Because of Dave's repeated taunts, I am posting. Thanks, Dave.
Kiss Me, Kate rehearsals have begun and things are crazy, as is normally the case when in production. Class all day, rehearsal all night. But man, is it fun. It's just plain exciting. I leave rehearsal exhausted but energized and enthusiastic. This could be the role that really revolutionizes my acting skills. I get to play a big old self-aggrandizing ass. Actually, two of them since both Fred (the actor) and Petruchio (the character he plays) are amazingly attractive jerks that you hate to love and love to hate. Funny that such an enormous acting challenge should arise from such a silly play. Or is it?
Anyway, another thing I'm working on for my acting class is a long speech from
Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw. I must perform it tomorrow and will type it here as an aide to memorization and to give you an idea of what kind of thing I'm actually doing in class. The character is Don Juan and the setting is hell. Here it is:
"I learnt it by experience. When I was on earth and made those proposals to ladies which, though universally condemned, have made me so interesting a hero of legend, I was not infrequently met in some such way as this: the lady would say that she would countenence my advances, provided they were honorable. On inquiring what that proviso meant, I found that it meant that I proposed to get possession of her property if she had any, or to undertake her support for life if she had not; that I dsired her constant companionship, counsel, and conversation to the end of my days and would take a most solemn oath to be always enraptured my them; above all, that I would turn my back on all other women forever for her sake. I did not object to these conditions because they were exorbitant and inhuman, it was their extraordinary irrelevance that prostrated me. I invariably replied with perfect frankness that I had never dreamt of any of these things; that unless the lady's character and intellect were equal to or superior to my own, her conversaton must degrade and her counsel mislead me; that her constant companionship might, for all I knew, become intolerably tedious to me; that I could not answer for my feelings a week in advance much less to the end of my days; that to cut me off from all natural and unconstrained intercourse with half of my fellowcreatures should narrow and warp me if I submitted to it and if not would bring me under the curse of clandestinity; and finally, that my proposals to her were wholly unconnected with any of these matters and were the outcome of a perfectly simple impulse of my manhood toward her womanhood. Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush for it, but I cannot help it. Nature is a pandar, Time a wrecker, and Death a murderer. I have always prefered to stand up to these facts and base institutions of their recognition. You prefer to propitiate the three devils by proclaiming their chastity, their thrift, and their lovingkindness; and to base your institutions on these flatteries. Is it any wonder that the institutions do not work smoothly?"
