My mentor, Dr. Vincent, wants me to write a short reflection about my experience in the play as a way to do some kind of writing work since I'm not writing a paper this semester. I haven't really thought about what I'm going to do, except that I want to write something and then produce it in the form of a podcast, This American Life style; Dr. Vincent and I talked about this because I have an interest in journalism.

I was talking to Jordan about it earlier, and he suggested mapping out a story. He's done several podcasts in the past, and has found that if you're going for the style of TAL then you need to have a plot and a steady narrative with a story arc in order to keep it interesting. I just need to sit down and think and write about it for a little bit, to hammer out what direction I want to take, what points I want to make, what exactly I want to say, etc.

Off the top of my head, I think I'd like to talk about how I believe that theatre is a wonderful outlet for human creativity. I heard an English professor speak in chapel the other day, and she was talking about how every human life is composed of many stories, many plot points, and, like any work of good literature, is complex; there is not just one message, or one idea being conveyed, but life is composed of variety, in emotion and in experience. Something she said that really resonated with me was that good literature should convey some kind of truth about humanity; that's what I love about theatre. There is something so unique about human beings using their minds and their bodies to convey messages about the reality of the human experience in real space and in real time.

As we close in on the actual performances, I'll be interested to see how the experience changes when we have an audience to convey these messages to. I've been in several plays before, but I've never considered it as a thought project, like I am with "The Dining Room". How do things change when we are not working only with each other's energy, but with the energy of the audience? The whole point of theatre is to perform, so what is there to be learned from the performance that's impossible to do or see without an audience? Obviously, there doesn't seem to be much point in crafting a message to convey if you never have anyone to convey it to. But what am I trying to convey? What is A.R. Gurney trying to convey?

What if we want to have people over, for cheesecake?

That's one of the lines from the play, post-censoring. "The Dining Room" has a significant amount of cursing in it, and since we are Christian students performing at a Christian school, it was decided that we should just leave the cursing out. Our director, Julia, met with Dr. Reynolds, the head of the Torrey program, and also with Dr. Todd Lewis, the chair of the Communications department, which contains the only other real theatre presence here at Biola (we don't have a theatre major or department, only a track within the Comm department.) Apparently part of the Biola theatre policy is "no cursing", and the issue had been a little bit on the fence anyway; it really doesn't detract much from the play to have it out.

Anyway, one of the lines in one of the scenes belongs to a husband, arguing with his wife about using the dining room table to work on her master's thesis; she insists that they never use the space and she can work better in there, and he counters with, "What if we want to have people over, for Chrissake?" During the first read-through of the play, I thought the word actually was, "cheesecake". We were trying for options of how to censor the word, and I threw out "cheesecake" as a joke, but it's ended up sticking. It certainly makes the line, and the character, a lot funnier, and so far every time it's been said while rehearsing that scene, there's always someone who can't keep a straight face.

Rehearsal tonight was SO MUCH FUN. I was excited for it all day; we were going to work on a scene I've been really, well, excited about. The whole cast (all six members) is in the scene, which makes it fun, and the scene itself is just plain fun. It's a child's birthday, and four of the performers are playing children about four or five years old. To start rehearsal, Julia put on some music and had us run around on stage as if we were five year olds. You can imagine how that played out; lots of running and pushing and twirling and hiding and jumping and yelling. And lots of fun.

Then, we did that again, except me and one other actor, Nick (who is a junior here at Biola and in the Torrey program) were not children; we were the adults. In the actual scene, that's how it is; four actors are the children, and Nick and I are the adults. I am the mother of the girl whose birthday it is, and he is the father of one of the boys attending. Trying to be adults while everyone else is running around being an insane child is very difficult; it was hard to keep things under control, including my own laughter.

Working on the scene itself was really, really great. When the children swell (or explode) into their talking and laughing and chanting for ice cream while Nick and I ("the adults") are trying to have a separate conversation was a challenge; Julia wants the kids to keep their energy, but that means Nick and I have to overcome that energy. Practically, at some points it was just a matter of hearing the lines and everyone's cues.

