Performance #17

by Tyler

Sunday, August 21, 2005.

Today was our 17th performance; we have 8 left. This has been the biggest run I have ever participated in. Before, the most I had ever done was 8 consecutive shows. Today there was something missing. James said that it was a great show, "it was rreally good." He always says that with his head tilted forward and his eyes large with emphasis (it kind of lost its emphasis though). He said it was very crisp and snappy (just the way he likes it). On stage I felt like it was going too fast, that people weren't listening to one another, and that the words had lost something. I couldn't explain myself very well. I don't even think those are really what concerns me about the show. Those are more superficial than what I am trying to get at; I think. "perhaps it's your tendency to want to 'actor pause', coming out," he said. I don't believe this is a characteristic of mine, and I don't trust him when he says it, but I am not writing about him.
Something was missing today. I do not feel Peck at my fingertips. I feel he is a machine I am operating from the inside. I don't care how it looks, it feels mechanical. This does not surprise me. I foresaw something like this happening. This is theatre, and this was bound to happen. So what to do about it now? There are small things one can do onstage that gives one a thrill, creates a sense of risk and newness, like I am on the cusp of something incredible. But these are temporary solutions. The other night, I reinserted some of my lines that were originally cut for time. I got a thrill out of that. Every once and a while I ad-lib a line here or there when something goes wrong or its unusually hot in the theatre, "It sure is warm tonight," I said tonight at the opening of a scene. Part of me was acknowledging the audiences discomfort and another part of me was explaining the sweat that had now soaked through the back of my shirt. Those are little things though, and they too fall under the same spell.
I desperately want to see myself. I want to tape one of the performances to see what I looks like. Can this fix the problem I am trying to get at though? Or can this only go so deep. I may find an awkward step here, or a clumsy hand gesture there, but will I be able to see what isn't going on beneath?
There are infinities within the words. Yet they are as temporary as one life is against the persistence of time; a blip on a the horizon. What can I do to realize this paradox again? Perhaps, as in life, the answer to this is in the questions, is in love, the moment? It helps to talk about it with people who have seen it for the first time. To see what inspired them. What they took away from it. I wish I could be involved in but a hand full of the conversations that take place after this show. I don't care about the technical mumbo-jumbo, or whether or not someone thought I was good or not. I want to know how they have been changed. I want to know. I want to be changed as well.
"It doesn't affect me the way it used to," Alex just told me. She opted sound today, and said the performance went well. It did. On our worst days, we are a good show to watch, but let me find the infinity within the words. Perhaps I will return to the script and read it again. Perhaps I will ask some different questions about it. Perhaps I will find something new. Is this not how it is with every text? Is this not the question that haunts all spirituality? This is why I know it's not a question of the pace or energy. This is why I don't trust James all the time...