Today I was a shadow. A menacing, tempting, foreboding shadow gliding across the stage, bending my limbs like well-oiled hinges and posing like a Grotowskian ballerina. My voice accompanied my movements, joining the other shadows in a choir of sounds that enticed the listeners to give into their dark desires. While slithering around and pulsing together we fill the stage with red fabric and our black-clad bodies. We are the abstract expression of the dark themes of this play: desire, revenge, jealously, greed, ignorance, rejection.
My director is heavily inspired by Grotowski, Brecht, and Meyerhold's Biomechanics. He's not a huge fan of Naturalism. My personal instincts as an actress are usually naturalistic. My first reaction when Carl asks us to do weird -I mean, stylistic- things is usually, "You're kidding, right?" or, "That makes no sense." But when I instead allow my body, voice, and mind to break free of "normal" conventions, I always experience work that excites and enriches me.
2 comments:
It's like i always say, normal is overrated :-P
You need to keep that naturalism to your default performance mindset if you plan on pursuing film or television. That's what gets you jobs when money is on the table!
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