Every time I start working on a new character, one of the first little "rituals" I go through is the act of standing in front of a mirror, calling myself by my character's name. I feel a little silly admitting this, but it's the truth, so you all might as well know. It's a funny thing, calling yourself by another name over and over again until you find the part of you, somewhere in the tangle of your own humanity, that can embody that name, that character. Sometimes it's really easy, and within three or four repetitions, I feel like I've got it. Sometimes it takes a week. I think Marisol is going to be one of those characters with a longer discovery time...
Which makes sense. This play is so incredibly intricate, beautifully complex, there are so many ways to simply approach the text itself, let alone begin to think about constructing a character. I love it because it echoes so much the complexities of reality. In a surreal world. How's that for an intellectual tangle? I'm eager to have our table talk, dissect this thing into little bits, and then work on bringing the beautiful complexity to life.
Yesterday as Amy and I were working with Bryan to prepare for our little filming session, he asked us to describe our guardian angels. I was caught a little off guard: "Do I believe in guardian angels?" I immediately asked myself, and was promptly embarrassed by my quick jump into cynicism. As I tried to picture what my guardian angel might look, smell, feel, taste like, all I could think of were descriptions from books I've read about other peoples' visions of their angels. So I threw together some response, an amalgamation of those images with a few personal additions (like the smell of clean laundry), just so I could add something to the conversation. I was disappointed with myself. I mean, I believe in God, and I believe that God protects human beings; I think that regardless of one's belief (or not) in angels, this Godly protection can be pictured in the form, the metaphor if you will, of a guardian angel. And I've clearly read books about guardian angels. So why have I never really stopped to think about what my own angel is like?
So now, in addition to working on being able to answer to the name "Marisol" in the mirror, I'm also going to work on that: discovering the essence of my own guardian angel.
Which makes sense. This play is so incredibly intricate, beautifully complex, there are so many ways to simply approach the text itself, let alone begin to think about constructing a character. I love it because it echoes so much the complexities of reality. In a surreal world. How's that for an intellectual tangle? I'm eager to have our table talk, dissect this thing into little bits, and then work on bringing the beautiful complexity to life.
Yesterday as Amy and I were working with Bryan to prepare for our little filming session, he asked us to describe our guardian angels. I was caught a little off guard: "Do I believe in guardian angels?" I immediately asked myself, and was promptly embarrassed by my quick jump into cynicism. As I tried to picture what my guardian angel might look, smell, feel, taste like, all I could think of were descriptions from books I've read about other peoples' visions of their angels. So I threw together some response, an amalgamation of those images with a few personal additions (like the smell of clean laundry), just so I could add something to the conversation. I was disappointed with myself. I mean, I believe in God, and I believe that God protects human beings; I think that regardless of one's belief (or not) in angels, this Godly protection can be pictured in the form, the metaphor if you will, of a guardian angel. And I've clearly read books about guardian angels. So why have I never really stopped to think about what my own angel is like?
So now, in addition to working on being able to answer to the name "Marisol" in the mirror, I'm also going to work on that: discovering the essence of my own guardian angel.
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