Better Slate than Never
Acting Class with a Bunch of Teenagers

While I did anatomy, I also did my first and only acting class, which was a good experience – maybe one of the best in my life, come to think of it. My mom told me that I nearly became a child actor when I was very young, but I guess my parents decided against it or it just fizzled out. Then later in high school my girlfriend tried to get me to try out for a school play, but was unsuccessful in her efforts. I finally tried acting at age 38, for the first time. I have a few memories of this class. One skinny girl's ass-waist-hip structure captivated me and I still think of it today, even though her face was a little ghoulish. The teacher talked about the "river monolog," supposedly a flowing improvised monolog given to introduce yourself as an actor. I searched for confirmation of their existence on the web and found nothing. The teacher said their absence from Google had no bearing on her memory of these things existing robustly in theater culture, and I didn't argue. When I played Brabantio in "Othello" and ranted about Othello's sooty bosom, a Black kid in class asked what race Othello was (he's a Spanish Moor, and is often played by a Black man). I found it interesting and impressive that he picked up on that. Um...there was a kinda fat girl who kinda flirted with me. That's about it. I liked the teacher but she was a weird hippie.

8/26

First day of class. I feel uncomfortable being so much older than everyone. Hopefully this feeling will diminish as the semester goes on and the kids will accept me into their tribe. Probably I should have taken an acting class back in high school, but better late than never. I wonder how much actual acting we will do (interacting according to a script or some specific 'acting exercises'). In a lot of ways an "acting" class starts to become more like a team building retreat or sociology exercise...some kind of interaction workshop where you learn to better "be human". And that's actually the locus of the value to me: I'm less interested in being a Hollywood star than I am in the social benefits "acting" will bring me, particularly in terms of career/workplace.

As long as I keep up my journal, I think, I will do well and get a lot out of the class. The "river monologs", in which we "slate" our introductions, may have been less interesting than they could have been, but it was our first activity as a class and people are still getting over shyness, reticence, etc. I do mine next class. I think it's good not to over-rehearse it mentally. Over-acting is such a problem, I think. Maybe it's a little necessary, though, for plays, where we don't have close-ups. On camera I think actors need to tone it down some, if they come from a theater background, although I'm just speculating. "The camera's effect on dramatic portrayal" is probably a done essay topic.

How will I choose a scene? I was considering Jack Nicholson's delivery of his "you can't handle the truth" testimony in "A Few Good Men", but I worry that I'd over-act it and bug my eyes out too much.

Terms:

Slate/Slating - For on-camera auditions only. You will be asked to state your name and sometimes the agent that sent you to the audition before you begin the scene. This goes on the tape for the casting director's reference. This is called 'slating'.

River monolog - a "flowing" improvised introductory monologue.

8/28

We started out improv sketches today, and I can see that I might have problems with the 18 year old kids in here. Theater improv is like the sort of game I used to play with my friends when I was age 10, 15, or even 18: inventing stories. I find myself wishing that I had peers to interact with, but maybe it will be ok. Also I'm just embarrassed: many of the kids seem to be better actors and just more comfortable in their own skin than I am. At this point, I might drop the class and I might not; this coming Tuesday is my last day for a refund. Or, I might switch to a later section in which I'm told there is another man in his late 30s. But maybe I prefer being unique...it remains to be seen.

Acting class could turn out to be a fairly weird experience, and by "weird" I suppose I do mean "good". Again, I'm not sure why I never did this before. It might (probably will) help me to be less prone to humiliation, as well as be more expressive, which are good traits for generalized success in the social field that is "the world of work."

9/3

Yesterday was Labour Day and so we didn't have class. I saw one of my classmates walking in the college courtyard today, and our interactional dynamic was weird: we were really friendly, saying "Hi!" with a smile and "see you tomorrow!", which is not really something I would normally do, with anyone. "Drama class" has been going on, as a cultural 'thing', for a long time now, and I think there are some behavioral routines established. I remember someone, an ex-girlfriend, told me something: she used to work in theater, and she explained it as a series of very intense and seemingly close but somehow superficial and easily dissolved relationships that form over the course of a theater event. It's easy to see why: thespians are blasting emotions at each other in an enclosed space over time, so it makes sense that closeness develops; that's sort of the principle wiring of the human primate. There's something about the nature of the beast, so to speak, that encourages emotive and close and, perhaps, "superficially deep" interaction.

But these are people we don't know well – they are fellow actors, and it's easy to see that our job is to be friends, so to speak, inasmuch as we need to exist in the same space and be human together, and have other humans watch us be human. We don't necessarily want to be friends – we aren't picking each other out of a crowd of people based on some innate qualities and choosing to interact (people generally have families and the people they went to kindergarten with, for that), but we're made to be friends, in this environment. And that's fine – people generally enjoy it I think. But real, lasting friendships coming out of theater/acting/drama? Perhaps there are problems there. Again: interesting experience. Glad I signed up for it.

