"Some days, doing "the best we can" may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn't perfect-- on any front-- and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else."
-Mister Rogers
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I have been having some serious writer's block recently.... and I don't mean for my show. I mean for this blog. I simply don't have anything I wanna talk about, or feel like someone would want to read about. Any little scrap of interesting info or insightful commentary I throw into my script, which leaves this blog to sit and grow cobwebs.
So... any suggestions on blog topics, or things you want my opinion on, or things about me you wanna know???? leave a comment. please. thank you.
To actually talk about something:
This weekend and next are packed to the brim with theatre and art. The Phoenix Fringe festival is going on right now with 137 performances in two weekends. Its crazy. I'm volunteering, so I can thankfully see them all for free. Its just a matter of scheduling them in. This weekend I saw some of the best, and some of the worst theatre of my life.
Henry V, put on by the Guthrie Theater at the Herberger, rocked my socks off. It was wonderful. (although, apparently I don't share the opinion of some of my other theatre friends) But after seeing that show, and having it followed by a mediocre one man play, a bizare parade on stage-- put on by a bunch of visual artists, and then one of the worst productions I have ever seen, put on by our very own ASU... my weekend was a resounding reminder that I hate most theatre I go to see.
...and I think this is not something uncommon in theatre. Most of the 'great' theatre practitioners I know, hate theatre as well. Granted, we are surrounded by it all the time and are trained to be overly-critical of everything we see, but it says something about who we are as artists. I find it a necessity to improve and fight for the theatre. To constantly push myself to be better, so that I don't end up stuck in a bad production. OR... if I do end up in a bad production, that it not be because of elements that were within my control. We can be better. We are better.
I fell in love with the production of Henry V for several reasons. One- the acting was superb. And its so hard to find decent productions of Shakespeare these days, because there is a style necessary in the acting of it. Not to say that you need to put on an affected voice, but there is a huge difference between contemporary acting and dealing with verse and complex period text. I felt the majority of the actors handled the text beautifully. King Henry in particular. There was such a great understanding of the text. And King Henry cried prob three times throughout the show. Which doesnt really take much... but it was so truthful. The costumes were also something that really excited me as a designer. They were simple in appearance, but each cast member's long coat was connected by a complex series of zippers. They were able to alter the appearance of the character simply by zipping of lengths of coat, or opening up the side of a sleeve, or undoing the collar. While the show was generally not descript to a certain period, there were flashes of it-- often as simple as a white frilled sleeve hidden under a forearm zipper. Well thought out costumes always excite me as a designer and an actor. I always design things that I would love to wear as a performer.
On the other end of the spectrum.... I had two and a half hours of my life stolen today that I am never going to get back. In recent years, I have lost great faith in ASU theatre. We put on massive productions, trying to include all studies in the school, but they just turn out to be huge cluster-fucks on stage. This production of a beautiful William's play is a prime example. The director, who made the rehearsal schedule based on the cycle of the moon, based a lot of the action in the play on the actor's dreams. As a result, the play had a Geisha, a little drummer boy, a cat woman, and an Incan woman..... completely without reason. Three out of those four didnt even have lines. They added nothing to the play. He cast a show with 30-some odd people when he could have done it with 15. It was just a wild display of over acted, over directed, over designed craziness. I find a lot of the acting techniques at ASU very fascinating... but I would love to see some good acting every once in awhile. Something where the actor has an objective, an action, a physical life....
So, while I experienced both extremes this weekend, I also took a lot away.... Like what NOT to do in my own play. Yeah... I'm an overly-critical artist... but I think you have to be. Otherwise you will end up settling and produce bad art all the time. Bad news bears. Next weekend i'm going to see a min. of six plays. And volunteer all of Sun. I hope you get out and see some art too. There is so much going on all the time. Tempe arts festival, phoenix film festival, art museums, openings, phoenix fringe.... the list goes on. Go and be overly critical like all decent artists.
Like I said... I'm running out of blog topics, and I'm only ten deep with this site. Help. ;)
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First off, you said you've run out of things to talk about and then proceeded to write a great entry about what's been going on in your life. :-P Hahaha. But I understand what you mean because I'm having a similar kind of writer's block. In Brotherhood 2.0 the two brothers would make challenges for one another, that's how they solved writer's block. But meh, my suggestion is write often about whatever is going on. An old writers' addage is that it's easier to write daily than monthly because if you only write monthly you find that nothing ever happens in your life!
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