Playing Danforth

   I didn't read Arthur Miller's The Crucible in high school, don't ask me why, you'd have to take that up with my teachers and it's been so long ago now that I don't even remember their names. But when I heard that GSCT was staging it this season I grabbed a copy and read it, and loved it. After my initial reading I wanted to play John Proctor, I wanted to say, "I hear the boot of Lucifer, and I see his face and it is my face and your face..." and all those other angry, angst ridden lines that Proctor gets to say. But after playing Judd Fry in Oklahoma! I thought, I don't want to play another angry, emotionally charged character that dies in the end right now; I rethought the play and begin to think I'd rather play one of the priests (Hale and Parris) they each go through a change in the show that really appealed to me as an actor.
   When it came down to actually auditioning I didn't write down a character that I wanted to play, I just put any and so of course I didn't get one of the ones I had wanted because I didn't tell anyone about it. I was originally cast as Francis Nurse  an older farmer whose wife gets convicted of being a witch; Nurse is a fairly small role in the scheme of the show and I'll admit my pride was somewhat stung by the initial casting, but I did put any and it being GSCT I don't mind accepting a smaller role (I wouldn't want to drive to another city for a small role but here in town I don't mind). Portraying Nurse did have it's challenges, for the most part I tried to keep my back bent and my gait slow, trying to draw in and be as feeble as my large frame will allow, also Nurse doesn't come on until his wife is already arrested so he is full of agitation, strife and eventually sorrowful resignation. But when I got the call to step up and play Danforth, I was happy to have a more challenging role on my hands.
   The man originally cast to play Danforth dropped out after the read through, I never heard the actual reason for this though I assume it had something to do with the seven-days-a-week rehearsal schedule (which is highly unusual for community theater in these parts). There was some cast shuffling and another man was placed in the role, this fellow had the presence to play the role, he fit it but it proved to be too big a part for him; he just never could get the lines memorized and because of this, perhaps, he had trouble developing the role. So the director made what I'm sure was a very hard choice of asking him to step down and it was at this point that I was tasked with taking over as Danforth. I felt bad for the other guy, but the character of Danforth really drives much of the second half of the show and without a strong Danforth it just wouldn't work.
   Most times I can find a line or a phrase that really sums up a character to me and it becomes sort of the hallmark of how I view them. For Danforth it's when he looks to Reverend Hale and says, "Mister Hale, surely you do not doubt my justice?" It's phrased as a question, but it is most assuredly a threat; the subtext is, question me and you'll find yourself in jail or worse. Also the fact that he say's MY justice instead of the courts justice, in Danforth's mind he is the court, he is the law, he is Denzel in Training Day, "King Kong ain't got s@$& on me!" The reason we hate Danforth is because he believes himself infallible and when this notion is challenged by almost incontrovertible facts he fights against reason to go on believing himself that way. He actively searches for a way to avert justice so that he can continue to believe that he is just, because if he is not then not only are the people of Salem possibly innocent but so are the 72 others he has sentenced to hang and the, "... near 400 in the jails from Marblehead to Lynn...". His career, his reputation, his very conscious relies on these people being guilty and that's why he tries so hard to get them to confess.
   I really liked the way Fred (our director) blocked Danforth, he comes striding in, takes center stage and gives it up only reluctantly. He is large and in charge and every one knows it, one note that Fred gave me on a couple of occasions was that I didn't have to yell over others to have power, because Danforth already has the power. Fred told me to come in under them, when they get louder and higher I come in underneath, except when MY justice is questioned, then I can shout them down. This was most evident in my last scene with Proctor, he's ranting and raving and blubbering about his name and I stay composed until I realize I'm not going to get my way, then I get to get mad and pitch a little hissy fit and say, "Hang them high above the town..."
   Playing Nurse would have been fine too, I would have given it my best, but all in all I'm glad I got the chance to play Danforth.

Rodin

I'm taking an art appreciation course for a degree I'm no longer interested in pursuing, so I'm just struggling through to the end of it. We watched a video on Rodin's The Gates of Hell and had to type a paper based on the video. I thought I'd share it here. One thing I learned from the video that didn't fit into the report that I found interesting was about Rodin's sculpture The Kiss. The two lovers in the kiss were based upon a couple from Dante's The Divine Comedy, they were engaged in an extramarital affair and were caught kissing by the women's jealous husband who quickly sent the pair to hell. Rodin decided the Kiss was to tender of a moment and instead depicted the couple on the door as falling into hell, however he displayed his original concept (the one we all know) as a stand alone piece. I find all this amusing because we have a copy of The Kiss on the dresser in our bedroom, not knowing the historic/literary meaning of the piece it looks like a couple in love and sharing a very tender moment. I wonder if Rodin would enjoy knowing that people today still love his work or if he'd be spinning over in his grave knowing that his work has become bedroom decor.

Sculpture/Rodin

            Rodin’s The Thinker is arguably one of the most recognizable sculptures of our time. The sculpture and the pose have been copied and used so often in pop culture that, personally, I was aware of The Thinker long before I knew of Rodin, Dante, or The Gates of Hell. As the video showed The Gates of Hell is not only a monumental work of art it’s also the story of Rodin’s career and the evolution of sculpture itself.