9/4

Today was my day to sit in two different classes to see which one I liked best. I was upset about the 18 year olds, and so I was given the option of switching into a later class, which is smaller, and in which there is a man my age. I'm not sure which I should pick. I'll attend two more of each class, on Monday, and then do a final choice. The second class talks more and sometimes it seems like too much...a case of "I just want to hear the lecture, please." I guess now I'm leaning toward staying in my original class. Oh, I prepared my materials for recitation, and they need to be amended. For one thing, the monologue needs to be a modern monologue. I think I'll do Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men", in honor of his retirement, and in spite of my traditionalist conviction that plays are more honorable and somehow better than acting for the camera. I'm worried about memorizing my lines. That might be my downfall as an actor. We'll see how that goes. I guess the trick is not to panic.

9/18

How could I have not written for 14 days? I simply forgot to. Today went well – I performed Colonel Nathan R. Jessup's monologue, and the class and teacher liked what I did with it. I was happy with my performance too, although I'm a little worried about my ability to act to another performer rather than speak to a skull in my hand, or talk to the 4th wall. I can do those things just fine, but processing another human presence requires a lot of brainpower that could otherwise be used to deliver emotively or at least accurately.

I think I will do better at pure conversation than any sort of physical stuff. Today I was enlisted in a scene where I was suppose to be comforting to someone, and I just stood there. Maybe I should have patted him on the shoulder, but somehow that was too much for me; I like to guard my boundaries.

Speaking of boundaries, it was interesting how a recent "journey" improvisational class exercise turned into, as I put it, a group therapy session – everyone ended up talking about past traumas. Well, most people...a few recalled vacations, including me, although even these were full of personal anguish and so on, while mine was not ("I drank a lot", I said). I don't feel comfortable enough to reveal a lot about myself.

In a sense it's nice to be in an acting class for this reason: you can just act, and get your social stimulation that way, but you never really have to be yourself. I think of Meryl Streep, and how she always seems so bland in interviews. Maybe I can strive to be that way.

Anyway, this is 5 entries, and my quota is now filled, but I think I'll continue to write til the end. Midterm is close...I don't have a lot of time to memorize my poem and my script (my monolog is already memorized, by virtue of having seen "A Few Good Men" a thousand times). I should work on my script and my poem after my anatomy exam tomorrow.

It's funny how this semester is all about memorization: Latin terms in anatomy class, and scripts in acting class. When is midterm? I'd better have everything memorized by October 7th, which is in less than a month. I wonder if I can do it...I think I can. And if not, well, at least I will have tried.

9/21

I have a handle on this class now, especially since I find that I am adept at learning lines. After just one day's practice I have my Glengarry scene basically memorized, with a few kinks. Specifically these two lines get me: "However they are, that's the deal: a buck a throw, $5000 – split it half-half" and "$2500 for one night's work, and a job with Graff working the premium leads". Those lines take a while for me to recall at my cues; for some reason I find it hard to get them into my head.

Still not sure about the concept of 'beats' but I don't think anyone is, including Stanislavski or his 1st generation devotees. Russian theater might be pretty interesting due to that cult of personality. I keep wondering if acting needs a new king theoretician. My technique is to memorize my lines and allow my natural language and social brain wiring to take over interpretation. I kinda think theory can screw up acting, much like it has screwed up contemporary visual art. So I come into academic theater as an anticonceptualist; I am aware that there is theory and that a lot of people pay attention to it, but for the most part I will not. Or, at least, I will not overdo it. But it might be a notion of "you can't help but pay attention to it" – whenever you think to yourself "I am the character I'm playing", you're doing Stanislavski.

I decided to write today because I wanted to talk about my characters: in my monolog, I'm Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, commanding officer, ground forces, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In my scene, I'm Dave Moss, crooked real estate salesman. In my classical monologue, I'm Brabantio, father of Desdemona, who is in turn the lover of Othello. There are commonalities in all three characters: basically, all three are assholes; angry authoritarian men who want others to behave in particular ways in accordance with their wills. Jessup is more violent, Moss is more underhanded, and Brabantio is more regal and snobbish (I think..or that might just be the Shakespeare sounding), but all three are aggressive and controlling. Brabantio and Jessup are also bigoted; although Moss is too (he talks about how he won't "sit" – do a sales meeting – with Indians elsewhere in the play), that quality is not focused on in my scene.

I think it is not a coincidence that I picked these types, and I'm not sure this reflects well on me. Maybe at some point I would like to play a "nice" character. You know what they say: beware what you pretend to be for you may become it, and, relatedly, gaze not too long into an abyss before it gazes also into you (or something...I'm paraphrasing, and I think the second quote is Nietzsche). Anyway, I think I'm good at acting. Too bad I didn't discover it sooner, although I might not have a great deal of range; I just play angry, fearful, power-hungry assholes.

9/23

The lack of participation, discipline, and commitment in our class is discouraging and disheartening sometimes. I remember taking art classes at Montgomery College when I was close to the age the rest of the students in my class are, and I wasn't any better. Not to say that Montgomery College doesn't attract the best and the brightest, but I think the culture of the community college is such that students think it's acceptable or even expected that they slack off. There's a range, and I tend to only notice the bad stand-outs, but the fact is that often people come to MC because they did not do terribly well in high school, and then they continue those same academic habits once they're here.

