From the King (Blog #7)October 15th 2007 |
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POGUE HAMLET BLOG #7
October 14, 2007
Today was a cue-to-cue tech, followed by a run-through…a long day. A great lunch was brought in, provided by the AGL Board of Trustees.
As during most techs, I made a few strides and other things unraveled. But in the actual space, I start to get some continuity of the play and a sense of its shape and my place in it. I explore performance adjustments, new relationship moments, or little inspirations which delight me…and which, when lost in that eureka moment, make me forget my lines.
Somewhere late in the run-through, as I moved a fellow actor and myself into our light, I immediately leaped four lines of necessary information. Of course by that time, I was dead tired as well. But such carelessness scares me. I want the lines ingrained, so nothing will throw me. It makes me wonder if I’ve been out of harness too long or merely getting old. I don’t remember being quite this frustrated with myself in either THE UNDERPANTS or TARTUFFE…Of course, my role in THE UNDERPANTS was one of those glittery gems where you just come on and flash for a few scenes and let others do the grunt work…and TARTUFFE I wrote (though truthfully Pogue, the actor, cursed Pogue, the writer, on more than one occasion while learning those bon mots).
But Shakespeare, as I’ve mentioned earlier, has always been fairly easy for me to learn in the past. I read my lines every night before I go to bed and then again in the morning just to get the exactness of the words. And then run them several times during the day. The last few times running them with Julieanne, I was almost word perfect. And yesterday, instead of reading them when I got up, I just rolled through their recitation without looking at them…and again was very secure.
So I’m hoping it’s just the chaotic, exhaustive nature of techs and the fact we haven’t run it for a few days. I was pleased with a few of my discoveries tonight…little touches, slight alterations of attitude…and feel I might finally be groping my way to a character.
My favourite story about actors obsessing about their lines: Ron Liebman once played RICHARD III at the Dallas Shakespeare Festival. Every night before his first appearance, Liebman would run, with maniacal diligence, Richard’s opening soliloquy. One night, rattling through it in the wings, he suddenly whirled on a fellow cast member and snarled: “You know all those little f**kers who come up to you after the show and say: ‘How didya learn all them lines?’ Well, they’re RIGHT!”
Hmmm, come to think of it, not unlike Liebman, I always obsessively ran my opening Orgon speeches in TARTUFFE before I went on. And I’m now doing the same thing with Claudius. Oh, for the days when I was young and foolish enough to think I was indestructible. More anon.
Charles Edward Pogue
“Claudius”
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