Oct 7 – Smile please. And a little to the left.

So I got the pharmaceutical photo shoot gig, or I should say my girlfriend and I got it.  I think they liked her best, and I got picked up since we were a couple, but I will take whatever I can get.  The job pays, and pays well.

We got and email from Michael Bini, the producer at On Request Images, saying they would like to use us, and that the wardrobe person would be contacting us soon about what to wear.  Colette called a few days later, and gave us a list, some of which I didn’t have, so it was an excuse to go shopping.  The things I was mainly looking for were some dressier shoes, a lightweight jacket that wasn’t black, and some pants that were khaki colored.  After two shopping trips I managed to find things that a) were cheap and b) were actually things I would wear after this was over, if we ended up using them.

Shoot day came and the call was at 7:30 am.  We both have to get up early for work, so it wasn’t that much of a hardship.  The shoot is at a nice Victorian house up on Queen Anne Hill.  Now if you are not familiar with Seattle, let’s just say that this neighborhood has money.  The houses are beautiful, and the yards are immaculate.  The house we were at could have been in the pages of Architectural Digest, or the finished product of This Old House.

They production company had a RV trailer out front which is where we were to check in.  We got there a little early, so we spent most of the time just sitting in the RV’s living room watching the crew run back and forth getting ready.  The caterer showed up with some food.  Bacon, quiche with asparagus, red pepper and goat cheese, and cinnamon rolls.  I was in heaven.  I have to say, one of the reason’s I have gotten into this business is for the food.  People ask do you want to do film or theatre, and I’m answer film…they at least feed you, even if they don’t pay you.  Here I was getting both.

We sat and chatted with people as we waited.  Turns out Michael the producer and my girlfriend are from the same neck of the woods and went to rival high schools.  I chatted with one of the guys we were going to be  doing our shoot with, and he owns a small women’s clothing boutique downtown.

We got our makeup put on, and then we went through a few clothing changes.  I ended up using the pants I bought and a pair of shoes.  The rest they had bought for the shoot or had on hand.  We went through a few choices because we had to have the right colors that didn’t blend in with the house we were in front of, or the patio furniture that we were sitting on.  Plus, we had to blend nicely, but not too much, with each other.

The scenario was the my girlfriend and I are having a nice casual front porch get together with our nice gay male friends.  We got to sit outside, acting as if it was a nice summer day, even though it was about 50 degrees out and overcast.  At first it wasn’t so bad, but after a while it got to be pretty darn cold sitting there.  The crew would bring us jackets to wear while they were setting up different scenarios, but then we would have to take them off for stretches of time.  We also had to hold glasses of ice water, and cold ceramic plates with appetizers  on them.  That didn’t help.

We’d get directions, like lean a little forward, ok, hold up your glass like you are going to take a drink, tilt your head a little, smile, ok try shifting your one leg forward, and then put your weight on your other leg, smile, good, now everyone look at Trent, ok smile…

One person from each couple was picked to be the “caretaker/hero” for each couple.  That person who is always making sure that everyone has what they need, or make sure that you take your medicine, or don’t eat the donut, etc.  The guy caretaker went first.  He compassionately offered us hors d’oeuver, and we all smiled and looked up at him thankfully.  We tried different positions, my girlfriend with her hand on my shoulder, the guys holding hands, us looking like we were having a toast and clinking glasses.

Then my girlfriend got to be the chosen one (see, I knew they liked her better).  We repeated the process, although by this time we were freezing to death, so it was harder to keep the smiling going realistically.  Luckily the guys who we were with (who weren’t a real couple) were both very friendly and charming.

We joked a lot.  Lots of gay inside jokes, that we gay people can always fall back on in a pinch.  Stuff about butts and sex, and how obviously this house was so neat it must belong to the guys, but we lesbians built the porch for them in trade for getting my hair highlighted. I sort of wonder if the other groups have their standard repertoire.  Anyway, it helped break the ice and gave us something to laugh at so we didn’t have fake smiles.  I do not have a good fake smile.

After some more shots, we got to wrap up, give the clothes that weren’t ours back, and then get our clothes packed up.  Had a few more snacks at the craft table, said thank you to everyone, and then headed out the door.

One job done.  I hope there are more.  With food.

Sep 18 – Just Shoot Me.

So I had my first casting call today.  Not for a film, not for a play, but for a photo shoot for print and web media for an unnamed pharmaceutical company.

I saw the audition notice and saw that I fit one of the categories of people they were looking for.  Now that I actually have my headshots, I could easily email the JPGs over, which is what I did.  They were looking for the following types:

People with physical disabilities, Native Americans, and LBGT youth and middle aged couples.    They were looking for people to be doctors, nurses, etc, of any race and gender.

So I thought I had two chances.  I could be a doctor.  I mean I work in a hospital, even if my job consists entirely of putting numbers into spreadsheets.  And I also qualified under the LBGT, and since they were looking for couples, I noted in my email, that I have a girlfriend and I’d be happy to bring her along.

I was happy when the next day I got an email, saying come on down to the casting, and bring your squeeze.  How exciting.  I didn’t know what to expect, but I figured I’d at least had one photoshoot experience, my headshots, and how different could it be.

The day of, I picked out what I thought were hip middle-aged lesbian clothes to wear.  And told my girlie to attire herself similarly.  Now I should mention neither of us are fashion mavens, in fact the opposite, but I think we did OK.  I was a little worried, because my girlfriend looked cuter than me.  What if they want her to be the doctor?

Anyway we get there, feeling a little unsure what to do, but the company doing the photography runs like a well-oiled machine.  We are waved in and told to sit down in some rows of chairs they have set up on one side of the room.  The other side of the room is blocked by dividers, but the flashing lights coming through the cracks indicate where the photographs are being snapped.

I scope the competition.  So far no other obvious lesbian couples.  That’s good, maybe there won’t be to many to compete against.  We get waved up to the table to check in.

It turns out to be the guy who I emailed in the first place, and who said to come on down.  He was gay.  In fact it seemed like almost everyone working there was gay.  I try to be friendly and charming to cover up my nervousness. We give our names, addresses, and the like, and then sit back down.

A fashionable young man with cool glasses waves me up.  He has a white board and has me write my name on it. We wait a bit until the previous person is done with the photographer.  Then he escorts me and my girlfriend into the back to meet the photographer.