            Rodin was originally asked to design a work for a museum in Paris, a museum that never saw completion, and so Rodin spent a good part of his life working and reworking the figures that would go upon the door and the door itself. Rodin was inspired by Lorenzo Ghiberti’s bronze door on Florence’s Baptistery of San Giovanni, which Michelangelo had dubbed the Gates of Paradise. He was also inspired by much of Michelangelo’s work, especially his work The Last Judgment. The Gates of Hell is, at least in part, a depiction of Dante’s great work The Divine Comedy, with a number of prominent characters from that work depicted on the door. Dante himself is represented in the pensive figure sitting on the lentil of the door, later known as The Thinker; Rodin depicts Dante nude and in great concentration, intent on the creative process, which was a departure from how Dante was typically depicted in art. Depicting Dante in a not readily identifiable way allowed Rodin to make him a symbol for all creators, his entire body gripped with the desire to create; in fact with the in-the-round molding of the figure and it’s placement on the door it’s easy to read a god-like, or Christ-like, meaning in his character. As the museum the doors were meant for never came to be Rodin began exhibiting individual pieces from the door, worked in wax and then cast in bronze, both in the size they had originally been made and in larger versions. It’s the larger version of The Thinker that most of us are familiar with these days.

            The doors themselves are a marvel as Rodin combines low-relief, high-relief, and in-the-round figures to give the doors a sense of feeling and movement. He has highly detailed pieces combined with almost abstract shapes that seem to melt into, or rise out of, the doors themselves; this was a departure from the mostly representational works of sculpture in Rodin’s day. Some of his figures lacked hands, or heads, or other body parts that were not needed for what Rodin wanted them to depict. When Rodin exhibited his door in 1900, at this point still in wax, he intentionally removed most of the in-the-round sculptures from it, leaving an abstract door with reliefs and shapes that allowed for greater play of light and shadows upon it. This abstract, seemingly unfinished, piece became known as one of the first abstract works of sculpture.

            It’s interesting to me that many of Rodin’s most famous works and his foray into abstract sculpture came about because of the failure of the museum for which his Gates of Hell were originally intended. I wonder had the museum opened as scheduled, would The Thinker be the famous, easily recognizable work of art that it is today.

Sources- http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/gatesofparadise-200711.html

http://www.nga.gov/collection/sculpture/noflash/zone2-2.htm

http://www.youtube.com/user/canaleducatif?feature=watch (BlackBoard video)

Getting to know Judd Fry

   In less than two weeks the curtain will rise on KMLT's production of Oklahoma!, and I have the honor of portraying Judd Fry. I've spent weeks now in rehearsals learning the songs, the blocking, my lines and what is one of my favorite parts of acting, getting to know my character. The playwright gives you the what your character does and says and with that, and the help of your director, you develop the why. Judd is a very interesting role, he's a sociopathic villain right smack dab in the middle of a romantic comedy, but you also feel kinda sorry for him. I believe Judd grew up without much love or affection, the only schooling he got was of the hard knock variety and while he's not very smart, he's also not an idiot. The fact that he hasn't had much affection in his life is evidenced in the way he's so easily led into talking about his own death when Curly mentions the fact that people will weep and wail for him, and that women folk who secretly loved him might even faint at his funeral; also Laurie's act of checking his forehead for a temperature, that touch of kindness, is, I believe, the spark that starts his fatalistic infatuation with her. This lack of affection at a young age may also explain his sociopathic tendencies, these are evident is his seeing no difference in the act of killing a hog and killing Curly and in seeing the burning to death of a family as a smarter way of getting even than shooting them, your more likely to get caught shooting someone. He also takes umbrage with the fact that the man who told him about the burning, and supposedly the perpetrator, lied about where it took place but it didn't bother him at all what the man may have done. As for him not being the sharpest tool in the shed, or smokehouse as the case may be, this is shown in the way he talks and moves and his overall lack of social graces. But he's not without some brains, as he on a couple of occasions asks leading questions to which he already knows the answers.  Not only has Judd not had the affection of women that he so craves but he's also been put down by just about everyone in his life. Curly in just one of many that's called him names, Judd doesn't believe himself to be less than everyone else on a conscious level but he probably spends a good deal of time defending that belief in his mind. I think this really comes out after he's rejected by Laurie and he says, "I'm not good enough for ya am I? Just a hired hand, dirt on my hands, pig slop." He's referred to in a number of insulting ways in the play but he's the only one that calls himself pig-slop, I suspect this was a name he may have been called growing up and when he faces this ultimate rejection he reverts back to it. I feel a bit like Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead here, not rationalizing away Judd's crimes but looking into why he was the way he was. Okay, I suppose that's more than anyone wanted to know about poor Judd or my process but it's my blog and I can share if I want. If you'd like to come see Judd, and the amazing cast of Oklahoma! go to KMLT's website for all the info., word of warning though, you may want to reserve a seat before you come because I got a feeling we're going to sell this mother out.