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There lacks sufficient material for me to essentially provide a half decent analysis of the performance, not because of how long it has taken me to finally get to this response, but because the performance itself didn't provoke much from me. I suppose in these past few weeks I have become somewhat desensitized to the nerves that seem to universally plague both amateur and experienced actors alike. Don't get me wrong, I still got nerves and a case of my notorious shakes, but they were downplayed, so downplayed that they seemed almost absent in relative comparison.  The performances surrounding the Poetry in Voice competition were most likely responsible for this. The intensity of these occasions and their plenteousness adapted me to the idea of being in that spotlight, of being watched and judged. However, I'm not exactly sure if this adaptation is advantageous when it actually comes to performing. Sure, a stronger peace of mind may allow me to focus more on my character and on the delivery of that character's lines, but at the same time, that terrible nervousness and the adrenaline rush that comes with it, it has a way of giving one an absurd amount of energy on stage. A sort of in the moment grace arises from that pressure, and often one can portray a complete moment of rapture if they can balance both training and skill with spontaneous in-the-moment energy. The problem for me is simply just achieving this. While I felt that I had sufficient energy during the performance, I didn't feel big, and I didn't feel deep. Perhaps that was due to the shallowness of the roles that I was playing, or perhaps it had more to do with the fact that I was just simply wasn't interested in investigating the father roles any further than I already had. This is most definitely a bad thing, considering that the whole purpose of the performance in the first place is to interest and entertain the audience. If the actors aren't even entertained, there really isn't much hope. It's not to say that I was never entertained with The Dining Room. It's a play that I've fallen in and out of love with. Portraying the intricacies, the interactions of everyday life in both their ugliness and beauty certainly came off to me as a swell idea when I first heard about it. Actually performing the piece though, that was a different story. Putting myself in the shoes of the archetype, forcing myself into this stone coffin of a character, and repeating it over and over and over again, only to be shown the creative potential of the other school groups. I must say it was particularly painful. And then again came interest. Looking more in depth into A.R Gurney's work, looking at all the scenes in their correct order and in their entirety, there emerges a strong ideological pattern, one that I think anyone can appreciate, audience and actor alike. It is the contrast and the consistent contrast of the comic and tragic together with one another, on the same set, with the same actors, that gives The Dining Room its own unique feeling, what gives it its entertainment value. In the end, the performance was an interesting one. I don't think I've ever been more at peace on stage or off stage. Whether this was because I didn't care or because I was simply comfortable I have no idea. All I can be sure of is that in terms of dealing with nerves, I felt the best I ever had. Who knows, maybe it had something to do with me facing backstage. Of course the usual criteria apply as well. The bottom line, the one thing that decided whether or not our performance was half decent, was lines. Always, always, always lines. Of course, I could be more specific, I could say that the efficiency of our rehearsal processes, our dedication, our commitment to our performance is what led to our level of memorization, but in the end, I think it comes down to the individual, to their life, and what they're capable of. I did give the performance my all, though that all may have been subdued by sickness, coffee binges, and a lack of sleep, and I don't feel as if I could have done any better considering the circumstances. Of course, if I were to do things again, lines would be the priority. But they always were and will continue to be in the future.

