Sunday, May 3, 2020

"What would you suggest someone start with?" - Not Hate Mail For A Change

Off hand?  How about trying the late, very great Brian Friel's American Welcome, it's effectively a monologue with, essentially, no physical action or much of a set, the other character being more or less part of the set.  If you can't learn that and play with it, it might either show you've got no hope but it could mean that you just need to try something else.  If you try recording your performances, you'll learn a lot about recording and finding out what you like and what you don't like about your own work. 

If I were an actor, which I have no intention of being, I'd find someone and go through a lot of 2-handers with them.  And if it didn't work with them then trying it with someone else.  If you could do a bunch of them on the schedule of the repertory theaters described in that video, the two-week or one-week schedules, it would probably be a good sign. 

That's translating my experience as a musician, we do that kind of thing all the time without anyone's permission or expecting anyone to pay us or even listen to us. It's just what you do.  It's a lot of fun, especially if you're working with someone who's good and who you like.  Sometimes it's even good when it's someone who's good (or not) and who you find a challenge.  Challenge is good. 

Update:  Imagine that, me, the musician, the non-actor, the person who has no aspirations to act knowing enough about the theater to know what a 2-hander is and knowing who Brian Friel was, one of the most significant playwrights of our lifetime as he, the holder of, if you please, a degree in "theater arts" doesn't know either.   American Welcome seems even more apt now then it did when I posted this post. 

Update 2:  THIS is a 2-hander, as its author, the actor in it with Judi Dench, Alan Bennett called it before one of the performances of it that I posted once.

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