The photographer is also a fashionably dressed man, who warmly introduces himself to me, and shakes my hand.  He then asks me to stand back.  I look down and see an “x” taped on the floor.  I say, do you want me on the x? and he says, oh you can see that? It was small and put on with clear tape.

The white board is put into my hands and a picture is snapped.  Then he takes a closeup of my face, then he has me turn to the side. Glasses on. Click. Glasses off.  Click.  Then he says 3/4 turn. Click.

Then he asks me to move my head back.  I move it what I think is back, but that’s apparently not the right way, so I try another way.  What he meant was to rotate my head towards him, but his description, and my comprehension of that movement weren’t synching up.  I felt like a little bit of a dork, when I figured it out, but oh well.  Click. Body shot. Click.

Then it was my girlfriends turn.  Same routine, but they had her put her hand on her hip in a few shots.  I thought, hey, I didn’t have to put my hand on my hip, what does that mean? Do they like her better?

Then we got to do a few shots together. That was fun.  i would like to have seen them, but the monitor was facing away from us.  Click, click, click.  It was over.

I made sure to thank everyone, the photographer, and the person who checked us in.   And out the door we headed.

If we are going to hear anything it should be by the end of next week.  I think we have an OK chance.  I’ll think it is funny, if my girlfriend got a spot and I didn’t.  Ha ha. Sigh.

Did I mention that this pays really well? I guess that’s because they are paying us not just for the actual shoot, but for the right to use our images on the company pamphlets, website and advertisements.

Anyway, I guess we just have to wait and see now.

Sep 7 – Heads up.

So things are warming up a little in the acting world.  Revving back up after taking some downtime after the Meisner class at Freehold.  I’ve gotten my headshots, I’ve gotten a part in a short film that a fellow Meisnerite is doing, and I’m working on a project with another fellow Meisner classmate.  So there are irons in the fire.

The big thing I wanted to do was get my headshots. I felt like I was off the hook until then.  I didn’t have to go out into the big scary world and audition, and get rejected, since you need headshots (or should have them so you don’t look unprofessional) to audition.

I had been searching the web looking for people, and I ended up picking Mark Brennan.  He is up in Vancouver, BC, and I was willing to drive up, but then I found out that he comes down to Seattle once a month to take people’s pictures, so that made it even easier.  Although I was a little disappointed that I didn’t have a reason to visit Vancouver.

Why Mark Brennan, and not someone local?  I don’t know.  I just like the way his photos captured people, especially the eyes.  Check out his website and see what you think.

To get ready for the photos, I had to get some new clothes.  I’m am a, um, how shall we say, fashion failure, and I’m a butch dyke at heart.  But I figured that I needed some girly clothes, since there are more regular girl parts out there than butch lesbian trucker parts.  I took one of my friends who actually has a sense of fashion and taste, and she helped me pick out clothes, most of which didn’t make it in the photo shoot, but I have them for auditions now.

I kept saying to myself as she would hand me something, I wouldn’t wear that.  But then I thought that is like an actor saying, but my character wouldn’t do that.   If the part (and the director) calls for it, you have to make it work. So I tried them on and apparently I looked good even though I felt uncomfortable and dorky.  Fish out of water.

The shoot day arrived.  Mark Brennan and his make-up person, whose name I have sadly forgotten, were really great.  I was tired that day because I had just finished the Danskin triathlon about two hours before.  He would have me stand different ways, and then give me cues, such as, I’ve just walked in the room, and you are really happy to see me, or, you are a bitch, and you don’t care if firing me ruins my life, in fact you enjoy it.

There was the technical part of being in the right position.  He would have me lean forward or tilt my head a certain way, and then add in the emotions as he cued me.  He also just talked to me, trying to get me relaxed.  I was actually feeling pretty relaxed at the beginning since I was still zoned out from the triathlon.  After awhile of standing there my shoulders and neck tightened up (from the swim I think), and he’d be like ok, relax your shoulders.  And I’m thinking, I can’t, they won’t go down.

We finished up the shoot, and I waited for him to send me the photos, so I could pick which ones I wanted to use.   He took about 100 photos, picked out his favorites, his seconds favorites, and then sent the rest.  Now my job was to pick the two I liked and he would color correct and touch them up for me.

I have to say, I was hoping for miracles.  I’m not bad looking, I think I’m nicely average, but I was hoping to look like a movie star, but instead I just looked like myself, with makeup and some fancier clothes on than I normally wear.  They always say your headshot should look like you, and not someone else, so in that respect they succeed rather well.  I was just hoping for more, but I guess that’s my baggage.

I narrowed down the choices to about eight, which was hard.  Then I posted those up on my facebook page and let people vote.  I’ve posted the results below.

I must say that putting my pictures up on my blog makes me feel a little exposed, since it is nice to hang out and write anonymously to the three or four people who actually stumble across this blog and read it.  But I figured I have to get used to putting myself out there.  I’m an actor after all.  People are supposed to see me.

July 31 – Where it’s at.

Been on a bit of a hiatus.  Finished the Meisner program at Freehold Theatre, and boy did I need a break.  That was a tough run, but good.  That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger sort of thing.

This will be a short post since there isn’t much going on at the moment.  I have an appointment to get my headshots in a couple a weeks, from a guy whose work I really like.  Mark Brennan.  Check out his website.

After that I’ll be ready to audition.  That’s frightening.  I’m nervous about that, but what actor isn’t I suppose.  I’m looking to do maybe some short film type work for now, get some stuff together for a reel.

There is also a class at Freehold this fall that looks promising.  Advanced Rehearsal and Performance.  It’s being taught by Annette Toutonghi, who is a great teacher.  I’ve taken Rehearsal and Performance before (twice), but this is Advanced, you have to have completed Meisner or equivalent to be in the class.

Part of me is like, do I want to take this class because it will be a good learning experience, and I’ll get more performance practice under my belt, or is it just an excuse for me to keep taking classes, and not get out into the real world.

I like to procrastinate, and this would be a way to procrastinate while seemingly not procrastinating.  I keep going back and forth with it.  I think I will end up taking the class though.  It seems to good of an opportunity to waste.

And finally, I’m working on a script with my friend Bill.  Our goal is to do a web series, get a following, and somehow make money.  It’s a great concept (Bill’s idea), and I think we can work it into something.

Of course I can’t talk about it now, not because we are being all secretive, but because we haven’t worked out the details of the story line yet.  Of course when we do, then we won’t be able to talk about it, because we don’t want anyone stealing our cool idea.

