I want to write about the Lydia Davis selection and get into some Meisner Technique, or remind myself of that joke about “Mississippi- how do you spell it? I-T” (or re: my last post, how do you spell bourgeoisie, yes I did it). I read these pages again then, because I told myself I shouldn’t blog about the Mississippi joke. And then I think I got it! (Not the joke, the theme of these selections.) Lights lights lights hoping to be liked the baby the baby the baby killed killed killed all the rabbits! (And it’s the first day of the month, so rabbit rabbit rabbit!) The do it with mirrors, with funny mirrors. And then you wonder what’s really reflected, repeated back at you. Raymond Carver’s baby mantra made me wonder how he could sit there chanting and humming about the baby while its screaming and he’s gonna hurt the baby!
These pieces are so short that theoretically I am torn between the advice stuck in my head about eliminating unnecessary words so why waste them on repetition, and the reasoning that its not wasting because if you only have a limited amount of space time and words to get your point across, then what better way than to say it over and over? I like the latter because I tend to like unnecessary words sometimes. But it’s not unnecessary if its necessary to say it twice.
Or more than twice.
So, in the Meisner Technique you repeat the same observation over again to get you more aware of what the other actors are doing? I'm not really sure; I thought it was some sort of pseudo-Zen thing. I am also a big fan of unnecessary words. You know - they're different the second time.
ReplyDeleteYeah, kind of, its called Repetition, and the joke version is like if you had the sentence, "I am going to the store", then you'd repeat the sentence with the stress on each different word, "I AM going to the store." "I am GOING to the store." And so on. Its hilarious at 1am rehearsals, I can tell you. The other technique is to have a conversation made up of only one phrase thrown back and forth at each other.
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