The rehearsal process is a particularly interesting one to me, mainly because somehow it actually manages to work. You would think that standing around stumbling about with your lines and character over and over again wouldn't exactly be the definition of progress, yet, time and time again, I find myself being the most productive during our rehearsal sessions. Some of it probably has to do with the fact that both my scenes are large group scenes, and so I have subsequently been somewhat forced to memorize my peers' lines as well. This unfortunate side effect also has its benefits as well I suppose. It does allow me to react promptly to their lines, and, to their dismay, it also allows me to prompt them on occasion. The efficiency of the rehearsal process, however, I think has been illuminated to me by the other pieces of art I've had to repeat recently. With the poems that I had to memorize for the Poetry in Voice competition, I simply walked around in a circle and rehearsed my poems over and over again. This process, was, to put it lightly, quite awful. At first, it seemed like there was no other way to sufficiently butcher a piece of art than to repeat it over and over again. But after while, I began to notice certain things. The very minute details behind the background of the words, the slightest syllable here and there, the pattern of the noises. A whole other world was revealed behind the poem, and I'm finding the same thing is happening with our drama rehearsals. When we first began rehearsing, it was even more painfully shattered than it is now. There was almost nothing there but a bit of tone and inflection that was thrown out as attempt to make it sound like we weren't just blatantly reading off of the script. But now that the scripts are starting to leave the hands, and now that the performance date is starting to approach mighty fast, what was really intended by the scene, by the writer and his words, starts to become apparent. The emotions of the scene and their subsequent meanings, Standish's frantic impatience and yet his feet solidly planted on the ground, towering over his family and his wife like some sort of monument of morality to them, and yet the audience we are performing to is that of the modern day. They know the morality of the play, the morality of the time, and they are completely free to have their own feelings about it. But yet here we are, trapped in the scene, feeling as A.R Gurney would have us feel. I remember at the beginning of this term when we described this play as almost like a museum's exhibit, and to be honest, that's exactly how I feel now. It's a profound idea, to portray not a just a part of history, but a part of it that is still alive and dying. Still, I find myself at times bored with play. I miss the more colourful options out there, and this may sound funny but honestly I think Waiting for Godot was more straightforward than this. More funny too. That's another thing about the dining room. It can't decide what it wants to be. Whether that's on purpose or not I have no idea, but each scene seems to have its own specific genre. Maybe it's simply an interpretation done by the actors. I certainly know that you can turn absolutely anything into a comedy if you try hard enough. But it's just how different these scenes feel, in their very nature. In my scenes I'm playing two fathers, both of whom are quite similar, and yet, the scenes themselves are so different, so strange in their feeling. Their done with essentially the same set of actors, maybe a different individual missing here and there, but essentially, they are the same. So I suppose if a director can really emphasize that when putting on the play they can create an experience less focused on the examination of these clichés and more focused on the exploration of possibilities, the absolutely unlimited multitude of experience that comes out of a set so simple as a single, dining room table.

To be honest, I'm rather disappointed that we have to narrow down the subject line of these journals, but if it helps some people to have a specific topic, then I'll deal with it. Character. So, if we're talking about character, I suppose I should start with my characters, the two major father characters of the play, one simply referred to as father and the other referred to as Standish. Both of these characters, I have to say, I somewhat despise. Narrowing down the reasons why is difficult, and I'd probably have to go through my entire life history to get anything remotely similar to an answer, but as of right now, I think the reason I dislike them is simply because of their clichéd behaviour, which is rather unfortunate, because it seems the entire play is about these clichés, these basic, standard lives. I am playing the epitome of a father. The strict model figure. And it disturbs me, because if I were ever to be a father, which is a disturbing idea in itself, I don't think I'd ever want to be like that, yet what I'm playing, what I'm pretending to be, has been the standard for the last one hundred years, and it seems that ever single male individual who has decided to reproduce ended up as something at least somewhat relatable to that. So maybe that old adage that we are the picture of our parents is true, or maybe it has more to do with the fact that children who suffer from abuse are often abusers themselves when they become parents. We aren't exactly given many other examples of parenting when we are younger. No matter how well the media, or how well education portrays what a parent should be, we all always be insufferably stuck with our own mentors.  And we're all that they leave behind too. Their genetic monuments. We will carry all of their abuses, all of their flaws and mistakes in raising us onto even our own children, and then perhaps they will think the same about us. The whole concept just seems ridiculous when thought of on a large scale. This seemingly unending cycle of bitterness and hatred, between what is often portrayed as the closest of relationships among human beings. Of course, none of this is very helpful when trying to portray the father or Standish. Nothing in the lines or the stage directions suggests that this father character has any second guessings about snapping out as son. Standish, is well, just Standish. He's simply preoccupied with other things, though he does get to yell in his scene as well. Yelling. That's one of those human functions that I've never truly been able to understand. Sure, I can see the appeal in perhaps raising one's voice, in getting oneself heard, but the yelling of a father, there's nothing quite more brutal than that, is there? There's something about just how fast and random it can come, and how utterly pure in its judgment it is. It doesn't matter if the child is right or wrong or just simply confused, as David is in the Standish scene, when that voice rises, nothing else matters. Whether it's a question of respect or authority or just simple survival I think changes with every situation. Why though? I have yelled, we've all yelled, but at a child? Maybe it's the fact that children often destroy any sort of passion the two partners have between one another. They break the female's body which dissatisfies the male which leads to god knows what. Bitterness, hatred, violence, a whole other world of possibilities. It's just so, unimaginable to me. I think we all have that moment in our lives when we realize our morality is different from that of our parents, and most of us also have that moment in our childhood when we openly declare that we would never treat our children the way our parents treat us. But then, it always happens, doesn't it? Things change, incentives are shifted, and efficiencies are made clear. The father's behaviour in the first scene makes it almost impossible for me to believe that he himself had a father who treated him that way, but again, I suppose that was the norm. But just imagining how a human being can come out of an environment like that even somewhat in tact is difficult for me to manage. Perhaps they didn't at all. Maybe we're all broken and to make ourselves feel better we must simply break others.

