I am so swamped with everything I am under recently, that's why this post is a bit late. But it's long. And I apologise for that, I got into the telling of this story, needed to put it somewhere. That place was here.
I do theatre as a subject and about a month ago we started on an assessment standard which involved putting on a full scale production. This really excited me, and production was that of The Trojan Women also performed under the name The Women Of Troy.
The characters really excited me, and the fact that it was mainly a woman cast was even better.
Now I'm pretty easy when it comes to characters. I don't really care often. I'll have my favourites, sure, but wherever the director sees me best is where I will often go, no questions asked. My favourite character was the Mad Prophetess Princess, Cassandra, but the director instead cast me as the lead, Hecuba, Queen of Troy.
Everybody was congratulating me and everything and saying how lucky I was to have the part. But inside, I felt the stress and pressure. Lead role, particularly lead female in a mostly female play is a huge responsibility.
We are now two weeks away from opening night. I am just as freaked as I was then. The amount of stress on me is doubling. The amount of lines I have had to learn and have perfected by this coming Thurs is really stressing me out. I have an entire A4 page of monologue to still learn and perfect by Thursday, as well as all the blocking, choreography and musical humming to learn for the background. All my cues are up in the air and I am really stressing. And this was after confiding in the director and telling her my problems. After telling her I was stressing over the number of lines. After the lines being cut down immensely to start with. I still have the most in the entire play.
On top of all that stress, the first rehearsals of the production, and even now, I am being told to do better, that what I'm doing in the production, how I am saying things isn't connected enough and I can do better and I should do better and if I don't do better my grade will suffer and I may fail. Okay, so she didn't say I may fail, but that's how my brain has interpreted it after all this stress, as well as all other assessments and course work I am currently doing and things that are due.
Another stresser of the play is the actual emotions and themes of the play.
The Trojan Women is a play about the women of Troy, the day after Troy fell. Everybody knows the story of the Trojan horse and Helen of Troy right? How Helen ran away from her husband to be with a Trojan prince and the war that followed was supposedly all caused by the gods. How the Greek sent 10,000 men in a 1000 ships and laid siege to the city of Troy with 3000 people, at the max population time for 10 years. And how they finally won the war through clever trickery and took Helen home from where she had been held prisoner for all those years?
Well, that's the glamorised version. The real version is told in the play. How Helen chose to stay in Troy after the Trojan prince she married was killed. How much suffering was caused for her, the most beautiful woman in the world. How many men were sent to their deaths for her, and how much was put on the line for one man's pride.
"It is the day after the falling of Troy. The sun is rising on the burnt ruins of the city as Hecuba, Queen of Troy and other women must rise from their hiding places and hear of their fate. Their fates are already sealed by the Grecian generals who are drawing lots as to whom they will get and take home. Every woman, every child still living will be chosen and separated from their friends, their family, and wrenched from their homeland to serve the men that killed their people.
Hecuba has watched as her city has fallen. As her people were slaughtered. She watched as her husband, and sons, were butchered in front of her. She watches as her priestess daughter is taken by the Grecian King to be a concubine. She watches as her people are allotted to the men that killed their families. She hears the cries of her women, pleading for help, but she can do nothing. She watches as her 5 year old grandson is ripped from his mothers arm and flung from the topmost towers to destroy the royal male bloodline of Troy, lest he seek revenge. She watches as the woman responsible plays her seductress act, and tries to le and bullshit her way out of her own death. She argues against Helen's story, tries to reveal her as a fraud, to turn her husband against her, to get her killed as price for the live of so many Trojan's slaughtered. She watches as Helen gets off scot free. She watches are his body is returned and she must bury him to let him seek peace in the afterlife. She watches as they set fire to the ruins of her city. And she walks the path to her slavery and the rest of her life."
As you can tell it's really heavy stuff. I have to feel all of this. I have to empathise with the characters, use my own emotional memory to affect me when playing this character. Don't get me wrong, I can dredge up the emotions needed, and play them very well if I can say so myself. The only thing I can't do is put them back in the safe of memories I keep locked away very easily. So I bring myself down to play this part very well, and then when the class is over, I'm supposed to not feel those things and focus on something else. And with my depression, it's damn near impossible. So I am stuck with this darkness and pain and sadness, all at once, and can't put them away. The only thing I can do is slip deeper. And when I'm having a good day, a pretty normal day, it doesn't last long. I'm forced by my course to slip into depression. My director knows I feel this way, but there's nothing she can do. It's all supposed to be acting. Acting means I fake it, but I can't for this play. I'm doing more acting in my everyday life acting normal than I am faking the emotions of the play.
When society and your coursework, when the thing leading you to your future is making you slip into depression in the name of 'good, realistic acting' what can you do to save yourself. What can you do to make yourself feel better, to put away those emotions? I am seriously searching for the answer, as I know that it will just get worse the closer the show dates are.
A-little-bit-ranty-but-necessary-and-a-little-apologetic-at-best
Samantha
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