In my thoughts on the movement work, I want to talk more at the idea of “eyes of the head/chest/guts” idea. I remember a rather loud, obvious reaction that I had to a particular moment when transitioning from one body area to another created an honest truthful sense of discovery and a clear thought process within a monologue, something fascinating to watch onstage. Thinking (or alternately “leading”) with various parts of the body can communicate more than trying to emulate something internal could. Ideally, we want both, but what really interests me is starting with this stuff, the body work, then feeding into emotions.

I had a great experience with Cock two days ago. As tempted as I am to just leave that sentence there, unelaborated upon, I will explain myself. There is a sex scene within the play that had always been giving me some difficulty, mostly because there is no touching within the scene. Thus, I had to provide my own imagery and motivations, and my connection with my scene partner had to be so strong as to be nearly tangible. Two nights ago, I made choices to connect with my scene partner in terms of eye contact and proximity, and how I chose to activate my spine/neck/head. At the end of the scene, I was covered in sweat, shaking, and I had to pull myself back together. I felt like I had just had sex for the first time again. I had this visceral experience that stemmed from what I was doing physically and the way I connected to the other party in the scene, and it fed into my personal imagery, which in turn put me in exactly the right place for the scene. The same happened in another scene where I needed to take control, but again in a sexual situation. So I moved my neck in opposition to my hips, and suddenly certain elements fell into place, at least internally.

So, all that is intended to say that the movement work and its focus on body awareness has already clarified a number of things in my mind.

In regards to table work, it’s an interesting process, because I’m the type of person who will get caught on and obsess over some detail that I can’t really play as an actor. So as a result I’m a little wary of long periods of table work. And it’s not that I don’t see the value in dramaturgy, it’s just that I worry about getting stuck in my own head as a result of a month of study. The movement work has kept me in touch with my body, so as soon as I stopped worrying about losing that connection, I was able to open up and start learning. Now, as we’re discussing backstories & cetera, I am constantly looking at how these details (and the studying that we are doing) might translate into playable, meaningful objectives or design choices or something else entirely. I’m learning how the table connects to the stage, and I’m feeling really good about that process.

Something interesting that keeps occurring to me as we do text analysis is the idea of unreliable narration. In Vanya, a lot of information comes from monologues, sometimes to no one in particular. So how much of that can we really trust, especially when everyone either hates or loves everyone in the house? This is the same sort of thing that happens in Cock, and it only became clear to me that perhaps not everything I said was really factually true when one of my fellow actors completely revised my timeline of events in a very credible way.

So to sum up, things are making sense now, and my toolbox just gets more and more full.

PLW

PS — I love that the toolbar at the top of the page says “Howdy, Phil Watson.” It’s like it knows where I’m from or something.

I would just like to start off by saying that these movement classes with Kali are The Bomb Dot Com! Through a number of exercises we have explored interdependency of one another, inter-corporal vs. inter-spatial movement, and onomatopoeia space filling. We’ve learned and investigated many more ideas and themes, but the one that resonated with me the most was the difference of inter-corporal vs. inter-spatial movement and how to connect this to the text.

I always find it hardest to connect my words with movement and vice versa and I have struggled to find methods to assist me in this process. This, by far, has been the most eye-opening moment in the class for me. Inter-corporal movement is moving from within the body while inter-spatial movement is moving within, between, and around the given space. Isolating one from the other accesses different modes of accomplishing a  task or “getting what you want.” You can also combine them to complete the same thing. While I obviously know that you have to move I had trouble deciding how to do so to get what I want from the other person. I look forward to exploring the options of movement as this process continues and putting words to those motions. I haven’t figured it all out yet, but I’m working on it.

Questions that I still have:

How can the actors with two halves incorporate similar movements and gestures to unite the character?

Is it necessary to have distinct movements that are only characteristic of one Yelena and not the other?

How can I continue to use the things Kali has taught me in other aspects of my life and in my work as an actor?