This final week of rehearsal was probably our most productive yet. Robin and I finally reached a point where our lines were no longer a problem, and we were subsequently able to run the scene again and again, trying out different emotional standpoints, and implementing a variety of physical aspects and movements into the scene. What we discovered was that there were a plethora of different options, almost infinite in number, of how to stage and perform the scene. While Arthur Miller's stage directions are quite specific in their description of the emotions John and Elizabeth Proctor are feeling, the actual ways in which these emotions are portrayed on stage are generally left for the interpretation of the players. In Nicholas Hytner's Crucible, this scene is not only missing a handful of lines, but spoken entirely with low volume and very little physical movement. There is not a really a climax, or least no physical one, if the action rises at all it is only within the characters we see on the screen. It's internal, not an external dramatization, which is alright to do with a film, but when performing on a stage, or directly in front of a handful of people in a confined space, like Robin and I are, keeping the action internal doesn't seem like an option. We don't want to risk coming off as indifferent, so, Robin and I have decided to take it in the other direction. We have exaggerated the actions, the emotions of the characters, and the product seems to be turning out alright, but still, we have a huge dichotomy between the internal feelings and external reactions of the characters. The characters, as well as ourselves, each exist in two separate worlds; the objective external world obviously, but also a rich, subjective internal world. This is the world of our own thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. and it is accessible only to ourselves. What's interesting is that to you, my internal world is just another part of the external world. I am just a part of the universe, as are my thoughts and emotions. But to me my inner experience is something separate from the external world. There's one branch of philosophy called solipsism takes this to the extreme. It concludes that because I have no access to them, other people's internal worlds do not exist. It's true that I can not directly know if they exist, but other people can express their inner worlds to others; relating to others their thoughts and feelings. This gives good reason to believe that other people have the same sort of inner experience that I have. Neuroscience has begun to shed some light on this issue. Logically speaking, we are all just a part of the universe, yet we experience ourselves as being separate from it, as being infinitely close to ourselves. This is because our brains have developed a "self model". This is a way for the person to interact with others socially, while simultaneously modeling our own inner state. The evolutionary advantage of such a mechanism is quite clear. It allows us to act as part of a larger social group and at the same time consider its our individual existences and plan for our future and survival. Thus consciousness is a self-awareness; an awareness of the objective external world and the feeling of a subjective internal world. This is what gives us the illusion that we are something separate from the universe. I am one point in the universe, yet I experience myself as being something separate from the universe because my brain has developed this mechanism to model the internal states of the organism. As Einstein put it; I am a part of the universe, but I experience myself as something which exists in the universe. My thoughts and feelings are a part of the external world, yet I experience them subjectively because I am "glued" so to speak, to the contents of my "self model". And so for me the end of my internal experience and the end of the universe itself are practically the same thing. Then there's solipsism. Fun stuff.

