The KID show: Babar…where elephants wear pants
The KID Show: “Babar…where elephants wear pants” opened today. Here are some pictures. See more at http://www.creederep.org
Updates from July, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Imaginary Invalid Opens at Creede Repertory Theatre!
From the ultimate master of farce comes the tale of a miserly hypochondriac, whose imaginary illnesses (and very real wealth) attract the quackiest of doctors. But when he promises his daughter’s hand to the dim-witted son of the calculating Dr. Diaforious, it’s a prescription for outlandish trickery and silliness as his family scrambles to break the perpetual patient from his dependence on doctors.
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2nd Day of Steel Work at CRT’s “2nd Stage”
Today is the 2nd day of Steel work at the CRT’s “2nd Stage” Theatre site. The shape of the building is really taking form as you can see from these pictures. Stay closely tuned for more updates as the shell of the building becomes more and more complete throughout the summer and into the fall!
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Avery
Oh yeah!! This is totally fantastic to see!! Awesome, Awesome, Awesome…..
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Michael Bouchard
What exactly do you do?
Author’s note: In an act of Kismet, the last post spoke about why we theater artists do what we do. At the same time as that post went up, I was writing an article that asks the question: What is it that you do exactly? Creepy.
Ask an actor what they do onstage and you’ll run into a flurry of responses, all of them different and equally true. We seek out truth on stage, we try to entertain people, we bring art to society, we touch peoples lives, we challenge ideas and so on and so forth. Instead of adding yet another esoteric answer to this lot I want to step back and consider what it is that we are literally doing on stage. (Entire books have been dedicated to this subject, so I’m going to try to make this brief as I can.)
Wikipedia gives this introductory answer to what it is that we do:
The ancient Greek word for an “actor,” ὑποκριτής (hypokrites), means literally “one who interprets”; in this sense, an actor is one who interprets a dramatic character.
So if we are to understand what it is that actors actually do we must explain what is meant by “interpreting a character.” There are many schools of thought on this question, each proposing particular styles created by the old theater greats, such as Uta Hagen, Meisner, Stanislavski and more. What all these schools agree on is that each character you play, at the very minimum, wants something. These wants are the characters driving force throughout the play. How the actor conveys those wants is where each of these styles differ, but on the point of “wants” they all agree.
So now we can say that the thing actors do is want something and then try to get it. But how does that look practically? Here’s an example. Near the top of Act 2 in CRT’s Swiss Family Robinson, Jessica Jackson’s character Bettina meets a man who has just washed onto the island. With no other men on the island she desperately wants to be married and leaps at the chance to snag this guy. Throughout the course of the ensuing song she does everything she can to find out if he’s married and to get him to like her. It’s a fantastic scene where she has one very strong want and pursues it doggedly, using the lines in the script to forward her desires.
But we’ve left out a few important details. How do we figure out what the character wants in the first place? How do we decide how the character will go about trying to fulfill those wants? The answers to these questions are to be found in the script, through what is unsurprisingly called “scene analysis.”
Taking a look at all the things your character does, says about themselves and all the things other people say about your character are clues to not only what it is your character ultimately wants, but are also clues as to what kind of person this is. (Are they aggressive, passive, nice, mean?) And it is here that all the different styles of acting and individual actors themselves differ. When we read our character say “You’re an idiot” to another character, we can read that in a million different ways (joking, angry, passive -aggressive) depending on the relationship between the two and just what kind of person you think this character is. And within that ambiguity lies the art of what we do.
We then take these judgements and use them to inform how our character walks, talks, sits and sings. Does the angry character walk with heavy footsteps, speak sharply, and scowl? Does the passive character hunch their shoulders, speak softly and look at the floor a lot? And then, might certain lines in the show make you think that this is where the character might be acting out of the ordinary, thus they might speak, walk or emote differently? The rabbit hole goes much deeper than this and the possibilities are nearly endless, but at least we now have an solid idea of the basics of what actors actually do.
So the short answer to this long post? Actors use the script and their own intuitions to figure out what their character wants and to interpret just how their character will go about getting those wants both physically and vocally onstage.
So, if you’ve ever wondered what it is about your favorite CRT artist that makes them so much fun to watch, it may be that they’re wanting something very specific and going after it with gusto onstage. Or maybe they always wear funny costumes.
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Why We Do What We Do.
Let me tell you a story. It is a true story. And it is a story that I experienced and has given me perspective this past week.
Every Swiss Family Robinson I always watch the last 5 minutes from the grid (when the father comes on stage at the end of the show I always turn into a puddle on the floor). Last night I watched the audience too. There was a young woman sitting in the last row of the balcony. She was mesmerized; eyes glued to the stage. She was not the most attractive young woman; however you could tell that she knew how to experience joy. When the last note rang and the lights faded, she was the first one on her feet and she clapped louder than anyone around her. When the curtain call was over she looked around her; almost as if she had snapped out of a dream and her parents (still seated on either side of her) turned to her and she turned to each of them and exclaimed, “That was so wonderful!” and she gave each of them an embrace.
That made tears come to my eyes even more than when the father comes on stage at the very end of the show. And I turned inward to myself, reminded of why it is that we do what we do.
Philip Grecian and 
avery augur 10:10 am on July 11, 2009 Permalink |
Totally exciting. It’s so neat to see the bones in place, you can really start to see how the building is going to address the street and what a presence it is going to have. Looking forward to seeing more….
Philip Grecian 12:06 pm on November 10, 2009 Permalink |
Wow. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?
This just makes me so proud.