Likeable Villains, Part 1

So you guys. One of the side effects of not having a husband for the summer is a vast amount of TV-watching. Largely consisting (now that I'm all done being obsessed with Roswell) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I just finished Season 4, and one thing that's really struck me so far with the series is how much I liked the Mayor from Season 3.

The first few times I saw him in the series, I didn't actually notice him. He was just some higher-up who talked to Principal Snyder sometimes. But as he got more screentime, and as his character and evil plot were developed more, I started to like him a lot.

If you haven't seen Buffy, well, you might want to look into it some time. Buffy is a Vampire Slayer, the Chosen One. She hunts and kills vampires and demons, keeping the world safe for democracy and not being killed on the street corner. She lives in the town of Sunnydale, California, which is located on top of a Hellmouth, pretty much a huge hotbed of demonic activity.

It's revealed in Season 3 that the mayor, Mayor Wilkins, is actually over 100 years old, and has been the mayor before, posing as his own ancestors. He built Sunnydale on top of the Hellmouth on purpose, because of some dark ritual he's going to enact, at which he's going to Ascend. (It's revealed that this Ascension is going to transform him into an uber-demon that's going to kill them all, thus enforcing the "authority figures as demonic evil forces" symbolism that the entire show, being based on a "high school as Hell" metaphor, revels in.)

So far, he's not sounding too awesome. I mean, ok. Dark ritual, kill everyone, become a demon. The fun thing with this character is that instead of being all byronic and brooding, he's a total goofball. He befriends a rogue slayer named Faith, and often treats her like a lovable niece, offering her minigolf and ice cream, and dressing her up in pretty sundresses. You know, in between giving her presents like very sharp knives and asking her to kill people for him.

Nontraditional Performance

Have you seen this??

A girl took all these pictures of herself with a whiteboard, quitting her job, then emailed it out to the whole office, because apparently her boss was a total d.b. Then today, this came out... apparently the whole thing was a hoax.

Here's what makes this fun for me: She's an actress. They held a casting call and everything, to cast this girl as Jenny.

SO. What makes this an acting job? She didn't have any lines. She was never actually filmed. As far as performance goes, there was very little, beyond still facial expressions and poses. Is this different than a modeling job?

Is this a performative experience for us, the "audience," as it were? Performance, to me, is generally defined as a person doing or saying something with the knowledge that he/she is being watched/observed. That makes this a performance... in that the blog post was done with the intention of fooling us, with being seen, and with being believed.

Random question: (If this were a class we'd discuss it, but it's not, so just think about it, ok?)

How are these pictures of "Jenny" different than these pictures?

Could we call these pictures a form of performance as well? (Just throwing this out there: I could probably call just about anything a performance-- and come up with a way to justify calling it that. lol)

(The Disney pictures, by the way, are part of the Disney Dream Portrait Series, as photographed by Annie Leibovitz.)

Theater'd Out

We'll see if I can get through this, eh?

So. I just did a run of The King and I. It was... really blah.

The production itself was really good. I'm not sure that the casting choice of the King was, as it were, ideal, but then, there were NOT a lot of qualified auditioners. Let's just leave it at that. He's a good friend of mine, and I'm glad he got the chance to play that role, but... it definitely wasn't type-casting. All things considered, he did very well.

But that's not the point here. The point is me. And the fact that I hate theater right now.

I would show up every day and think, ugh. I'm so over this. When can I go home?

I'm just not excited about theater right now. In fact, as aforementioned, I hate it.

There are a couple of reasons. One of the big ones is that I want to play a lead at some point, and I just don't see it happening. J.A., my director friend, who pretty much promised me a lead role in King&I, totally screwed me over. On the one hand, sure. It worked out fine for him not to give me a lead part. He still got my support, I showed up and did everything that was asked of me. On the other hand, I have to wonder how much he tried to get me that part. He told me that his production team had a big part in making those casting decisions, and reading between the lines, that says to me that they overruled him. Did he have to pick his battles? One of his really good friends ended up playing Lady Thiang (which is NOT a role I was up for). Did he choose to fight to cast her, instead of fighting for me?

