Day 3...

...and I’m already bored with the academic style of the rhetoric. I am always better talking that writing. You should know that last year I started writing a mystery about a middle-aged drama professor, teaching graduate classes in acting, directing, and play analysis while simultaneously directing Hamlet with the students in her class. I have just started rewriting what I wrote last year in preparation for continuing writing this summer. (I’ve also written a children’s book about a 3 and ¾ year old little girl—more about her later.)

Today while doing that I realize that Maggie Saltz ( somewhat younger, curly-haired, thinner version of me with really good knees) talks about all of the things I want to blog about. So, I’m going to continue my blog as a series of episodes from the book. I’m not particularly bothered by the prospect of the material being shared as I have no intention of trying to make a living as a writer, only to live as a writer. So, without further ado, Geri Clark writing in the voice of Maggie Saltz.  (Jewish on her father’s side.)

LIGHTED FOOLS

Chapter One

“Good morning!  Let’s see  . . . two, three, five, eight, twelve.  I’m ten minutes early and you’re all here.  Love the first day of class.  Yes, Vanessa?”

“Professor Saltz?”

“Please, Maggie.”

“Really?  In undergrad we always had to say Professor or Dr. or at least Mr.

“Vanessa, this is a professional training program.  It is our job to help you become colleagues as quickly as possible.  Hard to do with titles standing between us.  However, you should know that here we use first names with undergrads as well so if you were looking forward to being formally addressed as TA’s, you’re out of luck.”

“Oh, no!  I’d feel totally weird being called Miss Stevens by someone only a couple of years younger than me.”

“Good!  Then we’re all on the same page.  Here, Kevin.  Take one and pass them on.  It’s a comprehensive syllabus for the three related courses I’m teaching you. I’ve also sent you copies on a listserv.  If you lose this one, please upload another.  I don’t provide second copies.  Read them on your own time, not now.

And while we’re at it, would one of you—preferably someone tall, raise the blinds.  We spend most of our days in windowless rooms.  When we have the opportunity I like to bring in as much natural light as possible.  Thanks, Mark.”

The small conference room was immediately flooded with sunlight, radically eclipsing the paler, bluer glow of overhead fluorescents.  Despite lacking many homely features, the room felt both intimate and comfortable. Chocolate brown carpeting of an unusual monochromatic, nubbled pattern anchored the otherwise bland taupe walls.  A row of framed theatre posters on one long wall faced one with a large closeted white board.

“Professor . . . I mean . . . Maggie?  It’s the first day.  Do you know all of our names already?”

“Of course I do, Ian. I interviewed or auditioned almost all of you myself and I have had your headshots and

resumes to study. If you noticed at orientation I filmed your introductions. I spent a long time last night watching the DVD.”

“Why?”

“Alanna, I’m going to tell you a little secret:  I’m shy.”  The expected burst of laughter was rather quickly suppressed. Oh, well, early days. “I know you find that hard to believe. From your point of view I’m older than dirt, I’ve been teaching forever, I’m an actor, a director, and a professor. And I’m shy. Always have been, always will be. It’s genetic. However, while I AM shy, I’ve learned not to DO shy. One of the strategies I developed early was creating in myself the illusion that I already know with some intimacy the strangers that I meet in group or individually. Shy people rarely behave uncomfortably or evasively with people they know. If my brain believes I already know you and, moreover, that I already like you I won’t exhibit the shy behaviors that once drove people away or, at least, kept them at a distance when I was young.  Therefore, AM shy, don’t DO shy.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Mr. Katsulas  . . . I’m sorry  . . . Dan, you’re an actor, Yes?”

“Yes. What does that . . .?”

“How on earth do you manage to kiss, scream at, fondle, etc. a young woman you’ve barely met on a movie set?  Yes, I am aware of the details of your IMDB profile.  Related blogs inform me that you had to do all those things on the first day of shooting in Ocean Dancer with an actress you only met that morning.”

“But that’s . . .”

“Pretend?  Acting?”

“But I had been working on the script for weeks.  I knew her character, who she was supposed to be to me.  I even dreamed about her.”

