn., and Lynne Rogers. How to Be a Working Actor. New York: Back Stage, 2008. Print.