Plays as Literature

Would Miss Fischer have been so passionate about art if her family had not been forced to sell their "degenerate" collection in 1933? I'm not so sure.

The same thought process works for martyrs: Seeing people die for a cause attracts more fervent followers. If there is someone willing to sacrifice anything for an idea, we think, "there must be something there." Labeling Fischer's family art collection as taboo might have made her more attached to it. She may have thought there must be something there in the art that was worth risking everything to create.

I wish Miss Fischer was real. I would love to pick her brain.

This is an amazing play. Onstage I enjoy cranking up the pressure on Picasso to see what new information I can uncover about him. It's so fascinating to see how adjusting one reading of a line completely changes the way the other character responds. The second time through "unit two" Tuesday night, Jag changed his reading of a line and exploded in anger in response to something my character said. It surprised me, and revealed different information about his character than before. The surprise I felt also revealed some new things about how I viewed Fischer. Even though she thinks she's got him pinned, he still surprises her.

I'm starting to see how simply reading a play as literature in class does such a disservice to the author. Plays are obviously meant to be performed but I never believed viewing a performance to be crucial for understanding the play. I was so surprised after the first night of blocking how different my responses to Picasso were compared to how I thought they should be from just studying lines at home. Once I was up on my feet and feeling uncomfortable at the closeness of Picasso or defensive from the way he delivered a line I was able to understand the pressure Miss Fischer was under in an entirely new way!

Theater is so very fascinating.  It allows me to access true parts of myself that I never get to express in real life:  Pure manipulation, Insults you secretly think but are not appropriate to say in real life, and most of all honesty.

Acting really is truer than life.