I’m interested in the dualities that we experience in our daily lives and how those might better serve to give us new or deeper insights into the dualities that our characters have. I remember that one of my first insights in this area had to do with my tendencies to lie about things at an early age (I still remember faking an ankle injury in 1st grade- my future craft was already with me), while at the same time I had an equal urge to be totally honest about any emotion I was feeling. This contradiction continued into my teenage years. How could I at once be a liar and an honest person? How can you both love and not love someone, perhaps someone who is both good and evil?
HAMLET. . . . I did love you once.
OPHELIA. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET. You should not have believ’d me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I lov’d you not. (3.1.113-118)
I still have to refer back to the play and to Cressida before I can accurately comment on this, but I urge you to share your gut reactions about this: what are you and are you not in your lives? I feel that a deeper understanding of ourselves and of one another will reflect itself in our production…
Some interesting things to peruse about this topic from the introduction to the in depth look
How apt...
:
http://www.helium.com/items/872438-antithesis-in-shakespeare-playing-with-opposites
http://www.bardblog.com/antithesis-playing-with-opposites/
http://www.drbilllong.com/EvenMoreWords/Antithesis.html
http://pages.slc.edu/~eraymond/ccorner/exchange/goldschmidt.html
I think that I have always had to think of it more as an “and” and not as as “or.” Otherwise, doesn’t it make us kind of immoral to be people who lie for our profession? Yes, I am both a person who lies and tells the truth–sometimes at the very same time.
My theater professor used to say that it’s terribly difficult to be in love with an actor, as they are people who live entirely in the subjunctive, and when he says that you are the most beautiful woman in the world, he really means it–right now. I think alot of the female characters in this play live that way–as tools of war, they can’t help but only see the now, it’s their instrument of survival.
thanks for the blog, Amy.
jess
That’s an interesting and slightly disturbing observation by your professor, Jess. Something that I’ve always been identified with is “wearing my heart on my sleeve”. Which is to say that the best I can do to “act” in “real life” is to subconsciously keep things hidden from myself. Otherwise, I don’t do a good job of speaking out of both sides of my mouth. I don’t seem capable of outright deceiving anybody, least of all myself, unless I’ve somewhere suppressed all the facts.
Approaching my characters here, I know that what I need to find is the sincerity of their thoughts behind what they’re actually saying. I can’t act “acting” or “insincerity”. Everything has to be 100% sincere. So if my character knows one thing but says another, my challenge is to figure out how this character is fooling himself, not how to make the character “present” to the audience as if he knew he was lying.
Where Greg has helped me in the past is to pinpoint what my characters know and when they know it. Any insights from the rest of y’all on this will be most welcome as we proceed.
I hope this made some kind of sense. It does to me, at least!
A duality in my own nature is one of brassy bold/crushingly shy. I’m both, for some reason, and maybe it’s context that dictates who I am and when. All I know is that I have no fear in general of people or situations – but I’m terrified of mucking up with particular people in particular situations. I have said before that I would much rather be naked on a stage (and I have been) than doing stand-up comedy.
This blog is really helping me to delve into my Shakespeare work right
now too. I am playing Mariana in an adaptation of Measure for Measure
right now, and I absolutely love the role. But oh the duality of
Mariana! She literally loves and hates Angelo at the same time. He
has been so evil to her, but she ends up begging for his life in the
end! And when first approaching her, I wondered for a moment, God is
she that desperate? But no…not at all…she is that strong. She
hates to love him, but I believe she knows he can be better, and I
think the truth is, life is just that complicated. It is not black
and white, which is something I’ve always battled with myself….”Am I
this, or am I this?” And I am learning to embrace….I am many
things…..all at the same time.
Shakespeare’s a good one for that. You’re always playing contradictions. If you’re not, you’re ignoring half of what your given. If you just accept that you and everyone else is a bundle of contradictions, you can be a very happy person and a pretty good actor.
I think the key is not to play a character, but play a human being. The more you try to wrap a person up in a neat little package the more you constrict them. And the less interesting they will be to the audience.