Monday, October 09, 2006
Citizenship a la Richard Maxwell
Hi chaps... some reflections on our task today...
I found, like a lot of you, that an accurate portrayal of the Maxwell
style, was not as easy as one might assume. To assume that because the
actors don't appear to be delivering a complex characterisation, the
parts must be easy to play, is as we've all discovered, somewhat
misguided. Indeed, having been taught in the past to spend time
'getting to know my character' it is a rather backwards approach, and I
have to say Im finding it a real challenge.
My group and I, having stripped away the emotion from the scene in
question (our very own Citizenship Interview script) found ourselves
asking -"well, how do we stop ourselves from sounding so damn
mechanical?!?! This looks rubbish!"
Personally, I felt that tackling a chunkier piece of text a la Richard
Maxwell, was slightly easier than the one-line questions that made up a
large part of our Citizenship script. For example, 1st Interviewer's
line that reads 'okay because okay... nothing to be nervous about.'
seemed to fit the Maxwell style, due to its repetition and
higgledy-piggledy format. However, simple questions such as 2nd
Interviewer's line 'Can a judge challenge the legality of the law?'
were more difficult to deliver in the 'dead-pan' way; its basic nature
sounding extremely robotic, once the emotion has been withdrawn.
I think this is something we will need to consider carefully when
devising our own piece of theatre on this topic... in order to make
sure that any writing is geared towards the Maxwell style.
Indeed, I would very much like to see some more examples of Maxwell in
action, so if anyone's interested in getting a group together to watch
some of the videoed plays in the library - if Dan is successful in
sorting out the formatting problem - then I'm in!
See you all next week...
Sophs xx
