My acting class at the Arvada Center meets every Monday night so I'm mentally preparing myself to memorize lines and get up on my twangy Texas accent. I've been working for 5 weeks with my acting buddy Kathy, a retired art teacher on a play named, "Bourbon and Laundry" by James McLure.
Each pairing in the class has a different play they have to perform each week, and this week will be the first time we really do blocking and use real props. I'm still trying to connect to my character, Elizabeth Cauler, who loves her womanizing husband as he takes off for days at a time and comes home to tell her all about it. Then she learns she's pregnant. In real life, I wouldn't ever like this person. I'd think her unambitious, pathetic and completely ordinary. I find it hard to identify with her life's choices, and the loving feelings and sentiments she still has for her man.
We pick it up right before Elizabeth starts to cry and tells her best friend Hattie that her husband's been gone for two days. Part of my research is in trying to identify with this person, to feel melancholy and twangy like her. What was it like in Maynard Texas in the hot Summer of 1980, anyway?
To prep, I'm listening to country music on loan from my dad and watching The Last Picture Show. Thanks to Waylon Jennings, I came across a song that reminds me very much of Elizabeth and countless other good hearted women who love their good timing men: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyG7cfv6dXk
I'm thinking Urban Cowboy might cross my path before 6:00pm too. Anything to help me cry on que...
Monday, April 20, 2009
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