This Fucking Play I Hate

It was bound to happen eventually.

On Tuesday, one of my professors brought it up.

We were having (private) midterm conferences for voice, and I was getting some good feedback. My voice professor really likes me for some reason. She's much more lenient with me on the rare occasions that I haven't memorized a text, or on the not-at-all rare occasions that I slack off during warm-up exercises, than she is with most of the other students. She also seems to find me funny. And intelligent. And hardworking, even when I know I could be working so much harder in that class. So anyway, she was telling me what a lovely job I was doing with X, Y, and Z, and then when it came to the "here's what you need to work on" portion of the conference, she said:

"You have really good head resonance. I'm not worried about that. But when it comes to having sound in the rest of your body, and projecting, and breath control, you really just need more substance to your body to make that work."

And of course Denial Brain is modifying input at lightning speed, translating phrases so that they'll fit the eating disorder's skewed messages -- oh, yes, metaphorical substance. A more substantial feeling of connection to my body and all that. I can dig.

"You know, when I was maybe 23, I was kind of in the same boat as you, I think, and my voice teacher was just like, 'eat more food,' and I was like, 'fuck you'. But really, it really will help, and you really can't do the work of this class without having a little more to work with."

I think I was doing the whole nodding-and-occasionally-interjecting-a-yeah thing at this point, but I can't remember, because I was pretty checked out. For sure. I know I said "for sure" once, because I remember thinking, did I really just say 'fer shir" like that?

And then she said something about how there was a psychological component to this as well, and how allowing myself to indulge and enjoy food was really part of the larger picture, of me allowing myself to indulge in and enjoy life, which brought me out of me anorexic reverie to some extent as it was strangely relevant, and I don't remember exactly how the conference ended other than her reiterating what an excellent job I did with "The Raven" and making the words my own, how I'm nearly always spot on with that, and I did think, well this has all been surprisingly un-awkward for as direct a reference a professor has ever made to my eating disorder.

*

Rehearsals for Motherfucking Courage and Her Sophomores are going relatively well in that we have had two read-throughs and I have yet to strangle anyone. Though last night was a close call with the director. She was going on and on about politics and nothing good ever comes out of war and Republicans Are Evil and conservatives think Obama is the antichrist (wow, I never knew I thought that!) and everyone who disagrees with her is intolerant and ignorant (hmm...) and you know what, Obama isn't the antichrist, Sarah Palin is the antichrist, right, hahahaha!

SARAH PALIN IS NOT INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO BE THE ANTICHRIST YOU INFURIATING EGOMANIAC AND HOW IS THIS EVEN TANGENTIALLY RELATED TO THIS FUCKING PLAY I HATE.

And let's act to make a statement. Let's act because we as artists have something to say.

NO! DOING IT WRONG! When I am on stage, or in front of a camera, I do not give a flying fuck of a rat's ass what I as AJ believe or what I as AJ have to say (if I did, my performance in this play would be a bloody disaster). When I act, it is so not about that. It's about the life and the world of whatever character I'm inhabiting; it's about the relationships I have with and questions I have for other characters; it's not about my politics or my philosophy or with which of my personal opinions I can saturate and adulterate the story. This, Herr Direktor, is probably why every actor in every play I've seen you direct seems to play some contrived archetype rather than a human being. I was in Medea with you. I saw what you did to P.'s portrayal of Jason. Never mind that your histrionic directorial vision of what Euripides was trying to say in this play was more warped than a wormhole; the real sin is that you took an actor's understanding of Jason as a multidimensional, complex, Chekhovian case study of a man and turned him into a one-note litany of 21st-century ideology that you force-fed the audience. And everybody comes away from your plays feeling like the acting leaves something to be desired. It's not the fucking actors. It's you. Your plays don't even have political undertones. That would imply that there's another layer for the tones to be under.

*Deep breath*

I think Michael Scott said it best:



I can't even. I can't even begin to. I mean really. How anyone tolerates this woman is beyond me. I could handle her bullshit if it weren't for the fact that she's so utterly convinced that her way is The Way and her truth is The Truth that if anyone even so much as blinks in contradiction, she will do everything she can to make that poor, naïve individual's life a living hell.

(She's also the only member of the faculty who likes the dean. Go figure.)

Walking into that rehearsal room is like walking barefoot into a toxic waste-filled closet of asbestos and there are used junkie's needles on the floor.

Reason to restrict #5,983: the starvation makes me way too weak to feel this angry. Fuck refeeding.