June 26 – The end and the beginning.

So it’s over.  Last night was the final class of the Meisner progression that I have been taking for the last nine months at Freehold.  I have spent the last three years taking acting classes at Freehold Theater.  It has been a wonderful, terrifying, exciting, hard, frustrating, magical, roller-coaster of a ride.

The last class was a performance where we presented the scenes we have been working on for the past few weeks to our friends, family, and other students.  My scene partner Bill and I did a scene from The Marriage Play by Edward Albee.  We have been working hard on it, and it paid off last night.

The process wasn’t without its turmoil though.  Our last two rehearsals with our teacher, the incomparable Robin Lynn Smith, were hell.  When she starts of her notes with, “Well, the nicest thing I can say is that you don’t have any stakes,” then you know you are in trouble. She sliced and diced our performances until we were left thinking, why are we here?  What have I been doing for the past three years?  I have to say this was justified ginsu-ing.  We were lackluster, but we didn’t realize it, until we really turned up the heat.

My scene partner Bill had a hard time with his part of the scene.  He has a rather long monolog in the middle of it.  He would get contradictory notes from Robin each time we had a rehearsal.  He tried to do them all and ended up in a mush.  My problem was getting my stakes.  I had trouble connecting emotionally with the scene, because I don’t behave the way my character does, and I didn’t know how to be that way.  I got a lot of notes, that I had to go further, be bigger, be more of this, or more of that. I’m timid by nature, so this was really hard for me.

The last few days I was so desperate to break through my inhibitions I started to try self-hypnosis.  I stared at a hypnotic swirl on my computer screen and repeated phrases like, when I perform I am fearless and confidant.  When I perform my emotions flow freely.  When I perform I am relaxed and creative.  Anyway, I think it actually worked.  I was nervous, but not as much as I normally am, and I was really able to amp it up during our final performance.  I did things we hadn’t rehearsed, and I dealt spontaneously with the fact that my shoe fell apart in the middle of the scene.  I also was able to respond to Bill when he tried new things in the scene.

He too really shone in the final performance.  He managed to overcome what had been giving him so much trouble, by deciding that instead of trying to do the notes Robin gave him, he should do what worked for him.  It totally worked.  It wasn’t that he didn’t do what Robin suggested, because he did, but not all of it.  He worked out for himself what worked, and then allowed that to happen.

Before the scenes started Robin reminded us that we are here to learn how to use all the tools we have been shown, and that though this was a performance, we should approach it with astonishment as if it was happening for the first time.  I think this really helped us all.  We both tried new things in the scene. We played.  It was fun. everyone’s scenes in class were wonderful.  It was amazing to see how everyone grew, even in the last few weeks.  We all shone up there, basking in the glow of the support of our families, friends, and fellow students.  It was a wonderful experience, that filled me with hope, and a sense that I have arrived, not at the final destination, but at the top of the long hill I’ve been climbing, and now I can look back and see where I have been, while getting ready to descend into the forest, the unknown future.  Not with a sense of dread, but a sense of accomplishment, and a sense of adventure.

I’m an actor.  Now I have to act.

June 12 – Kick em when they’re down.

So we are less than two weeks away from the big final performance of our scene.  I feel as if we are doing as much work as we would for a whole play as we are doing for this ten minute scene.  We are doing a scene from Edward Albee’s The Marriage Play.  In the section we picked to do there is a knockdown fight.  My scene partner Bill and I really wanted to be able to do a good fight, since it really makes the scene, so we hired one of the teachers at our school to help us choreograph the fight, and make sure we didn’t kill each other, while trying to kill each other.

The first night we got together with the wonderful Brynna Jourden to help us, she ran us through some basic moves and concepts.  I’ve had three quarters of stage combat, but that was a year ago so I was a bit rusty, and Bill hadn’t had any experience with stage fighting.  We started warming up with trying to touch the other person’s stomach while trying to keep the other person from touching our stomach.  Our hands and forearms had to maintain some contact with each other.  It’s a fun thing to do.

Then we moved on to doing some basic unarmed combat techniques.  Mostly review for me, but new for Bill. He did really good on picking things up.  We did some slaps, some strangling, elbows to the stomach, arms twisting, groin kicking, basic falling, and rolling around on top of each other. A good start, and we didn’t get injured, so that was good, although I’m feeling a little tenderized from rolling on the hardwood floor.

We got together a few days later and then started crafting the actual choreography.  Brynna had some ideas, but took our input and modified things to our abilities as well.  At the end of our two hour session we had the basics of a good fight.  We are supposed to be exhausted at the end of this fight, our characters laying on the floor, and there won’t be any problem with playing that.  No actual acting necessary.  We were properly winded and we weren’t even going that fast yet.

I think it is a good fight, it has some slaps, some wrestling, a groin kick (scripted), some choking, rolling, hair-pulling, grasping, biting, crawling, and elbows and strangleholds.  What more could you ask for.  Now we have to work this into the part where we are doing the “acting”.  It’s almost like working on two scenes that we now have to put together.  We only have four classes left, and we are going to cram as many rehearsals in as we can.

This Sunday, we have our first full run through in front of our teacher, Robin, and this is the first time she will see the fight, and we will  see how much we can actually pull off.  It will be interesting to hear what she has to say.  I will report back with an update .

June 1 – Wrestlemania

Last night in Meisner class we got to do our physical metaphors.  What is a physical metaphor?  Well, we are supposed to take the essential conflict of our scene, and then translate that into something physical that we can do.  In our scene, from Edward Albee’s The Marriage Play, I want to keep my husband of 30 years from leaving me, and he wants to get understanding from me as to why he needs to leave.

So my challenge was to tie him up with a sheet, thereby keeping him from leaving.  His goal was to get an item (a sock) that I had hidden on my body somewhere (not on my foot that would be too obvious), and then get out of the door.  To add to the difficulty, I had to stay sitting on a mattress while doing this.

We had to do this while saying our lines.  To help us out, we each had “shadows”,  people who would feed us our lines, in little phrase bits.  We both were pretty much off book, so this was something  just to help us out, because in the struggling you can forget where you are in the text.  We also had a selection of spotters that were around us to make sure we didn’t run into poles, or furniture, or other people.

I don’t know how long it actually was, but it felt like an eternity.  Guessing on how long it was for the other people I’d say it was about 10 minutes.  Try wrestling with someone for ten minutes, it’s exhausting.  I was wearing a pair of cargo capris with lots of pockets.  I stashed the sock in the lowest pocket on my right leg, right about knee level.  I folded it flat as possible, so it wouldn’t be noticeable.

