Well, just one performance left, the dreaded closing matinee. But first, to update on how the first two shows of this weekend went.
In sum, they went well. Friday night was a bigger and somewhat more involved crowd that tonight (Saturday) was, but tonight was galaxies better than last Saturday.
Truth be told I have more to say about tonight, than last night. That because that for certain moments of the play tonight to me represented my best acting of the run so far.
Not that I can fully explain how. A person in the audience who saw all of the performances so far may not have perceived much of a difference in tonight's performance I turned in. But for every actor, (I'd assume) there is a certain inner awareness of what they are and are not accomplishing any given play, any given night. It has a lot to do with how much of your theory for the character, built in your head and your heart over the process, is projected outward in the same way you see it inwardly. (In some cases, surpassing it.) So far i have no major complaints about my work in this show. I have been so far mostly satisfied with what I've done. But there haven't been as many moments of "inner" and "outer" matching up during this run as their have been with many of my shows.
Until tonight.
Part of this difficult-to-articulate experience relates also to proper ratio for me between automatic acting, and deliberate acting. I think I've said before here on the blog that a few times during this show I've been on stage for a few moments, and felt automatic; I felt that I was in the character, but responding in the exact moment to a few too many things, without having the grounded awareness that I am a performer in a role. As I said before it sounds great on some level, and it is a powerful tool. But the key word is tool. This vanishing into a moment cannot be a proper tool for me, if Ty vanishes too much under the surface, even if the acting is something to be proud of.
No, I strongly prefer to be just a tick or two ahead of the game, aware that I am a performer bringing a part to life. Controlling the magic, in other words, instead of the magic controlling me. A few times during the run the magic, if you will, ran ahead of me for a while.
The polar opposite problem of course is feeling nothing-being myself in a costume walking around a stage regurgitating something I've memorized. Aping more than acting. This also does little for me.
However, when just the right amount of "vanishing" mixes with just the right amount of conscious control over my performance, and ideal situation is achieved.
If you followed all of that, (don't be upset if you didn't) than what I'm saying is that I achieved this golden ratio more often, for longer periods tonight than I have in previous days of the run. So, by my own somewhat clumsy definition, I did, overall, my best work, had my best experience as an actor, tonight out of the five performances to date.
Not that this was happening every single minute. In fact, one usually must be satisfied with a ratio a few ticks below this golden. An entire evening within the golden is rare. But barring any major problems otherwise, an evening with at least an individual scene in the golden constitutes a successful night for me as an actor. Tonight was such a night, I'd say.
Now, what specifically about tonight made reaching the golden ratio possible more often than the other nights?
Hopefully you don't think I can answer my own question! For surely, it is one of the great mysteries of theatre, and indeed many of the arts. We don't always know why one crowd laughs and another doesn't, how a brilliant actor can pull off one role and not the next, or how and when we find the golden ratio I've talked about here. I can only say, if my experience matters at all, that being prepared as early as possible, and taking the work seriously increases the likelihood. And I have felt more prepared for this show than I have for my last few.
Tomorrow of course is that odd creature, closing performance. Matinee. I will naturally try to fight the fatigue and the expectations based on tonight, and everything else that has to be done after the show, and labor just as hard to give a good performance. I don't screw around in a show just because it's the final performance. But my honest instinct at this time is that tomorrow is not likely to be a better experience than tonight.
Check back in though, and find out.
Showing posts with label arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arts. Show all posts
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Friday, December 13, 2013
Getting Dirty
I've mentioned my involvement with the newly formed Black Box Arts Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. As a facilities/house manager. We're having a small open house tomorrow, during which some of us will read "A Christmas Carol".
The building itself was a bit of a mess. A wall in the lobby that greeted patrons needed painting. (The logo of the old group that occupied the building was still stenciled all over the place.) Plus the green room needed tidying. I was there to do said painting, and I opted to do said tidying when the painting took less time than I thought.