Nervousness seems to be the plague of all those who go out into public. The cure is often a healthy dose of indifference, but within a species that has its very reproductive foundations rooted within the practice of strict judgment it is difficult to fool one's self into believing that others truly don't care. We are left trying to convince ourselves that we're great, but again, society has taught us to be humble, and praising ourselves within our minds goes against not only the societal norm but the years and years of self esteem conditioning that various companies put us through in an effort to attract us to their products.  This past week of rehearsal reached its precipice when the time came for an evaluation of line memorization, something that I can honestly say that I was not prepared for, nor was my partner. It was apparent that the other groups were suffering from the same sort of stage fright that we were. Whenever Mr. Newman would enter the room all acting progress would seemingly come to a halt as we all stopped and tried to think about how we should look and how we should be acting. It was really quite entertaining to watch while simultaneously being quite terrifying to be in the same room as. For us grade twelve's, last Thursday's class was our last opportunity to have a mark put in for our university grades, so the pressure in that particular moment was amplified even more so. It's quite funny to think about the situation really. You are worried about doing well and by worrying about doing well you consequently end up doing worse and thus your fears are confirmed. It's a terrible endless cycle, one that I think we've all suffered from inside and outside of drama.  The fear of making mistakes causes us to make mistakes. It's the regret, and knowing that that regret will stick with us for a long time. When writing articles for the Aquiline, I don't like to tell people that they are weak, spoiled, or take things for granted. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't. Everyone has of issues that plague them, but one thing that they all have in common is regret. Thinking about the past is one of the easiest ways to bring yourself down, because it is always the horrible stuff we remember the most (stupid brain). Whenever I end up in the lower school hallway I am reminded of the total bliss and lust for life that small children have. That is what I'm going to teach; to keep their lust for life, to not by force themselves to live up to other role models, but to look forward to their own adventure. You are not Gandhi, you are not Mother Theresa, and you are not Craig Kilberger. You will never be. And that's an amazing thought! You are your own master, and you can walk down any road you like! Ask yourself: "What keeps me from doing exactly what I want to?" The most likely answer is: "Myself." What you have done in the past will only hurt you if you do it again. Make sure to tell yourself what you will never do again, and then tell yourself what you will do. Form your resolve, but base it upon your own courage and independence. Be honest with both yourself and those you love. Don't try to live up to others, but make your own adventure. Regret is only good for telling yourself what you will never do again. Once you know which things you will never do again, regret turns into wisdom, and wisdom builds character.

Last week essentially consisted of the implantation of the techniques that I mentioned in the previous journal, the idea of line memorization before practice being the main one. While this idea seems to work out quite nicely on paper, in practice, and within the circumstances of our scene, I've come to the conclusion that it probably wasn't the best approach. When time is of the essence, one simply can't afford to memorize both their lines and the lines of their partner, even though doing makes the actual performance and practice of a scene run a more smoothly. With both Robin and I struggling to perform not only in drama but in our other courses as well, the added load of memorizing both sets of lines was apparently too much for our abilities, or at least our current amount of sleep. One can really come to understand why there are professional actors, after experiencing the work load and the pressure of university applications these past few weeks. When it comes to drama lines, the fact that you can literally work on them forever often forces me to do my other finite work first. But even when I do get this done, my mind simply isn't at ease, and I find myself unable to focus on the dramatic task at hand. It is hard to be John Proctor while also worrying whether McGill actually got my application, or the university of Toronto accidently misinterpreted my interests as strictly being in the agrarian variety. When it comes to professional actors, obviously they're going to be able to put on a stellar performance, because they've barely got anything on their minds other than the performance. It takes a stout mind, a devoted mind, to be able to dedicate one's entire self to a character for even just a moment. This imaginary individual's problems seem trivial and are in fact, imaginary compared to our, so of course our own emotions, are own experiences and problems are going to leak into our consciousness and cause internal mental conflicts. However, I suppose this can sometimes be a good thing. If we have our own problems, are own struggles and issues, and their emotional content leaks into that of our performance, than perhaps, as Stanislavski suggests, we can work from emotional memory to put on a more believable and realistic representation of the character. So really, in a way, it all comes down to a conflict of interest. You want to have emotional experiences and memories to draw on when you are performing, but at the same time you don't want any of your own emotional baggage to drift in front of the character you are trying to portray. So in the end, I suppose what it comes down to is discovering whether or not you have the necessary life experience to draw on and create a believable performance. You hear all the time about actors purposely putting themselves through the same experiences of the characters that their playing. Christian Bale, in the movie The Machinist, lost a ridiculous amount of weight, and only ate something along the lines of an apple a day for year to prepare himself for the role. Other infamous instances of this would be the entire cast of Platoon going through what to them mostly seemed like actual military experience. Whether this is the most efficient approach, or whether the actors should simply just learn how to act is another question, but I can certainly understand both the incentives of the directors and of the actors to gain experience to draw on for an accurate portrayal of an event. This is probably one of the reasons why good science fiction and fantasy films are hard to come by. It is hard to accurately portray a sensation without ever having felt it before. This is probably why science so often recreates dramatic happenings of the past within a science fiction environment. Political turmoil, fear of the unknown, things that humans are actually quite familiar with, seem to be the center of attention in the science fiction world. It is when directors and authors truly want to do something that has never been done before that the difficulty in acting comes in, and you either end up with a masterpiece or with something so cheesy it could be classified as a crime against humanity.

