In which Our Hero’s class sets records.
Today, our class succeeded. Five of us earned fives, two earned sixes, and many of the rest pulled in strong marks. Even I received a “not bad” for one of my two performances. (The other got a zero.)
Why did today work so well?
- First, we were all pulling for each other. Cheers before and after each performance. We didn’t previously do this. It’s very helpful to your peers.
- Second, the exercise was fundamentally fun: embody an element (earth, fire, water, air). Enjoyable to do, and powerful enough to allow for layering the text gently atop.
- Third, the exercise was simple. Embody an element. Low stakes.
My first element was fire. One line in, I lost the text. They kicked me off for it: six hours of memorization, gone. The takeaway: start memorizing on Monday. Use sleep cycles for the memorizing. Earlier, lighter memorization beats late, intense memorization.
My fire received these notes:
- “This is not fire. This is fire with petrol.”
- “When he starts to speak, we see something. He is sensitive. I think, ‘Ah, something is coming.’”
My second element was snow.
I began with the same image as yesterday. I watched it. I barely moved. I started saying the text (the same text as we used for fire). The teacher yelled: “Shut up!” then “Move!” then “Snow falling down from the sky!”, then repeated these three over and over. (Said one friend: “It seems funny to me that you’re asked to memorize lines but then she doesn’t actually want you to say them”.)
My favorite part was that she said “Shut up” and “You talk too much!” after nearly every sound I made—and several times when I wasn’t speaking. She’s freakishly skilled at spotting when I’m reciting text in my head. This is an impressive superpower. I need a big, strong, vivid image to overpower my love of text. Or maybe to make myself brilliant enough to be dumb: know the text well enough to forget it, but still have it when I need… #writerproblems
A few notes from the day:
- The exercise that gives you the breakthrough isn’t necessarily the one you should perform. (I possibly should have done Earth, not Snow.)
- When the rhythm of the lines matches the rhythm of the movement, it becomes boring.
- What I like doesn’t always matter. The audience tells me what they like.
Head Teacher’s comments on my snow:
- “Not bad, but this is not snow.”
- “You need good humor always. Something funny in your mind.”
- “Even when you aren’t speaking, we see you speaking text.”
- “You were sensitive.”
Teacher comments to others (because they’re funny):
- “This is ‘theater de mi cajones.’ You know what it means? It means theater of my balls.”
- “It’s a good image but it doesn’t arrive to us because of your shitty voice.”
Memorizing the lines isn’t actually that important. Being able to say the lines is. If you only know the first three, you can still earn great marks if you perform them well (*cough* one of my roommates *cough*).
I over-invested in learning the lines. I under-invested in being able to do the lines while doing the exercise. That’s the part I should have practiced. Or visualized. Or practiced and visualized.
Just because the assignment involved memorizing lines does not mean the assignment is to share the lines you memorized. Ain’t clowning great?
My goal this week was sensitivity/openness/gentleness. Today showed more glimpses (I opened briefly during Fire, and on-and-off during snow). I’ll keep working on this. For now, it’s nice to be landing it more often.
I received a zero and a “not bad.” The zero came with a comment that I was sensitive and open. Win. The “not bad” came with the same comment. I’m improving at this key trait.
Intensity: check. Voice: powerful. Game: reliable. Impulse: alive.
Sensitivity/gentleness/openness/giving: getting there, if only Our Hero would shut up.
Julian Wise 