We started out energetically.  I tried slinging the shet over him and getting it wrapped around his arms.  He kept searching me.  He didn’t go for the lower pockets, tried sticking his hands in my upper pockets and back pockets.  I kept trying to wrap his arms up, or get the sheet around him, and of course do his task, he kept having to break free of my attempts.  This worked in my favor, at least for a while, because he couldn’t search while he was trying to free himself.

Eventually though, he found out where the sock was.  Then my game plan changed from trying to wrap him up, to keep him from getting the sock.  I twisted and turned so he couldn’t reach the pocket, rolling one way and another, but eventually he got it.  Then he tried to leave, so now my job became to hold on to him and not let him go.  I’m supposed to stay sitting on the mattress, but he is stronger than me, so eventually he pulled me off, but I wouldn’t let go.

He was on his butt, dragging himself across the floor, pushing with his legs.  I was holding on with a death grip to his pants (each hand located dangerously close to either side of his crotch), on my stomach, as he dragged me along with him.  I wanted to let go, and get a better grip, but I knew if I did that he would spring away, and the way I was laying I wouldn’t be able to get him fast enough before he got out the door.

So we inched along across the floor, with our entourage of shadows and spotters.  Frantically saying our lines, until finally… finally, Robin came over and told us to stop, when we were about five feet from the door.  We lay there in an exhausted heap, sweaty and out of breath.

Fun you ask?  Yes,  but it also had the desperation of the scene, especially at the end.  I couldn’t do much but hang on and hope that he wouldn’t leave.  He interestingly said, that at that point he was hoping I would do more to keep him from leaving.  Interesting when you think about it.  A husband who wants to leave, and wants his wife’s blessing as it were, but also wants her to fight to keep him more than she is.

I also got in touch with the desperation that my character has.  That was important for me, because I hadn’t been able to get in touch with that much, just on an intellectual level.  Also, interesting was that the fighting was fun.  In the play, the husband and wife snipe and verbally jab at each other.  I think this, in better times for them, is how they have fun and connect, how they challenge and stimulate each other.  That came out in the wrestling

So very productive, if exhausting.  I burned a lot of calories.  I was saying, who needs aerobics, and Tae Bo, and ab machines.  Find someone and wrestle them for ten to fifteen minutes.  You’ll get a great workout, and you might learn some interesting things about your relationship.

May 29 – There’s always tomorrow.

So here is something I’ve learned about being an actor.  It’s not good to be a procrastinator and be an actor.

Should seem obvious, but it took me a while to catch on.  First of all, I shall admit  that I am a procrastinator, and a fairly skilled one at that.  I have pretty much managed to get through my life knowing how long I could get away with postponing something. Then running around frantically doing whatever it was I had to do at the last minute, cursing myself, that if I had done this earlier I wouldn’t be all stressed out.

I think I learned this in school as a kid.  I was smart enough to figure out what I needed to do to pass a class, and that’s pretty much all I did, and generally waited until the last moment to do it.  This sort of method, while stressful, lends itself to a more academic and paper writing, test-taking environment.  Not so much the performance world.

Because let’s face it.  It’s hard to memorize a bunch of text in a short amount of time. I find for myself this is done best in short bursts over a longer period of time, rather than trying to cram everything in at once.  It doesn’t stick very well, and the brain has trouble processing it all.

Then of course, anyone who has done a play or a scene realizes that you can always use more time to work on it.  Eventually you just have to go as is, but there is a certain amount of groundwork that needs to be done, or it just comes off as crap.

So here is my problem.  I’m a dyed-in-the-wool procrastinator, in fact at this moment I’m writing in my blog instead of doing my play research, and even this blog post was delayed several days, while I browsed the internet for useless widgets and weight loss miracles.  How do I get over this and start working on my acting preps that I’ve posted about before?

I have to day dream my character’s life and relationships. I have to read the play and mine it for statements about my character.  I have to analyze my scene for beats, and actions, and triggers, and blah blah blah.  Somehow I find time not to do it, and then, of course,  I stress out about not being prepared enough.  Why?

It’s that line about insanity is doing something the same way over and over again and expecting a different result.  My job is to figure out how to break this habit of procrastinating, because I want to do a good job.  There’s enough crappy acting out there, I don’t need to add to the pile.

Anyway, if anyone has suggestions, let me know.

May 20 – Light at the End of the Tunnel

So we have started on our final scenes for class.  This is it, we are nearing the end, ambling towards the stagelights at the end of the tunnel.  Twelve classes left and then we are released like baby turtles on the beach, to crawl out of our shells and see if we can make it to the ocean without becoming  dinner.

The scene I am working on with my partner is from Edward Albee’s The Marriage Play.  To sum up the story: Man suffering a mid-life crisis, after having a revelation at his desk, comes home from work in the middle of the day, and tells his wife of thirty years that he is leaving her.  Let us just  say that she doesn’t take it all that well.

Lots of verbal sparring, similar to what goes on in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but without the other couple.  There is a knock down drag out fight in the middle of our scene, which will be interesting to see how we pull that off.  I’ve had some stage combat experience, but my partner hasn’t.

Anyway we started our working reading last night.  Just running through the lines, with Robin stopping us to ask questions, about why we were doing or saying whatever we were doing or saying.  It was good.  I went early to watch some of the other people run through their scenes, which helped me feel more comfortable with the process when our time came.

There is so much to learn about a role, especially something complex like this.  Luckily Robin is there to help point things out to us.  It makes me wonder what we are going to do without here when this is all over.

May 5 – Tools of the trade

So we have attacked the text of the play we have been studying from all sorts of angles.  The way we have learned to break down text so that you as an actor have a fighting chance of pulling out a good performance is as follows:

Read the play or script, a lot.  Read through a few times just to read it, as an audience member, for enjoyment, whatever.

Then read the play and go through and pick out all the things said about your character by your character, by other characters, and by the author in the description.  Things are are stated out plainly and things that are implied.

Research things.  The author, the culture and history of the time period in which the play takes place, and in which the author lived at the time  they wrote the play.  You should also go through and find words you don’t know and learn how to pronounce them, learn what they mean.  If there are names of people in the play that are real people, find out who they are, and try and learn why they were included by the author.