This week was mostly spent selecting the scene, getting the lines together that needed to be memorized, and organizing and assigning the groups. Not much actual dramatic progress was made, unfortunately. I made the suggestion to Robin that we don't come together and read the scene until we have our lines at least somewhat memorized. Quite obviously she was confused at this, so I elaborated and told her of the technique we talked about in the play, about how practice is rendered useless if the actors don't know their lines, and on top of that added that in order to avoid mental and emotional stagnation we should leave the more dynamic aspect of the scene, the acting, for later. Unfortunately, it turns out that this upcoming Friday is in fact, the due date for memorization, which I have to say is a bit frightening, considering the fact that the Poetry-In-Voice competition is taking place on the exact same day. Things, at least in terms of memorizing, seem a bit cramped, but it's nothing I can't handle. I've certainly dealt with a much more ridiculous load of work before. Anyways, when it comes to Stanivslaski's technique of discerning between the character's super-objective and current objective, I find that the funny thing is, is that these sort of dissections that were meant for drama, in reality, are applicable to a vast array of actual life circumstances. It's a pattern that I am coming across increasingly more often. My current objective is to get this actor's diary uploaded and my super objective is to pass school and get into a university, and my super-super-objective is to live a happy life, and beyond that, well who knows? There are so many different methods when it comes to trying to get an actor to act realistically. There are so many different warm ups, methods and orders of practicing, of voice training, but what really, when it comes down to it, you just want the actor to pretend that it's real. For some reason we put barriers up, we try to break it down into easy steps, but the core question that the entire profession is built upon is "if you with these exact set of circumstances, how would you, with the same incentives as the character, behave?" It makes it sound really easy doesn't it? I suppose the fact that it isn't easy is why there are so many different methods for attaining a believable performance. If I were to create my own system, it would probably be a combination of a bunch of different ideas and philosophies. Beyond the super objective, I would have Nietzsche's will to power, Schopenhauer's will to love, and above those two I would have Freud's will to pleasure. But that seems to be the problem with acting. In acting, we are displaying emotions. Emotions are not based on logic. They're irrational. That's why they're emotions. Because we lack the physical happenings to provoke the emotions within ourselves, displaying a completely irrational set of actions on a stage is quite obviously, hard to do. We always seem to find ourselves sitting down and reading these plays and pieces of literature and thinking about well, if he or she had just done this or that then everything would have worked out fine. There's an axe murderer right behind the dumb blonde, why doesn't she turn around? As soon as an individual has acquired foresight, as soon as they know how things are going to turn out, their behaviour changes. Therefore, by being an actor, it is almost impossible to act as if you don't know the upcoming consequences of your words and actions, and of the words and actions of your fellow actors. It reminds of a thing a lot of directors like to do. In Star Wars, the true identity of Luke's father was only revealed to the cast moments before, and how in Alien, the infamous "chest-burster" scene was as much as a surprise to the actors as it was to the characters. It seems that directors have picked up on this little actor's paradox, and have tried to alleviate its side effects by keeping their plots a secret. It certainly is an interesting technique, but quite obviously a risky one. One can not know how to act if one does not know what Stanivlaski would call the "given circumstances," and receiving this information mid-performance can force the actor into a response of their own instead of one of their character's. I think when we examine the experiences of our improve unit, new information introduced while the piece is actually in motion can actually bring the action to a standstill. It would take highly trained, disciplined individuals to be able manage such suggestions in the midst of a performance. Hopefully, drama class will help us get to that level.

