When I was at Emerson, I took an acting class with Eric Weiss, who is a genius. In this class for non-acting-majors, I met some of the most surreptitiously and unexpectedly, earnestly talented individuals that I have ever encountered in my whole life history of theatrical endeavors. We worked on intense scenes between people with broken relationships, with brand new relationships, with no relationship at all before they met in this very bar on this very night, and I saw some of the most incredible moments of honesty.
I learned so much in that class. Next to writing my research paper for the honors seminar, it was by far the most difficult thing I worked on all semester. For our first scene, which I worked on with adorable Kosuke from Guam, I worked on channeling my own emotions and experiences to make everything feel more natural, more organic. I was able to modify myself, place myself within the context of that scene, and it flowed so wonderfully from there.
For our final scene project, I worked on a scene from John Patrick Shanley's Savage In Limbo. I had a good two-page monologue as my character, Savage, kind of dribbles on audibly about relationships with other people and ultimately admits that she's a virgin. At 32. To this woman in the bar, who she hasn't seen since high school. I was having a lot of trouble with the part - how could I find that sort of emotion, and the weird drive to tell this other woman everything about myself, within myself? Where did that come from? How would I find that in me?
Eric must have noticed my struggle, because he pointed it out in front of the class. He also made a point of saying that he gave me this part - arguably, the most challenging part in all the scenes we were working on - because he wanted to push me further. I don't remember what it was, but something clicked after that, and I pulled myself out of myself and suddenly I was Denise Savage and I felt strong. And ready. But really confused, like, it's like, everybody knows everything. and everybody argued everything and everything got hashed out and settled the day before I was born. it's not fair. they know about gravity, so nobody talks about gravity. look at me, my feet are stuck to the fucking floor - fantastic! but no, that's gravity, forget it. it's been done, it's been said, it's been thought, so fuck it. it's not fair.
i been shut outta everything by a smartness around me that won't let me think not one new thing.
and it's been like that with love, too. you're a little girl and you see the movies and maybe you talk to your mother and you definitely talk to your friends and then you know, right? somethin' a what somebody told ya inna movie or in your ear is what love is. so you go head, and you do love. and where the fuck are you then, that's what i wanna know. where the fuck are you when you've done love, and you can point to love, and you can name it? and love is the same as gravity is the same as everything else and everything else is a totally dead fucking issue.
I don't know where to begin describing the kinds of things that I learned through the socially inept, sporadically thoughtful Savage. And through the encouragement - Eric's positive reinforcement, not letting me quit; and, on the last day, when Chris Cullari told me he thought I was the greatest and most honest actor he has ever seen and if I ever want to be in a film, I should call him immediately. What does a girl even say to that!?
A year and a half later, I have been given the role of "Bobbi" in Neil LaBute's play, Some Girl(s). I have been saying for probably just that long how much I would love to have a good, solid part to work on, to apply all of these things I have come to learn about myself in the context of a character. Bobbi is incredible. She is sassy and smart, and unlike all the other women in the play, she isn't going to take Guy's bullshit. At all.
At first, I was flattered, and very excited. Bobbi is the one woman that Guy truly loved, ever - and through this weird confrontational vignette in which she appears, she allows me to weirdly live out every fantasy I have ever had about running into an ex-something. She makes him squirm, makes him work for it, and sees through everything, challenging him to be honest and to justify putting her through this weird regurgitation of emotion and pain. Eventually he is honest, and professes his love for her - which she ultimately has to reject. How many times have I played this scene in my head: being called up by [insert name of recent object of heartbreak here], reluctantly meeting him to "talk," during which he admits he's loved me all along, and won't I take him back; and following all of the prosthelitizing I'd done in the wake of the breakup, all of the advice of my girlfriends, and the reasons why I shouldn't give into it, I would walk away.
Bobbi is more complex than that. After guy's two-page monologue describing his life, which ends with "I realize now, it's all about you! I don't care if you buy it or hate me or laugh in my face...(tears up a bit) I love you and I'm .... ohh, boy. No way I'm gonna top that, so I'll just leave off right there. I love you, Bobbi. Not your sister, not anybody else I've ever known, even this girl I'm supposed to marry ... no one. Just you."
A beat.
"I wish you'd say something."
And Bobbi says, "It's very late."
Guy: "O-kay... is that metaphoric, or.. ?"
Bobbi: "I think it's sort of all-encompassing. (glances at her watch.) It's late."
And, with a pointed reference to the fact that he is getting married to another woman, she takes her leave.
What is fascinating to me is that I think Bobbi leaves for a very strange and weirdly practical reason. I think she leaves because she knows how complicated and muddy and scary it would be to reopen the possibility of a relationship with Guy. After spending who knows how many years convincing herself she's better off without this guy who just took off after a three-year relationship, she's probably in a relatively stable relationship. How tempting must it be to fall back into it, even just for a minute? And she leaves it. She leaves it in the past, where it seems to belong.
She says, Don't do some last-ditch, shitty thing that we'll both be sorry for...
I think the entire play is a commentary on how we ultimately take the easy way out, or we settle, maybe. Guy has a brief moment of passion about his love for Bobbi, and then his fiancee calls - he winds the cassette tape back up, on which he mercilessly recorded his conversation with Bobbi (my favorite part is when she finds out! Dear God!), and quietly returns to his ruthless, kind of sad and sorry life.
Because how do you live with something like that? There are some things we can't give into, some things we shouldn't - or maybe, are afraid to - normalize within our lives. To give them weight is to admit we are vulnerable. A few times in the last year, I feel like I've given into the reluctant desire to do so, to examine specific details of my life and try to reassess their presence, to realign my priorities. It's terrifying.
Nietzsche said, "I approach deep problems like a cold bath; quickly in, quickly out."
Being Bobbi is delicious and terrifying. It feels indulgent and yet, I have to remember the entire time, that she can't be funny because she's at ease. It's because she's wildly uncomfortable and scared, not knowing what to expect, or probably why she even went to meet him in the first place, or how she will react. I have to take that little bit of the me that I put into her during our first reading and twist it and hurt it and make it much, much sadder.
You think it's okay just as long as it's one person, rather than a dozen? Or a million? When is hurting okay, when you say so, or is it just open season, all of us going at it, in any way we see fit? Seriously, if you've got the answer, tell me.
...but you can't, you cannot equate like, some war with me not calling you!
Why not? Who says I can't? In fact, I already did. Just now, and I'm gonna stand by it. I am, because when you do what you do, what it sounds like you've done - a lot - people get hurt. Injured. A bit of them, some piece... it dies. They lose something that will never come back. Not ever. This part that you decide you can just ... take from them and damage. Piss on.
I, I didn't take anything from...
You did! From me, you did - not what you thought maybe, but you did do that - and you didn't care. You did not even look back. And that - that one little brutal gesture makes you more than just some ex-boyfriend.
It is very, very challenging in rehearsal to look Adorable Harry in the face and imagine that he has injured me in this way.
It makes me hope that I never let myself become so bitter and scared.
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