Here’s how I feel about theater:
- All my first crushes were theater boys.
- I have read a huge number of theater theory books, and believe Brecht and Artaud are correct, though I certainly enjoy a lot of things they wouldn’t.
- I have read an enormous number of actor biographies, including but not limited to Julie Andrews, Harvey Firestein, Neil Simon, Barbra Streisand.
- I’ve seen maybe 28 shows on Broadway. The best was Patrick Stewart in The Tempest, or the opera singer who sang “This Nearly Was Mine” in “South Pacific.” Crushing.
- When I tried to audition for plays in high school, I was nearly incapable of memorizing lines, and so so so so shy.
- Instead I ushered at every show, so I could see them all.
- The book I modeled my life on, for a bit, was a memoir by a writer who also performed bit parts on Broadway in the 1940s.
- When I saw shows on Broadway, I traditionally got a slice at Sbarro becuase I had spent all my money on the show.
Of the arts, ingesting books and paintings is important, but ingesting theater is also very important.
Today I drove up to an improv theater where my yoga teacher has regularly performed, without me in the audience. (Sorry.)
Now, I’ve done this before, paid for and showed up for what is called a “workshop.” With yoga, it was a “workshop” on how to do crow pose.
Crow pose is this:
Yeah. It was covid.
Similarly, I realized as today’s experience unfolded that everyone else was performing something on stage.
Well, I’m off for the summer, but I regularly perform for an audience of 1-5 city kids who have been involved in mistakes. As the year goes on, my audience goes from eyes locked on me to see what I’ll do to me being able to perform interpretive dance moves that are bigger than life, without anyone even noticing. (They will be looking at their work, the kinetic sand, out the window, or asleep. It’s okay if they sleep sometimes. Don’t worry about it.)
I have learned to flit and fly like a clown. I practice my ballet moves. I pretend to try to moon walk, or maybe I actualy do try to moonwalk. My styles also include “gettin down,” “what is she doing.”
The first connection I had in my commedia del’arte class was that when I approach a student, or a corner of the room, I often jump and land quickly on both feet. Dadum. I’m here. This lightness means I am still young enough, and not taking myself seriously.
Commedia dell’arte characters are bouncy like that. It’s also a way to keep yourself looking energetic when you are being seduced by nap energy.
We sat in a circle.
I had brought a notebook and a pen. It was a class. I am a writer. Where did this come from? Where was it going? (Related to my interest in Mardi Gras, masks in Venice, related to Shakespeare, i.e., “O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,” Pyramus and Thisbe, Punch and Judy shows eventually, opera?) The first paid actors in the west. Not church plays, not king’s entertainments. Women played by women. Cool.
But then we moved! Most of it was moving!
We learned to waggle like the servant dummies. There was posture and walking in funny ways, and then there was, “vocalize your character’s this or that.”
I am so adjacent to actors. My sister. My nieces. Friends. People in books I read.
But when I go to a movement class, it’s yoga (I get it, not that I can do it) or ballet (I get it, not that I can do it). After years of practicing both of those things, I have the basics. I know how to stand at ballet. I know how we start at the barre. I know the first run is starting on the right foot.
It was okay, though, getting going, because once I was going, everyone was going, and acting like they had no shame. I don’t have much shame (a little), but I was pretty ready to act the fool. Literally the fool, and others to come.
Posture: “s.” Posture: “s” to “c,” which is yoga stuff. Squats: yoga and ballet. Prancing.
We go over the poor dummies, the rich old man, the rich scholar, the tough guy, the lovers.
We have a circle on cement in a black-painted space, and our teacher brings it 100% every time. Of coures he does. Voice, body, whimsy, randomness.
I feel I improv all the time as a teacher. I’ve been known for my sarcasm. Being able to play catch with words can loop in many reluctant kids.
“Tuck your pelvis!” the assistant teacher says. Yeah, that’s vintage me, thinking I’m tucking my pelvis, but actually I still have a little duck tail. That’s the body I’ve come to love.
“Ohh, like that,” I say, just as I said that at ballet for the first three years.
I think I am a good audience member. I think my family is good. At a show, we whoop and hollar and hiss and wave our hands. We will mug back at you. We want a better show.
But thank goodness, my people are not usually the people on stage. When they are, I am a puddle on the floor. You’re okay. They’ll be okay. It’s okay. I hate seeing my people perform until I see they are completely confident.
We have to make up a story for our tough guy. We are all walking back and forth across the space, moving our heads around as directed, wobbly. My tough guy is CAPTAIN BILLBAGIO, who DRANK UP THE SOUTH SEAS with straws, GRABBED all the treasure, and then PEED IT ALL BACK to sail home.
We have a moment when individual students can practice in front of all of us.
I am too shy.
But I watch other people and realize, oh, these people are, like, performer performers.
I realize, they are all performing in shows that are part of the theater festival going on now.
Ohhhhh.
It’s cool.
One person doesn’t bring the energy or connect when the teacher tries to lasso her in. It’s okay to fail.
No death. Characters can get stabbed with swords, can play dead. No one dies. It’s comedy.
People make eye contact with me, in play, and I think it’s easy to make a melodramatic face, noise, or gesture. WHOA!
There comes a moment when we’ve been practicing and practicing (after I’ve been given a cup of water by the teacher, as I am the only person to not have brought water, I didn’t know it was a workout), I suddenly like need an introvert minute.
Like, I just don’t have any more.
The bathroom is what we use for this in our culture. I duck back by the wall of Hemingway photos and tropical paraphanlia, to pretend to pee, and just have a moment.
The teachers shows us his masks. “Is it papier-mache?” I ask, with a Mardi Gras krewe chief’s interest in mask materials.
“It’s leather,” the teacher says.
Oh, damn, I bet that’s comfortable! I’ve spent many hours in sharp or tiny eye-holed masks. Unfun.
The masks (the real masks) cost $400.
Our last game is a game I’ve heard of, becuase have I mentioned I’m very theater-adjacent? We play jibber jabber. Bring your character out into the middle and interact with another, trading out as seems right.
People go in, a fool and a fat doctor, a fool and another fool, a fool and an old man, an old man and….
I am a lover.
It’s the one I can think of that no one has been.
The lover is pretty, always pretty, and rich, and moves beautifully, so I guess this is low hanging fruit.
I bat my eyes at and touch fingers with another lover, and we squee and run away, because we are only in love with the idea of love.
My partner is much better at all of this than I am. It’s okay, though.
Some people in the class don’t go in the middle at all. Some show the advanced skills (walking AND turning around with the fool’s walk and style).
The assistant teacher has worked with Marcel Marceau, Carole Burnette. “I’m a mime,” she says. “I’ve always been a mime.”
I don’t know exactly how to respond to that.
“How did you find Marcel Marceau?” I asked.
“You mean, how did I find him, like how was he?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s an open question.”
“I’m also half clown,” she finishes up. I want to ask her about one of my favorite TV shows, “Baskets,” but I’m not sure if she’d think the show is making fun of people who are, or want to be, clowns.
I think it is both loving and making fun of people who want to be, or are, clowns.
But that’s just me.
The rest of the theater festival is about to get going. I have successfully galumped around the room, yelled out my strange story about drinking up the South Seas, and corrected myself when I remembered “in commedia del’arte, we poop, fart, and pee, but we don’t puke.” I had to pee out my seas.
Had I pushed myself enough for this to be transformational? Had I created enough material?
Perhaps.
I set my drink in my car, and went on to type up my notes.
Stage notes.
FIN
Going On 