Back to reality

I don't know if I've written recently enough to tell anyone that I was going to be doing a playreading, an Irish play written by a woman living in Prague?

Well I've already done it. Last night. It was a reading, not a full production, but we kind of got carried away with it. Meaning there was a lot of rehearsal, it was fully blocked out, we more or less knew our lines, so other than the fact that we had the scripts, it was poorly blocked, not quite rehearsed enough or very well thought out, it was almost a full production.

I had kind of a problem with the whole "doesn't know what it wants to be" aspect of it. I mean if we were sitting down reading, it would be fine. If we rehearsed long enough to know our lines, movements and all the emotional shit inside out it would be fine (though I would have been panicking much more I think). But it was something in between. And being a reading the actual words are important, so we were discouraged from paraphrasing or improvising bits that we weren't sure about the words, and encouraged to read when we had to, but being very movement orientated, this was next to impossible in a lot of scenes.

We performed in a restaurant that has a cosy back room. An Italian restaurant actually, right by the pizza oven. We did 2 shows because the seating area was very small, and wouldn't fit all our friends, and other people that are involved in stuff like this.

The play is called Sacred Sow. It's about murder, incest, love, hate, friendship and international relations. Pretty much. I played 2 characters. Evelyn, the sister of the main dude Sean, who flirts with a Czech visitor, pretty much all she does, and Grainne, Sean's girlfriend/half sister who gets murdered by his mother. And comes back as a ghost. That's all I'm saying. I had different costumes for the 2 and had to run out and do a quick change, so people would actually get what was going on.

The performance went pretty well. At least I say that now. After the first run I really thought I hadn't done well and it had been much better in rehearsal. The second run was better in some ways and worse in others, and I left out a bunch of my text, but everyone afterwards told me how good I was, which is what they always say so it's basically meaningless, but now that I look back I think I did ok. And everyone else was good, it lifted things to a different level actually being there with an audience.

And that's it. Nothing going on now. Life is boring.

I should write something, really...

I've actually been doing stuff. I have a playreading I'm rehearsing, that is, not a full production of a play, but a sit down reading in a cafe somewhere, but we seem to be making a big thing of it, and there's a lot of work so I'm rehearsing for that a lot, I'm reading 2 roles for that.

And.. oh the class. That's 2 nights a week. And rehearsals for class, which is just practice for what we're doing, which I haven't been doing so much so it doesn't count. Hmmmmm.

And life. You know the usual. I've been...

Ok, so not much of that. Well, there's getting drunk with the dude here and other people I know, or rather getting drunk with him and sometimes other people who he knows, and getting up to all sorts.

Not that I get up to all sorts of course. Me! Ha. All sorts? Never. Just a few drinks here and there...

And she did it again..

Or should one say.. one did it again.

Another playreading. This time the Mutant Cat read the part of Yesica, a little girl. Actually a little brat, well worse than a brat really, an evil little imp is more like it. The play is in the style of a fairy tale, but a modern one, for grownups and it's on the sick side.

The play is set in a forest and centers around 2 girls/young women who go looking for their dog in the forest and come across a young, studly forrester/hunter.. something like that. They both seduce him and have sex with him.. not at the same time and screw with his head, and argue and are generally mean and nasty with each other. The little girls are supposed to be them as children and they treat their father in a similar nasty way.

If it doesn't make so much sense it didn't when I was reading it either. It was fun playing a brat, and the whole thing is a bit over the top so I overdid it, piping up petulantly being mean to my sister and father. It would actually be a fun one to put on for real, with all the actions and sets and stuff. It's quite a violent play.

Multitasking before breakfast.

Oh my the life of a working thespian is tough. I had to get up at 8:00 this morning, to do a lunchtime playreading for the Prague Fringe Festival. And I have another one tomorrow. I didn't even breakfast, except for one coffee between the rehearsal and the actual reading.

I read A Short Play About Globilization. That's the title, and naturally, it's a short play about human trafficking. I had what you would call a supporting role (or roles) and was working with some real life professional actors, which was a bit daunting, I was afraid I would suck and the woman who organizes the thing would regret ever offering me the role. I read the stage directions, a woman's voice and another small role. It was a wee bit confusing, to me if not to the audience. I wasn't originally supposed to do the stage directions but the person who was going to didn't show, as happens here in Prague so I had the work of juggling different roles, and the parts I read were in the sections that were heavy on stage directions so I had to use my skills to switch sharply from one part to another.