I really love this scene. I was talking with Johnny (one of the actors and the assistant director) about it after rehearsal, and he said something that I think is really dead-on; this scene embodies what so much of "The Dining Room" is as a whole. Let me explain. The basics of the scene are these: I ("Peggy") and Nick ("Ted") are both married, with kids, probably in their thirties (I think the script describes Peggy as "youngish").

When Nick enters, we soon learn that there is some kind of mutual attraction between them, although nothing has been acted on. Peggy's husband is distant and apathetic, and Ted's wife is probably more concerned with appearances of a good marriage than an actually good marriage. Ted's wife knows "about us", as Ted puts it, and she's threatening to "make everything messy." As they try to pull away from the distraction of the kids for a moment, Peggy and Ted discuss their options, although it's more like wishful thinking. In the space of a few lines, the audience sees (or at least, I hope they will see) something really sweet between them; cute, even. They're certainly a likable couple, but in the end, they aren't a couple. They never can be. And this is the realization I think they come to, especially when reminded of the reality of their children, and their responsibilities. I find something gently heartbreaking about it all; they can't abandon their children, who are just as sweet and lovable, and so they must abandon themselves and, partly, their happiness.

That's why I agree with Johnny when he says that this scene is a sort of microchasm for the entire play. On the surface, the characters are funny and maybe a little flippant; it's easy to laugh at and with them. Yet as the play progresses, and as each scene progresses in itself, we delve deeper into the reality of these people's lives, and there is much pain and sadness and loss that isn't evident on the surface. In way, I think every individual is like this. When you're just scratching the surface of someone, things aren't so serious; there is small talk and casual jokes and light conversation. But the deeper you dig, the more you find; there is a good amount of joy, but probably an equal amount of grief and pain, and all of these things shape us into who we are. Humans are like sponges, constantly absorbing experiences, feelings, ideas, that build into that ever-changing person we are always becoming.

In some ways, I haven't quite put my finger on exactly what I love about "The Dining Room". But I do love that it's about being real.

Real People, Real Spaces: The Art of Morphing

I love "The Dining Room"!

Rehearsals are going SO well. The directors are wonderful, the cast is great, and everyone works wonderfully together. I am very, very excited for this show, and so thankful to be a part of it.

At one of our earlier rehearsals, Julia, our director, asked us to read through the entire script, and ask ourselves, what is the essence of this play? There are a lot of sweet, funny moments in this play, but there are also a lot of bleak, desperate moments that find people in sad situations, and sometimes at the end of their rope. As Julia said, one could walk away from this play and say, "Wow, that was a really depressing play about a lot of unhappy people." Why is it not that? How is this (potentially controversial) play justifiable?

I'm really falling in love with "The Dining Room". One reason is that I believe while many of the characters in this play are caught in moments of desperation, or shame, or weakness, they are just utterly, utterly real. When we discussed it together at rehearsal, we agreed that if someone judged this play, and these characters, solely by the brief spaces of time in which they appear onstage, that would be a mistake. These people are purely human, and we all have moments like these, moments that we cherish, moments that we fear, moments that we wish we could forget. I ask the audience not to think only about what they see, but what the don't see; how has this person come to this place in their life? What has happened to them to make them who they are, in this moment? I feel it's almost like reading a few pages from the middle of someone's diary. It can reveal a lot about who they are, but it's not all of who they are.

Another thing that I love about this play is that everything happens in the same space - the dining room. The people change, the times change, characters and families and problems shuffle in and out of this single space. I've found those stationary spaces of our lives intriguing for some time now. Think of the house you grew up in, or your childhood bedroom, or even your car. These place, these spaces, remain virtually the same, but there's something about us that changes them; they absorb our energy, our emotions, our memories, until we can't enter into them without entering into a part of ourselves. The dining room is such a perfect room for that; it has so many roles for so many people. A place to eat, a place to study, a place to gather, a place to feel safe. Every time one of us enters that dining room, in whichever of our several characters, we change it, so that while the set and props may remain the same, the space itself, just like our characters, is constantly changing. As actors, we must morph to fit our characters; when we do, the room, and everything it represents, morphs with us.

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!