Read Streamers. Didn’t like it too much for the same reason I didn’t like Odets: the characters are synthesized, painted, false, bizarre puppets. In Streamers a morality comes up and bops you one in the face. About queers: “I mean, some of ’em are okay guys, just way up this bad alley and you say to ’em, ‘I’m straight, be cool,’ they go their own way. But then there’s these other ones, these bitches, man, and they’re so crazy they think anyone can be had. Because they been had themselves.” You got it, straight from the mouth of 1970: queers, niggers, and all that good bullshit are in this play. Joe Normal, seeing this play, will assimilate it as some sort of deeper “reality” which he’s been missing by working at his insurance sales job. Joe Normal will see this scramble of swinging dicks onstage and think that this is life, this is the emotional grind that I missed when I went to college. Rabe does not play to the masses because his work does not speak to them. Streamers is a hodgepodge of larger-than-life army dipshits who we’re supposed to care about.

It’s a fascinating thing, watching people learn from you. The Immediate Gratification Players as a whole has moved me and changed me more than any organization on campus at Harvard. I’ve rolled up my sleeves and took care of them and it’s been a holy terror, especially with the Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am show, but it’s been just so rewarding to watch my players apply what I’ve taught them and have a good time doing it. I love them all so much. Sorry, Dramatic Arts 1, what I’ve learned from IGP and these amazingly open people tops the intelligent ramblings of Wheeler. There comes a point where you just have to tell the truth. IGP is that truth for me. I see improvisatory acting as a holy form of theater, in the Empty Space definition of the term; it seeks to move us by introducing our souls onto stage. We offer to psychoanalyze ourselves for your pleasure, and in doing so you, the audience, will find a distorted mirror image of yourself. It is a clean, fair, new art.

I read some of Creating Theater. I don’t think it was mandatory for us–the book, I mean. Everybody has their own opinions, directors especially. There are varying schools of theater but I think that the common denominator is that you have to be a little bit nuts about the art form. Why the hell do we want to get up and be someone else in front of other people for a little while? I can understand the wish fulfillment part, but why do we need the audience? Is it communication or introspection? What?

Less than five seconds ago I finished reading Chekhov’s Sea Gull and I am full of it the way that good plays fill you up, to the point where your seams nearly burst and your belly bulges to contain the powerful emotions that come with absorbing a play too fast. Goes to your head, like too-cold lemonade in July. Where to begin?

The sea gull, I think, and Treplev’s gift to Nina, symbolizes the fact (to Treplev) that Treplev could not give Nina anything of value. Sea gulls are easy and worthless to shoot. A gift of a seagull is like a gift of sand. And then you have Trigorin’s trite analysis, in which Chekhov just fucking outdoes himself: it (a) sets up Treplev as the bad guy to Nina, it (b) foreshadows Trigorin’s seduction of Nina, and (c) it blocks Treplev’s implied message. AMAZING! New! Wild! Different! How the hell do you write so many things with such brevity?!

I can see, though, why this play was recommended for Acting 1. It’s easy to get along with. Prolly played to huge audiences, because there’s not enough really deep stuff in it to alienate the common audiences. Also the illuminati prolly liked it due to Chekhov’s message about the destiny of theater, through Treplev’s speeches in Act One. Gets you on a lot of levels at once. Also you’ve got Masha and Medvedenko as subplots AND comic relief. Only Walt Disney does it better.

I don’t like the ending line. It’s a bit of a cheat. Sure, it’s shocking to hear that Treplev has just shot himself but if you kill the lights on that line there is nowhere to be gone. The play is not only over, it’s killed. I would sorta have liked it if we HADN’T have known it Treplev had shot himself or not. That would have annoyed the shit out of audiences but it would have given the play a micro-degree more of class.

Read Pinter’s Homecoming and found it quite interesting. The best thing about it, like Rosemary’s Baby, is you can’t tell exactly what it is that’s going wrong until the very end, where most everything is spelled out for you in the grossest and most terrifying possible terms. The image that I got is one of a worker bee (Teddy) bringing back food (Ruth) to the hive (everybody else). The model would work well in terms of developing the off-stage relationships of the characters. The trade of Ruth for a sandwich is utterly slick and cold. This play has something stinging to say about men’s perceptions of women, and it has something cold to say about the family unit. Imagine wild dogs fighting over a roast. Icy!

Oh, yeah, one other thing about the play: this play explores the essence of the block (see Johnstone). The men deny one another speech, actions, and objects. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a playwright use a block correctly in a theatrical context (in my of course brilliant theatrical repertoire.) Pinter understands that a block is actually a form of non-acceptance, and therefore hostility. He uses blocks to demonstrate the men’s interrelationships. Cool beans!