I'm not going to recount my cleaning activities here; that would perhaps be one of the most boring blog posts in the history of the internet. I will say, though, that during slopping around in paint, scraping my thumb, (an injury I didn't notice until about an hour later), washing windows, sweeping, dusting and storing things, I felt in true service to the arts on general. True, bare bones, blood sweat and tears dedication to improving one small corner of the arts universe.
My biggest contribution to that universe is through performing, and sometimes directing/teaching theatre. Depending on who you ask, writing fiction is also part of the arts. If so, I feel I do, or very soon will contribute to that universe via my fiction as well. But there is something different, (not superior) to the actually getting physically dirty of making things work for the arts. That cleaning, and moving and storing and sweating. It manifests one's total commitment to the theatre or the arts as a whole. Lots of people can walk onto a stage someone else dressed and perform without having to clean it up later. But when you put in the time and the energy to literally get cut, bruised and exhausted in the preparations of arts presentation, you know you're truly a part of the process.
I haven't gotten that feeling as often over the last few years, due to various circumstances. I used to have it all the time back in college, though, where the work ethic I have described was first planted into me by my alma maters modest but dedicated theatre program. Back then I didn't see it as three-dimensional as I do now. The cuts and splinters and bruises and labor came with a bit of grumbling in college. But even then I was cognizant of the teamwork, the labor and the time that went behind getting a show ready. The submerged part of the iceberg of a play that involved sawdust and lumber, paint and brooms. Mops, buckets, nails and power tools. All so the glistening white part of the structure that was the performances could peak up over the cold waters of an otherwise average weekend, and sparkle in the moonlight for all to see.
I'll always be an actor. That will remain my primary contribution to the stage, I think. But times like yesterday, as I worked to get that space ready help put what I do in perspective. I may have been alone at the time, but I was breaking my back in communion with the thousand if not hundreds of thousands of people who for centuries have done so in theatres and arts centers all over the world in pursuit of ars gratia artis, or, "art for art's sake."
The building itself was a bit of a mess. A wall in the lobby that greeted patrons needed painting. (The logo of the old group that occupied the building was still stenciled all over the place.) Plus the green room needed tidying. I was there to do said painting, and I opted to do said tidying when the painting took less time than I thought.
I'm not going to recount my cleaning activities here; that would perhaps be one of the most boring blog posts in the history of the internet. I will say, though, that during slopping around in paint, scraping my thumb, (an injury I didn't notice until about an hour later), washing windows, sweeping, dusting and storing things, I felt in true service to the arts on general. True, bare bones, blood sweat and tears dedication to improving one small corner of the arts universe.
My biggest contribution to that universe is through performing, and sometimes directing/teaching theatre. Depending on who you ask, writing fiction is also part of the arts. If so, I feel I do, or very soon will contribute to that universe via my fiction as well. But there is something different, (not superior) to the actually getting physically dirty of making things work for the arts. That cleaning, and moving and storing and sweating. It manifests one's total commitment to the theatre or the arts as a whole. Lots of people can walk onto a stage someone else dressed and perform without having to clean it up later. But when you put in the time and the energy to literally get cut, bruised and exhausted in the preparations of arts presentation, you know you're truly a part of the process.
I haven't gotten that feeling as often over the last few years, due to various circumstances. I used to have it all the time back in college, though, where the work ethic I have described was first planted into me by my alma maters modest but dedicated theatre program. Back then I didn't see it as three-dimensional as I do now. The cuts and splinters and bruises and labor came with a bit of grumbling in college. But even then I was cognizant of the teamwork, the labor and the time that went behind getting a show ready. The submerged part of the iceberg of a play that involved sawdust and lumber, paint and brooms. Mops, buckets, nails and power tools. All so the glistening white part of the structure that was the performances could peak up over the cold waters of an otherwise average weekend, and sparkle in the moonlight for all to see.
I'll always be an actor. That will remain my primary contribution to the stage, I think. But times like yesterday, as I worked to get that space ready help put what I do in perspective. I may have been alone at the time, but I was breaking my back in communion with the thousand if not hundreds of thousands of people who for centuries have done so in theatres and arts centers all over the world in pursuit of ars gratia artis, or, "art for art's sake."
