This summer I was in Stagewest's production of 'The Shape of Things' by Neil Labute. Lots of other people have discussed Stagewest's Labute rep series but I'll just reiterate that the theater produced three of his plays simultaneously and there were lots of ISU people involved in many capacities. It was a neat experience! It's wild to see how much theater stuff is going on in the Ames/Des Moines area and how many people are involved in different things, kinda encouraging to think that there are tons of opportunities to work even here. I'd seen stuff at Stagewest before but this was the first show I'd been involved with.
I expected to encounter another level of professionalism working with a professional theater (pardon my redundancy, not a lot of synonyms there) but I kinda didn't. That's not so much a slam on Stagewest as it is a compliment to ISU. My experience was really similar to some I've had in school. I helped some (not as much as I should have) with set construction and it felt exactly like it does at ISU, which says something awesome about our crews and student designers. This might have had something to do with the fact that so many ISU people were affiliated with the production but I prefer to believe it's 'cuz typical ISU productions aren't so far behind the professional world.
When I first read 'The Shape of Things' a couple summers ago I really liked it for whatever reason and sorta set up this romanticized version of it in my head. When I read it again in preparation for the audition I was doomed to be disappointed because I remembered liking it so much the first time. Since then every subsequent reading has been increasingly disappointing. It seems like Labute just brings up really broad hot topics (subjectivity of art, subjectivity of the 'human experience') by stating their importance, ie: "I understand the words you've used here, but they're both pretty subjective. Art, truth." Seems like telling instead of showing. His dialogue also feels a little overwritten to me. This might be a bad example but I didn't enjoy the movie 'Juno' because the main chick is way too clever to be a human being. Everything she says feels like part of a stand up routine. Some of the dialogue in a tSoT feels the same way to me, it's just too smart to be real. The characters are supposed to be college students; We've all spent a lot of time around college students and I'm willing to bet none of them talk like that.
Acting is always hard but I assumed it would be easier in a play like this. My character was sorta peripheral and never really dealt with any extreme stimuli. This may sound really amateur or whatever but the way I see it the more extreme the stimuli a character is exposed to the bigger/better imagination the actor will need to insert himself into those circumstances. I guess I'm learning that this isn't necessarily the case. At my level (white belt) more extreme stimuli sorta give me more to work with, whereas when the given circumstances a are a bit more mundane I need much more specificity of imagination to insert myself into them and 'live truthfully in imaginary circumstances' or whatever. I don't wanna generalize 'cuz I'm sure I'll end up being wrong again but now it seems like the more similar a character's experiences are to the actor's the harder everything is. Is anyone else really uncomfortable expressing opinions about acting stuff? Maybe it's because I can be an elitist prick sometimes but I always feel the need to make excuses for everything I say regarding acting so other people don't judge me. I'm always worried that people will think whatever I say will sound amateurish or hint at some lack of credibility. The environment feels so competitive, even outside of shows or whatever, every discussion feels like a dick measuring contest to see who can sound simultaneously the smartest and the least pretentious. The media is all about finding ways to make us feel self-satisfied and superior. I watch reality TV because I love to feel smarter than those people. All I ever do is look for flaws in everything people say so I can write them off and feel smug about it. It's completely messed up! Even writing this is a way to convince myself that I'm somehow 'above' everyone playing the status game. You can't escape it, life is one huge status game and it's awful. In theater when we come together to work on a project I'm still looking for ways to self validate instead of actually supporting some greater cause. I wanna make something without even briefly pausing to admire myself in the limelight. It'll never happen because I'll just be secretly patting myself on the back for foregoing patting myself on the back. I hope everyone is this selfish so I don't sound completely crazy right now. I want to be a part of something bigger and I want to create art and all that but it's so hard to convince myself that it's not just for personal gain.
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