Rachel Corrie Update

Okay, so I haven't been updating on my senior project nearly as much as I should be.

Mostly, it's going well!

Partly because of senioritis, I think (which I mentioned in my previous post), I have not been nearly as proactive with Rachel Corrie stuff this semester as I was last semester.

We have, however, had a couple of rehearsals. My fabulous stage manager and I had a pick-up rehearsal a couple/few weeks after classes started again in which we just ran lines. After having not worked on it really at all for several weeks, I was worried I would have lost a lot of it. But I didn't struggle too much. It's still there!

Then, a couple weeks ago, we actually got the first 1/3 of the play back up on its feet with props (no costume though). And my director and I have been working pieces as well--changing some things here and there. I'm excited I get to do it again. A couple of the things we're re-working in the play will be the "February 7" section, or the part where Rachel talks about us all being kids, and the poem in which she talks about the mental health clients. We're hoping to make them clearer, easier to follow, and more visually striking. I think it's safe to say that we won't be changing the majority of the staging, however.

A couple of weeks ago, some people from the intercultural student services department held an evening lecture in the Century Dining Room entitled something like "God, Peace, and the Middle East," so naturally I went. It was pretty good, and I'm glad I was there. I even met someone who had seen Rachel Corrie first semester who talked with me about it for a while. Unfortunately, I didn't get to talk to everyone I wanted to, and I left without meeting an Armenian professor I didn't know who has a unique, personal perspective on happenings in the Middle East. I did get to sit down with him and have coffee last week, however, and we had a great conversation. I think we both left feeling encouraged by each other, and I had a little bit of a broader view of some happenings in countries other than Israel and Palestine.

Also, one of the professors who had her classes see Rachel Corrie last semester gave me written responses from some of her students. They were fascinating, enlightening, and encouraging for various reasons, and I was thrilled to get feedback in that way. I've never experienced that before. Things like:

“I liked how [the Sojourn review] mentioned Emmett’s fight for performing this play at IWU. It reminded me of... Rachel Corrie’s struggle to make a difference... I really enjoyed this performance.”

© Greg Fiebig 2012

I'm also very excited to get to perform this play in the Black Box this semester--I think the atmosphere will be very conducive to this particular play.

I still have some reading I would like to do, and there are still details to iron out, but we'll get there.

I have a feeling April 4 and 5 will be here before I know it.

Senior Life: Continued

I'm planning on two posts today.

This one: I will talk about senioritis, about options, and also about wanting something so bad you can taste it but not wanting to get your hopes up.

The next post: I will give a progress update on my senior showcase My Name is Rachel Corrie.

But firstly.

I always thought senioritis was a myth. All through school. High school. College. Whatever. I never thought it was actually a real thing. I thought it was some lame excuse people made up so they could skip through the hallways throwing papers around, refusing to give a flying flip.

Then I got to this semester. I was fine right up until this last semester of my undergraduate career. And then it hit, and I found out senioritis was real.

Oh, and it doesn't feel anything like I thought it would, either. I thought, if it did exist, it would be this blissful, beautiful place where I just stopped caring. But no. Oh no no. I still care. I still hit panic mode when it's the night before and I still haven't started that assignment that's due at 8 a.m. I still get ulcers worrying that everything won't get done.

I just don't do it. I can't make myself! It's awful.

Fortunately (and this actually might be part of the problem), I really do have a very easy semester. The easiest semester I've ever had, actually. I've worked hard to get here, it feels fantastic, and I'm just coasting on my way out.

Speaking of which, let's now talk about options.

About this time last year, my greatest fear was of getting to the end of senior year and having zero options and no place to go. Which would then lead me to just spontaneously up and move to a big city where, resourceless, I would probably crash and burn and end up eking out an existence from a glorified cardboard box.

Or worse, an actual cardboard box.

Well, those fears have been mostly alleviated.

I have options!

Which is a lot more than many seniors in college can say before they graduate.
What I didn't realize is that, when you have options, the options don't always play well together and then you have to make decisions.

So this week, I've had to wrestle with which options I will or won't give up, based on what might or could happen. Fortunately, I found out I can delay actually making a decision for a couple of months which helps immensely.

Which brings me to:

Have you ever wanted something really badly?

I'm not talking about really wanting a popsicle on a hot day. I'm talking about, like, if you get this thing, it would simultaneously affirm your life choices up to that point, fulfill you, and give you hope for your future. And you know you shouldn't put so much stock into it, because when you step back it doesn't sound like much. But you know that, now that you've built it up in your mind, you'll be devastated if you don't get it?

That's this job I've applied for.

And I know, if I don't get it, I'll probably be able to look back and be okay with it. And that there will probably be other opportunities. And I'll probably be at peace with wherever I end up this fall.

It's just weird because most things I've wanted this badly I've usually had some measure of control over whether or not they come to be. It's usually something that, if I work hard enough, or practice enough self-control, or save up enough, or think through enough, I can get it. But not this. I've done everything I can and now it's out of my hands and I don't even know what my odds are of it actually happening.

I REALLY WANT THIS JOB.

So anyway. To get my mind off of it, I'll move on and talk about my senior project. Next post!

Character ≠ Actor

First, an extremely hilarious video.
Please, PLEASE, for your own sake, view this video of Sir Ian McKellen sharing his bountiful wisdom on the art of acting. You won't regret it--

http://www.wimp.com/goodactor/

Isn't he wonderful? I know. Okay. Now. Let's talk a little bit about acting.

