The Kingdom of Kristine

This month, Monsieur le professeur has a partner. She is teaching some of his classes each week. Her name is Kristine, and she is very good. Her approach is the opposite of M. le prof.

I trust her a lot. Partly because her way of working is more familiar and helps me synthesize M. le professeur's approach with the water I swam in for several years in the classical American rep approach. I also trust her because she obviously has integrity and calls me on all of my bullshit.

I really suck at her exercises. I am used to sucking by now. When I am complemented, I feel like I did something wrong. I think I am here to learn how to fail well sometimes.

Anyways.

The other day, we were doing a greek scene. Of course, my work was safe, boring, and completely uninteresting. I mean shit, I was bored. Bored like hell. And I was doing it...this isn't a good sign, in my experience. I know I'm young, but this is generally a sign that Mr Flop is in the room.

After we worked together for awhile, she said to me

"You know, you are realy good when you don't know what you are doing. But when you have an idea, an approach to something, you work in a straight line. And it is very bad. You freeze up. You do a lot of homework, don't you? Stop it. Don't work in straight lines. You are so much better when you have an abstract idea or no idea at all what you are trying to do."

Hm.

Case in point, senior year of training.
Everything I did was TERRIBLE. Especially the final semester. We had these scene presentations, this senior show. Oh god was I shit. From start to finish.

But during the winter, when I was drowning in work, we did Chekov. And everyone thought I was quite good. I was doing Treplev in the seagull and I was so busy that all I did was learn my lines and show up for rehearsal half dead from exhaustion. I didn't do a fucking shred of work. And I have never felt so completely lost on the stage. And somehow, it was oddly fun. I constantly felt like I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going.

Hm. I also recal during "Hedda Gabler" that there was a point where everything went to hell and the only way I could find to fix it was to make myself forget I was in play and go onto the stage having no idea what would happen. Then the piece suddenly had ease and rhythm....

I think certain approaches I learned to actually actually contradict with the way I think. I am a messy thinker. I think in patches. Like a quilt. I don't think in a linear a to z form. I think first over here, then over there, then over there. And I think if I approach theater in this way I will work in a way more authentic to my "way." God this is a liberating revelation. I feel that I have been knocking around if for weeks. As soon as she said that I try to work in straight lines and I shouldn't, it was like lightning struck me. DUH!!!!! I am a patchwork thinker. I should try being a patchwork actor.

What does that mean? Well, I have a few months more here to play around and to find out what that means. But thinking about it too much is obviously not at this point going to help.