Day 82: From the Mouths of Mothers, by Amanda Stuart-Fisher

This play was created in collaboration with a charity that supports the non-abusive parents of sexually abused kids, and is adapted from several hours worth of interviews with voluntary participants. It's certainly not a light play, and it isn't meant to be. The stories all overlap, which makes it rather hard to follow for a lot of the early part of the play. Maybe that's partly my own struggles with following more than one conversation at a time, but I suspect it's also partly to show how easily each voice can become a bit lost in the noise for the medical, legal and emergency service professionals involved, and how devastating it is being just one lone voice that nobody can give full attention to. We do get to see each mother interacting with the son or daughter in question through the play, in snapshot conversations, but the mothers don't talk to each other. The final line brings them all into unison and... well, just reading it had me at the point of tears, so I can only imagine what it would be like to watch performed.

It's an awkward and difficult subject, and a lot of it makes for uncomfortable reading, as well it should. Some plays are subtle in their politics or activism. This one pretty much just comes out and talks about it, straight up. There's a lot of good advice, though most of it comes from examples of how not to deal with things. Whether I'd recommend it to others, I think if it's a subject you're interested in, it's worth a look. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, going to hit hard anyone who has been involved in simlar situations from any side of the story, but really it can't be any other way.

Oddly, I'm considering this as a potential source of monologues. There are a few of the mothers who are spot-on age appropriate and some great deep emotional stories (and because each story is just broken up through the length of the play, it'd be easy enough to run a couple together for length) - I would probably need to choose a different Shakespeare piece to go with it than the monologue I'm currently working on, for contrast - there's a subtle difference between a soliloquy and directly addressing the audience and I feel like it's not enough of a distinction.

Day 81: A Dish of Tea with Dr. Johnson, (adaptation based on two books by James Boswell)

The title credits were getting a bit long so I abbreviated, in full they should read: Adapted by Russell Barr, Ian Redford and Max Stafford-Clark from James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The play is presented as a sort of living memoir delivered to an implied small and intimate audience by Dr Johnson, both as long monologues and conversations with Boswell. The conversation seems to keep coming back to the theatre, particularly discussing prominent contemporary actors (and at that, mostly Garrick).

As a portrait of the man, it is an interesting read though I suspect as with so many plays rather a lot is lost in not hearing and seeing it acted out. I did find myself hearing Dr Johnson's voice as he was portrayed in Blackadder, and I suspect either both sets of writers were working from the same source material or the writers of this play had been somewhat influenced by the episode in which he appears. Either way, he seems to have been a classic example of the eccentric, addictive-personalitied, self-assured and manic creative type, who seems to take a lot of pleasure in disliking and disagreeing with things.

There's a lot of quick changing, if cast according to the suggested layout, for the man who for most of the play is Boswell. Some of these are instant shifts on-stage from a female character back to Boswell, which put me rather in mind of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, only I don't get the impression this was intended to be a farce, so I'm not sure how that would work - again, interesting to see, should the opportunity arise.

Day 80: EAS day/no play.

I'm going to keep this brief since my laptop has stepped up it's death throes and I don't want to keep it running too long while it's in this state. Did some excellent characterisation work today, using the same scripts as last week we were first set mixed-group improv scenes in crisis situations (my group was shipwrecked, and characters included and 8 year old boy and and an insulin-dependent diabetic) using what we knew or felt able to add to our scripted characters. The second excersise was to take that characterisation back to the scenes as scripted, but to work through the scene in our own words from an approximate memory without looking at the script. Finally with the feelings brought out in those two scenarios, we went straight into performing from the script to the class. Every scene came out much more emotional, much more natural and much more off the page. Definitely something I can take away as a method to use in building the characters for my monologues for the Shakespeare certs and later for auditions. Next week we'll be working on some more general acting excersises rather than direct script work, and in the mean time I plan to go along to trial sessions for Alexander Technique and Pilates at DanceBase this week. Definitely glad I made the decision to join EAS - I feel like I've got a bit of the lost mojo from earlier in the week back, and I'm starting to feel more open and trusting with my acting.