Going to a different theater is an option that wearies me. If I do that, I'll have to find a show that has a big ensemble. Then I'll have to deal with being in a show where I only go onstage a couple times, in the big ensemble numbers. THEN I'll have to deal with stupid loud people that I want to punch in the face backstage (or worse, I'll have to deal with children). On top of all that stupid crap, I'll have to do it all while watching someone in the lead role that isn't even as good as me. Then I'll have to do it again. And again. To get a big role in a community theater production, in fact, I'll have to stick with the same theater and/or director for several years. (As J.A. is currently in the process of proving -- thanks a lot.) (In fact, he's also in the process of proving that I have to not only be friends with the director, but with the entire production team - stage manager, vocal director(s), AND choreographer. I may or may not give him another chance to drive home that point.)

The other reason I hate theatre is because I've done three shows in a row now. I started rehearsals in October, and I've been working on something ever since. Even my "break" before King and I didn't really count for me, since it wasn't nearly long enough.

There's got to be more to it; after all, I have an entire Bachelor's Degree just in theater. So much of it during college didn't drive me crazy; there's got to be a reason why it's driving me nuts now. Of course, I wasn't performing in college, just studying.

Anyway, this whole post sounds really super bitter. (Especially the bitter parts.) Can we just agree to not hold it against me? Life's not fair, I admit, and I'm not here to be pampered or pandered to or anything like that. And I'm sure everyone picks up similar things to be bitter about during their lives. I'm pretty sure this bitterness has something to do with my anti-theatre kick right now. I can't figure out if it's a cause or effect. Or maybe they're both effects. In any case, that's where I'm at right now, and why the place I'm at isn't a stage.

Nontraditional Casting FTW!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/theater/11hunt.html

This is NOT the first time this has happened, but Helen Hunt is playing the Stage Manager in Our Town off broadway right now, a role usually played by a man. Which is awesome.

I tried to do this earlier this year, in a local production of Willy Wonka. They posted a message on a local forum that they needed more adults for the show, so I called the director and asked if I could come to callbacks and audition for the role of Willy Wonka. Any guesses about what she said?

Admittedly, this was a very small theater, and it tends not to try anything too "out of the box." I was still pretty disappointed; how cool would that be?? At least Helen Hunt gets to live my dream.

Go read all about it here.

A Story Within a Play

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/theater/18metal.html

So this is a cool story. This author wrote a book, which was banned by a school board. Which, the school board had these meetings, and invited the author to come to one and talk to them all. And then the author wrote a play about a book that gets banned from a high school and the author of the book comes to the small town where it was banned and meets people. That play, by the way, opened on Broadway this week and stars Billy Crudup. So there you go.

Iron Man 2

Did you see Iron Man 2? I saw it on Monday, and let me tell you something: Those people were trying too hard. But they were having a heck of a lot of fun.

I liked the performances, and I liked a lot of the dialogue. I was pretty much either laughing at the dialogue because it was funny, or because it was super-duper lame/cheesy. (A couple of times, my husband leaned over and said, "Stop laughing! That was lame!" To which I had to reply, "I know; that's why I laughed!")

I thought that the plot was a little forced, though. Mickey Rourke's character, Ivan Vanko, was this dangerous powerhouse, but I never felt like he got to cut loose and really wreak havoc. Where's the rampage through the streets? Where's the dangling the girl off a huge cliff, accompanied by the obligatory "save the girl or the bus full of children" moment? It was just, Oh, he's in prison. Oh, run before he blows something up. And then, in what really should have been the most bada** scene of all, Tony and Rhodey just kind of... win.

The other thing that was forced was Scarlett Johansson. Scarlett, what were you doing in this show? No, really. Why were you here? Besides enforcing the "hey, the guy whose purpose seems to be training and security is very bad at boxing and fighting!" gag, which I hated.

(Also, why did you take your hair down at the end, to fight the minion-guys? If I were going towards the huge fortress, knowing I was about to have an epic battle against the BadGuy (which you did), I'd be putting my hair UP, no matter how perfectly bouncy and curled it is. I'm just sayin'.)

Anyway, I found this cool article about Robert Downey, Jr. and Mickey Rourke in the movie. Here it is, for your pleasure.

Feeling Better

Ah, the drama of the Theatre. If only people knew what kind of craziness goes on backstage! I think they'd be waay more impressed with the kind of magic we thespians create ON stage.

So far, rehearsals for my latest show are going well. Even though I'm only a lowly chorus girl, I've already impressed the music director, earned a solo in one of the big songs, and received a VERY poor impression of the person who got the role I wanted (code name: Public Frenemy #2).

This last is a positive thing, because I think it's healthy to have something to be a little bitter about. As long as there isn't too much rancor there (which there's not... I promise). I just think that... well, I wouldn't be much of a thespian if I didn't relish the drama, y'know?