Look at all the relationships in the play.  Who wants what from whom? and why?  Who are you allied with?  Who are you against?  Who has power?  Who doesn’t?  And does the power shift?

Find the main conflict of the play, and the major turning points throughout. Look for changes in the dynamics and tactics of the characters, especially your own.

Then start looking at the scenes.  What is the  conflict of the scene?  What does your character want and how do they go about getting it?  Is this scene a private scene between characters or is it “public” among the other characters?  Important to know since people behave differently in public and private.  Yes, you have to pretend that a bunch of people aren’t watching you on stage for your private moments.

Then you have to start looking at the beats.  Why am I saying this?  What am I trying to get from the other character?  How do I want them to react to what I’m saying?  Is it working?  Do I need to change tactics?  What is my stake in this situation?  What are my obstacles?  Are there secrets that I have that other’s don’t know?

What about the physicality of the scenes?  Why do you move to a certain place when you say this?  Are you close, are you far away?  Is your back turned, and how does that effect the dynamic and power plays between characters?  The director will do a lot of this in blocking, but trying it on your own in rehearsal can be very enlightening.  I found myself moving to one part of the stage, only to feel that it wasn’t right, or maybe tried sitting on a line or standing, to see if it had a different feel, a different emotional effect.

This is only some of the things to ask yourself, there are more, but these are the ones I could remember off the top of my head.  You can spend, and should spend, a lot of time with this.  If it seems overwhelming, it is.  I’m overwhelmed.  We are about to start our final scenes that we will present at the end of our nine month journey.  We are to use all the things we’ve learned to help us.  It’s a lot of stuff.  I’m not sure I realized that until now.

I guess it’s good that we have a bunch of tools to use. Nothing is more annoying than trying to build something, fix something, put some IKEA furniture together and not having the right tools.  The more tools, the more likely we will have what we need. So I will take the overwhelmed feeling I have now, and try and enjoy it.

Apr 22 – What does that mean?

We have entered the third quarter of Meisner.  This quarter is dedicated to analyzing text and than using that analysis to bring life to the characters and play.  Sounds simple enough, but it is really hard.

We’ve been given two plays to read and study.  Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, and Miss Julie by August Strindberg.  These two plays share many similarities.  The were both written about the same time, both by Scandinavian authors, both deal with the characters inability to conform to the given social structures, and both title characters kill themselves at the end of the play, finding it the only means of escape from their circumstances. A bit of a downer I say.

After reading both plays, we were assigned a character from one of the plays.  Then we had to go through the text of the play and find all the facts about our character that were said by us, by other characters, or implied indirectly by the text.  I got Hedda Gabler.

I have to say, in the first reading of the play, I didn’t like Hedda.  She was a bitch, and actually after a few readings still remains somewhat of a bitch, but now I acknowledge she might have her reasons to be.  This is not the first time where my first instinct in having to deal with a character is…this person is horrible.  Then after working with them for a while you get to understand them and like them, despite their flaws. Reminds me of some family and friends.

After this we were assigned scenes to go work on.  My scene has three people in it.  Hedda (Me), Lovborg, and Thea.  Last night in class we were to get up and do a working reading through the scene.  We set up some basic furniture and wore some basic costuming to get us in the mood.

Then we started reading the lines and trying to “play our actions” as best we good while staring at a piece of paper.  For those who may not be familiar with the acting terminology “playing an action” is basically figuring out what your character wants from another character and what your character does to get what they want.

I may want you to give me some money because I need it to escape my bad situation.   My action is that I need to get the dough, the way I do it is the tactics.  The action is drawn from the text of the play, say the mob is after me because I spilled the beans.  The words I say (along with the physical expression), and how I say them is my tactics.  I might try and seduce you, or threaten you, or plead with you, etc, etc.

It’s complicated.  We spent maybe a half hour going through the text break down each sentence, phrase, and sometimes single word, to find it’s action.  What do I mean when I say yes here?  Do I mean yes, or do I mean no, but am saying yes because that’s my tactic?  Am I saying it sweetly, mockingly, and why? What am I trying to get with this tactic?  Is it working?  How is the other person responding?  What does their response do to me? On and on and on.

We got maybe 10 lines done in a half hour of working.  With Robin, our teacher, coaching us with the above questions, and our repeated responses of, um, I don’t know.  Oh, I didn’t realize that.  Oh, I see, wow, so that’s what that means.

I think most of us who went up were pretty much ready to have a nervous breakdown.  It was a bit overwhelming to realize how much information was in the text that we had glossed over.  How are we ever going to learn how to do this?  Robin seeing us all, reminded us that’s why we are in this class, and we will get there.  I hope so.

April 13 – Mirror Mirror.

Still recapping last quarter since I was too discombobulated to write about all this stuff then.  Plus, we have only had one class this quarter and that was mostly talking about what we are going to be doing.  No action yet.

One of the big exercises we had to do last quarter was calle The Mirror.  Sounds harmless enough you say, and if by harmless you mean physically and emotionally exhausting, then you would be right.

What you do is go up in front of the class.  The rest of the class stands opposite you.  Whatever you do, they do.  whatever you say, they say.  As you might imagine, having 15 or so people watching you intently, mimicking your every move, tends to make you feel a little, um, shall we say, uncomfortable.

What you are supposed to do with this uncomfortable energy that is running through you is throw it back onto the group.  You can do this by shouting at them, or waving your arms, or grunting, stomping your feet, whatever, but it has to be at them.  Which is all well and good until they do it back to you.

Robin sits off to the side and lets this first phase go one for a while.  Then she starts to side coach you.  She’ll throw out a person or situation and you were supposed to act it out.  So for instance she would say you are a puppy, and the person would drop to the floor, wag their imaginary tail, scratch fleas, bark to try and get you to play, run away scared, and roll over.  It was all improvisation.

Common things thrown out at you were some animals, puppies, cats, chimps, wolves.  Often you would have to protect your young.  Lots of growling, swiping of claws and gnashing of teeth.

Then there were the erotic dancers, and street prostitutes in the Holland Tunnel hustling for johns, and had to fight off the young uppity ho, who thought she could take your spot.  You could go from Can Can Dancer, to boxer, to stand up comedian dealing with a heckler, to Elvis.

Often you would have to sing something.  I had to be a country-western singer performing in front of live audience at the Grand Ol Opry.  It’s amazing how when someone asks you to sing a song, all the words go right out of your head.

