TITUS 22 March 2010

TODAY. Keith is ill. Downer. Because we’re building Williams-specific, today is a play day. Yay! Time to review what you worked on over the weekend, then we’re going to do show-and-tell, and then we have a couple other things in store. Right now, take ten and review your work from the weekend.

SHOW AND TELL
Nicole – Lavinia (monologue)
Divided duty. Men’s natures wrangle with inferior things, though great ones are their object. A sense of pain. Men are not gods. Unhandsome warrior. I’m not really sure what this is or where it is in the world, but it was cute and good.
COMMENTS: Desdemona. My favorite line is “even to a sense of pain.” Lot of parallels with Desdemona.
NICK – Aaron
Great wonder. I curse the day. Why should wrath be mute and fury dumb? You have lost half your soul. Hmmmm. Because of the marriage? How interesting. Or because of the dead baby. Perhaps because it’s after Desdemona, I am feeling all of these mantacchments in the world right now. This clapping is horrifically violent. I am a little traumatized by it. Switch to…a Titus? This is the day of doom. Make pillage of her chastity. Music honest as I am.
COMMENTS: Basic mold of Aaron as Lady Macbeth, between when Tamora becomes Emperor and Lavinia as raped, sort of a Hamlet figure (Tamora), means or motivation for carrying through these acts. Sources: Macbeth, Iago. Interesting to see her as Macbeth and Aaron as Lady Macbeth. Feminize him, juxtapose those lines maybe? Cool. Interesting choice.

ROSS – Marcus (from Thyestes)
She’ll kill or die. Punishment itself is what I want. Death is something you beg for. What happens to Lavinia is worse than death. Is it? What is worse than death? The end, the stop, the dark, the not-feeling. Torture. The mother’s tearing up her own flesh. She looks splendid. Okay, that’s horrifying. So totally horrifying. What words her first pain will break out in. I just got some crazy chills with that laughing belch. I want the mother to drink her children’s blood. I’m striding as high as the stars.
COMMENTS: Really good selection. All cuts. 8 different scenes. Really nice cut.

JEN AND CHELSEA – Tamoras
I feel like a butcher’s dog. The world’s dying out. Don’t talk so loud. Lorca in the world. I kind of want a Catholic prayer to the Virgin Mary in the world right now. Maybe in Latin?
Potential Prayer:
Blessed be your purity,
May it be blessed forever,
For no less than God takes delight,
In such exalted beauty.
To you, heavenly Princess,
Holy Virgin Mary,
I offer on this day
My whole heart, life and soul.
Look upon me with compassion,
Do not leave me, my Mother.
Oh, and this was brilliant. BRILLS.
COMMENTS: We loved the imagery of Tamora losing her mind. After hearing Ross’s thing, it’s a really interesting idea. The thoughts. The mother part of her and the…her subconscious. All of it’s happening at once. No longer differentiate between violence and motherliness. It’s inside of her head. It’s her breaking. A frenzy of killing and she steps back and it doesn’t all make sense. In your head, when your brain is going that fast, a whirlwind, there is no side. It’s all just a mess. Macbeth as the anchor. Clear notion. Wanted you to resolve, love that you didn’t. Mother Courage, Lady M, Yerma, original poem, Hamlet. Singing and frantic, rocking to its own rhythm. It needs shaping, but what it has is really good.

ASHLEY AND ZAC – Demetrius and Chiron
Crime is not an idea, it’s an act. It won’t rain. I never feel anything. OMG that “I never feel anything.” As a whisper. FUCKING.TERRIFYING. To give up freedom, to be dominated. More or less. OH MY GOD. I think the scariest part is the fact that it is funny and charming. Why would we do this? To prove that we are free.
COMMENTS: Endgame, Murder by Numbers. So good. The movie Rope – Hitchcock. Killing for intellectual thought. Really interesting. Liked how certain things – hard to decipher what is what. Really well put together. The coin. She needs to have something. Now they’re not this one thing – they’re finding differences in character. Almost might want to look at Leopold and Loeb. How does this fit with what Ashley did last week? The growth of the coin is decimating. To prove that we’re free – we are not going to let weakness take over.

LIZ – Lavinia
What win you if you gain the thing you seek? Who sells eternity to get a toy. I say no. ‘Tis not life I have begged so long for. I really like that mirrored Lavinia moment. It is sort of beautiful. And maybe Lavinia who is whole comes into the world?
COMMENTS: Pieces finding a structure amongst themselves. When we come back from break, assignments for various people. Liz’s monologue with Ashley’s work as Chiron into scene between the three of them.

We are officially in high gear in the best possible way. I’m such a sad bastard 21 hours of the day. I’m gushing a little bit. This ensemble is really exciting for me.