Theatre Experience, Part 2

Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, MFA Acting Spring Repertory

Shakespeare's plays are fascinating. There are several reasons for this: he was the most popular playwright of his age, his plays centred upon ideas and emotions still deeply thought about today, his language and style have a very likable quality to them, approachable and yet transcendent. Which is why people will often read them first as stories, then read or enact the plays or portions thereof, with the culmination in watching the play itself unfurl on stage, with the words, jokes, soliloquies and puns that the man himself penned. Probably that's why the acting class usually ends up using one of his plays for their repertory, an important performance sequence that effectively forms their Master's thesis.

Of course, the experience of watching theatre depends on the skill of the performers, and for someone like me, who has had very limited experience of theatre, every performance inspires new thoughts and new ideas within me.

The performance that I attended was preceded by a talk about the play itself, in this case, Twelfth Night. The talk was given by one of the faculty members of the School of Theatre and moderated by the director of the play. I've forgotten his name. He professed himself a big fan of Shakespeare, and especially of this play, which he thinks has a deeper significance that what people usually accord it. Most people just see it as a comedy, a funny play with funny characters, funny lines, and pranks. However, as with all of Shakespeare's plays, it has a deeper significance at several levels, and carries more serious themes that usually perceived.

For one thing, it's about death, although it references it in a very subtle way. All of us go through life, and every story told by writers and bards is a journey, through the events of life. But what is the destination? Death. Inevitably, inexorably, we move toward death. We may walk, run, leap, trudge, with or without burden, but the journey continues, step by step, ceaselessly. All our life we run after fulfillment, from one goal to the next, but the overall goal, whether we recognize it or not, is death. This is very subtly referenced in the play, in one simple line that often goes unnoticed because it follows some six lines of description of prior events, by one of the characters.

A contract of eternal bond of love,
Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands,
Attested by the holy close of lips,
Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings;
And all the ceremony of this compact
Seal'd in my function, by my testimony:
Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave
I have travell'd but two hours. 

The last two lines are the ones to think about: "Since these events, my watch tells me, I have travelled but two hours toward my grave." Cunningly enough, by the time this line is spoken, about two hours have passed from the start of the play.

This leads to thoughts about how we make this journey. Essentially, we run from one fulfillment to the next. Human beings have an appetite; an insatiable hunger for love and contentment that never goes away, no matter how many times we satisfy it. It's true for something as physical as food, and it's equally true for something as abstract as love. You eat, you feel full and happy, and the next day, you're hungry again. It's the same with love. The pleasure of contentment is sublime and deep, but it is fleeting; we run back over and over again for more, ceaselessly all along the journey to death.

The title of the play has a very subtle relation to this. At first look, it doesn't have any connection to any of the actual content of the play - "Twelfth Night" - what does that even mean? It refers to the last night of the twelve days of Christmas; in other words, it's the culmination of the festive season, the last day of satisfying the appetite, spiritually speaking. It's the end of one journey, and the beginning of the next. What does it have to do with the play? Nothing really, except that it was intended as an entertainment for that occasion, and it attempts to inspire a feeling of cheer in the audience.

This much I learned from that talk. The play itself had some eye-openers for me. Theatre is very different from cinema; each has their own challenges, and their own advantages. I've only ever seen movies, and theatre is still very new for me. The most striking thing was how perfect the actors have to be. There is no scope for mistakes in performing one's part - you can't go again if you flub a line or burst out giggling, you have to have perfect timing especially for a comedy, you're so close to the audience that they can see the wrinkles on your face. You have to memorize and speak a couple of hundred lines, which you can't rehearse in between, while portraying expression and body language in accordance with the character and situation.

It's not just about lines and how you speak them. There can be action sequences as well - in this case there were swordfights, juggling, singing, playing of instruments and more. Fight and dance sequences are carefully choreographed - every movement is well thought out in terms of motion, duration and position, and must be executed exactly. Songs and musical sequences must be in tune, and the compositions must be rendered according to the spirit of the play. This play involved one specific sequence, where two characters are juggling, and what's more, they pass the balls between them as they juggle. And they aren't just clowning around to make the audience laugh - there is serious dialogue between the two at the same time, and there are very specific word cues, according to which the balls had to change hands. Juggling is easy to learn, but it requires practice, and it requires some measure of skill to be speaking dialogue and emoting, alongside the juggling itself. That is by no measure easy, especially when there is no scope for mistake.

