No Pain, No Gain........

So I'm making my final exit two nights ago as Malvolio. It is for him (in my humble conceptualizaton of the role) a turning point, a defining moment. He has been, finally, betrayed by everyone....."Sir Toby and the lighter people", by the woman he thinks he loves (Olivia), and even by Feste, whom he believes, against all odds and good reason, has come to his aid in freeing him from the prison imposed by Toby. And worse than that, it is Maria rather than himself that has married out of the working class and into the power of the aristocracy.....his own long held dream. Worse than all that, he has been made into a laughing stock within his entire world, both upstairs and down.

What does he do? For me at least, the text suggests he fails to "get it", the why of what has happened to him. Instead, he hurls the now useless letter from "Olivia" to the ground, and spits out his revenge to the whole company "I'll be revenged!!!", and then to the audience themselves on all four sides of our arena staged production "....On the whole pack of you!!!"; he strides up the vom (stairs leading to the Lobby in this instance) and out of the theatre, having learned exactly nothing, Puritan-like in his dogmatic obstinacy to the end.

Except here's where it gets interesting. Instead of striding out up the stairs, desperate to maintain some shred of dignity and decorum, I played, as I occasionally do, more of the heat of the moment, and rushed the stairs, angry and desperate only to get out and away from them all. Unfortunately, the front of the rubber sole on my right shoe had come loose, caught the edge of the top step, and....well, you know where this is going.....down. I landed hard on my right knee, jamming it back up into my hip socket (apparently....this isn't that student doctor's blog); genuine pain, and for that matter, genuine humiliation. What I won't sacrifice for my art.

So the next day, I had to figure out how to do the role with a limp, and without the ability to work some very specific blocking on my knees. And here's where it gets interesting (finally, I promise). I perform the role that night, and because of the limitations imposed by my new injury, it gets better, and I have what feels at least like the best show I've had in weeks.

All right, so the actors among you are saying, "Well, of course, what did you expect? The whole show probably felt fresh and different, because it actually was. New choices, assuming they work on at least some level, are always going to seem sexier than what you've been performing for onto three months now! Doesn't necesarily make them "better" choices". Yes and no, but alright, point taken. I think it's a little more complicated than that; this kind of event resonates on deeper levels.

As an actor, we spend an awful lot of rehearsal time trying to get it right, whatever the hell that means. As a young actor if my craft suffered from any identifiable problem it was my need to set things in stone, to seek some kind of nearly attainable perhaps perfection, or my best shot equivalent, and then repeat it as perfectly as possible every night. That was for me the point. So at some stage hopefully you wake up to the absurdity of that particular quest, and learn to be flexible in what it is we do. And here again, clearly the idea isn't so much about trying to get "it" right, as it is trying to get it all right tonight. For a (somewhat) anal compulsive like myself, there is great value in being reminded of that.

But more than the straightforward point about craft, there is something else out there around the edges of the event that I can't easily articulate, but seems important somehow, like a scent that surprises you, deeply familiar in an unfamiliar place. Perhaps it is simply this; that change, expected or, as in this case, sudden and painful, is constant. And opening up to that idea is like breathing deeply......because sometimes, change turns out to be for the good.

Maybe the point is, or becomes, to practice the habit of unclenching for awhile......to see where the change might take us. Now there's a radical thought, at least for someone raised by slightly fanatical shanty NY Irish Catholics (if your not suffering or, alternately, drunk, what is the point?). Somewhere in the background, floating over the sound of the temple bells, we hear the mantra "...beter actor, better person, better actor....".

Of course, next time I think I'll just get the damn shoe fixed.