I'm alive! I kept meaning to type an entry, but Diaryland got sick and I had so much to do...
Anyway, what's there to catch you up on? I've been having a lot of homework-- in AP English we read Jane Eyre, which I'm pretty sure I had read before, but it was still really good. So, every night I had anywhere from a hundred and fifty pages to fifty pages to read, and questions to do. Then, on top of that, I had piles of French homework for some kind of conversational verb form or another... And, yet on top of that, I've had two shows to study and prepare for in drama. All of a sudden I'm a director, and an actor, and I have to plan rehearsals to get the full advantage of my actors, andd then prepare for the same kind of rehearsals for another show. I think I'm doing a lot better at acting than directing, though!
For the show I'm acting in, I'm playing a ditzy blond air-head whose life is pure pageantry, and she discovers that her personality has no substance. It's a lot of fun, and I have to be ready to turn from making people laugh to immediately making myself cry, and I really enjoy it (I love the reactions I can get out of an audience with it). Anway, we had a hot-seat rehearsal, which is basically when the director asks the character questions, and the actor must respond as the character. I went up on stage and shook hands with the director and the co-director, just like my character would, and just lost myself in this blond world of hers. I love it when I finally understand a character and just go with it, and completely forget myself. I get past the initial stages of finding inspiration (my inspirations were Jessica Simpson and that "When I've got a brand-new hairdo" Sarah Jessica Parker Gap commercial) and thinking about my character's backround, I make comparisons to myself. In this case, I don't have many-- she loves the South (I'm not overly fond of it), she's got an inflated ego (I've got a bruised self-esteem), she loves her daddy and has a cold relationship with her mother (I hate my "father" and adore my mum), she's terribly dumb (I at least admit I'm not stupid), she attends private schools and has a tutor (Public School all the way), and her birthday is in April (mine March). Social image is important to her, however, and I'd never leave my house without makeup, and we both concur on politics, if not for very different reasons. Anyway, as I was answering the questions in as bubbly a voice as possible, I saw that all the other actors were drifting up to the pit to watch more closely, and laughing at all the funny parts, and pretending to shoot themselves because they thought I was too good. That kind of stuff makes me feel like I belong someplace, doing something, which doesn't come along very often.
But, directing is a different story. I have problems being mean enough to my actors to get them to shape up in the points where they need to, and then transition to telling them just how well they're doing (and they are doing enormously well!). On top of that, I need some easy and cheap solutions to the set problems I'm having. I'm getting camping air-matresses for the beds, but I don't know what to put them on. I have a bed frame, but I'd need another. Plus, the school has problems with allowing the purchase of beds and leaving them on school property (they think that people are going to sneak away and use them for more than props...). The air-matress can be deflated, so that's a good idea, but now I need to think of some kind of table long enough to put the matresses on, or at least a way to get four matresses, and put one on top of one and one on top of another (I just don't have the $80 that would take). Plus, then, I need to find a fitting table and all that... in any case, it's fun work, however hard the work may be.
So, the community college has this "Shakespeare in the Grove" thing every year, and last weekend I auditioned for it, just because I love Shakespeare so much. Well, I made call-backs, which were today. I woke up kinda late, and I showed up about fifteen minutes after nine, and the door was locked. So I waited until the voices reading quieted down before I knocked to get in. They treated me kinda coldly, like I didn't belong, and so it really translated into my reading. I didn't read as much as any of the other girls, so the director didn't seem to adore me, and now I'm sure I did't get a part. But then my mum, thank heaven she took me, gave me a pep-talk on the way to the car about the whole thing. She said that I was being negative since before the audition day, and there had to be a reason I didn't want to be part of the play. Well, I finally admitted to myself that I think I'm above it. Last year's "Taming of the Shrew" appalled me-- I didn't agree with the interpretation of it, and almost all of the acting was unbearably over-the-top. I mean, Shakespeare would turn in his grave. Well, at these call-backs, there were the same people from last year's show, and they were so cocky it immediately turned me off. They were annoying in their readings, with terrible inflection (I don't think projecting and yelling are the same thing), and blocking that could have been mimed to make more sense. And they treated me like an imbecile, as though I were beneath them-- so I felt like I was, and didn't do nearly as well as possible. (I'll tell them what, the minute they can actually analyse the hamartia of Hamlet, the importance of "weird" versus "weyrd" in Macbeth, or even actually understand half of what Shakespeare wrote, they can act condescendingly to me.) I could have one of those parts in a minute compared to those over-the-top college kids, but my feelings were so hurt, and I disliked them so much from even before I met them, that my heart wasn't in it. So, no part for me. If I were to get a part, I might even consider not taking it at all, as good a chance for acting as it would be.
That sounded much more judgemental than I meant it to be, because I didn't walk into the room and automatically turn up my nose. I didn't even accept the fact I didn't want to be a part of it until I stood up and felt wholly unwelcome. I know now from directing that there has to be a chemistry in a group, and this group had a very ugly chemistry that excluded specifically me. If I didn't like last year's grandiose interpretation, and I don't like the cockiness of the people this year, then I was bound to do poorly. My only regret is now that a room full of people from a community college think I'm a bad actress. Big deal. My highschool thinks the opposite, and that's, what, 3,000 people? Including my mummy, it'd be 3,001.
I just hope I didn't ruin her chance at costuming for the show. I still want her to do that, because it's a big deal!
Wow. I'm so boring. I'm going to go away now, and draw.
The title is from Seinfeld.
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