And none of these actions are written in the original play. Playwrights don't write in actions like that. Those are bits that the actors and their director must add in, to give form and spirit to the play. Playwrights don't write in a screenplay for dances or fights; the players must imagine and execute those. Playwrights don't write songs or music for a play, unless it's a musical. That too has to be taken care of separately. This is why people gain so much in terms of personality when they enter theatre - you have to stretch your imagination so far and wide. Theatre people aren't good at only memorizing and speaking dialogue; they will almost always have a repertoire of other artistic talents too.

An actor has to be able to sing, dance, juggle, fight, perform acrobatics and stunts, play musical instruments and do a dozen other things, apart from just speaking dialogue or emoting on stage. A director must give position to the actors, direct their movements, add in music, dance, fights or other sequences as needed, and bring out the personality of the characters through the actors, by giving shape to the play. This perfection in performance is why theatre people almost always perform extremely well before the camera as well - such rigor is not required in a movie, where you can have several takes for each shot.

I did not have much regard for artistic performers when I was younger - I used to think that they are hyped too much, and given way too much attention. My views have improved a great deal now, thanks to my experiences, both in India and here. I still think most cinema actors are overhyped and given too much attention, talented though they may be. But I have a lot more respect now in general for performers - be they from theatre, music, dance or the fine arts. These fields are more diverse than I originally imagined them to be, and their exponents are usually good-natured, down-to-earth, intellectual and talented people with a passion for their art, which equals any passion that I see amongst the scientific and technical populace for their respective fields.

(My experience courtesy the MFA Acting Class of 2011 at the School of Theatre, University of Southern California, Los Angeles)

You Have The Right...

I read the following post recently. http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/02/09/mostly-harmless/

The author wanted to start a discussion about groups that are stigmatized for being different, which is often unfair because the difference is harmless. No matter how different you are in what you stand for, you should not face any discrimination, as long as what you stand for is in general harmless. The idea is that different groups of people, such as atheists and LGBT groups, can relate to each other's problems better, because they face the same problems too.

However, after I went through all that, it was the list of ten hypothetical rights at the bottom of the page that caught my attention. The question posed is, is each of these rights harmless? The blog is one that focuses on atheism and related issues, hence the more pointed question is, should an atheist find it logical to support these rights?

The key word is logical. Actually, the key word was probably intended to be atheist, along with logical, since that's the theme of the post. But I'm ignoring that for now, because atheist or not, the logical factor seems to me to be more fundamental in thinking about the question.

Each right really represents a section of people that believe that what they are doing is harmless, and they should be allowed that right without any discrimination from others. More likely than not, there would be at least one right that people would find disturbing or unacceptable. But unless they can bring a logical reason why they would oppose that right, to the extent that they would legislate against it, their objections cannot be considered valid.

Most of us have the ideas of the culture that we grew up in ingrained inside us, and it's often difficult to break out of that training and think logically. We all say that we should be tolerant and accepting and open to new ideas and new people and so on, but in spite of all that, very often, when faced with this kind of a situation, we tend to go along with our knee-jerk reaction, inbuilt due to all that training.

My own responses: (Original author's note: Note that these examples should all be considered consensual, adult situations.)

The right to marry members of your own gender.

I agree. I see no reason to object to a person marrying whoever they choose, regardless of gender. Each person's marriage is their own choice, and and official marriage gives important legal rights which should belong to every family.

The right to adopt children, whether you’re gay or straight, and whether you’re single or not.

I agree. Child-rearing is one of the most primal instincts. Sexual orientation would not affect how a parent behaves towards a child. I would be more worried about a person's history of violence or drug habits, rather than their orientation, if they were to raise a child. As for single parenthood, I personally feel a child would be emotionally happier with two parents rather than just one, and certainly two people together would have more time / money to raise a child, rather than just one. On the other hand, we're talking about adoption, and I'm sure any child would be delighted to have one caring parent, rather than no parents at all. If a single person is emotionally and financially equipped to take care of children, there is no reason to stop them.

