Friday, November 7, 2008

Did you see me breathing?

I have a rant, but I'll hold off just long enough to tell you of an interesting story....
After the play tonight we the cast went over to Little Italy, as usual.
We had a marvelous time laughing, eating, and drinking.
After a while, we all went our separate ways.
As we were walking to our separate vehicles, Garison hissed at Lynn, Manny, and I to quickly move to where he was standing, which was behind the van next to Manny's car.
As we did so, he pointed out a young woman several yards ahead of us in the parking lot.
To our shock, this young woman was... urinating in the parking lot up against a truck.
I lie not.
She was in a squatting position, and was quite... bare.....
It was special.
A few minutes later, Danielle calls me to tell me of her fun tale.
As SHE was making her way to her vehicle, an apparently drunken old man presented her with the proposition of sexual intercourse...
Of course, he used much more colorful language and slurred a lot.
I believe his opening statement to her was, "I could just totally F#@% you right now...."
CLASSY.
Groveport's finest certainly does love to flaunt its charms afterhours...

Now for my rant.
*AHEM*
In this production, Danielle and I are dragged out on blankets in the last scene.
And we're "dead."
This is the first time I've ever had to... for lack of better terms "play dead," so I've been kinda playing with it, trying to control my breathing, and, for the most part, I thought I had done a pretty good job.
Then I asked mom last Saturday, after the performance, "Did you see me breathing?"
She said, "I could tell you were trying to control it."
AKA yes, yes I did.
Thanks to this conversation, plus one of my many BFs with Danielle (BF is Bitch fit, for those of you who haven't seen White Girls), I realized something.
We're in a play.
We are actors.
We are pretending to be these people.
I'm not really Regan.
Danielle and Aaron don't really go off stage and do the bad thing.
Doug isn't really going crazy.
Harlow doesn't really gouge out Keith's eyes with his bare hands.
I don't really KILL anyone.
Therefore, I don't really die.
AKA who the heck cares if I'm laying there breathing????
Seriously.
I mean, as long as I'm laying there, not moving, not scratching my nose or laughing at the other actor's lines, or laughing at Danielle, I'm obviously portraying the fact that Regan is dead.
There you go.
That's all that needs to be done.
It's acting.
Ha.
Laurence Olivier once looked at Dustin Hoffman and said, "Dear boy, why don't you try acting? It's so much easier."
Of course, the reason why Sir Laurence said that was because Dustin H. was torturing himself as a.... *SHUDDER* method actor.
Method actors....
UGH.
That's another rant in and of itself.
My point in bringing that up is that it's acting.
IF you are an actor, act.
It's not that hard.

I don't really know how to end this so I'm just going to say good night now.
I am tired and do not wish to type any longer.
Night.

2 comments:

Danielle Filas said...

And for the record- I did NOT take Mr. Groveport 1945 up on his eloquent offer.

And THANK YOU. I always hate when people say that to actors, "I could see you breathing!" Well, that's because (shock of shocks) I'm NOT REALLY DEAD. In fact,it may please you to know that the whole time I'm "dead" I'm watching the shadows of the players on the back curtain. And last night I had to sneeze SO BADLY that all I could think was, "Hurry UP everyone! HURRY UP!" because although I think the audience should forgive me for breathing- I do think the audience might have a hard time suspending its disbelief should an onstage corpse suddenly sneeze.

Danielle Filas said...

Oh. And the actual verbatim quote was, "I could jess f*^& you in a heartbeat."

Which, I'm sure was fairly optimistic on his part.