At Baker’s Plays I bought a play called Scapino! ’cause i heard it was good. It is in fact Bozo the Clown bouncing around on a pogo stick. And so much much more. It is a frosted dog turd. It is vomit in the snow at 2 a.m. It is utterly racist and condescending to the audience. The opening song in the show is comprised entirely from the menu of an Italian restaurant, for God’s sake! Characters throughout the play have to speak in mock Italian, as if the Italian language is actually a bunch of nonsense to be ignored or laughed at. Frank Dunlop and Jim Dale should be sodomized with the Coke bottle they felt was so funny all the way through Act I. Okay, I’m done now.

Almost. What’s the difference between Scapino! and murder-dinner-theater mysteries (saw one and thought it fairly gross for the poor actors), as opposed to the stuff we read for Acting 1? Is it not possible to be salable and classy?! Does intelligence not sell? In Emma, the writer (I forget his name) says acting is 5% Quality Acting and 95% Bunny Suit. Is this a profession of choice for someone with my computer skills? And why aren’t we covering how to MAKE A LIVING in the theater? We’ll be brilliant and starving.

Read American Buffalo. It’s a status play, I think. I should have read it more closely. The curse words don’t offend me like they did everyone else in class. I realize that it may be a bit contrived (“do poor people really talk like that Herbert?”) Also it has something to say about reality and wishing beyond reality. Ever heard a story about this fellow who has this lottery ticket of which he’s uncovered five of six numbers, and they match five of six announced on the news? So he never uncovers the sixth because he will always be able to dream of the idea that he’s won the lottery. American Beefalo is a lot like that. We all feel sorry for Bob because he’s low status.

I went slightly bughouse (ha ha) and checked out six books on the theater, none of which have to be read for this class. What a dumb ass I am. Actually I did not shoot for the theater proper: I localized my checking out to the history and teaching of improvisational acting. I found that there are many other people out there with dreams and theories which are a lot like mine. Ever heard of Viola Spolin? She is the one who created the concept of the improvisational game. In Improvisation for the Theater, she goes over about half of the games I’ve learned by word of mouth, and adds about one hundred and sixty more. She IS the woman. I like improv as a training tool because it demonstrates that we are to show real people on stage, which may be distorted by the director’s perception of “art,” but nevertheless must remain real people. Death is not a realistic play, but the characters MUST be real for the play to fly. Also got Combat Mime, which teaches me how to beat people up without beating them up. I just couldn’t wait for the workshop on the subject–sorry! Got about three books on the history of IMPROVISATIONAL COMEDIE as seen through the eyes of the stagestruck viewers of Second City and The Compass, two original improvsiational troupes. The books mostly masturbated over themselves and how great they thought past comics were. As a true lover of improv I realize that it can only move forward, since it is an art of the moment. The minute it begins to repeat itself it leaves the realm of a pure art form and becomes a hybrid. This is not necessarily bad, but the creative act is then (temporarily) stifled. Am I making myself perfectly clear?

Read Death of a Salesman again, finally. One of the cool things to be noted in this play, that I think may be just literarily trendy but is still very cool: do you know what Willy sells? You may think you do, but you don’t. Miller never mentioned it. Happy said he had an “eye for color” and his boss asked him to turn back in his sample case, but otherwise we don’t know what Willy sells. This could have been for one of two reasons. One, because Miller doesn’t care what Willy sells, and information about this detracts from the plot, or two, because Miller wants to allow the director some sort of cursory, superficial hand in developing the characters for the play. Actually I think a combination of these forces may be at work. You can also see this kind of non-naming, leave-it-to-the-director sort of stuff in Albee. Check out The Sandbox: what does the musician play? I always thought it was a clarinet. My friends have told me a flute and a piano. Fact is Mr. Albee never told us what the musician is playing, nor anything about him except “young would be nice.” I always imagined a skinny black guy with a balding pate and a sour demeanor. You can imagine whatever you want.

One of best things about Death is that Miller works with characters that you, the audience, have seen before. Linda reminds me of my mom. Very much so. I think that’s what may make Miller timeless. He works & alchemizes with real people. That’s what makes him kick Odets’s ass …

Odets’s Awake and Sing, according to the prologue, is dated. I will go further and state that by and large it is a piece of shit.

BESSIE: Eighty thousand dollars! You’ll excuse my expression, you’re bughouse!

Granted, the play was written in 1933. Granted I don’t know any lower-class Jewish families who lived in the Bronx at that time. Granted I don’t know their patterns of speech or dialogue. Granted I’m just an undergraduate computer science major with a sharp cynicism. But when a line like that comes into a play, it can do NOTHING but shock the audience back out of the story and into the realization that THIS IS ONLY A PLAY. This is the cardinal sin of theater–to make it affected or fake. There is no reason to get up on stage and say this. And don’t pick on me because it’s only one line. Miller uses every damn line he writes, and so did Shakespeare. Odets is full of pre-existential bullshit like the line mentioned above. I hate him. I will kill him.