“Everything we do with another person we do based on not who they are but who we think they are. Everything we do is a reflection of an internal set of rules that is based on what we think we know about people and ourselves. That knowledge is conditional, provisional, temporary, and subject to constant revision in real life. You’ve only been here three days and you have already adopted and discarded any number of assumptions about, me, each other, and the program, and we’re barely at the beginning. Acting is

possible as an art or craft or discipline, depending on your definition, because it works according to the same principles that guide what we do always. I assume you know the famous line of Hamlet? ‘There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.’ True in life, true onstage, true when being shy but needing not to do shy.”

“Why would it be wrong for you to do shy with us?”

“I discovered relatively late in life that, like many good shy people, my behavior kept me from having the friends I so desperately coveted. When I was a child I deliberately avoided meeting anyone new when I could manage it. When I was forced to, I had a habit of looking at anyone I didn’t know well with my head lowered and at an angle. As you probably know most people interpret such behavior as an indication that they are being avoided or even rejected.”

“How do you know that?” Ian clapped his hand over his mouth when he realized he had blurted out without raising his hand.”

Maggie ignored the lapse but not the question.  “I know it now because I have been in therapy to myself for as long as I can remember. As Socrates said at his trial for heresy ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’

I was a shy only child so I, perhaps, carried that advice to a rather extreme degree.  However, I’m not sure that an actor can afford not to constantly examine his or her ‘stuff’ as that’s the resource out of which we create all of our characters along with our own lives.”

“Stuff?”  Alanna asked.

“I use the word stuff because it’s really all-encompassing without being very abstract.  Our apartments are all full of stuff.  Our brains and bodies are full of stuff. All the experiences, thoughts, imaginings, behavior, fantasies of our entire lives comprise our stuff.” I was a shy only child so I , perhaps, carried that advice to a rather extreme degree. However, I’m not sure that an actor can afford not to constantly examine his or her ‘stuff’ as that’s the resource out of which we create all of our characters along with our own lives.”

“And we’re supposed to remember all that?”  Alanna asked.

“Not consciously. That would not only be impossible but would keep us from being present in the moment. But an actor needs strategies for accessing the right stuff whenever they need.”

Myron interrupted, “I know I’m the only playwright in the group but I’m getting a little concerned that all our conversation is going to be about acting. I acted in undergrad but I wasn’t very good. I’m better at writing.”

“Myron, you will soon learn that when I speak about acting I am talking about the human being as actor.  In your mind you must be ready to become a variety of characters by turn. You have greater need of
everything we do than anyone else. You create the shells that the actors have to fulfill and if your characters’ ‘stuff’ doesn’t seem truthful you will not be a very successful playwright.”

“You didn’t finish talking about how you avoid doing ‘shy’,” Vanessa said.

“Ah, yes.  You’ve already discovered I’m easily diverted. I never met a question I didn’t like. Let me see . . . where was I? OK.I spent a lot of time observing other people and then I turned inside to observe my own behavior in a variety of situations. I also read a lot in a varity of sciences crucially related to acting like

psychology, social psychology, anthropology, cognitive science, communication theory and the like. I eventually learned the rules that  science has proven and popular girls have known forever, that the most attractive quality in a person is that they find us attractive.”

“Really?” Martha Vogel, the slight, dark-haired would be-costume designer was suddenly startled into speech.

“Martha, you’ll find this interesting. In the ante-bellum South young belles would often put belladonna in their eyes before going downstairs for dancing.”

“Belladonna?” Juana Delgado had finally found a way of entering the conversation stream.

“Have you ever been to an optometrist and have him dilate your pupils with a chemical so that he could see better?”

“Yes.”

“Well, belladonna was what they used to use to do that. So young women discovered that when they when they used it it helped them fill their dance cards more than cinching their waists and pinching their cheeks. Each of the men who approached them saw a woman whose dilated pupils signaled, “I’m so into you.” And it probably didn’t help that with dilated pupils they couldn’t identify details they might have found unattractive.”

“What does that have to do with not doing shy?” Apparently Martha was becoming impatient.

“When I first went to college I rather accidentally took a theatre class. When you act you have to interact with people in a way appropriate to your character. One of the most important behavioral rules is that of gaze. When we look at a person we think things about them. If what we think is positive, our eyes naturally dilate.”

Mark interjected, “So you learned to look at people with positive thoughts so your eyes would dilate?”

“As the character that was a natural extension of the work. In life I discovered that we are free to think however we wish about anyone and, especially at the outset of any relationship it is always a better idea to think positively. I mean, what could it hurt?”

