Harry Potter and the Media Theorists

I've been reading the Harry Potter books (slowly, if you ask Miranda) and I really do enjoy them. I've also seen a few of the movies. What strikes me about Harry Potter most of all is the tremendous opportunity it is giving a whole generation of people to understand innately the process of adaptation. This generation will have read the books, loved the books, and then have watched the films and - this is the best part - loved the films. The films are profoundly different from the books, encourage the aesthetic assertions of a rotating cadre of auteurs, and cut out and sneak in all kinds of plot development and characterization. But by being shared so widely and in two separate media, and by being successful in both, The Harry Potter stories can, I think, shed a lot of light on what is the difference between Novels and Films. It will be exciting to see what difference this makes going forward.

I am especially interested in the responsibility of adaptations and the management of expectations in adaptation. The phrase "The book is always better than the movie" can, I think, be one day responsibly replaced by the truism, "the book is always different from the movie." This is the essence of the matter. The movie, the play, it will be different from the book. Abandon any notion otherwise, but, of course, still come see it.

Benedictio mea Miranda est

I have today officially had the best year of my life. More to come. If you would like the key to happiness, I'm sorry, she's spoken for. (And is sure to correct my Latin.)

Full Storefrontal: Strawdog

The second in my series profiling small companies at Theatre In Chicago is now online, this one about Strawdog. My warmest thanks to Anne Nicholson Weber for her invaluable and patient criticism, and to Miranda for coming up with the perfect name for the series.  

UPDATE: The link to Strawdog Theatre Company's website above has been fixed.  If you still want to visit Strawdog.com feel free.  It's not a particularly useful site, but as far as random websites go, it's mercifully unpornographic.  

Close Reading

From Miranda:

Don't you think it's "testament to your burliness" not "of" on The@er? Testament is from the latin word testis, -is, meaning witness. You are a witness to your burliness not a witness of your burliness, right? Well, now that I type them both they both sound okay. Whatever. What do you think?

I think you're probably right.  I usually fix typos surreptitiously, but when they come to light with etymological notes, I guess I have to draw attention.  I think maybe I didn't really mean testament at all...

A Good Start

These are amazing.  

(Hat Tip: MEKS)

Acting That Shares, Cont'd

This will be the last video for a while, I promise, but I made Miranda watch this like fifteen times in a row the other day and I'm still excited about it.  And so on the subject of acting that shares, as in that scene from The Apartment or Lance Baker in Mauritius, I have to offer this great example from the BBCs I, Claudius with the amazing Derek Jacobi.   Start at about 1:52 and watch the panning shot of the actors listening to Agrippina's story.  Jacobi's Claudius is the first in line. 

Is it Naturalism?  By no means.  But it is, I would argue, natural; and, more to the point, it is communicative, expressive, motivated, honest, and compelling.

Cliché Watch (Bonus Edition!): Acting Out Indirect Discourse

One of the challenges of acting is not working too hard.  What I mean is, as an actor you're stuck with a certain limited amount of text and months to deal with it, analyze it, embellish it, and it can be very tempting to take every opportunity to endow your allotment with interest.

An instance of this occurs far too often with indirect discourse and it is so profoundly unnatural and uncomfortable I can't believe actors get away with it so often.  It's acting out indirect discourse.  In a scene a character says "Jimmy told me that he wasn't going up there no matter what."  An actor will want to change voices half way through and say, "Jimmy told me that, 'he wasn't going up there no matter what'" or if a little more clever the actor will at least say, "Jimmy told me that he, 'wasn't going up there no matter what.'"  

This is ridiculous.  If you were supposed to act out that part of the story it would be in direct discourse, "Jimmy told me, 'I ain't goin up there no matter what.'"  That's how it works.  Listen to someone tell a story, ever, and you'll know this.

I suppose the reason this gets me so excited is that I've been able to identify it as part of what forms the line between acting and making faces.  I've been thinking about this a lot recently.  I have a real preference for acting that shares--one of my favorite film performances is probably Jack Lemmon in The Apartment--but there really is a difference between big hearted, demonstrative acting (I'm really thinking of comedy here) and making faces--empty expressiveness.  That is, I feel like there's a big difference, but I can't pin it down.  Miranda says that I better not be able to pin it down--that there must be magic--and god know she's right. But this sounds like a dare to me.  I'll keep working on it.

P.S. In the link, check out the way he tilts his head when he takes his hat off.  

Crossing Downstage

The Cliché Watch this week is a good one.  I like it because it's directorly.  It recently took the concerted and combined efforts of Miranda and Anne Nicholson Weber to talk me out of rejecting directing altogether for politico-aesthetic (i.e. benno-is-a-high-falutin-jerk-head) reasons. Directing really is an art and it is a field that is separate from acting.  

However, one of the reasons (aside from mere excellence) that I like Theater Oobleck so much is that they are asserting the primacy of the actor.  Too much is too frequently taken from actors and given to directors and I really think this is, as I say in the post, a waste of resources.  

This week also offers a brief respite of harping on the role of the audience, which perhaps might come as a relief to loyal readers.

P.O.V.

One interesting point raised by the promenade production interview here, is the possibility of changing points of view for an audience. To that end, Miranda had great idea the other night. One thing we don't do in theater that much is play with Points of View. A lot of plays, for a lot of reasons (some good, some indifferent), maintain a unity of location from start to finish. In cinema, for a lot of reasons (some good, some bad), this almost never flies. Certainly, only a particular kind of art film would ever keep the same camera angle throughout the whole project. I bet there's a way to incorporate this for the good in theater.

The first act is the living room as we expect it. Couch faces front, ottomans in place, a coffee table, whatever. The kitchen is off stage left, the porch is off stage left. In the second act the room is at an angle. The Kitchen is now sharply down stage left, even through the audience. The door to the porch is now Up Right, anticipating an entrance and the couch faces mainly down right. It is as though the audience in now looking through the kitchen door at the living room.

Why don’t we do this, and what could we gain from it? I think it’s worth trying.