I'm doing another tomorrow, which is a kind of fairy tale in which I play a child. It should be challenging. Or it might just be a laugh.

Working for the weekend..

Life is hard when you're a dedicated thespian. I had to work both Saturday and Sunday this past weekend. I'm worn out.

Saturday I had a rehearsal for the upcoming film I'm starring in. I played one woman's rational part. I am supposed to be all logic all the time, because two other women play the other aspects of her, the emotion and the morality. It's kind of a make it up as you go along deal, the director has the basic plot of the movie, about a couple where the woman is played by the different part of her, and we improvised the rest. We were supposed to rehearse this past Saturday and film next Saturday, but we only managed to finish one scene so far. By finish I mean come up with what's in the scene, not necessarily be ready to film it.

Of course now I'm (partially) trained in the Meisner Technique I had to argue with the director and the other actors about how we should all be playing our characters. I felt it was my duty to my art.

Yesterday I went to a meeting about the upcoming playreading I'm doing. I'm exaggerating a bit calling it work, I know. It was brief, the woman running it gave us a rundown of what's happening and gave us our scripts. I will be doing two, one on Thursday and one on Friday. I read the scripts last night and I'm not sure what to think. I'm a bit confused as to who I'm playing in the first one, there are so many characters who come and go, and only 2 described, I'm supposed to be playing "video woman" and there are characters called "woman" and "woman's voice" in parts who I think might be my role, but I'm not certain. I'm sure I'll find out. My character in the second play appears to be a child, not sure what age but it's a bit of a stretch all the same. Most of the people in the playreadings appear to be professional actors here for the Fringe Festival. The roles I have are minor ones, so I'm not terribly worried about it, though I may be later in the week.

Just stopping by...

My goodness, I've been so busy lately! Well for me anyway. I'm still going to my classes, and getting to know the mob there better. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it's terrible but mostly it's ok and I think I'm learning something.

There's a festival coming up which includes a series of playreadings, and I'm going to be doing one, possibly 2 of them. People will actually be coming to watch that, so I'm getting out there. It's not a full on well rehearsed play exactly but I'm hoping some of that will come in the future. I actually went to a playreading the other night which some of my classmates were in, as well as some other people I've met through student films and such over the past few years which I couldn't talk to because I had to leave early!!! I had a meeting to go to, which I was actually late for. See, I told you I was busy!

The meeting was with the same film group I worked with last year, and we are making another film. It's about a couple who are going through problems and the woman is played by 3 women who are different parts of her personality, not sure what I'll be or how it's going to be filmed but it sounds interesting.

Well, it doesn't sound as bad as some of those student films I've been in, which isn't saying a whole lot really.

Next time one with more explosions please..

I went to a playreading yesterday. It was organized through my class, and hosted by a member who quite conveniently lives just around the corner from me. The play we read was "Long Day's Journey into Night" by Eugene O'Neill, a deeply autobiographical play dealing with his family and their relationship with each other, addictions, illnesses and resentment over the past.

And it kinda sucked. Well that was the opinion of more than one person at the reading, the first and most opinionated being Ben, one the teachers in our class, who piped up that he didn't like it immediately after we finished the first act. Brian, the other teacher and the one who chose the play, quietly showed his disapproval. He'd introduced the play to us, describing O'Neill with great reverence as one of America's greatest playwrights, on a level with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. He lost no time in justifying Ben's criticism by saying that he's known to not really like playreadings, he only goes along because he feels he should, being a teacher. His own reason for not liking it was that there were too many stage directions. And he's Australian, and just what do they know about posh stuff like that?

In my opinion the play was not suitable for this sort of reading. It's very wordy, and as has already been mentioned there are too many stage directions (that Brian felt the necessity to have read). We also had some Czech people in the group who's English is pretty good but not quite good enough to do this sort of cold reading, which is difficult enough to do in your own language. It's probably a much better play when seen on stage, or studied properly.

I read the part of the morphine addicted mother in the family for the first half, and then our hostess took over the role. It's a very complicated role and kind of hard to read just like that but I think both of us did a reasonably good job. If I'm completely honest I'll have to say I read it just slightly better than she did, but others may disagree with my opinion on that.

Afterwards I went for a beer.