“So you learned the trick of making friends?”  Mark asked dubiously.

“Don’t be silly! Making friends isn’t a trick. I learned a practice that prevented me from acting in such a way that people usually interpreted as judgment or rejection. One of the best things about studying theatre in college is that in class and in production what you do is constantly really expressing your stuff. The other students were forced to work with me over the extended period of time of each class or production. So . . .  I gradually stopped being shy and could communicate my actual admiration and even affection for them.  I can’t tell you how often I heard ‘I just hated you when I first knew you but now I just love you.’ It took even longer before I learned to act ‘unshy’ when I met people so they wouldn’t have that initial ‘hate you’ reaction.”

“Why . . .?”

“Have I gone on for some length disclosing details of my personal life that you really don’t need to know, Myron,  right?”

The question broke the suspicious intensity with which the question was asked and he laughed and agreed.

“Because I often use my own life as examples of dramatic principles that you need to understand if you are to act, direct, write, and/or design for the theatre. Drama onstage is a lengthy set of fictions that look like life. The way that is achieved is by following the principles by which life proceeds. I have just given you a fairly detailed version of what Aristotle would call a long line of probability eventuating in my having watched

the DVD of your personal introductions while enjoying a plate of really good cheese and fruit and two glasses of  a decent pinot grigio. Incidentally, I always try to watch under similar conditions—it underlines the feeling that I have come to know you all in a pleasant social setting. This is the first instance of my sharing with you what I am pleased to call ‘my stuff’. We all understand the world, make decisions, and act based on the ‘stuff’ we own at the moment. While I told my little story, you all, to varying extents, may have had an empathetic response that depended on your automatic translation of my story into similar stories of your experience. That’s how theatre works. That’s how life works. So endeth the first lesson.”

“But Dr. Maggie, ma’am, I’m a designer. I don’t need to develop the same interpretive skills that actors and directors, and playwrights do. Why do I have to take this class? Sorry guys—nothing against you but you don’t have to learn to draw and draft and build white models.”

“Kevin, you are wrong on both counts. For one thing, next year all the actors and directors and playwrights will . . . don’t groan . . . take a design class. But you designers must be able to read all plays like actors, directors, and playwrights do. From the point of view of each of the characters. Only then can you

appreciate what goes into each choice of clothing if you are designing costumes, or what constant influence the set and the lights must have in order appropriately to be actors in the scene. Just the way the quality of light in this room and it’s size and shape and colors and ‘set dressing’ will constantly influences all of our interactions in this room. Light especially, which I think of as the underscoring of the stage, is a particularly potent partner. All of these things will become increasingly clear as we get into rehearsals for Hamlet. I know it’s still rather early but I’m going to let you go now to troop up the hill to the Campus Bookstore to pick up the many expensive texts you’ll need for this class. You better do it immediately because tonight all of you will be involved in the casting for the smaller roles in my production of Hamlet.”

“You mean we only have today to prepare to audition?”  asked Dan,  encouraged by other anxious faces.”

“Well, those of you who are actors have already been cast.”

“We have?”

“Yes, the decisions were made by me and the chair based on your original auditions. You remember we taped them? Well those were also your auditions for your first production. Tonight I expect you to take turns as readers with the undergrads who are auditioning. I presume since you knew this was to be the first production you have all acquainted yourself thoroughly with the play and if you haven’t you will pretend that you have by doing excellent cold readings this evening. As soon as I get to my office you will all receive the casting choices already made of the eight of you via email. I would rather the undergrads’ introduction to you be made tonight rather than witnessing your cries of glee and chagrin at the brilliance or poverty of my casting decisions.”                        

“Myron, you are expected to be there to watch to become familiar with the process of casting as we do it here. In four months you will be expected to cast your first play with the help of your director. Juana, you are cast even though you are here to learn to direct. In addition to a small role you will be my Assistant Director, responsible for directing the undergraduate understudies when you aren’t in rehearsal with me. Martha and Kevin, as designers, you have each been assigned to assist the faculty who have designed sets, costumes,

and lights. Your assignments will also reach you by email. So . . . let’s all hit the ground running.  See you in the big rehearsal room tonight by 6:00.  Sides will be available at that time. We’ll begin at 6:30 promptly.  Four minutes per auditioner. Give them each a good reading, OK?”