Act Like You're Talking

I am feeling much better these days and, for those keeping track, it has taken exactly one week to get over this malady which, for those keeping track, was a severe bronchitis, bordering on pneumonia. Which reminds me, I must tell you about my having pneumonia and taking photos of Dizzy Gillespie while he visited the community college I was attending.

But right now I want to catch you up on my activities as a Thespian.

Even though I was very sick, I felt duty-bound to attend the weekly acting class at Jace's house. I arrived just after 5.00 pm and, explaining the self-evident in my hoarse, weak voice, told Jace that I was very sick, my voice was hoarse and weak and that I probably wasn't up to much acting. Jace said that this was alright and that I could "take notes."

Rose and Jeremiah arrived thereafter and we all went upstairs to begin class. Given a sheet of paper and supplying my own pencil, I began to "take notes" even though I wasn't entirely certain of what I should "take notes" over. Rose and Jeremiah began their lengthy scene from Hapgood and it was immediately clear that they had not rehearsed this outside of class and probably hadn't looked at the script since the last time we had class (or the last time they attended class, I'm not sure which it is, frankly). Jace got rather irritated. After all, even if this isn't a formal class, some expectation is made that we will all take this endeavor seriously enough to read our scripts over in our off-time and perhaps even try to improve on our skills from one week to the next. Clearly this was not happening with Rose and Jeremiah. So Jace stopped the scene and had them start over with the implication being "this time could you please bother to try." So the scene was started over and they did improve, though one could hardly see how they could get any worse. Once again Rose got locked up at the end of the scene where she's to call Jeremiah an "unspeakable cad" and Jace was not particularly happy with this.

For those keeping track, my notes consisted of: "Blocking?" and "Frustration = energy"

Rose had to leave for her rehearsal in the college play and Jeremiah had to leave to study German. This left Gina and I.

Gina's truck had broken down earlier in the day and she had called her boyfriend to see if when he would come over and jump start her truck. The answer was something like "I'll come 'round when it is convenient to me." which left Gina in tears. Poor Gina! She didn't feel like doing much acting that night.

So Jace turned to me and said "I know you're not feeling well, Paul, but do you think you could do something?" and naturally I felt duty-bound to at least do something. So I picked out one of my monologues from Coriolanus, the one where Coriolanus sways the crowd to elect him consul, but with my hoarse, weak voice I couldn't take this to the build up it needed and gave up mid-way through. So I tried my two monologues from Pygmalion which are more conversational and, do you know, I was pretty much off-book with those. I could only go so far with these monologues given my vocal limitations, but Jace said I hit all the marks.

Class broke up and Gina was making arrangements with Jace's husband to get her truck jump-started. As I left, Jace said that I was the only one she could count on to attend regularly and improve myself from week to week. Granted this is not a formal class and we all have our several schedules and lives to attend to but it isn't hard to make some effort with this endeavor.