Twilight Los Angeles: The Creation of A Monologue

The following is an assignment due on Edmodo. It is due tonight, but Edmodo refuses to work on my laptop, and it is the only way I have of submitting it, so I'm posting it to my blog and submitting it to Edmodo if/when it works on my laptop.

Directions:In the empty space provided, answer the following question:

What does ADS mean when she says that she tries to perform her characters, "utterance by utterance" and not just "word for word"? 
Include a personal reflection on your process of creating your assigned Twilight Los Angeles Character. This reflection should include a well thought out exploration of the challenges, pitfalls, and victories of your creative process.

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I feel that when ADS says “utterance by utterance”, she doesn’t just mean the words someone says, verbatim. She means the exact way someone says those words; the way the words come out of their mouth. Timbre, resonance, pitch, volume, accent, dialect, fluctuation - all of these things are intended to be considered in the Twilight pieces. To fully become someone, you shouldn’t just parrot them. Impersonation is required in the presentation of Anna Deavere Smith’s monologues and interviews.

Impersonating someone onstage is just as hard as I imagine impersonating someone offstage would be. You see it in a bizarre rom-com, or a thrilling sci-fi movie: someone wakes up in someone else's body, and try to pass as the other person to avoid attracting suspicion. They can pull it off sometimes, but they’re always found out in the end. Through a bizarre nervous mechanism, a deeply-kept secret, an odd mannerism - something that they forgot to add in there. Something that they couldn’t impersonate. 

The hardest thing for me, when looking at the character of Maxine Waters, was accepting that there is going to be something I will miss. I cannot fully impersonate a character unless I am a carbon copy of that character. I will not know any nervous mechanisms, any secrets, any mannerisms. The goal, for me, was to present the facets of Maxine Waters that make who she is obvious. I adopted her way of speaking in a clearly enunciated manner, and throwing words out rather than speaking them - it was as if she was speaking to an annoying toddler who didn’t understand what she was saying. 

Waters uses frequent filler language, such as “um” and “uh”, and breathes with a strange patient urgency, which reminded me of a parent calmly berating a child. She sits ramrod straight, but hunches when she stands, only straightening when she feels the need to make a very loud point. She is not above yelling - her fluctuations in pitch and volume are rapid and unpredictable. Her voice is of a very nasally timbre. All of the above were things I tried to incorporate into the Twilight side. 

Anna Deveare Smith

Today in class, we watched a video of the great ADS talking about her method of acting, or as she calls it, imitating. Here are my (extremely rough) notes on the video.

• "Everything we have to say is couched in metaphors"
• "Identity - untouchable"
• Haven't translated theatre into something that can constantly be replicated info something we can depend on
• "The actor's gift is the imagination"
• "The ability to believe that you are someone else"
• Individuality as it is captured physically, making sounds
• Unquenchable: listen to people, listen to stories
• Goal: to tell a story that has multiple points of view
• indicate that the old idea of the single author is FLAWED
• It takes many people to tell the story of a community
• How does the other person think? 
• Bridging that gap through acting (?)
• You don't lose anything - you gain
• Something appealing about details - maybe there's a wider variety of human beings than we've thought about

-Keerthi

Maxine Waters: Character Study

After I auditioned for the IB Theatre Showcase, I was given two sides: Cornell West and Maxine Waters. We were asked to study one of the people we were given, in order to be able to portray them accurately. Here is a transcribed version of the notes I took when researching Maxine Waters.

Maxine Waters

• Born August 15th, 1938
• Congresswoman of the 43rd District - Democrat (was Congresswoman of the 29th District in 1992)
• Oldest of 12 Black women in Congress today
• Former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus
• 77 years old currently; was 54 in 1992
• described LA riot violence as a "spontaneous reaction to injustice."
• "economic, social, cultural, and political" factors responsible
• thought "riots" should be called a "rebellion" or "insurrection."
• Clearly enunciated speech
• Matter-of-fact speaking; slow but not too slow, almost like explaining something to a child
• Steady, weary way of saying things - lots of "um"s and pauses
• "hwhat", not "what"
• ends of sentences sound like questions
• lots of adjusting of glasses - pushing them up and down the bridge of her nose
• voice gets rocky when passionate - speaks mostly quietly, but can get into loud registers very quickly
• grounded when standing, feet apart, power stance

Usually, taking notes on people is for historical purposes. Having to actually look up videos of someone, and adopting their mannerisms, is certainly a unique experience. I'm reminded of something Mr. Graham told us last year: "Becoming a character, as it were, actually has nothing to do with becoming that character. It's about finding all the parts of that character in yourself." I wonder if that applies no matter what - no matter how different the character is from yourself. 