Day 79: Yours Abundantly, from Zimbabwe, by Gillian Plowman

The first in a compendium of six recent plays written by women, this one mainly takes the form of a series of letters from children, the headmaster of a local school in Zimbabwe, and his wife to a woman who met one of the kids while on holiday there and (in the eyes of her daughter) is having a "midlife crisis" in making plans to return as a teaching assistant. Through the eyes of both the locals, and the wealthy and deeply sympathetic woman who becomes their benefactor, the story of life under Mugabe unfolds, and one by one the letters begin to talk about friends who are lost to illness or under circumstances where the government is implicated. Eventually the headmaster is killed explicitly for his anti-government beliefs, and we're told that the woman continued to teach at the school after his death.

When I was growing up, I didn't take a lot of interest in world current events. A newspaper was something for grownups - I was interested in fiction, particularly fantasy, and the snippets of information that filtered through to me when I accidently saw parts of a news program on television, or saw the older girls handing out badges for some overseas cause or other scared me away. I can't help feeling a little bit like I should know more about the background to the play than I do, and I certainly feel like I come away from the reading with more of an understanding than I had before. When I was seventeen I visited Tanzania for a month with a group from school, a trip that included a week working with a Masaai tribe. While I was out there we did get to briefly see their local school, which I think gives me a bit of context for the play - it is a different country and a different set of circumstances, but as an image to keep in mind it's probably closer than imagining any school I've ever been to.

The daughter's protests that her mother won't be able to get her home comforts if she goes out to Zimbabwe struck me as equally funny and deeply sad. It has been my experience in travelling to a whole range of places in various states of development that it is always easiest to let the place tell you how to respond. The friends I went out to Tanzania with will probably all agree, on returning we were all craving hot baths, bacon, a bed without a sleeping bag, water that didn't need iodine added to it... but I don't think I really noticed missing those things while I was out there. There were so many other experiences, and simply a different way of life, that pining for those creature comforts wasn't so much inappropriate as just something that didn't occur to me. I'm not sure everyone I was with would agree with that second part, and I suspect that the sentiment in the play that it's crazy to think you could just live without everything you take for granted every day is one that a lot of people would find themselves nodding along to. And that, I find sad.

Day 78: A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams

One of my latest acquisitions, this is a play that seems to feature a lot when talking about studying theatre and drama as one that everyone seems to have had some contact with. I'm glad that I can come to this for the first time on my own, having not covered it at school. There are parallels and symbolism in the names of the local streets, buildings and vehicles with the storyline and the lives of the two sisters, but like the music which is sometimes in Blanche's head and sometimes really there but always in the background, the names just help sketch out the outline of the action. I can very much empathise with sisters who are so different they cannot hope to understand each other's life choices, but as secrets get revealed through the course of the play it's difficult to really know who to sympathise with. In the end, Blanche is dragged off to a mental hospital "for her own good" and it's clear by then that she would likely struggle to look after herself alone. But everyone involved in having her committed has their own problems - I'm left feeling like any one of them coming into an unfamiliar group might be treated similarly, with the possible exception of the incredibly unfortunate boyfriend who really defines bad timing, innocence and poor judgement.

In terms of character development I can see that this would be a really interesting play to get stuck into. Most of the characters are masking themselves to some extent, some of them only to certain other characters. There are reasons for those different faces, most specific is the deep emotional scarring that has driven Blanche to a madness she doesn't really recognise in herself. There's also the stark counterpoint in the total lack of physical privacy - we watch the action through windows and transparant walls, neighbours are free to come and go, and even the two rooms of the apartment adjoin by only a curtain. The trunk - which has a key - is open most of the time. The only truly private place shown in the entire course of the play is the bathroom, and Blanche seems to spend most of her time in there. Just one more implication that she has something monumental to hide.