You would also often have to confront an imaginary person(s), who would be doing something horrible, say like torturing an animal, or about to kill a bunch of women and children.  And you would have to stop them with your words alone.  This was really hard.  My thing was I had to stop a town of religious zealots from stoning two women they thought were lesbians.  Fun.

It’s tiring. No matter what side of the mirror you are on.  You end up moving around for about 20 minutes or so.  At some point Robin lets the group drop out and then it’s just you.  She’ll make you stay still, and say some phrase over and over again, or sing some childhood song to each person who is standing in the group not moving, but watching intently.

She’s looking for our “masks” to fall away, those shields we put over us to keep from being vulnerable.  This exercise does that.  You don’t realize it while it is happening, but as a group member watching, you can see the transformation.

Most people at the end have a childlike essence.  It’s hard to describe without seeing it, but often I could see the person as the would have been when they were five, just simply standing there and being themselves, without the artifice of having to be with-it and in control.

Some people cried, some laughed, some left the planet for a bit, but all returned and came back as themselves.  Beautifully and simply themselves.

April 10 – A little imagination

Hmmm…sorry?  What was that?  Oh.  I’m sorry, I was daydreaming, and I didn’t hear a word of that.

So day dreaming, you say, Why?  Basically it’s like running.  It’s exercise, but instead of building up your body, it builds up your creative faculties.  Like any sort of exercise, unless you are magically gifted, it’s hard at first and gets easier as you go along.

We had to do some more exercises where we set up a space to be a room in our house.  We brought meaningful props in and used some Freehold furniture to make a representation of our room.  Then we again sat in there daydreaming, people watched us.

The next round we had to bring an activity and a circumstance, similar to what we had done in our repetition exercises in the previous quarter, and then we had to sit in our space and daydream.

My activity was to learn Amazing Grace on the banjo, and my circumstance was that my mom had died, and was to learn to play this for her funeral service. This is the song she wants played.

At first nothing was happening; I was too busy trying to play the song, which I didn’t know how to play. So I decided to stop and just sit there, and in that quiet spot not doing anything,  I managed to imagine what playing Amazing Grace at my mom’s funeral really meant, and I started crying.  Oh, a good amount too, more than the last time I cried.

It was interesting that I had to do nothing to get in touch with the emotions.  At other times I’ve relied on physical activity to get me into a scene.  I guess the lesson there is what you need depends on the situation.  This time it was daydreaming.

Apr 9 – Imagine that.

Boy it’s been a long time since I’ve posted.  In fact a whole quarter of Meisner went by.  So now I feel forced to sum it up, so we can move on to the third quarter, and I can start talking about that. It might take a few posts, but I’ll get there.

The focus of the second quarter of the Meisner track at Freehold is developing the “instrument.”  That’s the actor’s body and mind to put it into layman’s terms. The point (as I see it anyway) is to disassemble our cultural programming enough to act/react spontaneously to the imaginary circumstances in which we find ourselves during a play or film.

Sounds kind of high-falutin, but really it’s about teaching adults to play make believe after such frivolous time-wasting abilites were crushed out of us by the monolithic weight of our western European, Protestant, technology riddled 21st century adult responsibilities.

Things that came naturally to us as children do not come naturally as an adult.  We may be able to drive and shop online, but kids have us beat in the imagination department.

I can remember spending hours playing on the jungle gym, that was really a rocket ship, trying not to touch the hot lava playground sand.  Or running through our neighborhood playing Charlie’s Angles (the original 70’s show – I’m old), fighting over who got to play which Angel.  For the record I didn’t fight; I was always Sabrina; she was the smart one, but my friends fought like cats and dogs over who got to be Jill (Farah). The loser had to be Kelly.

So what did we do in the first part of the second quarter of Meisner?  We imagined things. We daydreamed.  Sounds easy?  It’s not.  It’s easy to daydream when you are just drifting through your day, trying to escape from your tedious job by having some fun in your head.

Maybe you are rescuing kittens from a burning building and become the town hero, or maybe it’s imagining what you are going to say to someone in some confrontational conversation you are planning having.  We slip in and out all day, but suddenly someone says, you need to imagine and you need to do it now.  Then the clamps clamp down and the gears screech to a halt.

Daydreaming is controlled by our subconscious, and because of that we don’t tend to have much control over it, which is actually what makes daydreaming useful.  Our subconscious minds, if given free reign, will take us to interesting places, that our conscious mind, so worried about trying to not make a fool out of itself, won’t. Perhaps because it is afraid, or mostly because it doesn’t even occur to it to go there in the first place.

So one of the first exercises that we did in class was to daydream.  You had to get up in front of the class, lie on one of the questionable Freehold mattresses, and daydream, while the rest of the class watched.  Yes, that’s what we did.  Imagine a room of adults sitting in rows of folding metal chairs, watching someone lying on mattress with their eyes closed daydreaming.

The funny thing was it was interesting.  In my experience, I was too aware in the beginning to really day dream, but as I laid there long enough, things started percolating.  When you’d watch other people you could see emotions flit across their faces.  That was interesting.  They probably didn’t even know it was happening, but it was happening, and it was interesting.

So the first step was taken, lying down.

Dec 12 – Say it like you mean it.

I could start of this post saying how I’m going to recommit to posting regularly again, but I think we all know how that will go.

I’ve just finished my first quarter of Meisner training at Freehold Theatre Studio Lab.  It has been a long, somewhat tiring, but mostly fun ride.

We started out with the classic Meisner repition exercise, expanding onto that to calling behavior, and then added the activities and circumstances (see previous posts for explanations of these).  The last step we added this quarter was text, specifically a short scene from a play.

We were paired up with a partner.  Robin made the decisions and I’m not quite sure what her criteria were, but everyone seemed well matched, so I can only imagine she had her reasons.  We were then given a short scene from a play.  We were told not to read the play, at least until after we were done working on it.

We did a short scene from I Never Sang For My Father.  It was a brother and sister trying to figure out what to do with their aging jerk of a dad after their mother dies.  Sis says it’s nursing home time for bad dad, and Bro’ says  I feel guilty about not loving him and and I feel like I should  take care of him even though it will ruin my chance at love and happiness.

We then worked on just reading the text mechanically.  This means reading it with no inflection of rhythm, tone, emotional content, whatever.  It sort of like reading it like a ro-bot where e-ver-y-thing is pro-nounced with the same weight and syl-la-bles are all the same.