-Keerthi

One-Person Show/Ethnodrama Reflection

Honestly, the thought that continues to reoccur in my train of thought is: this is very close to being the weirdest thing I've done. Usually, being in shows, I am, to some extent, told what to do. By the director, by the writer, by the stage manager, or by all three. This is one unique case where I am all three of these things.This certainly puts a wrench in the process, mainly because since there's no one to tell me what to do, I'm more or less forced to talk to myself. It also makes it confusing, because when I'm being told what to do, I can critique it to some extent, or give my second opinion. A second opinion is hard to get when the writer is the actor.

For me, at least, it requires a lot more second-guessing. "Should I say this line? Does this really sound okay? Is it logical for this line to flow into this one?" are questions I find myself asking myself. (That sentence makes sense in this context, which is probably an indicator of how bizarre this context is.) I've recorded myself performing my ethnodrama, only to find that I haven't stayed in the frame of my camera, which means that I have to rerecord and re-choreograph the blocking of the piece. It's..frustrating, to say the least, but the end result will (hopefully) be worth it.

When everyone around you seems to know what they're doing, it puts more pressure on you (or, rather, me) and results in panic and a ton of stress. But yesterday, a classmate came up to me and asked if I knew what I was doing, and I automatically responded with "I'm kinda figuring it out step by step." And the thing is, I think we all are. I think this is unfamiliar territory for all of us; that is, if one of us fails, chances are we all will. It's strange how comforting a thought like that is.

Stimuli

Here are my four stimuli; the four things that inspire me to create.

1. "But I don’t want small talk. Text me, and without saying hello, tell me why you got so angry at your sister this morning. Tell me why you have a scar shaped like Europe on the left side of your neck. Send me paragraphs about the time you spent at your grandmother’s house that one summer. Call me when I’m half asleep and tell me why you believe in God. Tell me about the first time you saw your dad cry. Go on for hours about things that may not seem important because I promise that I’ll be hanging on to every word you say. Tell me everything. I don’t want someone who just talks about the weather." - this is a quote that I found online about six months ago. About two minutes after seeing it, I opened up a google doc and wrote the first short story I'd written in a year. I'm not sure why, but there's something about the thought of knowing people that just gets me into the mood to write.

2. Peppermint Tea. - Early in freshman year, anytime I had a paper to write, I would make myself a cup of tea, sit down, and get to work. Ever since then, anytime I have peppermint tea, I'm automatically primed for writing and creating, sometimes for hours upon hours.

3. http://youtu.be/_holzIquMxg - this is a link to the Regina Spektor song, Braille, which has had a huge influence on my creative thought process. I was listening to it when I got the inspiration to compose my first ever piece that I later transcribed onto sheet music. 

4. "I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does." - the smiths. This is a huge part of the topic that I'm planning on writing my ethnodrama on. It took me about a year for me to realize that I am worth loving, and this specific lyric had a huge impact on the way I learned to do so. 

Quote Response: In-Class Prompt

"As an actress, I feel that my identity is for rent. Not for sale, but for rent."

- Anna Deavere Smith

Directions: Take 10 minutes to write down what this quote means to you, in light of watching Great Broadway Performances: In The Heights.

Answer: As an actor, identity is something I struggle with. When given a character, do I portray the character as myself or myself as the character? Do I act as a completely different person, or do I insert myself into the character's circumstances? While I usually choose the latter, I feel as though even if I do give a part of myself up to the character, when I get offstage, I get that part back. Therefore, I do rent out my identity in some way, but I do not give it up completely, or "sell" it. 

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992

According to Los Angeles Times, "Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman docu-play "Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992" is among the most durable artworks to emerge from the ashes of L.A.'s 1992 riots." Said riots were a result of the Rodney King Controversy of around the same time period, when 4 police officers brutally beat an African-American man when arresting him on charges of driving under the influence. After the acquittal of all four police officers, riots in LA caused 53 deaths, and over 1, 000 fires. Smith's one-woman show is a retelling of over nine months' worth of interviews, that she did with over 200 people. It tells a story without actually telling a story, using words verbatim from all her interviewees.