For now, that is all my chickadees,

Ashley Diane Long

Dear humans and russian literature enthuciasts,

I originally wrote this five days ago, but decided to let my thoughts simmer and calm down before posting. Here is the calmer version of my post:

My mind hath been blown!!!!! I am realizing that Chekhov has been recycling the same theatrical motifs over and over again in some attempt to make good literature. Last Tuesday in class, we decided to read excerpts from some of Chekhov’s Vaudevilles as well as from his Core Four (Seagull, Vanya, Sisters, and Orchard) and The Wood Demon (his failure of a show that ended up being reworked into Vanya). Now I have critically assessed all of the Core Four except for The Cherry Orchard and although I have noticed elements that have been similar, my mind has never been so stretched until I added Wood Demon to the mix. It was with this play that I was able to realize that all Chekhov does is remake the same play. The following are all of the things that I (a lowly college student) noticed as repetition in his plays after thinking for about 10 minutes:

Gun for attempted/successful suicide murder (Ivanhov, Seagull, Vanya, Sisters, Wood Demon)

Fire (Wood Demon, Sisters)

Valerian Drops (Vanya, Seagull, Sisters, Wood Demon)

Doctor Character (all of them)

Large estate but stuck in a cramped place (Seagull, Vanya, Sisters)

Over powering theme of being watched by servants/spectators (Seagull, Vanya, Sisters, Wood Demon)

Offstage death that people react to onstage (Seagull, Wood Demon, Sisters)

Offstage death that people react to, but ultimately in a funny manner (Wood Demon, Seagull)

Now I’m not comparative dramatic literature major, but that was a bit too easy. The answer is clear. All of Chekhov’s stories are just continuations of each other. The mighty Anton Chekhov has only written one measly story over a 15 year period and the only thing that stopped him from writing The Cherry Orchard Part 2 (the tale of an old russian man who has an unrequited love that drives him to be sad consider suicide and then be talked out of it by his Doctor friend thus reverting everything back to normal) was his darn TB. So yeah Tony, I’m calling you out. If you wish to duke it out, I will be in either the BC rehearsal room or Scheafer Theater for most days until the end of November. I have attached a photo of me in full armor for intimidation purposes.

Sincerely,

Kommodore Kebede

Hi everyone, I am Aure-Malia, Vanya’s widow mother who is part-time studying as a freshman at Duke.

I didn’t dare to say in class on Friday but I believe a “oh shit” moment I have experienced this past two week is when I stood in front of the Vanya class on audition day and realized… I was auditioning for Uncle Vanya!! Why would I have listen to our dear Vice-President and put myself in such an uncomfortable position… Fortunately this “oh shit” moment quickly turned into one of my favorite moments starting at Duke.

I have a hard time trying to give a profound character analysis or intense self-reflection and reconciliation with the play. Not that I haven’t spent time on de-puzziling the puzzle, but I believe I just don’t feel very confident or have any concrete idea of how to turn my character alive yet. I am trusting and counting on the still little intimidating professors and the quirky exercises during workshops to get something out of this inexperienced comedian wannabe. At this point what I can do is to be the piece of clay as moldable as possible, eager to be shaped, and continue to pretend to know what I am doing, maybe just as a good number of the rest of the cast.

To end this belated post with triumph, here is a confession: I may be the only exception in this flamboyant cast, but I sincerely have no musical skills and sing like a featherless crow. So sorry Jeff…. Hopefully a sixty-year-old cha-cha dancer as Maria works for you too.

Aure-Malia

“Cabin fever is an idiomatic term, first recorded in 1918, for a claustraphobic reaction that takes place when a person or group is isolated and/or shut in a small space, with nothing to do for an extended period. Cabin fever describes the extreme irritability and restlessness a person may feel in these situations. A person may experience cabin fever in a situation such as being in a simple country vacation cottage. When experiencing cabin fever, a person may tend to sleep, have distrust of anyone they are with, and an urge to go outside even in the rain, snow, dark or hail ”

Thank you Wikipedia.