 

My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phonetics professor, in order that she may pass as a proper lady. It's a lighthearted romp, but it's laden with loads of comments about society and class, as well as the nature of love itself.

I was not expecting to like this piece of theatre. I despise musicals, I'm generally a cynical and scientific person, and the concept of true love and romance is almost offensive to me. Even just the name of this play gave me the impression that it really wasn't going to be my cup of tea.  However, I absolutely loved it. The classic musical interpretation of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion truly entertained me, and I have to say, warmed my heart. One of my major complaints about musicals is that they simply skip from one number to the next, not leaving much room for plot or acting. This play maintained a beautiful balance between the two, and I can say that the music of play really did enhance the story telling. The acting was beautiful, with a superlative performance put on by all on stage, big and small. The star of show really was Deborah Hay, who was able to give the character of Eliza Doolittle an aspect of reality unexpected in an often overblown classic like My Fair Lady. The pacing of the play was simply brilliant. The scene-to-scene transitions were seamless and pieces of drama in themselves. The great acting in between the musical numbers really made the plot addictive, and even during the musical numbers the acting was simply magnificent. Set design, costumes, music, dialogue, it was all there in perfect harmony. I am almost at a loss for words at how much this musical simply just caught me off guard. The director didn't really implement any dramatically new ideas, but this is the 50^th anniversary of Shaw, so faithfulness to choreography and script were simply a testament to the work's ability to transcend its time and reach out to all generations. A well-deserved standing ovation was given, one that was subconsciously agreed upon by the entire audience. If there were any issues, I couldn't sufficiently discern them from the grand culmination at the end of the play. This was not only my first time seeing My Fair Lady, but also my first time at the Shaw festival. It is impossible for me to not to be impressed, I suppose. The only thing I can really compare it to be the plays I've seen a Stratford, but those were plays, and this was most definitely a musical. Maybe it was too grandiose, maybe the chemistry wasn't there or the acting was insufficient, perhaps a few of the characters were off, such as Freddy, who actually did seem to be a pretty suitable suitor. But none of this seemed to matter to me. The themes dealing with the rigid class structure and just the piece itself being about something as interesting as linguistics made it much more pleasurable than any other musical performance I had seen before. So, in my books, it was excellent. But compared to other My Fair Lady productions, I simply can not say. Unfortunately I have not had the privilege to see the musical elsewhere. I suppose the next time I see it will be in the classic film version, starring Audrey Hepburn. But, as all theatre and film fans know, the mediums are startlingly different. I don't suspect that I will be able to make a truly academic review of the production until I see another production. Then I will be given the crucial information about what they did differently. And that, with a classic like My Fair Lady, is really what discerns the quality.

So I've entered that annual state of thespian withdrawal. There's always this time after the play when your purpose dissolves, the social hierarchy unfolds, and your no longer aloud to openly be someone else. It's an interesting concept, really. It's like we've all engaged into long distance relationships with one another. At least relative to where we were before. But we can't even officially acknowledge that fact, but the idea still lingers. The idea. To call it an idea, to call it whatever it may be called by my mundane human mind? What is it? What kind of connection do we truly have? A blood bond? A love? Is it platonic or physical, intellectual or does it secretly stem from lust? And how could one ever answer these questions honestly, even after a lifetime together? It's a difficult situation, the one of the human relationship. I have enough trouble dealing with the physical pain of existence, but the emotional pain, the mental pain, the pain that comes from the creation and severing of human relationships, that pain is at times unbearable. And to think that some are surprised when members of the human race throw themselves to their deaths or blow their brains out with a firearm all over the bathroom wall. It's a miracle that more of us don't do it. It's quite strange that the vast majority can really be so utterly content with their mundane existences. I feel like my entire life has been this constant failure to live up to the standards that both others and myself have set up. And it has been like that for such a long time. I can't live up to even the smallest expectation of writing in this blog consistently, and writing truthfully at that. There are all of these little dreams and fantasies that I seem to attach to every single breathing moment. I am constantly disappointed. When I was a child, I remember having these ambitions, these ideas about who I wanted to be when I grew up. I would say I wanted to be a writer, and my parents would say journalist. I would say that I wanted to be an actor, and they would say television newscaster. I'd want to open a refuge for stray cats, they'd say veterinarian. It was like this constant conversion of my dreams into this practical money making venture.  Oh how the imagination tortures! How it loves to tear up the floorboards of the mind and throw around the furniture of metaphor until the entire status of your persona is indistinguishable from a warzone. And that's what the mind truly is, isn't it? It's a warzone. If the battle isn't taking place between the hemispheres or among the anima and the consciousness, it's between the desires of the individual and those of the outside world. And how that outside world is so mysterious. Just trying to imagine the conscious minds of others is a difficult task. All of this wasted potential, floating around in the abyss. But then there are circumstances like these, when I feel the aches in my brain and bones, I witness how even the smallest day to day happenings can tear apart the mind and I find it completely plausible, and actually probable, that I, as well as the rest of the human race, will never do anything useful.