We would sit across from each other at a table, not looking at each other in the beginning because we were to busy reading, and read our lines mechanically.  The idea being that eventually the emotional content will come out on it’s own without us forcing it.  We just read like two rock-em sock-em robots that have decided to put down the dukes and give conversation a go.

After a few days of that, we then superimposed the calling behavior onto our text, so we could say our line, or we might be inclined to say something like: you aren’t paying attention to me. Then they might repeat, I’m not paying attention to you, or they might say their next line.  Sometimes the repeating would go on for a bit.  Robin would side coach us, telling us to say our line as we would say our calling behavior.

For instance, someone telling me: you are annoying me, might make me defensive. I would answer back, I’m annoying you, and let my defensiveness shine through.  Then they might say again: you are annoying me, and then I could say my line of text again with the emotional coming through.

It’s hard to explain this process and much easier to see it happening.  It make for a very natural reading of lines, and makes it more obvious when you are “acting” the lines, faking the emotion as it were.

We learned some tricks for memorizing lines as well, such as throwing a ball back and forth with your partner while saying your lines as fast as you can, writing your lines down by hand, and writing down your lines with no punctuation, so you are not trapped into one way of thinking and saying them.

We also had different tricks during our little scene performances.  All the scenes had some element of conflict to them.  So when people were not letting the combative nature come out, or were “acting” it Robin gave them pillows to hit each other with while saying their lines.  It was amazing how real it became and how dramatically honest the lines came out.

In my scene my partner and I were told to take a twin mattress that was lying around in the studio and each hold one end, and play tug-o-war, while saying our lines.  It was amazing. It felt very freeing.  I was so involved with the physical activity and saying the lines, that they just came out however they came out, apparently much more dramatically, but also more naturally.  It just felt good and effortless, even though I was red-faced and breathing hard at the end of it.

Now I just need to figure out how to do that without a mattress.

Nov 19 – Consciously Incompetent

I was talking to one of my classmates last night.  I mentioned that I had a blog about my acting school experience, but that I hadn’t been blogging much of late.  I explained that felt like I should blog, but my brain just felt like mush when it came to trying to process the information and experiences of class.

He told me about something he had read that Spalding Gray had said or written.  I’m paraphrasing his paraphrase, but I think you will get the idea.  He said the Spalding Gray was walking through the forest on a beautiful day, and the trees and sky were so exquisite and moving that he felt he should write about it, but didn’t want to, or couldn’t, or something like that, I’m not sure now. Did I mention my brain was mushy?

It’s like it is to hard to explain what’s happening, because I’m not really sure what’s going on myself. My paltry attempts at splicing words into a narrative are likely to fall short of what’s really going on.

Last night at the end of class, Robin asked us if we had noticed anything particular about that night’s performance bits.  People responded with various things such as the activities seemed more meaningful, the background stories richer, the interactions more complex, the connection deeper, the framework of the repetition exercise was looser, and on and on.

Basically what she was trying to point out was that we are improving. That by jumping through the Meisner-shaped hoops we are becoming better at our acting just by the act of doing.  It seems Zen.  Become what you are, become what you do, a no-matter-where-you-go-there-you-are sort of thing.

Robin made us all read Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel at the beginning of the quarter.  Basically it describes the process of repeatedly trying to master something and even though you keep doing it badly, the process of doing it despite all ones errors and misdirections, will lead to improvement and eventually mastery if you stick with it long enough.

The idea is to get to the point of Unconscious Competence, the fourth stage of competency.  The four stages of competency being:

1. Unconscious Incompetency, you don’t know what you don’t know how to do.
2. Conscious Incompetency, you know what you don’t know how to do.
3. Conscious Competency, you know how to do what you do, but you have to concentrate on it.  And lastly,
4. Unconscious Competence, you don’t have to think about what you are doing.  This is the realm of mastery.

Right now I’m in the land of Conscious Incompetence.  I know that I don’t know a whole lot.

Nov 14 – Add it up.

The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice, performed by the New Century Theatre Company at ACT Theatre.  Running from November 13, 2008 – December 13th 2008.

Verdict:  Go see it.  Now!

I think this is the best play I’ve seen in a while. It has a delightfully weird story, good actors, creative staging, all wrapped up into a disturbed fun house ride where you are not sure what is coming next.  Now how often can you say that, when you see a play or movie these days.

The story follows Mr. Zero, a plodding cog in the accounting department of a nameless store.  He’s been in the same job for twenty-five years, a fact that his nagging wife reminds him of continuously.  On his 25th anniversary his boss comes to tell him that he is being replaced by a new adding machine.  Let’s just say that he doesn’t take it well.  From there, the ride begins.

The play was written in 1923 at a time when the classic white American man was a mysogynistic racist, and Mr Zero is no exception.  One section of the play demonstrates the horrible racism of this time, and I’d warn audience members who might be sensitive to racial and religious epithets to be prepared for some graphic comments.

I was torn, feeling sympathetic with Mr. Zero and realizing that realizing that he’s an ass (and worse, but I don’t want to give the plot twists away).  Mr. Zero wends his way through his circumstances haphazardly.  He has moments where he dares to dream, but they don’t last, mostly his own fault.

If you liked the movie Brazil (especially the director’s cut), I think you would like this play.  It has a similar feel and look.  The set is miminal, but creates in the first half a decrepit art deco landscape. The ensemble creates a mood reminiscent of Metropolis, moving in rhythmic unison.  The music supporting the synchronization. I enjoyed the music, a mix of weird electronica, cinematic, with some singing bits now and again.  And there was dancing too. How fun is that.

What I liked about this play is that it kept me guessing.  I really didn’t know where it was going.  It wandered around seemingly randomly, not unlike what was happening to its protagonist.  I felt like I was riding on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland, wondering what was going to be coming next.  A weird delight around every corner.

I should talk about the acting.  I thought everyone was really good.  The juicyness starts in the opening scene, when Amy Thone, playing Mrs. Zero begins an impressivly alternating gossiping about the neighbors and complaing about her husband in a fast and long monologue.  I personally can’t imagine having to learn all that text, let alone get it out in a coherent manner that people won’t tune out in after 40 seconds.

I don’t have the program with me to accurately recall who played who and their names, so I will just say that everyone was good.  My favorites were the guy who played Mr. Zero, Amy Thone as Mrs. Zero, and the guy who played Shrdlu (I think that’s the character name – the guy who killed his mom).  In any case, everyone seemed believable.  I almost never thought some was saying their lines just to say their lines, which I of course am paying extra attention to since I’m in acting school, and taking Meisner classes.