It's interesting to note the difference between this and science courses, which of course are tied directly to a paycheque; no mystery there where the motivation is coming from. Kind of sad for the arts, but this is the direction society has taken. In my MFA thesis I mentioned a passage by Bertrand Russel in which he laments that the sciences are not taken as seriously as the arts and humanities (this was in 1910, before the world wars and the advent of the importance of technology, especially in military applications); kind of interesting to think about the way it's flipped.

I think acting has a lot to offer and it's a shame that it's not done with more rigour at the college, even community college, level. Sometimes I think what everyone needs is military school. I can say this now at age 38, because at 18 I was in the same boat; I had learned no discipline and was not motivated.

I can see getting really into acting, and even preferring it to real life or NEEDING it in some way. It's a safe way to interact with people...you can do all the things you'd like to maybe do in real life, but can't due to shyness or perceived threat or whatever. I think acting is good for shy people in that way, and I'd maybe even go so far as to posit that introverts make better thespians.

I did a reading of my Glengarry script today, and it went well. I think a lot of my challenge in the class is going to be learning to interact with and pay professional-calibre attention to the other students, who I tend to dismiss or ignore because of their age, or even be slightly intimidated by.

But no – really, for the most part, the problem is my inability to focus (ADHD? I dunno). For the same reason I can't concentrate on movies, TV, or any activity in which I'm not participating or generating some output; I don't make a good passive observer.

Teenagers are interesting: socially and body-language wise they're like adults, but verbally and in some other ways they're like kids. I remember being that age and just not having the verbal ability for...anything. I was forced to fall back on something like instinctive behavior, which generally amounted to feeling intimidated, which segued into a snobbish sort of shyness around people. Now I can talk to these kids and it's a lot easier to be around them; they respond to words. Everyone responds to words. Maybe this can be my second chance at high school.

9/26

Quick insight: acting generates an artificial intimacy. People see you expressing emotions and they thereby feel close to you and like they know you, but they don't. This must be what movie actors deal with in their fans. I went into this before when I talked about all the "superficially deep" relationships that I presume come out of theater-as-a-discipline. I think there's a presumption that Hollywood or even stage actors do what they do for the attention, but I'm sure there are some of them who dislike or resent the attention and only want to act (like Gary Oldman, for instance). It reminds me of something I picked up from (I believe) my mother, when I was very small: I asked her what it took to be an actor, or why some people were actors and some weren't, and she told me that you had to be good looking. I think I carried that for many years, and didn't really understand about "acting" as a skill until much later. Ironically my mother was a talented actor in college, like her mother before her.

9/30

We (I) didn't do much today. People went through their scenes, and the rest of the class watched. I didn't get any on-book parts. Mostly it's people reading off the scripts, and not a lot of acting, but glimmers do come through occasionally.

I would like to go on to the next level of acting instruction, whatever that might be. Another class? Community theater? I think I have a talent for this and it might potentially be a fulfilling, lifelong hobby...something to replace drawing or guitar. Midterm is coming up...I am very interested to see who has actually memorized their lines, and who will actually turn in their journal (and, who has dropped the class by the drop deadline).

10/2

I performed all three of my bits today, one after another in the order I memorized them. I only had one moment where I almost didn't remember a line, but it came to me. If I'm ever asked "what's the secret to acting?", I'm going to reply "memorizing my lines." Because I think, at least with acting, I am very anti-theory. Probably this stance is coming from my experience with visual art, where I basically blame theory and conceptualism for destroying the whole enterprise (although I would like to get into some experimental theater stuff). If you just memorize your lines, then that's it – the rest will take care of itself, and come naturally.

While I'm sure people can improve, I think it's a mistake to try and learn to be a great actor from nothing, or worse: to try and absorb theory and then wrap practice around theory, like so many of us did in grad school; that is the path to the dark side. Memorize your lines and deliver them – those are my acting tips. These are philosophical problems that exist in art and in music too, except with art and especially music there is some real technical proficiency that's very difficult for people to learn on their own (eg: what valves to push on a saxophone). But in acting, everyone already talks and flails their arms around...one just needs a sense on how to do this professionally.

One other thing: I'm not an outgoing person. I have trouble asking for on-book parts and don't want to put my hand up or volunteer for too much. I think I don't want to dominate the class, and also I'm just naturally shy – I'm afraid of people, basically, and my assumption is that they don't like me. But I like the dichotomy of being a competent and forceful actor, and then a very quiet and reserved person off stage. I don't want to be one of those "drama people" who are always in your face, bugging their eyes out while baring their teeth and doing orders-of-magnitude pitch variance at 75 decibels.

I think Harrison Ford is like this – shy in real life but an actor's actor on camera. Harrison Ford, Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Forrest Whitaker, Ralph Fiennes, and the less-famous Garret Dillahunt (supporting roles in "The Road", "Winter's Bone", and "No Country for Old Men") – I like those guys (and gal). I don't know any (principally) stage actors, but this is not my fault: you have to have been exposed to that culture in some way – it doesn't just come at you like TV/movies does, to everyone.

I learned something else today: when you slate, you just give the name of your character and the name of the production, and you don't go into an analysis of the story (I think). I suspect that theater might be a little like art: that the conventions are fluid and vary a lot from place to place.