As the wonderful Sir Ian says (multiple times) in this video, "I pretend..."

This video is hysterical because of how obvious that is. Of course he's pretending to be Gandalf. That's what he does. He's an actor. Duh.

So why is it so difficult for some of the people I've encountered to comprehend that I am not the person I pretend to be when I'm on stage?

My senior project, which I've written about before, is a production of the one-woman show My Name is Rachel Corrie--a choice I knew would be controversial on my evangelical Christian university campus. While it broaches the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it first and foremost tells the story of a twenty-three-year-old who looked at what was happening in the world, saw injustice, left her home to go live in the midst of it and help in the only way she knew how, and was killed while protecting the home of a civilian Palestinian family. The problem, for my community? Rachel Corrie happens to have held a very pro-Palestinian view--a perspective not widely held or accepted by many Christians, who are largely pro-Israel. I was worried that this would be problematic from the beginning, and I was afraid that I might not be permitted to perform the play for reasons having to do with politics. To my surprise, however, the politics of the play were not the biggest problem. The language was.

There are 22 words that might be considered "vulgar" in the script (depending, of course, on your definition of "vulgar"). Believe me, I know, because I had to count them up and justify them when I wrote the two different proposals I had to submit. My justification for performing the script unedited was simple: this script is different. The story isn't fictional--Rachel Corrie was a real person who really lived, but the script is also actually comprised of several of Rachel's letters, journals, and emails that were compiled and edited into script form. So if you were to ask, "Who wrote the script?" Well, in a sense, Rachel did. And to ask to edit the script? It seemed disrespectful, flat-out wrong, in some way, to try to censor and sanitize Rachel. To "clean up" her language would be to misrepresent who she was, to belie her memory. For what? To make a few people a little more... comfortable?

Really?

Fortunately, I was allowed to present the play in its unedited form, albeit privately. Which was what I'd been trying to do in the first place. I couldn't have been more pleased.

But there are people who have struggled with my performing this play. My pastor, who was opposed to the play even being read on campus, said that he was "disturbed" by the thought of the words coming out of my mouth.

But that's just it.
With all due respect, don't you see? When I am on the stage, my mouth is not truly my own. These aren't my words. They're Rachel's. That's why I have to keep them. I'm telling her story, and I'm telling it her way.

A wise theatre artist I know put it this way:

These are not your words. And this is not your play. This is the playwright's play. And she had every right to write what she wrote. Don't hide from it. Tell the truth of this story.

Last semester's performances went better than I ever could have predicted. Everything went off (mostly) without a hitch (except for that one performance when an audience member's GPS began giving rather loud directions in the middle of the play). And I've gotten more positive feedback than I could have imagined possible. People got it. They were challenged by what they saw. It made them think. And they even enjoyed it. But the one thing I've probably heard the most, even from people who know me, is that they forgot it was me. They forgot my name is Kendra. They forgot that I'm a college student. They forgot I wasn't Rachel. They willfully suspended their disbelief enough to forget, for a while, that they were sitting in a recital hall in the Midwest watching a play and, somehow, the story--and Rachel--came to life. And that means I did my job.

But then the play ends. The lights come up, I walk off the stage, the audience walks out of the theatre, and my name is Kendra Emmett.

CHARACTER    ≠    ACTOR

When people can't separate these two things, it can become dangerous. Don't believe me? There are tragedy/horror stories of what has happened when actors get too intertwined with their characters. It can be extremely psychologically damaging, for actor and audience alike. There was a lot of speculation about Heath Ledger's accidental drug overdose after what many would call unhealthy immersion in the mind of his character, the Joker, in The Dark Knight. In her book The Friendly Shakespeare, Norrie Epstein tells the story of an audience member in the Old West who stood up in the middle of a performance of Othello, pulled out his pistol, and shot the actor playing Iago. And don't even get me started on the disconcerting stories about Twilight fans. A girl once asked Robert Pattinson if he would bite her. She was completely serious.

That's a little extreme, but it's exactly what I'm talking about.

Robert Pattinson is not a sparkly vampire.

Ian McKellen isn't actually a wizard.

I could probably not be described as a "messy, articulate, Salvador Dali–loving chain-smoking" political activist.

And please don't misread that as some sort of judgment. In fact, a rule of acting is to never judge your character. When I've actively been trying to learn about and better understand Rachel so I can portray her more effectively, it would have been hard not to come to appreciate and admire her. Was she a saint? No. God knows I'm not either. She was a real person with powerful convictions and beliefs, who happened to occasionally use language that my university and people in my community happen to disapprove of, and who I will do my very best to bring to life for you.

Herein lies the actor's paradox. We desperately want the audience to forget, but not to forget.
I am telling you a lie. And I want desperately for you to believe that lie. While simultaneously remembering the truth.
This is why we say we make believe.

And so, in conversations about my performance as Rachel Corrie, I've been asked by at least three different people, "So... do you swear?" and, from what I understand, quite a few people thought I smoked real cigarettes.

Neither of which are inherently bad things. For some people, however, these would be indictments. Which is a whole other post in itself. But that's for another time.

So, for now, I'll just smile and say, "Have you ever heard of Sir Ian McKellen...?"