Please, Sir, May I Have Some More?

I had another good exercise in class last night. I think I got a good balance of paying attention to my activity and my partner at the same time. I got really angry and I got really despondent. The teacher didn't have much for me in the way of comments, though. She didn't like the environment I created, but other than that, she said it was "pretty decent." I'm not sure what to do with that. Other than make sure the next environment I create is a little more indicative of where my set-up puts me.

A lot of my classmates seem to be having problems with the introduction of imaginary circumstances into things. My thought is to just make something up. If you don't know why you would do something, make something up. Which may or may not be the right approach. For example, one of my classmates didn't really have any feelings one way or the other about the woman whose "apartment" he supposedly just visited and then was going back to, and he therefore had problems figuring out why he would say to her, "I'll be back in five minutes" and why would he come back in five minutes. From my point of view, the thing is this: he returned to the apartment in five minutes. That is a given. It is up to him as an actor to figure out why, whatever that reason is. Maybe he just set a fire in the apartment down the hall and is coming to get her out. Maybe he wants to help with her activity and needed to go find supplies. Maybe the heat is out in his place and he wants to be somewhere warm. Whatever. The truth of the situation is that he went back to her apartment. As actors, we are given those truths all of the time - they are called "scripts." We have to figure out what will motivate us as people to actually do those things. It can be directly related to the other person on stage or it can not be, as long as it gets you there. Because once you are there, who knows what is going to happen? Maybe you show up wanting to evacuate, but end up falling in love and you both burn together in a beautiful Romeo and Juliet type tableaux. You just need to make up a reason to be there. The rest of it will happen how it happens.

Or I could be totally wrong. I have been pulling stuff out of my butt to fill in the spaces in my activities - I've given myself imaginary children and diseases and boyfriends and jobs and all kinds of things - in an attempt to up the stakes in my exercises and I am apparently just doing "pretty decent" work. I don't know what that means. I don't know if that is good or bad. I don't know how to improve on "pretty decent," unless you tell me why those specific words were chosen to describe my work as opposed to, say, "great" or "stinky."

I like that I can leave this class feeling good about myself. I wish I could help my classmates who seem to be struggling so much with it. And I think I need to find a mirror for my next activity, for which I am totally going to trick out the space.