tough slogging

Whew! We did our first run-through last week, and it was exhausting. I was convinced at the intermission break that we'd been working for at least 2 or 3 hours and was shocked to learn that only an hour had passed.

We're into the difficult part now. We put it together once, and now we're taking it all apart again. And getting off book. It's time for growing pains, difficult questions, and commitment. To be honest, this part is hard to write about.

A few things I've been working out and grappling with over the past week:

1. man hands - distilling the essence of what makes a male hand gesture male - watching men's hands on BART as they hold phones, turn pages of the paper, etc. The basic thing seems to be keeping fingers together.

2. the intersection of status, confidence, and maleness. I know that I have a tendency as an actor to make choices which lower my status. I know there is a connection between status and confidence. I believe there is a further connection between status, confidence and maleness. Yet here am I, a female, playing a male character who has status, but at times lacks confidence. How to illustrate status and confidence and therefore maleness without veering into caricature. How all of this is made more difficult by the obstacle of being a female playing the character.

A tactic I'm using to examine #2 is watching films with male characters who are what I'm calling 'warriors'. I don't tend to watch a lot of this type of film, but the examination is interesting - Platoon, Braveheart, Gladiator, Apocalypse Now, Patton.

Another tactic I'm using to examine this is what happens if I don't apologize, especially for the amount of space I take up. This was an interesting one on a walk through a crowded grocery store. Other shoppers apologized to me for letting their carts get too close, etc.

Looking forward, we're just over 2 weeks from opening, and will be moving from the rehearsal space to the Oakland performance space next weekend!