10/7

Final entry for this quarter. I need to make sure I include what we, the class, were specifically told to include in our journals, although I know I already talked about my characters. However I didn't talk much about my poem, or, in fact, my scripts as text. Memorizing a poem brings me closer to it than I'm used to being (I've usually held a detachment from or even a disdain for poetry), and this closeness allows me to criticize the poem more confidently. Specifically, and with the realization that some of these problems may stem from my "poem" being only an excerpt from a larger work (i.e., contextual issues), I'll say that TS Eliot's imagery can seem confused.

My section of "The Wasteland" is supposed to evoke DRY and ROCKY. But in a few lines, Eliot conjures conditions that don't coexist believably, at least on Earth. Firstly, "the sandy road" and "feet are in the sand" – is it sandy or rock there, in this wasteland, among the rocks without water? While I'm sure I could find somewhere on earth where it's dry and sandy and rocky (Utah?), a "dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit" evokes a craggy and massive landscape of rock formations, and a sandy road seems like the desert. And a road evokes, of course, civilization. No water along the road? Why is it sandy? I'll leave it with saying "sandy" and "rocky" butt up against each other, for me. Secondly, "frosty silence in the gardens" and "thunder of spring over distant mountains" evoke moisture, which is an even bigger problem. Maybe it's for contrast, though. Far be it for me to criticize Thomas Stearns, especially without reading the whole "Wasteland".

I did another rehearsal today, and again experienced that little flash of a moment where I almost forgot a line. It came to me, though. I wonder if people can see it in my eyes when I'm not recalling – maybe something to watch for in plays (frantic glances from side to side, bulging eyes, blinking, staring off into the corner, etc). I guess you can pass that sort of thing off as "acting" – in fact, this was a joke on the TV sitcom "Friends": when you can't remember your lines, you look off to the 4th wall and seem pensive, as though your character were pensive about his situation, rather than the pensiveness being generated by you, the actor, trying to remember his lines. I found a good way to pay better attention to the other students: help them out. I sit in the front row, and it's fun to cue them on their lines.

Oh, and a bit about "A Few Good Men" and "Othello", and maybe about "The Wasteland", in general. I'll start with "The Wasteland" because I don't have much to say about it – as far as I can interpret, it's about hell. And probably, some kind of figurative or mental hell. But it makes for good Halloween-style overblown el nutso readings; "dramatic readings", I guess. THERE IS NOT EVEN SILENCE IN THE MOUNTAINS!!!!!!! [shake fist, head down in frustrated angst]

"A Few Good Men" is play-like, and when I research it now I see that it was a play before it was a movie. Col. Nathan R. Jessup's monologue is Shakespearean-seeming – like modern language Shakespeare, I think. The grammar is elaborate, and while it's not quite believable that anyone, but perhaps especially not a Marine colonel, would flawlessly construct such elegant flowery prose off the cuff in mid-testimony, it makes for a good set of delivery options for someone doing theater because with complexity comes nuance, whether an actor wants it to be there or not; I can play the part angry, cold, thoughtful, sympathetic, and vary my delivery as the monologue changes. I like to try and give it more range than Jack Nicholson did in the movie; the temptation, I would guess, when performing modern monologues, is to play the actor rather than the character.

Othello is a sad, sad story (themes: love, social class, family, betrayal, death). I read a summary, and interestingly, was able to get more "into" it and feel a lot closer to the text than I usually am able to, with movies, TV, books, etc, I'm sure because in the case of "Othello" I'm performing it rather than only moving my eyes over it. Acting has literary critical value that way, which is probably one of those things that everyone (every drama student at least) knows but that I just discovered: "if you really want to understand and appreciate a text, memorize it and perform it."

10/14

I performed my midterm today. I find it difficult to watch myself, because I really don't like the way I look. I know this is a common problem for people on camera. I feel like I can't possibly be a good actor while I look so awful, even though I know this isn't true, sort of, logically.

I will watch full screen in the other monitor and take notes (I videorecorded it).

1. My stomach sticks out a lot.
2. Gesture only with left arm during poem.
3. Oops, screwed up ("here one 'cahn ' – said with a weird UK-ish accent – neither stand nor lie nor sit")
4. I wonder what the kids think of me.
5. Always gesturing with the left hand.
6. Not sure about my gestures. Are they too forced?
Maybe a few good men is a bit rushed at first. But seems to get better. Better to do more emoting – don't worry about overacting...If anything do more overacting.
7. God I'm ugly. Maybe the kids talk about it.
8. Again, hand gestures look forced and weird. Maybe tone those down a bit or work on them in some way.

It's interesting though...and I'll talk a bit about the kids in such a way that I would probably prefer they not read it, but it's necessary for art crit purposes: Nathan is interesting. I'm not sure he's a particularly good actor, but he's so comfortable in his own skin and so smart and friendly that his "stage presence" is affected and he comes across well. He has a good voice, too – clear and resonant. So I think that "who an actor is" does get conflated with the roles he or she is playing, unavoidably. It is on that note that I must, must, must, lose weight. Also I'll die of high blood pressure and not be able to act anymore, so there's that. On second thought Nathan might be a "good actor"; hard to tell, ultimately, how much of an appealing presence is the actor and how much is the actor acting, so to speak.

