Monday, March 26, 2007

Love, hate, murder, & rubber gloves: in a word, theatre.


It is a well-known, oft-quoted cliché that actors like doing baddies, that the roles are somehow meatier. This may be so - I haven't really been cast as one before, although I have done my fair share of unhappily-married middle-aged women (oppressed and not). They have been great roles too. I confess, however, to having had a bit of a hankering for trying my hand, as it were, at someone really mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Well, careful what you wish for, missus. I am Solange in Jean Genet's The Maids. I'll attempt to give a quick synopsis of the storyline: two middle-aged sisters, Solange and Claire, are housemaids to a young and beautiful Madame. Their love for each other is twisted and peculiar in a number of ways, and apart from it, the only content of their lives is Madame, they love and envy her with all the unspent passion of womanhood. They spend their time acting out a fantasy of turning against Madame, of humiliating and ultimately killing her, taking turns at being Madame, the other sister then playing the one "cast" as Madame. (Confused? You won't be, if you come and see it. Or perhaps you still will be.) Arguably, Genet has written the maids as the protagonists, but they - particularly Solange - are scary and murderous. I am not quite off-book yet, so might miss one or two, but offhand I can recall four incidents of Solange either attempting to strangle someone onstage, or speaking of attempting it, or claiming to have finally done it, in the hour-long play. Genet's play is based on a true story (I have linked to a related site in a previous post, but please don't read if you are easily or even medium-easily upset by violence) although it is only a foundation he's built upon, something that has rattled his intelligence in possibly the way the true story Equus is based on did to Shaeffer. I wish, in some ways, that I hadn't read up on the background case .

A couple of my good friends have spoken about the horror of doing a "bad" character - one did the Scottish Laird in the well-known Shakespeare play that carries his name, the other the incestuous Stepfather in Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (in which I, incidentally, was the oppressed unhappy elderly crippled wife). I haven't understood why they've felt it so heavy, not really (I mean, the roles are brilliant, so why not enjoy?), but I'm getting an inkling of it now. I am only a self-taught actor so won't pretend to know all the names of Stanislavskian techniques etc, but I go into the process of creating a character with the idea that all of us carry everything inside of us, every human possibility and emotion, and that "all" you need to do is to just tap into it. Which is scary when you start to feel you've a half-developed Solange inside you, that it could be you, under some circumstances -

And yet Solange is sad. Sad beyond belief. And at yesterday's rehearsal I suddenly felt that she was really doing this, she was going to murder Madame not only because she couldn't bear the oppression - in particular of her sister - anymore, but also because she couldn't allow her sister to commit the murder herself. She was - is - doing it out of love.

So - the box in the picture contains some rehearsal props and some actual bits of costume. Visible are e.g. the alarm clock that will warn the sisters, mid-strangulation, of Madame's return, the teapot for the poisoned tea, and Solange's rubber gloves.

10 comments:

The Moon Topples said...

I was an actor for many years, and I always enjoyed unsympathetic characters as they make you work harder to have them be something the audience can relate to. Plus, they tend to have wonderful lines.

Anna MR said...

Solange has a four page monologue towards the end of the play, according to the stage directions she will seem to be addressing characters who are imaginary, though present. Plenty of wonderful lines there...

But yes. I think it is important to find the human in such a character, not to go the obvious way and make the obvious choices. For instance, in the aforementioned speech S. has a line I pity Madame, I pity her whiteness, her satiny skin, her little wrists, and little ears - I think she really does, it is a line of real, deep human pity for another, not a sarcastic line spat out with venom.

Want to tell about your acting career?

nmj said...

Can I just say I love the blue silky garment - is it Madame's?

I have never acted, but I have a not infrequent dream that I have to be in a play and I am too tired and want to sit down on the stage!

The Moon Topples said...

Anna: I will do a post about acting sometime soon. I'm way overdue. I don't think I've ever talked much about it, except on the way to another tale.

And it seems like you have a good read on the "pity" line.

Anna MR said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anna MR said...

(Honestly, this note in brackets is a PS: I am getting increasingly pissed off with the inability of either Blogger's comment section/my Mac/the impish elementals governing internet postings to handle *multiple links in one comment*. It becomes a mess although in preview it looks fine and the links work. it is PISSING ME OFF

hence this message and poor Charnel not getting a link, only a name-and-address-drop. Signed, the author of this bollocks.)

Mr Mahti Moon, I don't know whether I dare visit your place again, given the eight-page rambling shamble of a comment I left there yesterday. Be warned, though - I am tempted to do so. Perhaps I'll try to travel incognito (i.e. shut up). So yes please, do post about your theatre work. I, for one, am interested (and happy as a sandboy you have the good grace to reckon I am right in the pity line - I have been squirming with embarrassment half the night (and consequently caught the flu and am unable to go to work and earn my keep today) thinking about what a poncy and self-important *git* of an evening-actor I sounded like) and am sure your longer-established reader are too.

NMJ, my lurve, hello and welcome back from that god-forsaken island (to another, no, no, bad joke, cross that one out), let alone that god-forsaken tiny plane. You are SO BRAVE. I wouldn't have it in me to go on one of them, no way never. Not - ever. Anyway, the blue garment is indeed Madam's although she is not seen wearing it, it is onstage throughout in what we call her wardrobe (a pile of extraordinary clothes on the floor, which Solange paws through lustily to open the play). It is actually a recycled costume from The Winter's Tale, made by a friend, fellow blogger, and fabulous costumer (amongst her other attributes and guises) Charnel Doze (visit her at http://charnel-doze.blogspot.com). For a nice view of the costume in its original surroundings, check out .

Anna MR said...

...and unbelievably, the link *still* manages to fuck up when posted, no matter how tried and tested it is in preview.

*goes off to pull her hair out in frustrated frenzy*

Anna MR said...

Just realised I'd failed to say anything about your thearical nightmare, nmj. Do you realise this (Having thearical nightmares) proves conclusively you are prime acting material, my dear - onstage with you, missy. Go, go! I can see a pretty wicked Blanche coming out of you. Or a Kate.

The Moon Topples said...

Anna: Your link works. You have to click the full stop at the end of your comment. To prove I have followed your tiny, hidden link, the caption is "Big sleeves abound!"

Anna MR said...

Glad you could still click the dot, Mr Maht Moon. I don't know why it keeps doing this, I find it intensely annoying...