Three years ago I was in France for Christmas with a friend and her family in a beautiful 15th century manor house in Nimes. It was December, the snow was deep and crisp and beautiful to someone who’s used to hot sun and dry soils. There were six of us staying in this enormous chateau, and we had great visions of holing ourselves up for the winter, watching tv, eating bread and olive oil and playing romantic French songs on the old piano beside the fire. The first meal was perfect, we chatted away in rolling French and everyone seemed to be enjoying everyone who was enjoying them. A cosy scene indeed.
As time went on, however, the frost in the wind outside seemed to seep under the cracks in the doors and windows, and little by little we became disenchanted with one another. The food became less divine, the weather went from magical to thoroughly depressing, and my friend’s warm and welcoming family slowly turned into a small group of very sad, very irritable individuals. Time wore on, and spats turned to frequent screaming matches, until when I woke up in the mornings the house seemed a little smaller than it did when I’d gone to sleep the night before. The walls closed in around us, pressing us together and forcing us to accept our mutual humanness – our stupid mistakes, our boring conversations, our lack of talent and vibrancy in all but a few exhausted areas. I found myself wrapping up in every piece of clothing I had brought and venturing out into the deep, sludgy snow to get out of the giant hairy moustache that was that family.

To this day I hate snow, and I hate Nimes, and I haven’t spoken to the family since. It was a blessed reprieve to step out into the departure terminal in Paris, and I daresay they were relieved to see me go.

This is called Cabin Fever. When two or more people are isolated in a confined space for too long, without external stimuli or contact with nature, bad things happen. People start to go a little mad, start to do things that they would otherwise do. I think it hearkens back to our fear of being in a cave with a big rock rolled across it. Where do we go if something attacks from the inside?

There are only three things that scare me to the point of having a phobia:
1. clowns (whoever thought that was ok??)
2. the fear that I will one day be homeless and living on a moth-eaten patch quilt on the streets of New York with an anemic cat that I’ve called Miss Puss.
3. Being trapped in an inescapable place

Yelena is trapped in so many ways – she is trapped in a disillusioned marriage to a man she can’t bring herself to love. She is trapped in her obligations to her step-daughter which deny her the freedom to love the one person she could possibly have a chance with, and she is trapped in this house full of bitter, dissatisfied people whose hearts and minds are either too tired or too inaccessible to be of any comfort to her.

Of course, we’re all trapped in this little freak show that is Uncle Vanya, in our own twisted way. We are planets in orbit, revolving around and inextricably bound to a locus that seems to be a vacuum of What Ifs and If Only I Hads.

While I agree with Jeff that this play is a comedy, and I agree that we’re all a little cartoonish in one sense or another, I think there’s something very powerful about Cabin Fever and the way it’s going to affect us all out there on stage. Think about this, next time we rehearse, or next time you’re going over lines. ” A person may tend to sleep, have distrust of anyone they are with, and an urge to go outside even in the rain, snow, dark or hail.” Again, it begs the question – what do you do when something attacks from the inside?

JB

Hello!!!!

I’m Cynthia, a junior from Chicago, and I’m really excited to explore the role of Sonya with Faye as my theatre-lab partner. Tuesday’s read-through revealed that differences in interpretations of a character between acting-pairs were already starting to emerge. I’m curious to see how these differences will continue to develop (or maybe converge?).

After reading Vanya and watching Vanya on 42nd Street there was one theme that struck me as being completely and utterly relevant to Duke students: the overwhelming feeling of tiredness throughout the play that plagues almost every character.