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Focusing Too Much on Arts Funding May Just be the Reason Arts Funding is Drying Up
Here is a post by someone with Americans for the Arts. It is a good post, and what it says is not untrue for the most part. (It talks about the need for Arts organizations to partner up with non-arts organizations in order to increase funding, given the decline of funding for arts-only initiatives.)
The problem I have with it, (and many other similar blog posts that can be found over at the Americans for the Arts website) is that it isn't addressing the underlying problem. That problem is that the arts are losing funding for their own sake, and are having to piggy back on the funding efforts of other institutions that would be secure standing on their own right.
If funding, both public and private for the arts has been decreasing over the last 20 or 30 years while funding and donations for other non-profits has not been, doesn't it stand to reason that there is something intrinsically missing in the message that the arts world is sending out? We have known and proved for years that a strong arts presence in a community is a benefit to non-arts essentials such as education, employment, and tourism, but that doesn't seem to be enough.
If all people at Americans for the Arts and other similar organizations are concerned about is being able to say they pulled in X amount of donations per year, then perhaps this piggy back approach is all we need. Cash, after all is important. Yet isn't the concept of the arts important enough in its own right to put in the effort to get it to stand on it's own? Do the arts really want to tie their financial success directly to the stern of somebody else's ship? Even if it works? Shouldn't arts organizations be projecting their mission in such a way that people want to continue to fund them for their own sake? Or is the mission primarily about funding as opposed to educating people about and seeking to preserve the glories of the arts themselves?
If it is simply about fighting the war for better funding, that may be one reason why the arts are losing that very funding for which they are fighting so hard. I am not naive enough to think that any organization can run without funds, but there comes a time in any institution where you have to stop talking about the need for money, and start producing something with that money which reaches the people. Or in the very least the most relevant demographic of same. This requires more than fundraisers and more than the important work of lobbying legislators. It requires putting the arts out there, to be consumed. To be understood. To be loved.
Perhaps it is time to increase the amount of communication having nothing to do with the funding aspects of the arts. If we do a better job at that, maybe, just maybe, more money will follow.
The problem I have with it, (and many other similar blog posts that can be found over at the Americans for the Arts website) is that it isn't addressing the underlying problem. That problem is that the arts are losing funding for their own sake, and are having to piggy back on the funding efforts of other institutions that would be secure standing on their own right.
If funding, both public and private for the arts has been decreasing over the last 20 or 30 years while funding and donations for other non-profits has not been, doesn't it stand to reason that there is something intrinsically missing in the message that the arts world is sending out? We have known and proved for years that a strong arts presence in a community is a benefit to non-arts essentials such as education, employment, and tourism, but that doesn't seem to be enough.
If all people at Americans for the Arts and other similar organizations are concerned about is being able to say they pulled in X amount of donations per year, then perhaps this piggy back approach is all we need. Cash, after all is important. Yet isn't the concept of the arts important enough in its own right to put in the effort to get it to stand on it's own? Do the arts really want to tie their financial success directly to the stern of somebody else's ship? Even if it works? Shouldn't arts organizations be projecting their mission in such a way that people want to continue to fund them for their own sake? Or is the mission primarily about funding as opposed to educating people about and seeking to preserve the glories of the arts themselves?
If it is simply about fighting the war for better funding, that may be one reason why the arts are losing that very funding for which they are fighting so hard. I am not naive enough to think that any organization can run without funds, but there comes a time in any institution where you have to stop talking about the need for money, and start producing something with that money which reaches the people. Or in the very least the most relevant demographic of same. This requires more than fundraisers and more than the important work of lobbying legislators. It requires putting the arts out there, to be consumed. To be understood. To be loved.
Perhaps it is time to increase the amount of communication having nothing to do with the funding aspects of the arts. If we do a better job at that, maybe, just maybe, more money will follow.
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