On Friday, 10/15/11, I conducted my first outside interview for the ELP projects. I interviewed Charles who works for the theatre dept. but is also an avid fan and regular player of volleyball. Interviewing was easier than I expected. They do all the talking for you. The hardest part is not treating the interaction as a conversation. It seems a bit sneaky that my part of the conversation, reproducing his part of the interview, comes later when he can’t respond.
As I go through and transcribe and make decisions about what piece I am using for my everyday live performance piece, I am really trying to pick something that is far away from me. It’s reminding me of the Anna Deveare Smith ‘The character is the space between you and the subject.’ I want to pick something that I can’t immediately see what the character is. I also want to pick something that is heavy in terms of content. What is the essential element of this interview? How did this interview change my relationship to the project?
I am surprised by the similarity between myself and Charles. The classic stereotype places theatre kids and jocks as distinct cliques. However we both have a lot of overlap. I find myself trying to hold my face in a way that it looks more like his face.
As I watch other people perform I see a lot of personal ticks. It seems like as an actor you can gain more by limiting your personal quirks than by some attempts at imitating the subject. The distraction makes the distance between you and the character larger I wonder if watching the performance would find a combination a more complex character (the combination of the imitation and the personal ticks)?
This makes me think about possibly combining both the interviewer and the interviewee into one character that could be in the play. Such an amalgamation could be interesting, especially if the outcome was some strange sports jock/theatre kid hybrid. I mean, I know there are people out there who love sports just as much as they love theatre, but I'm talking about a caricature, Frankenstein type creature. Interesting? maybe?
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your comment on our individual “isms” and how we must shed our “isms” before trying to imitate someone else. I think the first part is being aware of those “isms”. For example, some “Cara-isms” are a country twang, big eyes with lots of eyebrow and forehead furrowing, and slouching the chest. It is imperative for me to be aware of these “isms” before trying to perform another person or any character in a play. In my ELP, my interviewee also slouched over but he did not have a country twang at all and so I had to be very conscious of that and how the two of us pronounce words differently. Also, he used his eyebrows and forehead but not nearly to the capacity that I do. So, I think we all, in this process, should be aware of our individual “isms” and be conscious of those when trying to play another person.
ReplyDeleteThere are some things like gender, size, and age that we are not capable of accurately imitating. However, I love that in class we are not just accepting that as such, but instead, are openly discussing the things that are different between us and not achievable. For example, my interviewee had much larger hands than I and a much deeper register- as he is a male. I could not biologically achieve these two things but the recognition that those differences exist was nice.
I have also talked to Charles a lot through the semester, and he has that way of making it easy to relate to him. He is a very comforting person, and when I think about doing an ELP of him, I think it might be easier than most. But maybe that’s just because he’s such a nice person, and he wouldn’t be upset if you messed him up. You know what I mean? Maybe ELPs are so hard, because we are afraid to misportray these people because of who they are, not what they have said. ELPs are just hard, and I have no answers. And like Amy said, we are set up to fail anyways.
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