The right to smoke marijuana (with certain restrictions similar to those on alcohol and cigarettes).

This I'm not so sure of. To start with, I don't know everything about marijuana, and what I do know could be rather biased. Marijuana is often termed a gateway drug, but it is not in itself very harmful. Alcohol and cigarettes cause enough damage as it is, so why add more? But people are smoking pot anyway, legal or not, and maybe making it legal with restrictions can pave the way to educating people about responsibility and enforcing restrictions better.

The right to choose euthanasia.

I agree. For those who don't know, euthanasia is the practice of assisted suicide, often for someone with a terminal illness with no chance of recovery. I have read enough sad stories about people who due to disease or accident were crippled for life in the prime of their youth, bedridden and paralyzed without a chance to return to normal, brain dead with body breathing. Some of those people might want to live as long as they can, and some of them may just want to end it all and pass away. It is their choice to make, because they are the ones who are suffering. And they should have the right to make that choice.

The right to change sex or gender, whether through surgery, hormones, cross-dressing, or some combination.

I agree. I've learnt slowly over the years, that people aren't just defined into a finite number of categories like a clear-cut diamond. It took quite some reading to understand the concept of genderqueer and such. Each person has the right to choose what they want to be, in terms of gender and sexual identities. It is each person's own choice to make. Nobody should have to dictate to anyone else on this issue.

The right to marry multiple people.

This is a sticky one. My knee-jerk reaction to this one was, no this shouldn't be. But then I reconsidered. And I can't come to a conclusion. People should have the right to live as they choose. If someone wants to marry multiple people, and if that choice makes them happy and harms nobody else, why should anyone else try to legislate that?

But things are not really that clear cut. To start with, there is a great cultural bias against this idea in most parts of the world. It won't be an easy right to get, and it would be even more difficult to practice. Secondly, there is the possibility of abuse of such a right. What if a person marries a partner but does not tell them that he / she has other partners? They should have the right to know, and if they do not want to be involved in a multiple marriage, they should have the right to not be tricked into it. Even if they have the option of divorce or annulment once they find out they have been cheated, there would be so much time wasted for them, when instead they could be with a partner who shares their views. Or, what if a person is in such a marriage, and then later changes his / her mind, and wants out? And this could happen a lot, so how much in terms of resources would we be willing to spend in this sort of thing?

Polygamy and polyandry have existed historically in many cultures, and are still practiced today in some communities. They were practiced for various reasons, most relating to the structure of society as it was at that time. For instance, in some cultures, several brothers would share a wife, because this ensured that family property would remain within the same family line. In others, males were often killed in wars, and polyandry was practiced so that all fertile women would have a mate and produce children, ensuring that the community population stayed stable.

But in today's world, society is more stable than it has been earlier, and moreover, marriage is associated with important legal rights. Having multiple partners complicates these issues to a great extent. For example, if a person dies, how is his / her property to be divided? Equally amongst all heirs - partners and children? Apportioned to each partner equally? Apportioned to each partner depending on how many children were produced? What about the right to make medical decisions? If all partners have the right, and they make conflicting decisions, how is that to be resolved? How do we arrive at a consensus on such things?

The right to have an elective abortion in the first or second trimester. 

I agree. There is no thinking about this one. Pregnancy is a complicated issue, and every woman knows best what she is capable of undertaking. Forcing a woman to have a baby when it would be detrimental to the quality of either her life or the baby's is unacceptable. Abortion may seem like termination of life to some people, and it may not feel good to undergo the procedure, but that is no reason to legislate against it. A fetus in the womb is nothing like a baby already born.

The right to have an elective abortion in the third trimester.

The third trimester is special because abortion in this case is somewhat dangerous. A lot of doctors don't feel comfortable about doing it, because of the risk involved. A woman may want her pregnancy terminated for whatever reason, but what if the doctor feels it is potentially fatal to the woman? He / She may not want to take up that kind of responsibility. I'd say that the right to abort the fetus should be there nevertheless. I don't know about the doctor's right to refuse the abortion if he / she in good faith feels that he / she might not be able to save the woman.

The right to engage in incest.