Saw a homeless person drinking a cup of coffee in the Square so I watched him for five minutes. He did it better than anyone in class. We all act. We don’t live the parts. We may be okay at fooling people but I saw more in those five minutes than I’ve seen in section for the past three weeks. We suck basically. People do not wear their emotions on their faces except in plays. People wear something else on their faces.

When we were children we were taught that a frown drawn on a circle with eyes implied that the circle was a sad face. We were also taught that the circle with a smiley line meant that the circle was happy! Mad, lines above the eyebrows. And I say that that is not the way we look when we are happy, sad, or angry. The moral of the story is that all actors overact. The homeless person I saw in the street had a street face on for sure, but there were a hell of a few stories going on beneath that street face. When you are cold you don’t shiver and pull your head into your neck like some sort of inverse giraffe. You just feel cold. We don’t hop up and down to keep warm. We just look slightly pissed off to be out in the cold and not in the steam heat about a block away, with the December ice cutting through your coat like a hissing knife we stand and look a little pissed. That’s all.

The difficulties actors put up with are unfair! Here is an interesting exercise idea: put two actors in front of a classroom. Unbeknownst to the rest of the class, have on player think of his/her greatest sexual experience and have the other player think of the death of a loved one. BUT at all times the actors wil try to keep refrigerator-door faces!!! It would then be up to the watchers to determine who was thinking of what, and how the watchers were able to tell. We would then get into the realm of “true” motivations. We would then learn how to act behind the walls of indifference which we as vulnerable humans hide ourselves. This is important. It would be more important for a play like Pinter’s Homecoming where walls and blocks and negated communications are an integral part of the plot. Learn to act without acting!

Read Streetcar, again. I think Williams does what all good dramatists try to do: take a couple people you can sympathize with and put them on stage to bounce off one another for a couple acts. Is this how Shakespeare got started? Streetcar is cool. I have to imagine Blanche as going absolutely insane at the end or else the show doesn’t work for me. She has to be emotionally, mortally wounded. I don’t know why. The ending of the play always cooks right off the page.

Read True West. The essence of the story is not a fight. The essence of the story is the attempt to reconcile irreconcilable personalities. Austin and Lee go at one another, but they are too much alike to not be parts of the same person. The play is a status play. The status of the players shifts from scene to scene and produces action. These guys were not created to fight–they would not be brothers if their hatred was from the heart. A fight in Shepard’s mind is a form of communication and not the failure to communicate or the breakdown of such communication.

Read the whole first part of Hagen. Seems good. The coolest thing about it (I don’t know how cool this is) are the “tricks” to getting yourself sick, drunk, awakening from a wide sleep, or whatnot on stage. That’s nice, but I wonder if writing these things isn’t a bit like giving an actor a “magic” wand that will instantly work with the power of placebo when invoked. If Uta Hagen says you will cry when this happens, you will cry when this happens. Concentrate on objects. Objects are fine. At this juncture in my life I do not worship them. This is partially due to the fact that I am a Harvard senior and am immensely full of myself to the point that I rarely accept without question that which is told to me. Also this is because I think object acting is of limited value in certain non-conventional situations, i.e. improvisation.

Pure improvisation requires a different sort of characterisation technique than the one given in section; that is, we cannot sit and concentrate on an object and then portray an emotion. There is simply not enough time between an offer and an accept onstage to invent objects and concentrate on them, since objectification (?) is essentially an analytical process that culminates in an emotional reaction. Therefore, for the Immediate Gratification Players I created a new game called Pardon Me which allows the instant generation of characterisations. All the players stand in a circle. The acting player says to the person on his right, “Pardon me, are you a fireman?” Instantly the person must adopt the movements and vocalizations of a fireman and say “Yes, I am.” Play continues to the right with different characterisations.

Eventually after the players became comfortable with the game, we switched to first names only. Therefore the players had to create entire personalities based on arbitrary input–ergo, improv. Note that characterizations are, in my mind, different from characters. Actors create characters. Improv’ers create caricatures.

Read Johnstone’s book, Impro. This book tells how improvisation is done. Once you really grasp the concepts of low and high status, you look for them everywhere. Seducing is something high does to low status, but rape is something low does to high status in an attempt to swap statuses.

Began training my own improvisational theater group, The Immediate Gratification Players, last night. Was amazingly and utterly impressed with the performance of people who have apparently never done improv before. I really am believing that it is a function of desire rather than so-called “ability.” If you want to improv, you can. That’s all. That’s my theory. We’ll see whether it stands.

In section we had to talk about an imagined piece of fruit that we studied. What a trip! Is this stuff really useful to us as actors? I can talk about a piece of fruit, sure. I can convince you that I actually have a piece of fruit. I can also convince you that I’m a Shakespearean actor, or a bum, or a dude from Texas examining fruit! So what’s the deal? What is being taught here? Ignore the world and concentrate on your fruit? Huh?