rehearsal #3: a practice in waiting
April 2nd, 2008 | Published in News | 3 Comments
We started rehearsals for oph3lia two days ago. Working today with the translator crew, for the first hour or so I had the actors do an exercise in waiting.
That’s Moe waiting. She’s trying not to touch the ground.
Here’s Jorge after two massage warm-ups:
and Laura waiting by the unused elevator and stairwell:
When I got to Drae, she had her tshirt pulled up over her nose. Here are her legs.
And Alanna, waiting and listening.
Later I had each actor recreate a segment of their waiting, which I just found endlessly fascinating.
In our lives in this city, time alone, I mean really completely alone, is a rare occurrence especially if you are in a relationship or co-habitate with a pet, roommate, etc. I think we are so very much defined by our context and relationships. The exercise in waiting is an exploration of who we are when we are taken out of our contexts, when we are not watched nor obligated to interact with anyone else. We are alone when we sleep. But when else? If you have no one to talk to, are you defined by the language you speak? How /can we shed the layers of our identity? Is it a release? Is it dangerous?
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:17 pm (#)
I have this idea from my youth growing up in the Cold War that a defining characteristic of the Soviet “lifestyle” was waiting in long lines in markets with empty shelves. (And then I think of Borat’s first time in an American supermarket, bewildered by the Cambrian explosion of uselessly differentiated products.) We New Yorkers have very little patience for lines nowadays, and even when there is the occasional queue at Target on Sunday afternoon, our alone time is filled with iPods and cellphones, devices geared towards making hay out of every moment of interstitial time.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm (#)
Someone sent me a link today to the story of this man Alan Crotzer who was imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit for 24 years in Florida before he was exonerated in 2006. Talk about waiting. The photos make me wonder what kind of person he was before he entered jail at age 20. And whether, now, after so much solitude, he has become essentially a different person. Has the part of him that existed in solitude usurped his social identity altogether?
http://www.alancrotzer.org/index_content.shtml
April 15th, 2008 at 11:53 pm (#)
Nicholas White was trapped in an elevator for 40 hours. Luckily, the security cameras documented his ordeal. Interesting video at The New Yorker.