"Stop! Stop!! Stop!!! One by One.", I, acting as a bad Erasmus coordinator, banged the table hard screaming at fellow actors on stage at the end of scene 3, only to figure out that my fly has remained open and was wondering what to do next as I continued with the scripted dialogs, "Do not worry. I will listen to all your problems. I will solve all of them but one by one! Is that clear? One by One!!!" but in my mind I was shitting in my pants pondering to myself, "OMG!!! My fly is open. WTF!!! What should I do now?" The next part was the closing and most important part of the scene where I have to move to the front threatening on phone, "If you don't finish your job today, I will cut you into pieces and feed you to dogs. Understand? Understand++ you M*****F*****"
Going to the front part of the stage with the fly open would have been adventurous and would certainly have guaranteed stardom in Leuven in no time. Showing back to the audience and fixing the problem would have meant negative body language and hence was not advocated. I never realized what to do, how to act and how to fix up the mess without digressing from the scene. What I spontaneously ended up doing was zipping the fly as I walked down the stage at an inclined angle. Thankfully nobody came up to me saying that I had messed it up royally but it goes without saying that some in the audience must have noticed it. To my surprize, some informed me in the intermission that I was outstanding in the same scene. LoL :-)
But, then again. That's theater. Everything is for the real. No retakes, no editing and everything is uncut and up for the audience to grab it all. You can never fake it and all your problems and strengths are all out in the open. As an actor, not only yours but the lines of the fellow actors should be in your memory. Timing is crucial. The body language, on stage movements should be streamlined with the character and above all you should be ready for all the surprizes. At the end, anything can happen. Everything is a possibility. You can practice any thing and everything. Rehearse for hours, days and months together but performing in front of the house packed audience? It might surprize you altogether. Tailoring your dialog delivery as per the audience responses, taking adequate spontaneous pauses whenever demanded could hardly be simulated and that makes every theater show unique, be it the first or the hundredth. That's why it is and will always remain an art, a performing art of highest quality.
As it got planned, all my scenes were listed one after the other and that meant a limited amount of time to prepare (mentally and physically) for each of them. To add to the predicament, all of them involved change of dress and as narrated above, I ended up making a mess during the last scene. On the whole, the Janus show was an astounding success with "Mind your Language" opening the show to a very warm audience and the grand "Global Party" scene providing a brilliant end. Other scenes in between were very well received as well.
Some in the audience said they just loved it. It was a indeed a pleasure and a very memorable experience to work with all of the Janus crew (Actors, directors, stage setters and others) and the hard work indeed paid off as some in the audience were lured (some even vowed) to be the part of Janus next time. There can hardly be a better complement. As audience was in the guffaws outside I was discussing with Fredrick in the wings when he quoted, "They are not fools to pay 3 EUR to watch us play. We are good, just too good!!!" Indeed We Rocked and made 'em Rock in sync with "I Got a feelin'. That Tonight's gonna be a good night~. That Tonight's gonna be a good night~. That Tonight's gonna be a good good night~" OMG!!! What a fantastic night...
Going to the front part of the stage with the fly open would have been adventurous and would certainly have guaranteed stardom in Leuven in no time. Showing back to the audience and fixing the problem would have meant negative body language and hence was not advocated. I never realized what to do, how to act and how to fix up the mess without digressing from the scene. What I spontaneously ended up doing was zipping the fly as I walked down the stage at an inclined angle. Thankfully nobody came up to me saying that I had messed it up royally but it goes without saying that some in the audience must have noticed it. To my surprize, some informed me in the intermission that I was outstanding in the same scene. LoL :-)
But, then again. That's theater. Everything is for the real. No retakes, no editing and everything is uncut and up for the audience to grab it all. You can never fake it and all your problems and strengths are all out in the open. As an actor, not only yours but the lines of the fellow actors should be in your memory. Timing is crucial. The body language, on stage movements should be streamlined with the character and above all you should be ready for all the surprizes. At the end, anything can happen. Everything is a possibility. You can practice any thing and everything. Rehearse for hours, days and months together but performing in front of the house packed audience? It might surprize you altogether. Tailoring your dialog delivery as per the audience responses, taking adequate spontaneous pauses whenever demanded could hardly be simulated and that makes every theater show unique, be it the first or the hundredth. That's why it is and will always remain an art, a performing art of highest quality.
As it got planned, all my scenes were listed one after the other and that meant a limited amount of time to prepare (mentally and physically) for each of them. To add to the predicament, all of them involved change of dress and as narrated above, I ended up making a mess during the last scene. On the whole, the Janus show was an astounding success with "Mind your Language" opening the show to a very warm audience and the grand "Global Party" scene providing a brilliant end. Other scenes in between were very well received as well.
Some in the audience said they just loved it. It was a indeed a pleasure and a very memorable experience to work with all of the Janus crew (Actors, directors, stage setters and others) and the hard work indeed paid off as some in the audience were lured (some even vowed) to be the part of Janus next time. There can hardly be a better complement. As audience was in the guffaws outside I was discussing with Fredrick in the wings when he quoted, "They are not fools to pay 3 EUR to watch us play. We are good, just too good!!!" Indeed We Rocked and made 'em Rock in sync with "I Got a feelin'. That Tonight's gonna be a good night~. That Tonight's gonna be a good night~. That Tonight's gonna be a good good night~" OMG!!! What a fantastic night...
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++ Understand? Understand you M*****F***** was not part of the script. But I ended up saying it. Do not know how?, why? but I guess I was just too much engrossed into the character and it came up naturally. In retrospect it fits well to the character as well. Wonder why I never thought of it during any of the rehearsals. Never occurred.
4 comments:
GUESS WHAT? I saw that!!!!! LOL! But it was more like 90 degrees! And it was perfect for whoever wanted to see what you were doing. Only thing they wouldn't have seen is what colour you were wearing INSIDE! ;-)
Kudos for putting this up on the blog! :D LMAO!!!
Thought you will post something like "...But you still enthralled the audience..."....LOL
Well, I spoke to some in the audience later. The verdict is 50-50. There are as many who did not have a clue as to what was happening.
Nadeem Ali (Mind Your Language) and Indian student (Between Classes) seem to have gone well as well. In spite of cough and cold my voice did hold on, that's another positive personally but overall, we all performed a touch better than our rehearsal times and that is the most satisfactory.
About putting this one on blog:
"To laugh on oneself is a virtue" and I have plenty of it, whatta say?
Tanya likes this! :))))
Tanya,
My pleasure!!!
Guru
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