Another thing of note that happened today: we did improv, and I kinda went overboard avant-garde. I shudder to think of the way I must have looked. I think I just need to avoid filming myself and looking at myself, because it really affects me. I simply don't look the way I want to look or the way anyone would want to look. As long as I don't have to see myself it's fine, and I think other people are focused on my acting rather than the degree to which my abdomen protrudes, but it's still very upsetting.

I thought I might have gone too far in improv, and freaked some girl out...She said I was scaring her during the improv. But then some people reassured me that I had not, so I felt better. I'm paranoid about women and find myself easily manipulated by them, and more darkly, that I'm going to get accused of "harassment" or something and be judged guilty before proven innocent, like a sex offender. For some reason that theme keeps coming up in my improvs: I get ordered around by women. Improv freaks me out a little bit, I think because it's too much like real life and things can "come out" that you're not ready for. The kids really, really enjoy it, in a way that I think I can't. They went totally nuts playing games today, inventing elaborate scenarios. I may not be able to do improv as well (although I was told that I was fine), but I'm good at memorizing my lines.

That reminds me: I think there's more to memorizing your lines than meets the eye, and when I say flippantly that the secret to good acting is memorizing your lines, I'm being deceptively simplistic. In fact, memorizing something is being with it in a very intimate way, and in order to memorize something you have to understand it in some way. And with this understanding comes expressiveness – you become the character, in a Stanislavskian way. And, memorizing lines and delivering them "off book" is a Stanislavsky thing. So really, there's a lot to it. Once you've memorized something it stays with you, and you mull it over. And with every rehearsal comes a greater understanding of it.

Next class we're going to start on Shakespeare. I wonder how the kids will handle it. I am obsessed with "the kids". God I wish I weren't so fat. Another two months of school, roughly. Pretty soon we go see our play.

10/21

So we're supposed to see a movie and look at the acting. This might seem odd but I'm not a wonderful judge of acting, as it appears on TV or the big screen. If you listen to people in real life, they are not so much "in character" as they are when they're doing "classical" theatrical drama. I heard about something written by David Mamet – actually precisely what I was looking for – that was basically an indictment of method acting. His basic premise was that you don't have to get into character, or worse – be in character between scenes and make a big production, so to speak, of it – because the lines are already "in character". If you listen to people in real life they're inconsistent, and their delivery is weird. Here's something from an interview with an actor, Michael Emerson:

Interviewer: Do you go all method when you're in Hawaii filming?

M.E.: Oh no. I'm the furthest thing to a method actor. I clock in and clock out of that. I don't have to get myself wound up to a fever or put myself in a dark place or anything like that. Playing the scene provides me with all the sort of darkness I require. I'm pretty easy on the set.

This sounds like a compromise between oration and method acting: you read your lines, but the "method" comes directly from the line itself – the text – rather than pretending to be someone. I like that I think...Pretending to be someone seems like it could get all consuming, and, ultimately, who's going to note the difference anyway (people will piece together a cohesion if things are continuous).

So there it is: a way to escape the tyranny of Stanislavski. But, like any modern thing, I could see how it could fall apart as laziness. If someone says "oh the lines will generate my characterization...I don't have to think about my character at all" then it becomes a less rigorous exercise, which is something that doesn't really produce good results across the board (see: the conceptualization of contemporary visual art). So I dunno ultimately. But I do rather strenuously agree with the assertion that people are not naturally "in character" when they talk; rather the situation shapes their "delivery". And, so, since all you have when on book is the book (the script), one can see that script as a situational thing.

I think this also touches on "just letting it (acting) come naturally" – you memorize and deliver your lines and whatever comes out comes out. Sometimes I think the more effort you put into art, the worse it gets, and it all has to be a "natural" enterprise. For instance, I heard some crits of my performance, and my hand gestures were mentioned. I agreed – they seem forced, and I was, indeed, thinking about them. I dunno. I think what I need to do is more acting, and less talking about it. That's true of any kind of artistic endeavor.

Anyway, my movie, with the fact in mind that I am really unable to in good conscience judge the acting. But, I can pretend – specifically, I know what the goal of the acting is: method acting and holistic characterization. It's not an approximation of real life, it's a movie (or play) and therefore it's its own thing. So in that case, looking at my own collection (i will pick something I'm really familiar with rather than something i've seen once in the theater recently):

I'll pick "Drive", which was semi recent. In fact the acting in drive is quite naturalistic. When I think of other movies where I like the acting, it's similar. In movies like "a few good men" it seems dramatic and overblown, and maybe that's ok for certain kinds of movies and for the theater. But, at least in my case, I like more subtle or unusual kinds of acting, like I see in "drive". A few examples: Ryan Gosling, the main character, doesn't talk or change his expression much. Keannu reeves probably could have done this role and not screwed it up, but maybe I'm giving him (Keannu) too much credit.