I'd certainly go and see this if I happen to catch it playing somewhere handy, but I doubt I'll raid it for monologues - partly because it's apparently so well known. It makes a nice change that the women carry the play, and though they do all have or gain partners through the course of the story, they are strong and clear characters in their own right and not defined by thier respective men.

Day 77: The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee

For our pairs/group script work at EAS this term, I was given the opening few pages from this play. It seemed like a good idea to add it to my reading list for the week, as well as being worth getting hold of the script so I had my own copy since we're not allowed to take home or mark up the copies that were handed out in class. It's also good practice to read the entire play when working on scenes and monologues anyway. The fact it's "not mandatory" for this particular class is not the relevant point.

The title, if the two lines are reversed, basically spoils the plot - Sylvia (the other "woman") is, in fact, a goat. The action of the play surrounds the leading man revealing the truth to a friend, who decides the only reasonable thing to do is to tell the man's wife, and the subsequent fallout with his wife and son. That he has apparently been occasionally screwing a goat for the last six months appears to be just one of a host of problems within the family. With the existing tension that lies between a homosexual son and his trying-to-be-understanding parents, and the wife's concerns for her husband's possible early signs of dementia (which may in fact be a manifestation of his own worry about his affair) the revalation about Sylvia not surprisingly breaks all three family members down completely and the latter half of the play is almost entirely pitched so that everyone on stage is yelling, crying, breaking things or all three. When she storms out and returns later with the now slaughtered Sylvia, it feels like a small victory for cheated victims everywhere, and because the mistress in question is a goat, it's not going to result in doing time for murder.

There are some fantastically emotional walls of text for Stevie (the wife) which would make potentially great monologues, so this is certainly one to earmark for that.

Day 76: Hitting a wall.

Second play-free day this week, but it turned out to be a rather heavy downer. I had hoped to run some work on my pieces for the Shakespeare certificate and got as far as enlisting my usual friend as audience and critic before realising that just looking at the page of lines made me freeze up and feel completely incapable of saying a word. I had truly hit a block and as I write this it's 2 days later, and I still haven't managed to run the scene or the sonnet out loud other than to myself while out walking. I have the image inside of what I want each one to look like - several, actually. But when it comes to actually doing it, I'm clamming up even more than I was in the EAS audition. I could partly blame the work avoidance on that same mid-time lull I had in prepping for the audition, since I'm familiar with the pieces and it's still 6 weeks until the exam, but I think there's more at work here. I've realised how important this year is for me. This particular speech may only ever get me that Bronze certificate and then never be brought out again, but this exam is one of a few definite landmarks I have hopes of hitting over the coming year and it's the first contact with RADA which already feels like a huge hurdle in my mind. The whole point of signing up was to get an opportunity to see the place, and have a first audience there with lower stakes than the audition I hope I'll be doing next winter. The mental gremlins being what they are, I'm left equal parts terrified of falling on my face and terrified of actually rocking it. If I fail, I've got to come back from that - good practice for handling the inevitable handful of rejections when I go for the full auditions, but I have a feeling it'll be more tempting than ever to just quit, or at least fall back into a holding pattern for a while. And if I come through with flying colours then.. what then? I get cocky, or I decide it was a fluke, or.. I'm overthinking it. I know I am, but it's a bit intimidating to realise I might actually make it this time. I was already telling myself that there's no alternative, no going back, and that I am going to get in somewhere next year, and here's what I have to do to get there - but it's been a very very long time since I last actually got something I went for with this kind of tenacity. I'm used to it all falling apart, and I'm terrified of self-sabotage. There's a photo I've seen around the web of a swing that basically hangs over a cliff, with no harnesses or anything - it looks like the view would be amazing, the high would be like nothing in the world... but I wouldn't trust myself not to let go at the highest point of the swing, by accident, and fall to my death. And the feeling I get looking at that picture, the ambivalence... is pretty similar to thinking about my longer term goals. It's beautiful and a rush, and dizzying and terrifying, and the further along I get and the more elements I add to my preparation, the further and harder I'll fall if I let go. And trusting myself not to let go is turning out to be pretty hard.