Richard Maxwell Project

After first watching an extract of a New York City Players production in class the acting style seemed so mundane and straightforward, it made me automatically assume that Richard Maxwell's work would be a simple style to imitate. (- oh how wrong I was!) It wasn't until trying it out in Monday's class that I realised how it is much easier to 'over act' than it is to 'under act', as in effect this is what we are having to do. Any emotions, gestures or reactions that come naturally to us in every day to day life we must detach ourselves from in order to not portray this in our 'New York City Players' style production. This bland, dead-pan style goes against the majority of what we have ever been taught in drama classes in the past, as I think Sophie pointed out - we are constantly being reminded to connect with our character and know their background, who they are, where they come from, what they like, what they don't like.

So I asked myself how is Maxwell's style going to work in a society of theatregoers that want to see these qualities in a performance and how are we going to achieve this desired style? Heather left a link on her blog which helped me to understand this, it was a review of which Maxwell had quoted on his own work;

and another quotation towards the end which read,

My feeling is, it's already real because you're doing it.

This made me realise that an audience could find a Richard Maxwell interesting to watch because perhaps it makes the work more naturalistic, (in a back to front sort of way), the very act of being yourself is more real than emotional recall, adding emotion to a performance that you don't feel at the time. I am going to be intrigued to my reaction to a NYC Players production and wonder whether this lack of emotion will allow me to connect to the characters better, more realistically and maybe even have more empathy with them.