I really don't like this one. If both relatives are consenting adults, why should anyone else interfere? And yet it feels weird, undesirable even, due to social conditioning. It was socially accepted in quite a few ancient cultures and cousin marriages are legal in several places today as well.

The actual trouble with incestuous relations is that children of such relations tend to have a greater risk of genetic birth defects. Inbreeding over generations in succession increases the chances of these defects spreading over the population, causing a dip in the overall quality of the gene pool. This is a long-term effect that would be visible over several generations (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding#Humans ).

How far can we legislate on this? Should we give preference to the possibility of long-term harm? What if two adults want to have a relationship, but with no children? It's another sticky question, and there is no single "right" answer.

The right to express belief in any religion or philosophy.

At first, this seems like a no-brainer: secularism means tolerance for others' beliefs. But this too has the ability to become a sticky problem.

What if someone's religion or philosophy tells them to cause damage to society in some way? Adolf Hitler's philosophy was that Aryans were supreme and Jews should be eliminated, so does the right to express belief in that philosophy mean we can't condemn him for the death camps he started? Apartheid is the philosophy that dark-skinned people are inferior to fair-skinned people. Should dark-skinned people be expected to respect that kind of idea? A good number of religious texts dictate that homosexuality is a sin. And yet isn't that idea abhorrent to so many of us, homosexual or not? What happens to the right to express belief, in these cases?

Someone might try to get technical and say that this right is just about expressing belief, not about actually implementing it, so it would then simply come down to a matter of freedom of speech. After all, if someone just says they have such-and-such idea, but won't actually implement it, no harm's done, right? I don't think so. Expressing belief is not just about words, it's about actions too. Implementing belief comes under expression of belief; it is not a separate thing.

Certainly everyone should have the right to express what they believe. You can't really legislate against that. But this cannot be an absolute kind of right. Nobody should be able to use this right to discriminate against other people.

*

I'm no legal or social expert, and I am certainly in no position to legislate on stuff like this. The rights that I'm sure of, well, I'm sure of them, for reasons that make sense to me. The ones I find problematic, well, I can't come to a conclusion on them. I don't want to stick to a knee-jerk response on them, but I won't blindly justify recognition of those rights either.

Blog Reading

I read blogs. In fact, I read too many of them, so much that my own writing has come to a standstill. Blog-reading was a phase that I fell into headfirst, and too deeply for my own good. It is certainly good to read blogs and to think about what is written, but certain things need to be remembered when reading other people's blogs. 

For starters, I started to spend too much time reading too many blogs, and each and every post on those blogs. It started with two or three, and slowly spread to something like fifteen. That was overkill. I realized, that even on very good blogs, it's just not worth reading every single word of every single post. Even with very good blogs, you can separate the really good posts from the just okay ones, and then focus on reading selective posts. Of course to do this, you have to be reading every single word to start with, so that you can discern the good posts from the not-so-great ones! I have been reading long enough to do that, and have already started doing so. This makes more sense, because it allows me to focus my thinking on stuff that really interests me, rather than just read anything and everything. 

Then again, it's not enough to just read. Reading is supposed to inspire thinking, and that is what allows intellect to grow. But thinking inside one's head is not enough; I've realized this the hard way, with too much pain. There must be some outlet for one's thoughts; somewhere where you can look back at them and connect the dots to make patterns. This is where one's own writing should help; writing as a habit makes you focus your thoughts, and solidify them. Writing is important for communication too, because if you can write stuff clearly, that allows you to share your ideas effectively. 

Reading every single word of every single post is quite frankly, a waste of time. Really a waste of time. Even if every post gave you something to think about, and to write about, it's still not worth it. You don't get left with anything else to do. Thank goodness I didn't start commenting on blogs too. That would've been the end of me. It nearly was, especially with my writing coming to a halt and all.

I've always believed it a bad idea to make promises, because somehow I have never believed that it's usually possible to fully ever keep a promise. Certainly a promise with a forever connotation is a very bad idea. So I'm not going to promise myself that I will get back to my writing and post regularly, but I can certainly try to commit to that. I like my writing, and I often have a hard time believing the richness of thought I used to have as a younger person. I want that to continue, and the best way to do that is to keep up the writing. I will post more regularly. That's all.

