Victories and Defeats

I wanted to share a bit of what I learned last semester with Barbara, because it is really helping me through the Pig process (and those of you with me then, Kyle, Zanny, Taylor, Chris, etc., will remember how much she emphasized this). She was all about "entanglement," as Matt has said, and specifically what that meant was giving and receiving, attacking and defending. That was why we did all those exercises with the imaginary tug-of-war, tossing the balls of energy back and forth to each other, the back-slapping game, and all the other paired-off games in which competition and listening were key. Then we developed these ideas into scenes, where we had to really SHOW how we were attacking the other person with our line, or our action, and we really had to SHOW how we were affected by the other person's attacks.

How this relates to Pig is that this show is so much fun, and funny, because it's a constant battle, a very clear entanglement between all the characters. This isn't some subtle David Lindsay-Abaire play where the attacks might be buried deep within the script - they're right out in the open, with every character. So Tammy Ryan here has done us a huge favor, and made our jobs quite a bit easier.

What we have to do now, I think, is not work on our attacks - I think we've all gotten quite good at really stabbing each other with these lines, actions, and tactics. What we need to do now, and what I've been working on, is finding where we are defeated - where we've really taken one to heart, or where at the least we don't get the response we expected. I'm talking about listening, but not listening like "I heard what you said," but active listening, listening + action: expressing your defeat so that the attacks actually become stronger and more powerful. If everyone attacks but no one is ever defeated, where's the struggle? It's like we can't ever hurt each other, and that doesn't make for powerful drama I think.

So for example, in my parrot exchange with Jack (and this is a very tame example compared to the exchanges of most of the other characters), I am working on really letting my defeat show after each line. Jack: "I never wrote," (unexpected change!), George: "You never wrote??", Jack: "He never wrote neither" (defeat - another unexpected change!), George: "He never wrote neither??" You get the idea. So my point is, something that may help is to look at your lines and see where you don't get what you want, and find a way to express that defeat to the audience. And then find your next attack and ATTACK!