Of course there's Brian Cranston who was recently lauded by sir Anthony Hopkins as giving "the best acting he (Hopkins) has ever seen", in "Breaking Bad". Hard to top. And yeah, in "drive", Cranston is good too. It's hard for me to crit acting, for some reason, because there are so many ways a person can deliver lines, and it's hard to say which are the wrong and right ways, although maybe my MFA-born postmodernistic relativism is showing here more than it should. I think when we look at method acting it's easier to say if it's wrong if the character does not seem "in character" – for instance if a character has lost his keys and is not angry and frustrated, he is termed "not believable." In fact, in "drive", Ryan Gosling is not all that believable by Stanislavskian method acting standards; he's kind of a poker face. But, there are a lot of people in real life who are like that, and it's a realistic movie. Maybe super-realistic. It's kind of an interesting foil to "a few good men" which is just basically Sworkin clevernesses and eloquences piled on one after another – case in point: my monologue from midterm.

Back to "Drive": the one bit of acting that really blew me away in "Drive", that I noticed right away the first time I saw it: when Albert Brooks playing Jewish gangster Bernie rose does a scene with his partner Nino (played by Ron Perlman).

I looked up the IMDB original written movie script and the actors' delivery on film is very different from it. Let me transcribe what I heard:

The thing that stands out most about this scene is Bernie's nervous blinking. It seems very naturalistic, and a consequence at how genuinely upset he is. Perhaps that's not much of an analysis. I'll say in general that "Drive" is naturalistic and realistic, and not like "drama" – it's far from "A Few Good Men". This is not to say that everyone in it would disavow method acting...probably far from it. But there's a subtlety and a realism that sometimes gets overshadowed with devoted method actors bulging their eyes out. But what do I know...I'm just halfway through a freshman acting class.

I had an insight: method acting and Stanislavski might be like modernism in art. And more Mamet-oriented script-driven styles could be more like postmodernism in "contemporary" (vs modern) art. Something to think about, anyway. But I can see dangers popping up in the Mamet script-driven style, that I went into above. I guess it's good to be aware of things, and that's all I can do. "Drive" is quite a postmodern flick, I think, and not just in the acting: it references the 80s and pastiche and all of that stuff. Shopping malls and suburban culture are in it. There's nonsequitor and deadpan, and overall it just feels very pomo.

10/30

I just saw "This". The moment that stands out for me was when a French "doctor without borders", at the end, tells all the other players who have been squabbling and crying over their sexual indiscretions, that he has real issues to solve with his work, and that this sort of thing – crying over sexual indiscretions – is silly. He says the French do it better, and just accept that bodies sometimes want to do things to other bodies, and voila. I think we can leave out the cultural criticism, though, at least in terms of comparing Anglo-American and French values. Instead, I think this important moment was a critique on humanity. Do we really need more chattering about sex in the general discourse? Are there not enough love songs? Can't we do something else, like heal the sick or praise God? Why is fucking so interesting? It doesn't really say good things about humans as a supposedly evolved species, and tends to knock them down in my eyes as being closer to apes than angels; what a piece of work is man. So, I guess the play annoyed me a little bit. I just don't care about love stories.

Confession: for one thing stories about people in complex social relationships involving genitalia miss the mark for me because i've been largely excluded from this little human dance, and it's upsetting to me to be reminded the degree to which I have missed out on and am missing out on life.

My question on acting is always "how real did it seem?", i.e., could I imagine such interactions taking place unscripted between two people in the course of civilized society? Usually, I think, the more method acted stuff, my answer is "no, people don't talk like that." Imagine Star Wars as kind of an extreme example: this sounds like dialog, and not natural speech. I suppose there's always the question of intent, as in, did the writer/director intend the speech to sound weird and stylized. But sometimes I think it's just clumsiness or lack of attention that produces modernistic crap like the Star Wars dialog. But I actually have a more elaborate theory on that that I won't go deeply into (that more Shakespearean UK actors like Cushing, Guinness, and McDiarmid did a better job with Lucas's silly overblown tripe than Harrison Ford et al. could...and that Lucas should have picked more British National Theatre types).

In terms of acting, "This" seemed fake. However, a lot of the interactions were "fake", as in, they were dinner party'ish and as such I'd expect the participants in these interactions to be performative. In some other places, where the talk was more "real", things seemed slightly less plasticized. There was a question and answer period afterwards, and as usual there were things I would have liked to have said but did not say because I am shy, and because I always think everyone thinks i'm trying to demonstrate that i'm smarter than everyone when I speak, which I think to a degree I am...but that's not the whole story.

The question of what "this" is was raised, and I think it's obvious: existential angst...modern civilized man's condition as his brain, intended to hunt mammoths and forage berries, is thrust into a weird civilized world with agriculture and writing play reviews. It's the inherent pain that mankind feels – that "something wrong" that all the religious systems try to solve (Original Sin, Jihad, Dukka, etc). Something feels terribly wrong and painful with existence, I think especially in the "modern" (as in, post-technology, post hunter-gatherer world), and sometimes people try to look at solutions.