How To Juggle Two Balls, and Three Balls

I remember watching a TV show one day in tenth grade, where a character was shown juggling. It was a young girl, my own age, and I remember thinking, this should be easy to do. I didn't realize at the time that you could probably just look it up online, so I had to develop my own technique for doing it. 

It's pretty easy really. Essentially, you just replicate the motions first, and make sure you are comfortable with the sequence, without actually throwing more than one ball at a time. This is so that you get instinctive about when and where the ball is supposed to go, and when and where it should land. Then you try the sequence with upto two balls in the air at any time. You get comfy with two flawless exchanges. Then get comfy with three. Once you get comfy with three exchanges, it's only a matter of concentration for getting more than that. 

Everyone usually gets pretty good at doing two balls with two hands. Two balls with one hand needs a little more work. I'm pretty comfy with that, and can do them with either hand, even switching between hands. Interestingly, I learnt how to work three balls, before I did two balls. I practiced with tennis balls, simply because I had a whole load of them lying uselessly about the house.

The position of the balls in your hand, and where you catch and throw them, is important. Suppose you have two balls in one hand. Both balls lie on your palm, one in "front", between your thumb, index finger and middle finger, and the other at the "back", between your ring and little fingers and the ball of the thumb. The position is important, because when you throw a ball, you throw it from the back position and receive it at the front. I haven't tried doing it the other way around, because this feels more natural. My guess is that's because I can control the motion of the ball when I'm throwing it better that way, ie I can control the amount of force with which I throw it. 

For two balls, it goes like this.

I have two balls in one hand and I want to juggle them, with that one hand, which, believe me, is not as easy as one may think at first. The motion should go like this. I throw one ball, and before I catch it, I have to throw the other. Then I catch the first ball, and throw it again, before I catch the second ball. This exchange must repeat continuously and slowly, and the balls shouldn't hit each other when I throw them. This is why I throw them a little sideways, so that the overall trajectory of the balls turns out a little oval in shape. 

Throw the back ball, and catch it in the front position, in the same hand. This is one exchange. This means that you have to throw the ball just high enough that you have time to shift the ball in your hand to the back position. Too little force means not enough time to shift the ball, too much means the ball will fly off and land somewhere out of your reach. Once that is done, try two exchanges. That means, instead of just shifting the front ball to the back in your hand, throw it - with the same level of force that you threw the first ball. After you throw it, you would catch the first ball, when you do, shift it immediately to the back, and then catch the second one in front. 

Then try three exchanges. If you get that straight, try three exchanges again, sideways throwing this time. I found sideways throwing more comfortable, because I get a better idea of the balls' trajectory, since it is in a plane normal to my line of vision. One could in theory continue throwing the balls back and front, but since that happens in a plane significantly away from the normal to my line of vision, my estimate of the force with which to throw the balls soon goes awry. Other people may have different experiences, I haven't checked. 

If you get three exchanges comfortably, try going for more. If you got it with one hand, do it with the other. Then try switching from one hand to the other, maybe after about ten exchanges in each hand. It gets super easy with time, once one has the throwing motion down pat.

For three balls, it goes like this. 

You'll have two balls in one hand and one ball in the other. The same rules of back and front position apply. The rule simply is: throw the ball in the back position from the hand with two balls. Throw the ball in the other hand before you catch the incoming ball in the front position. Once you catch a ball, shift it to the back position, ready to throw again. 

To practice, go like this. Throw the back ball to the other hand, shift the single ball to the back and catch the incoming ball in front. Now the original single ball would be at the back, so throw that to the other hand, and catch it in front. These are single exchanges; you start with two balls in one hand, and you land up with two balls in the other hand. Next, try double exchanges. Throw the back ball to the other hand, throw the single ball in the other hand, catch the first ball in front, catch the second ball in front. You started with two balls in one hand; you'll land up with two balls in the same hand. Then, try triple exchanges. You get the logic. Once you get triple exchanges, concentration and practice lead the way to multiple more, till you don't have the concept of exchanges ringing in your head anymore.

It's that easy. I haven't tried four or more balls. If anyone does, please tell me the sequence.