You'd Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow

Author:Kathleen Glasgow [Glasgow, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786079695
Google: AO0pzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2021-10-13T23:00:00+00:00

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In Drama Club, Simon Stanley paces the stage with a giant piece of chalk. He talks about staging and blocking. “Actors are like chess pieces on the stage. Wherever the director decides they need to be in a particular scene, it’s designed for maximum emotional effect.” He points to the ceiling and to the sides of the stage. “Lighting helps, too. Lighting can highlight a particular moment. It’s a subtle signal to the audience that something is important, an emotion is heightened, things are changing, or ending. Make sense?”

Everyone nods.

“A role is the part you play in a production. Characters are the moving parts to keep the story evolving, keep all your chess pieces in play, keep the emotions alive. Actors for the stage learn how to use their presence, their voice, their physicality, to convey the meaning of the story. The play. ‘The play’s the thing,’ as we’ve all heard.”

Simon marks an X in the middle of the stage. “You,” he says, pointing to me. “Stand here, please.”

“What?” The blood drains from my face. Everyone is looking at me. Lucy Kerr whispers to the girl next to her and glares at me.

Jeremy nudges my shoulder with his. “Go on,” he whispers.

Simon points to Priscilla. “Pris, you go out into the seats, the middle row.”

Priscilla jumps off the stage, lean and lithe as a colt, and runs to a seat. I look beyond her to the seats in the back, where Joey usually sits if he doesn’t have tutoring. I wish he was here now. That might make me less nervous.

Simon says, “Come now, Emory, dear. The lovely thing about theater is that we simply have no time for shyness. The audience can’t wait forever.” He smiles gently.

I walk hesitantly to the X, all eyes on me.

“Now, repeat after me,” Simon says.

“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

I repeat it, but softly.

“Now, what do you think that means?” Simon asks.

I blink. Sweet, getting sour by something done, or something someone has done? Beautiful things that die are worse than ugly things we expect to die?

I say that, but quietly. Simon says, “Wrong! Just kidding. Maybe. Maybe that’s your interpretation of it. That’s fine. You have to try to interpret your character’s emotions and motivations from what the playwright has given you on the page, and from what the director asks you to do. Bring them to life. Now, who is speaking?”

“A girl?”

“Okay, that’s a good start. Where is she?”

I imagine a girl walking in a field of flowers.

“In a field of flowers?”

“Okay. We can start there. Do you think she’s sad, wistful, mad?”

“She sounds…maybe wistful, like she’s sad that lilies die. I don’t know, this is a weird quote.”

“Shakespearean sonnet, child. Nothing weird about that. If we don’t have the Bard, we don’t have half of our language. Now, your character is a wistful girl in a field of flowers. Let the audience know that. Start by thinking about whom she might be talking to.

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