Although the characters have many reasons to be tired: age, depression, boredom, gout etc. Vanya and Sonya seem to be tired mainly from burning that midnight oil working for the professor and managing the estate. The idea of working so incredibly hard without entirely knowing why is something that I think every Duke student can relate to- particularly those involved in research. (If your researching under a grouchy, glorified, egotistic professor, then Vanya is even more relatable). As students, we might study all night, read pointless articles, run PCR over and over in lab, or spend days locked in the library for a term paper but is it really worth it and what is it all for? Many students probably aren’t even sure of their post-grad plans for most of college. Yet I see many sleep-deprived-zombie-students (sometimes myself included) walking frantically about the quad, anxious, overworked and in need of a nap. Perhaps Duke students can look at the lives of the characters at the estate and connect it to their own robotic studying and day-to-day tiredness. Maybe seeing a reflection of their own exhaustion will also convey its absurdity.

Lurv,

Cynthia

Hi. I’m Phil, I’m a senior from TX, classicist/actor/occasional director, you know the rigmarole.

Honestly, until this show, I had never been fond of Chekhov’s plays. Ward No. 6 is perhaps my favorite short story in the world, but his plays never did it for me. Nothing happened, nothing interesting anyway, and if I wanted to watch sad people fail, I’d watch the Jerry Springer Show. But after hearing Jeff’s idea for the show, I was hooked, and as we went through the audition process I realized the brilliance of this work. It’s hilarious. And within that new perspective on the work, the fact that nothing really happens makes perfect sense. It’s kind of like real life; we have dreams on dreams, and we never do anything about them. Or we try to fly and realize that in fact we can’t dream ourselves wings and just sort of stay on the track we somehow fell on. I hope that isn’t true, but I get the feeling that it’s close enough to true enough of the time to warrant its posting here.

Anyway, I appreciate being brought around to liking Chekhov’s plays.

One of the tenets of Grotowski’s theory regarding theatre was that the actor should be able to play a role with nothing: no props, no costume, no makeup, nothing. (“The actor should, on cue, be able to become a crying child,” and then Ryszard Cieslak embodies a crying infant and everyone is impressed, yadda yadda yadda.) Then, if the action of the play absolutely requires it, props, clothing, etc can be introduced. But there should be an overwhelmingly good reason for it, and while I’m thinking about it wouldn’t it be great if one or two pieces could serve for all the props or set pieces that appear in the show? Towards a Poor Theater.

I’m aware that not everyone shares this view on things, but I quite like it as a starting point. I’m excited to work with Serebryakov, a character who is so unlike me in almost every sense. I’m going to work on exploring his physicality, how to express him both externally (rheumatism, gout, age) and internally (his haughtiness, his confidence). Some mask work would be cool too. I personally would love it if I had no accoutrements, no moustache, no glasses, no indicators, just my body. I know that might not fit with the overall idea, and I’m not married to any idea, especially at this point, but it’s a challenge I would appreciate (and one that will, in a way, be realized anyway, in rehearsals before any costume pieces are introduced).

So this was my test post rambling. This was actually more than I expected to share. I hope you enjoyed reading my secret desires (not the strangest context for that phrase to turn up, I’d say) and my obvious newfound interest in Grotowski’s work.

Until next time,
PLW

Hey everyone-

It’s me, your resident “nanny”- the person in the play who is hated by no one and loved by everyone (holla at ya girl). Most of the time she’s just minding her own business, knitting things and being a comfort to others. I would like to state that Marina and I have one thing in common: we like tea. But that’s about it. We stop sharing similarities after that. She is old, I am young, she is Russian, I am… not. But there are a lot of qualities in her that I admire and she seems like a pretty cool old lady to me, one I would be grateful to have around in a household filled with tension and unhappiness.

Other than those brief remarks on my character, I would like to add that one thing I found especially noteworthy in Vanya on 42nd Street, and that I thought contributed to the overall atmosphere of the film, was the constant creaking of wood and other sounds that emerged organically out of the old, abandoned theatre they were all in. This is also something that I think we can replicate onstage since… well… we will also be in a theatre. Not an abandoned one, though, hopefully… but still. I also want to reiterate what everyone has already said- the set looks amazing. I can’t wait to see it in person.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I sign off  and leave you all with some pictures of old ladies that I like.

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! 🙂