Watching the play that first night with the audience – it felt like I was seeing it for the first time.

I don’t know what it is about having and audience siting out there, watching you… But it’s like everything comes alive in a way it hasn’t before. There is an energy in the room that wasn’t present. You become more alert; hyper-vigilant, even: watching for their reactions, trying to see what moves them, what makes them burst out in laughter, recoil in disgust, gasp in shock. What moves them to tears.

It was so interesting to see what the audience reacted to; and it was even more interesting to notice my reaction to them. I laughed at parts I knew were coming up because the audience laughed at them. I held my breath because I knew a tense scene was approaching and I waited with bated breath to see what they would do. In a way, I felt that those of us on stage became an audience in our own right; us watching them, watching us, doing the play.

After that first week I felt I had figured out what our audience would be like on any given night. Thursday nights are slow because it’s not the weekend; Friday nights are good; Saturday night’s were even better; and Sunday matinees felt like death. But I realized after that second week that this didn’t hold. Because that second week our liveliest audience was the Sunday matinee, and the least reactive one (to me) was the Saturday night. I wasn’t complaining – how wonderful it was to end the show run with such a lively audience! – but still, it challenged my convictions, and so I had to go back and think about it some more.

And I came to the conclusion that you just can’t predict what your audience will be like. (I know to some of you who have done this for a while this might seem obvious; but it was a very interesting thing for me to learn.) I was (in a way) disappointed by them on nights that they were quiet when I expected them to be louder; when they missed jokes, when they let moments slip by without so much as a gasp of surprise. And I was elated by them on nights that they were so responsive when I thought they would be silent as the grave; when they laughed at things I myself hadn’t even picked up, when they cried out at parts I was sure they would miss. Every night the audience surprised me; and every night, I learned something new about Uncle Vanya – even this far into the process, even after months of watching it over and over. And still, there were things I hadn’t yet known.

– Jaya Z.

So far my experience with acting is radically different from what I thought it would be.

My guess was that you memorized lines and then performed them, to the best of your ability, making the character seem as believable and real as possible.

This is a lot more intense than what I had expected.

I’ve seen it mentioned in other blog posts that this process isn’t typical… I don’t know how true that is, but if it is true, then I am definitely being spoiled in my first foray into the world of theatre, and I wonder if any experience will measure up to what we’ve done already.

I never considered theater or acting a physical “thing.” I always thought that the characters were expressed through your tone of voice, your way of speaking, the words you used, and the emotions behind those. It never occurred to me to move like the character, to try and express meaning without speaking, to say something without saying a word. Kali has taught me so much these past few weeks. It was astounding to see the way that this cast came to move as one, how we synced our movements together, how our breath drifted towards unison. It was almost a spiritual experience, and I wonder if this isn’t what encouraged us to let go and not be afraid to act out and go crazy on the rehearsal floor, this feeling that we have all become One already, in some way or another.

This past rehearsal has been particularly eye-opening for me, I believe. As I welcomed everyone on stage, and as I sent them to work with their doubles, the magnitude of physicality in general and of the pairing work in particular seemed to gradually slam into me. At first, just walking around, watching each individual actor and actress go through their character’s gestures, I felt an overwhelming sense of how them each character was; they shone through those gestures, radiating out in such a way that that gesture couldn’t have been anyone but that character. For example, when Phil performed one of the Professor’s poses – arms spread wide, head tilted upwards, a smile on his face, like he was all that and he knew it – that was the Professor, that was His Excellency, and it was undeniable, and I didn’t want to deny it. I saw the Professor in that moment – perhaps what he used to be, what he might have been long ago – but it was him, and he shone through, and it was amazing. It was breathtaking. The pair work was similarly awe-inspiring. Watching the character doubles as they slowly transitioned in and out of their memes was an experience like no other. I was so amazed at what amazing things each pair had come up with, and I really did come to see how each of the roles could be seen as needing two people to play them. The pairs definitely complement each other, and I love seeing the whole character shift its way between them.

The table work has given me insight into the lay that I never would have come to on my own; with Friday’s class, I feel as though I left with more questions than answers (definitely with way more questions I ever would have had two weeks ago). If I am completely honest, at first I found the constant re-reading of the text quite boring and tedious. I figured this was one of those technical aspects of acting that you just “had” to “get through” to get to the fun stuff. But sitting in class on Friday afternoon and reading the text through for what must have been the fifth time… I was amazed at how many new things I learned in just those few short hours. I found myself laughing out loud at parts I would not have laughed at before – parts I had originally conceived of as cynical and full of sadness and sorrow. Just the simple conversation about the timeline – how old are they? when are people arriving/leaving? when do certain events occur? – even that served to invite a completely different interpretation of aspects of the play that seemed so straightforward just a few readings before. I also see a lot more of our physical work coming through when people are reading now – they are not merely reading the text, but they are allowing the characters to speak through them as the text moves on.

The amount of new things I learn with each reading continue to surprise me! I am sad that Kali won’t be joining us anymore, but I know that we are more than capable to continue to feel her methods as we do our warmups and in the days leading up to showtime 🙂 I’m excited you guys!!

Hello everyone! ^^ My name is Jaya Powell, 2015 Linguistics and Japanese double major, and I just recently go into acting.

My family has told me for a while now that I should go into acting or some kind of performance/storytelling medium, but I never considered it until this past summer. I’ve recently realized that most things I enjoy – writing stories and poems, reading out loud, listening to and playing music, and now acting – are all different aspects of the same thing, and so I’ve come to view myself as a storyteller. Last week was my first audition ever and I am so grateful to be working with such a wonderful cast!

Vanya on 42nd Street was a very interesting film for me to watch. The thing that struck me at first was how differently I had interpreted the play. In my reading of the text, I imagined a lot more yelling and hostility, yet Vanya on 42nd Street conveyed a sense of humor or sorrow through the same passages in which I had read anger and animosity. The character interpretations were similarly different – I had envisioned “my” Sonya as more naive and delicate, where in the film she seemed more aggressive at times. (Admittedly I did not at first like this characterization, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching her by the end of the film.)

I also loved the way the film slowly increased in empathy – as Professors Storer said during class, it gradually transitions from metatheatricality into the world of the play. In the first few acts we watch the actors become their characters, see shots of the set and the audience. It seemed to me almost seminar-like, as if we were watching a speaker give a talk, and were privy to the reactions of the audience (and, in the film, those of the other characters as well). I even noted how the wide camera angle caused me to imagine a scenery around the characters (as if to reconcile the shot of the theatre with the knowledge that the characters are really in a garden). As the play progresses, however, the camera heavily focuses on the characters – we no longer have a sense of metatheatricality; the audience becomes obsolete; the scenery no longer matters. The play becomes very intimate, with the “true” audience heavily focused on the emotions playing out on the faces of the characters. I remember a specific scene in which Yelena begins to cry after Sonya goes to get the doctor. At one point she lets out a particularly heart-wrenching sob, and I flinched upon hearing it; the fact that I had such a visceral reaction to that one instance leads credence to the intimacy and emotional investment that can develop in the audience over the course of the film.

The film was wildly different from what I had imagined, as I suspect it may have been for others as well, but I enjoyed it! I am so excited to work on this play! 🙂