The Goal
For my third and final project, I wanted to see if I could create an uncanny performance piece.

The Process
Once I'd decided to create a live performance, I thought about other pieces I'd seen in the past that could be described as uncanny.  The first piece that came to mind was "Not I" a short play by Samuel Beckett.  In this play, a woman delivers a scattershot of language with rapid-fire precision.  In performance, a single beam of light illuminates a mouth.  I was able to watch the entire piece performed by the iconic Billie Whitelaw off of youtube. 

I also made a list of other texts that allowed the actor's voice to take on inhuman qualities.  I was especially interested in Lady MacBeth's speeches from Shakespeare's "MacBeth", Leontes' speeches from Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale", the Bride's speeches from Lorca's "Blood Wedding", Clytaemnestra's speeches from Aeschylus's "Agamemnon", Hippolytus's speeches from Euripides' "Hippolytus", and Medea's speeches from Eurpides' "Medea". 

When I began the writing process, I decided to incorporate many of these into my text.  Throughout my play, the main character of my piece channels Hippolytus, Lady MacBeth, the Bride, and Leontes. 

The Writing
During the writing process, I pushed myself to create an uncanny world.  In the world of my play, a man goes through a mysterious process of late puberty, a woman turns to sand, and blue monsters invade the town.  To the main character of the play, the world he knows is transformed from a place that he knows to a dream-like universe with a number of confusing, unknown quantities.  He no longer recognizes his masculine body, his violent desire, or the invading creatures. 

In a sense, I wanted to create a man who is home (in his body and in his town), but is catapulted towards a place that doesn't feel like home (a larger, hairy body; a town with monsters). 

The Performance
Initially, I wanted to create a performance that used a distorted visual landscape.  I thought about using a singular, swinging light source that would leave me (the actor) in a rhythmic pattern of lit, partially lit, unlit. 

However, I ultimately decided that my text would be best served as a vocal performance.  I wanted the audience's attention focused completely on the images created by the text and my vocal distortions.  Hence, I chose to perform in a pitch black room. 

Navigating the text was a difficult process for me as an actor.  While I do have some training as a performer, I've not really acted in over four years.  And I've never dealt with such a long text.  And my memorization skills have always been spotty at best.  As a result, I focused heavily on performance and delivery.  I wanted to create an aural landscape that tore between the sweet and the desperate, between the ecstatic and the measured.  I wanted to make my voice inhuman at times.  And above all, I wanted to go into a trance while in performance, letting the needs of the character take over my worries as an actor.

This means, I spent a huge chunk of time memorizing and rehearsing.  I knew that poor preparation would be a disservice to my text. 

The Effect
Performing my piece for my ACTLab class was intense.  I was incredibly nervous about getting through the final two pages of text, because of the intense nature of the piece.  In rehearsal, I was finding that my physical and mental stamina began to flag towards the end and I had trouble recalling text in the places where it needed to be the quickest.  I also worried that the long wait to perform would render my acting instruments cold. 

However, as I performed for my class I found that I had a lot to be proud of.  I felt calm and in charge of my character.  I felt like I communicated the text in a dramatic fashion.  And, hot damn, I powered through the end of the play.  When my perfomance ended, I felt like I'd taken a huge risk and had completed an enourmous task.   I've never performed my own work, but now I'm considering writing a longer solo performance piece.  It was a ton of work and I could have died from nerves, but ultimately I loved the process. 

In conclusion, I was reminded of why I loved theatre after I performed.  It's like this event happened and people experienced it and now I can talk about it but it can never be reproduced and it will only exist ephemerally in memories. 

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