I also wanted to ask, bluntly, "was it supposed to be realistic?" I wonder what kind of reaction that would have gotten. I'm afraid it would have provoked a condescending lecture on "well, is any play ‘supposed to be realistic'? You've stumbled upon an important and intelligent discussion, in your drooling ignorant question!" I cannot tolerate people thinking I am less than 100% super-genius. Anyway, I was too shy to ask anything, and was pretty annoyed at the hot theater, having to spend so much time with humans, feeling fat and old around the younger kids, and just wanting to go home. But I still sort of enjoyed it...but I repeat: do we really need more on the human primate's sexual exploits?

Some of the word play I appreciated, and there were a few little Seinfeld-esque moments and asides where they went off topic for the purpose of conversation, and those were entertaining. To a degree the play was about how language in a social context shapes our realities.

Why can't teenagers, and seemingly especially teenage girls, ever stop chattering? It's like breathing to them. Just constant ongoing communication. And they whisper it so they think it's not disruptive, but people can hear it and are just being polite and non-confrontational. I sometimes fantasize about the things I would say and the things I would do if I were a professor.

11/4

We haven't been doing a lot of different things lately...last class we talked about "This", and today we did some read-throughs and some improv. I'm really bad at improv, at least compared to the kids. Maybe, though, it's a function of my being so much older than them – if I were improvising with other 30-40somethings, I might have an easier time. I'll use today's journal space to say that in some sense, I don't really approve of Shakespeare. I think it's lowest-common-denominator pandering, basically...a 15th century version of the "Friends" sitcom: "teeheehee sex" for half an hour, every week. Shakespeare talks about sex and death, though, so at least he's gone a bit beyond what's done contemporarily in media. But I think I'm not giving Shakespeare enough credit, and actually the problem is that I'm sort of misanthropic, socially anxious, and introverted, and as such I don't especially want to explore the maneuverings of the human primate as it navigates its base desires and avoids pain. I look forward to the presentation on Samuel Beckett and Sartre and Camus, who I think (or I hope) have more "elevated" themes. My playwright is Chekov, who deals with politics and social change. That is acceptable, especially since it's very Russian and feels alien (and therefore interesting) in that sense. I shouldn't be so grumpy, but it's true: I'm just not a people person, so a lot of Shakespeare is lost on me. I can see why it was not well-reviewed in its day, I think for the same reasons that I cite (and especially considering the more potent religious order that recommended we focus on "higher" objects of thought rather than sniff our own armpits all day). But the language is fun, in Shakespeare...sort of amazing that he wrote all of that. And it makes sense, too, if you read it out loud and perform it and get into the character. I find that I get much more into Shakespeare now, performing the roles, than I did in high school when I was only made to move my eyes over the text. I think I got basically zero out of it back then, whereas now I like it, in a sense, but at the same time I sort of roll my eyes at it for not being terribly elevated material – it's almost a comic book of a narrative.

11/11

How I hate improv. But, I found a partial solution: just do something weird. Today I held up the driver of the 'car' we were in and said ‘get the fuck out of the car', then I laid down in front and said 'drive!", which went over well – there was spirited applause. I poked Brady's eye out with my guitar picking fingernail when I held my finger-gun to his head, and I felt bad, but he assured me he was not hurt. Normally, if I don't make up something odd to do, improv feels like a revisitation of the trauma of high school, partially of course because my fellow players were in high school just a few months ago; I feel ashamed and afraid and like I will do the wrong thing and be mocked or ignored or detested. Maybe this is the secret to being social: some degree of planning; keep executing little scripts. To a degree, the whole reason I like acting is that it's scripted; you can socialize without having to come up with your own lines. Improv kind of destroys all that, although there is some other value there: it's a safe environment, theoretically without consequences, although the last time I improvised I thought Jenna was going to turn me into the office for being a sex offender, and this time I poked out Brady's eyeball. Such is life. And I know some of the kids don't like improv, or at least are wary of it, for that reason: unexpected things can come out that have more to do with reality than fantasy. Last time I was watching as people were riffing on the idea of being fat or thin, and I just thought to myself: "oh please God don't ask me to go up there." It's interesting to watch improv, though, because you're getting a real window into people's souls; it would be a field day for a psychologist.

I'm having a bit of trouble with my Cherry Orchard monolog. I just draw a blank when i'm trying to perform it for my mom. But I think the problem might be my mom.

However my scene, I'm looking forward to. I'm working with Rachel, who is amazingly talented (or, maybe it's just a contrast to the people in the class for whom acting is not and never really will be "their thing"). Rachel can read Shakespeare having never seen it before, get all the words right, read it at speed, and read it dramatically. Hard to believe she's only 20-ish years old. She has a lot of talent and intelligence and I'm sure she'll do well, even if she doesn't go into acting; I remember hearing that she did want to make a career of it, which might not be so smart, but people are most often told (especially by people who are not first generation immigrants) at age 18 or 20 or whatever to do what their passion dictates regardless of pecuniary concerns. This might be bad advice.

Five entries. I'm done. Maybe I'll do a synopsis at the end, or not.

