That's how I, an English major with a History minor, ended up in Principles of Acting. As a brief overview, the class is populated primarily with freshmen Theater students. The professor asked me my name and my major in the hallway before class the first day. After I replied, he asked why I took the class and I just kind of shrugged. Fair enough. Since then, he occasionally points out the fact that I'm an Odd Duck in a class full of odd ducks.
"A lot of you are doing these exercises because you're in theater and like, fuck it I have to. But," focuses his attention to me, "Are you looking around like, why the fuck are we doing this?"
Sometimes he even refers to me as "The English Major." I don't take offense, though, because he doesn't mean it offensively. Why would he? I've won the school's literary magazine's "playwright award" for the past two consecutive years.
A lot of the exercises are biz-zarre, though. But I don't typically question them, and I'm usually all gung-ho about doing them. Or gung-ho-ish, at least.
Today, we were supposed to have observed an animal and then we would be embodying that animal. And it wasn't supposed to be, like, a vague "dog" or "cat" animal. It was supposed to be a specific animal, like, "my dog, Jubilee" or "my Grandma's cat, Tilly." So I observed my brother's bird, Kiwi.
Kiwi is abrasive. He's protective of his cage, my brother, and my brother's room. He paces a lot. With the exception of my brother, with whom he usually has no bubble, Kiwi needs you to be as far away from his as is humanly possible. Right now, for instance, I am a couple of rooms away from him, and I bet I'm still too close to him for his comfort. Kiwi charges at people (me) when they (I) enter the room and squawks angrily at them (me).
So the character I portrayed was angry and hostile. It wasn't exactly, like, "Hey be a turtle or a parrot or whatever." The idea was that we were people with the characters of this specific animal. And we started off by walking around, then interacting with our peers, then making sounds, then using words... During this section, my friend Emily came up to me and I, as Kiwi would, charged at her, stomped, and let out a glottal yell. Except, I accidentally stomped on her foot, and had to look at her not as Kiwi (who, let's be honest, would've been pleased with himself) but as myself, who feels terrible when I bump into chairs. "I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" I gasped quietly (we weren't supposed to break character) but pretty soon we were giggling and hugging and getting scolded for breaking character.
I went back to pacing around the back of the room, and Emily went back to walking laps. The professor came up to me, "Hi," he said, and I took two stomping steps towards him and let out another glottal cry. "Good" he said, and I half-giggled. I can't take my angry self seriously. "...If you could only keep breathing and quit breaking character."
Next we did these couple of improv scenes with our characters. In the first one, we did an interview set. For the first handful of interviewees, I was the interviewer.
"WHY DO YOU WANT THIS JOB?" I spat.
"WHAT QUALIFIES YOU?"
"LEAVE."
I interviewed Ariana, who was portraying a timid, pregnant, kangaroo lady. And a couple of other people. But retrospectively, I feel really guilty for how cruel my angry parrot lady was to her timid kangaroo lady.
Next, we did an improv set where four of us (me, Ariana, horse-Ricky, and cat-Emily) were waiting for a bus that was 20 minutes late. The bus stop only had three seats. I glowered at Ariana until she gave me her seat. Poor pregnant, timid, kangaroo Ariana. From that point on, the professor would give one of the other students a direction and send them into the scene. Dog-Paige had to come apologize for the bus's tardiness. The first time I spoke was to scold her for her apology. Elephant-Alex had to try and sell us drugs. Ariana screamed at her, "Get away from my baby!" When Alex bumped my shoulder, hey can I interest y--, I barked, "DON'T TOUCH ME. GET AWAY FROM ME." And Ariana nodded in agreement. As more and more people arrived, the original four of us responded to each of them with anger, annoyance, and frustration.
It was like a bonding experience.
Every now and then, Ariana would look at me, and when I would shoot a glare in her direction, she would start back and whimper. Finally I stood up, "JUST TAKE THE SEAT." "No, it's... You have it." She insisted. Ricky (being the pretentious horse he was) decided that if neither of us would take the seat, he put his feet up.
"SHE'S PREGNANT." I hissed, stomping towards him, pulling his feet up, and spinning him forward. "SIT." I commanded to Ariana, who did so anxiously.
And that was the end of the exercise. Afterwards, we got to laugh and talk about how much we liked Katie's Turtle person--Katie, during the interview, said, "Well--I don't--move--very quickly--but--I--make up--for--it--in my--work ethic." It was probably my favorite moment of the entire exercise. We got to finally relax our shoulders, or break into smiles.
And then we reflected. And here's the thing--I didn't just dislike the fact that I was grumpy and mean to everyone, it physically disturbed me. When we finished, my heart was anxiously thumping. And not, like, "I'm nervous" heart thumping. But, like, angry thumping.
I can't imagine what life is like for those people who just walk around angry and hostile. It's such a weight on your heart, man, such a weight. As soon as we got to break character, and I got a chance to laugh, it was such a relief.
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