Tomorrow marks the end of speech and debate season for Maine. It's aaaalll over after that. Well, except for the strenuous fundraising for nationals, and for those who make it to nationals, and also the famed Debate Banquet in March.
This means that one acts have picked up in full. This year we're performing Cut by Ed Monk. It took us about three months of reading tacky scripts to settle on this one, but I'm pretty pleased with it myself. Our school has been known to do much more serious, dramatic one acts in the past, but we haven't been doing so well with those this year, so we thought we'd go for something a little more, as my director puts it, "hokey".
The cool thing about this one is that rather than having names, each character (except for the final director, a techie, Nick, Jack, Shannon and Jennifer) has a letter assigned to them, and you switch characters throughout the entire play. It's a challenge as an actor, because it forces you to examine how you're putting together a clear persona of one character, who could be the antithesis of another one you have to play in five minutes.
Character formulation is one of the most difficult things for me about acting. I'm not so much bad at it, but I have difficulty pinning down the precision in a character. For instance, how would this character stand, and what particular motions would they make? One might flick her fingers as she says something, while another might nod her head. So far, I haven't played a single character the same way twice. Eventually I'll settle down into each. Unfortunately for me, in this play, my letter ("A") doesn't go offstage once, meaning that I'll have to be perfectly in character the entire time. It will be exhausting.
Theatre season makes me busy, but it's the kind of busy I like. It's not a busy that has me rushing from place to place- on the contrary, on most days, I end up staying at school for several hours after the last bell has rung. It feels homey. I like knowing that I have to be on stage for two hours after school, to run the same section over and over again until I get it right. Everyone's got their niche, I suppose.
In other, completely unrelated news, Brian Jacques died earlier this week. He was the noted author of the children's book series, Redwall. My brother and I were both very fond of the series as children, and for awhile Patrick would only go by the name Matthias. I felt more akin to Cornflower, and I would spend more secret hours in the backyard pretending to be her. It takes a very particular kind of writing to be able to connect with children well, and Brian Jacques managed it with a well-worn flair in which good always wins over evil, but you're hanging off the edge of your seat anyways. Well done, sir. Rest in Peace.
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