I had acting class last night. My scene partner and I did our showing last week, so I just sat and watched others perform yesterday. The professor is tough and doesn't pull punches, but he's also fair and insightful. I like listening to his feedback because to me he seems right on. Granted, I don't know anything about acting really. He just seems to be right about what's important in story telling. What's important in engaging an audience. What's necessary to make things seem real and feel like they matter.
We watched a scene from Agnes of God between a psychiatrist and the titular Agnes. The woman who played the psychiatrist hadn't memorized the lines very well and English wasn't her first language. But more than that, she was playing psychiatrist like indifferent psychiatrist. When our professor talked to her about it, she said she found the character boring more or less. Our prof talked about how if the actor is not interested in the character, the scene, her scene partner, the audience feels that and isn't going to be interested either. He encouraged her to be curious about the character and to make a choice that was interesting to her.
I'm applying this thinking to my recent -- and now several-months-long -- malaise about writing (trying to write) in the film industry. I have not felt excited about it. It seems impossible and frivolous. How can one build one's life on it, either practically or philosophically? I've had a hopper of screenplay ideas for a several years. This morning I was thinking that maybe part of my problem is that those ideas don't stir me anymore. Maybe what I need is not to bonk out of writing altogether but to make a stronger choice within my writing. Okay, so these screenplay ideas don't seem to matter? Make a stronger choice. Feel around for a story idea that does seem to matter. Something that will get me off my psychological butt. There's interesting, stirring stuff out there. I just need to do the work to find it.
(Maybe.)
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