Breath. Plunge. Splash!

Well, here we are. At the beginning of a brand new blog, all about theatre and how I experience it. Let's take a communal breath, feel the SATS energy build, and plunge in.

This semester at Biola, I got a role in a production of A.R. Gurney's "The Dining Room", and it's being put on by the honors program I'm a part of, the Torrey Honors Institute. Last year they did "Peter Pan" in the fall, and a minimalist adaptation of "Richard III" in the spring; both were wonderful, in entirely different ways.

Peter Pan was laugh-out-loud funny, and perhaps as imaginative and engaging as Mr. Barrie could have wanted it. Minimalist in a sense, mixing "reality" (i.e. the world of the Darling household and the "you must grow up" rule) with fantasy (of course, Neverland). Barrie incorporated that already, having Mr. Darling and Hook be played by the same actor; the Torrey Theatre Club made use of it through scattered props and sparse, constantly morphing sets, as well as costumes that were half fantastic, half this-looks-like-a-bunch-of-kids-dressed-up-to-play-make-believe.

Which I think is exactly the point. By limiting costumes and props and sets, the audience was invited, almost forced, to engage and imagine just as much as the performers were. One of the messages I think Barrie wanted to convey with his play was that of the importance of imagination, and not forgetting the wonder and innocence of childhood, even as adults. Children are people, too, and maybe there's something about playing make-believe that's just as real as discussing politics, or writing intelligent essays, or reading newspapers.

"Richard III" - where to start? I think it marks Shakespeare's talent as a storyteller and observer of life that his words can be set in almost any time and place and still ring true. For some reason, everyone loves to re-create Shakespeare; maybe there's some novelty in taking something from an age so different than ours and applying it to ourselves; maybe it goes back to that timeless quality of his; maybe it's just fun.

I very much enjoyed Torrey's take on it. It was cut significantly, and the actors, dressed in all black, were constantly changing characters and scenes, usually while all remaining in the same space (not a stage, but a room in the Student Union Buliding that is reminiscent of a great big living room, with wooden floors and lots of chairs and tables).

One scene I remember specifically has the queen is speaking, and she says her lines three different ways; there are two other characters she is talking to. (I hope I'm remembering this semi-correctly; to anyone who was involved, forgive any mistakes). Once she seemed pretty normal, another time she seemed fearful, and again she seemed manipulative, like she was planning something sinister. I thought it was an interesting representation of how the same words can be said in entirely different ways, conveying entirely different emotions to the audience, and each time holding an entirely different meaning. As my acting professor would say last year, and as I am learning in "The Dining Room", acting is not about the words; it's about the meaning behind the words, which is conveyed in many, many ways aside from speaking (just like how we communicate normally). That scene from Richard also seemed, to me, to be symbolic of the slow decline toward chaos that was an over-arching theme in the play; the queen began calm and confident, and moved toward distress and corruption.

I'm sorry if that was a pretty lengthy recap of my theatre experiences of last year. Actually, it's not complete; I took an acting class first semester that taught me a lot, and I'll incorporate elements from that as I write through my time in "The Dining Room".

Next, I think, I'll jot down what I've learned as far as vocal and physical movement exercises, which was the bulk of the first couple of weeks of rehearsals. Only now are we moving into scene work, and I'm curious to see how these techniques, most of which I have never done before in theatre, manifest themselves into the actual performance of the play.

Hooray for theatre!