I’m not a theater critic by any stretch, but I can tell you that I was thoroughly impressed.  Go see this show.  I mean it.

Nov 6 – Drive on

Another review.  This time it is Becky’s New Car by Steven Dietz, making it’s world premiere at ACT Theatre in Seattle.

I have to say I liked this play. It was funny, and warm, and enjoyable. Not too deep, but not shallow either.  Having recently finished acting in The Man Who Came to Dinner, by Kaufman and Hart, I felt kinship with this play’s screwball heart.

Becky works at a car dealership processing the loans and paperwork.  She is overworked and under-appreciated.  She is steadily, if not excitedly, married to a roofer, and has the obligatory slacker psychology grad student son who likes to psycho analyze her.

One night she is working late when a very rich man, Walter, comes in looking to buy nine cars for his employees for appreciation gifts.  He claims he isn’t good at buying presents and asks her to do it for him.  Not wanting to turn down the sale of nine cars, she agrees.

In the ensuing coversation Walter, greiving for his own dead wife, mistakenly thinks Becky is a widow.  Not wanting to lose the sale, and also enjoying the obvious attention he is giving her, she doesn’t correct him, assuming that he will get his cars and be on his way, and that will be that.  What’s the harm? Oh, you know what’s coming next.

Of course he comes back later to persue her, and she is intrigued.  What follows is the classic mistaken identity/little white lie turns into writhing pit of chaos for everyone involved story.

The play had great screwball one liners.  The characters are cliches: The bored wife, the stable and intitaly clueless husband, the slacker son, the rich man who is surprised to find himself attracted to a real (read working class) woman. Still, you don’t mind because they are played well by the actors and are sympathetic.

The set was minimal, and the staging well done.  There was some audience interaction, which added to the laughs, and only at one point which I thought slowed the pace down too much, when three audience members were asked to come out on stage to help her get ready for her Cinderella ball moment.

I like to go on Pay What You Can Nights, because I’m a acting student who can’t afford the full price tickets.  When I go to the PWYC nights, I’m always expecting to see more poor college student types, but it is almost invariably the blue haired crowd that attends.  At this particular performance the average age must have been 68. I only saw one other person my age.  So when the poor ladies were called up on stage, it took them a good while to get there.  And at the end when the audience wanted to give them a standing ovation, I saw more than one person having a hard time getting out of their chairs.

But, really aside from that small snag, I thought it all worked wonderfully.

It closes this weekend (Nov 16th, 2008).  Go see it if you can.

October 31 – All for One

Review of the Three Musketeers at the Seattle Rep.

I went and saw the Three Musketeers at the Seattle Rep.  It was Pay What You Can night,and Halloween.  My Stage Combat teacher Geof Alm played D’Artagnan’s father, and Treville, and a few other people besides, which was fun to see.  I always like to see my teachers in action.

How was the play?  Well it wasn’t bad.  The thing with any story that’s been done over and over and over again, is how do you make it fresh and interesting?  They tried, but I can’t really say they suceeded.

Not that there wasn’t some effort put in. They updated some characters, giving a few women a larger role, and more importantly control over their characters. For instance they added the role of Sabine, who is apparently D’Artagnan’s sister, who disguises herself as a boy to travel with D’Artagnan to Paris.  Oh and she’s a good swordfighter too.  If there is one thing I have a soft spot for is girls dressing up as boys to go on sword fighting adventures.  And it didn’t hurt that the actress was cute.  I give the production two thumbs up for that.

Still the story is the story and you know how it goes.  There was lots of sword fighting, with at one point 10 people on stage fighting simultaneously.  There was swinging from the rafter’s on ropes.  There were guns and cannon’s exploding. There was leaping from balcony to balcony, and all the sorts of swashbuckling action that you might come to expect from Hollywood movie.  And that’s what it felt like to me., a Hollywood movie put on the stage, which I imagine is no small feat.  And like many Hollywood movies, it was pretty to look at, but not much on substance.

Still it wasn’t a bad way to spend a Halloween.  Better than hiding in the dark in our house because we didn’t buy any candy.

Oct 29 – It’s all in your mind.

So the tennis game continues.  Back and forth back and forth.  You are annoyed.  I’m annoyed.  You are boring me.  I’m boring you.  You are upset.  You are upsetting me, etc, etc, etc.  The verbalization part has remained the same, but now the framework is getting more complicated.

The repetition exercise is funneled through an increasingly complex conglomeration of imaginary machinery.  Every week new modules are strapped on affecting the output of the input.

Now we have put the exercise on its feet as it were, set it loose in an artificial environment.  First the criteria was Person A was in their room chillin’, Person B comes to the door and knocks.  Then Person A opens the door (or not if they so choose), and lets the person in and the repetition exercise begins.

Then an activity for Person A, the person in the room, was added.  Person A has to be doing some sort of task that has a cap, i.e., you will know when you are done with it.  The activity has to be done for some imaginary reason, but generally in regards to a real person.  Like I’m going to make a cake for my girlfriend because she has had a hard day work because her boss gave her a bad evaluation.  The girlfriend is real, but the bad evaluation is imaginary.

The next module was upping the importance of the activity.  It now has to be based on a life altering event of some sort, again involving a  real person, but imaginary circumstances.  You might be asking, what does that mean?  That’s what we all did.

An example that Robin gave was of previous student whose dad never thought he was manly enough, even though he was a perfectly regular guy, with a family, and a successful job.  His dad was apparently a NFL coach, so his imaginary life altering circumstance was that his dad was getting an award for his football coaching that was going to be shown on national TV.  The son would show up at the event in drag and embarrass the coach father.  The activity would be making the dress he would wear.  The emotional state generated: revenge.

This is all the background set-up for the exercise.  Then while you are sewing away on your dressing plotting your dad’s imminent humiliation, someone comes to you door and your only mode of conversation is stating either what you think their behavior is, or how their behavior is affecting you, while letting the background situation affect you however it is going to affect you.

So for this Sunday I have to come up with an activity.  I have something in mind, but I have to work out more details before the reveal.  I have to tell you this stuff is hard.  The purpose is two-fold (perhaps more-folds that i am unaware of as yet): to exercise our atrophied imaginations, and to help us experience a variety of emotional states, while hopefully managing to stay “present” with your acting partner through the repetition exercise.

If it sounds hard, and it sounds uncomfortable, it is.