Oh, I saw another play last night, called "appropriate". It was good-ish, I suppose. The acting was better than in "This" but the story was more confused, especially at the end. And the set was different – it was a single set, rather than a revolving stage (ergo, "The Roundhouse" theater), so it was a little more boring in that sense. They did make some internal changes to it though, like clean up everything dramatically, extremely, and suddenly, which made a big difference (a lesson for the homemaker). So in that way it was really like two sets. But "This" actually had something like five of them; it was impressive. But I don't know how well roundhouse stages, if there are a lot of them, work themselves into dramaturgy; what if you write a play that requires 5 sets, and it can only be performed in roundhouse theaters, of which there are (I don't know) 15 in the country? Seems rather limiting, and almost like a sub-discipline: writing for multiple sets. I don't know anything about plays though or what the history is like in terms of changeability of sets. "I suspect there's been historical variation," is my generic answer to the inquiry.

11/13

I did my Cherry Orchard monolog and it went really fantastic. People were jealous, which isn't that fun to experience (it has filtered its way down to culture-at-large that there is no shortage of envy in the dramatic arts), but at least it's an indication that I've performed well. I discovered that it actually makes it easier if I do my Lopakhin with a Russian accent...the rhythm of the speech and the characterization is helped. I have carpal tunnel at the moment and can't write much or very fluently, so i'll stop for now. But I just wanted to say how well my rehearsal went today. It's too bad it's so hard to earn a living from art, writing, acting, music, etc, because that's really what I do best. Imagine if it were as lucrative and prevalent as medical technology – if the Bureau of Labor and Statistics listed 1. acting 2. art 3. guitar playing 4. musical composition and 5. philosophical journal writing as the top five jobs set to grow at 50% in america in the next 10-20 years. Maybe when the machines take over and are doing all the tech jobs, there will be a resurgence of creative jobs. It's possible we'd need a non-money economy for that, though. But I'm glad that I'm figuring out a way to make a living now, with medical imaging, and then when I've relaxed a bit and don't have to worry about my rent (mortgage? Dare to dream) cheque I can actually devote some time to making art; I guess there are some artists that don't mind starving, but I object to it; I'm not Jean Michelle Basquiat. Acting is kind of a lot of work...I'm not sure if I want to keep doing it. How could I do it in an amateur hobby way, like I do art? Learn scenes myself, perform them for my videocamera, and upload them to Youtube? That seems terribly sad (imagine howling...'tis too horrible!). We'll see.

12/04

I keep writing my final entry and then deleting it so this will be my last attempt. I find myself in a bitter mood here, toward the end, and all I seem to be able to talk about is how uncommitted the kids in my class are, and how useless it is to study the arts. I can say, objectively, that I got a lot out of this class – I learned that I am good at acting, and more specifically and more surprisingly, that I am good at memorizing my lines; I wasn't sure if I would be able to do that, and it turns out I sort of excel at it. I think I'm just tired now and don't want to write anymore, or keep up with the quality I started this journal off in. Also I haven't written in over two weeks and I feel out of practice again. Writing is shitty that way. My birthday is in two days! I'll be 39. Maybe I can be like Jack Benny, and be perpetually 39 years old.

I signed up for the next acting class but dropped it, narrowly missing my last chance for a refund. I still think it was for the best. For one thing, I was driving to the same campus at age 39 that I was when I was 19, and this was starting to creep me out. But mostly that second class was just bad; the teacher was a tough old bitter deep-voiced Broadway marm who seemed to minimally engage with everyone, and I decided I didn't like the students based on my experience watching – not even talking to – one guy in particular with long hair and something like a trenchcoat who, on the first day before the lecture started, strolled nonchalantly, while making eye contact with whoever looked at him, over to the piano to play it for everyone. The first semester had been free form and unthreatening, and I was allowed to take off and do my own thing, which worked well. That first hippie teacher told me I could consider acting for a career, and that was nice to hear even if it was silly; there's more of a shortage of thin pretty people than there is a shortage of people who can say words charismatically. The prof in that aborted second semester class told me that while I looked young enough to play roles potentially 10 years younger, my "body size" would limit my castability. A lot of people find the world of acting despicable. Still though, it's one way to be a star.

2/6

We're not required to keep a journal for this second class. It's really hard for me to discipline myself to do things on my own if there's not a requirement that I do them. Maybe this is kind of a human truism. At this point the class has met three times – hard to believe...it seems like more time has passed. At any rate, it's not too late to start a journal. I think it was really helpful in my last class, and I want to do it again. Also I entertain fantasies of publishing it.

I have some misgivings about this semester. First of all, the students are unbearable; they are performative narcissists, all of them (well...some of them). And the teacher is unbearable. Well now that I write about it it's possible that I just don't like the way the classroom is set up. Something is different, and it's causing me to have a different, unpleasant experience in this class.

First complaint is about the book. It's a seminal text of sorts called "Audition" by Michael Schrutleff, and it's a little bit ridiculous. I read the part we are required to read, although I couldn't concentrate enough to really read his example dialogs between him (the director) and the actor auditioning. The point of the book is how to do well in auditions – how to act, basically, with the practical focus being auditions, because that's where it's decided who gets paid and who doesn't. I do not disapprove of this focus, and it's nice to get some particularism like that. Speaking of particularism, though, the main thing I notice about theater/drama is that it seems stuck in a historically modernistic paradigm.