 

When it comes to performing a monologue, it really seems that the key to success is exaggeration. Exaggerate every single aspect of the characters persona, even the slightest insignificant idiosyncrasy.  Because the monologue is such a short performance, it is incredibly important to emphasize even the smallest suggested characteristics that are put forth by the author in the text. You have to establish a character with a fraction of the original material, which is quite the task. I tried to exemplify a variety of different emotions in the monologue but portraying them all at the same time in layers of emotional expression was quite a challenge and I'm skeptical that I actually succeeded in that attempt. But anyways, the most integral aspect of the piece, the lines themselves, they were down almost perfectly. I don't believe I made any mistakes with my lines, though at times I suspect that I loss some momentum, particularly within the third and fourth paragraphs. I felt like I had a choice between going way to fast, thereby communicating the overbearing stress of the caregiver's position, or speaking them with pauses, breaths, and sighs, thereby communicating the idea of the caregiver's burnout depression caused overwork. And then the question was, "how do I portray both of these aspects?" I ended up speeding up the third paragraph to amplify the stress of the situation, and then I moved the depressive aspect of the character to the last part of the monologue. But still, I wanted to show the conflict between absolute panic and just simply giving in and giving up, surrendering to burn out and fatigue, throughout the entire piece, because it really seemed to be the central conflict of the character. I tried to leave these cracks in my voice, this sort of lingering uneasiness, but in the end it just sort of ended up in this grand convoluted mess of unspecified emotions, which I suppose could work for the character, though really it wasn't what I was aiming for. However, I am in grade twelve, my marks do actually matter for a few sorry weeks, so I suppose I really have to be my own advocate. Unfortunately, doing that will make me sound like a pretentious wannabe thespian, but what choice do I have? I suppose there's an aspect of honesty involved. I truly believed I did well in this area and bad in this area. But even those judgments are overshadowed by the fact that I have incredibly large and blatant incentive to butter up my performance as much as possible. How can I be honest, if I am in charge of my own mark? I suppose I could do what I've been trying to do throughout my entire academic career. Try to ascribe some sort of moral purity, some sort of objectivity to the world. This is very hypocritical of me considering my tendency to verbally preach about nihilism. I suppose I wish that there was some sort of form of objectivity. Some sort of straight forward set of rules that one could regulate oneself by. But I know this is simply a fantasy, and so by acknowledging that I am thereby a nihilist and a complete and utter moral mess. So really my goal with the monologue was to communicate that edge of sanity, that precipice of absolute stress. I wanted to really emphasize the ranting of the caregiver, and I wanted to really establish just how much pressure he was under. The problem with this is that the monologue itself is filled with quite a bit of comedy, so I had to focus on delivering these lines with the proper timing and pronunciation while also communicating the emotional and mental stress that the character was under, which diverted my attention away from making the necessary interactions with the audience to really project the character. It was good, but there are some clearly definable areas for improvement, especially in movement and eye contact, as well as the pacing of the lines themselves. Right now, I believe my overall mark would sit around an 85, but that it could easily be bumped up with a bit of fine tuning.