Chasing Waterfalls
Rehearsals are going well. We had a day off yesterday where I took a little hike of a local glenn with many pretty waterfalls, saw the final performance of the last show - which was wonderful and now, once again, my mind has flopped to thinking the grass is yet again greener on the comedy side of the fence - and, since I'd had a few notes on the issue, I thought I would try delving a little deeper into my character's intentions in certain scenes. Turns out that was sort of a mistake.
Nothing is infallible, and even great plays by great playwrights can unravel under too much scrutiny. In college I sat through a few head-scratching rehearsals for Twelve Angry Men where actors kept throwing out questions that were unanswerable in the script. Or sometimes even contradictory.
I'm having a bit of that now. What I've been directed to do in one scene doesn't really jibe with the script and the staging I've been given in another scene. So what do I do? I've tried asking questions of other issues before, hoping to get some guidance on how to bend my mind around to a right way of thinking, but I don't want to be the constant hand-raiser that we all find annoying. Plus, in a way it just kills me because this is a mystery - a typical whodunit - and not High Art. So I feel a bit silly for having to do so much homework on "why do I say this when I do?".
In fact, it isn't just me. I think we're all crumbling a little under the weight of implicating ourselves, but implicating other people, and therefor implicating no one.
Less is more, I always say. Time to find the path of least resistance and pray it doesn't send me up a creek.
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