(no subject)
The other night, one of the actresses at my work forgot her line.
There are three parts in the show when I walk the handheld microphone over to her and she says her lines into it, all backstage.
The other night, I walked up to her and handed her the mic. She's normally hyper-confident, so it was bizarre to see her wide-eyed and panicked. She looked at the microphone, then up at me, then at the microphone, then back at me, with this pleading look in her eyes, as if I was supposed to tell her what her line is. I didn't know the line either, so I just shook my head at her.
She said "um" a few times into the microphone, then mumbled a line that vaguely resembled the one in the script, all the while managing to look thoroughly terrified. Then she thrust the microphone back at me, and walked away, muttering to herself and shaking her head.
Every performance night, the script is altered just slightly by the actors. I've never actually seen anyone completely blank a line, though, and it was a weird experience to actually witness it happen close up. I don't know how to explain how it felt. I guess the feeling is the one you'd get from watching someone completely fuck up while they look to you for help. Not sure what that one's called. A mixture of pity and voyeurism, perhaps? I say voyeurism because while it was happening, I had the feeling I was witnessing something extremely private. When an actor messes up a line on stage, he hides it. Backstage, away from an audience, however, the woman was free to express her fear and confusion, and so what I actually witnessed was how, I suppose, every actor reacts internally to fucking up.
That was a really long description of a very uninteresting story. Sorry.
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I don't like any of my classes this semester. As usual, my policy has been to remain silent during all of my classes. During my literary theory class, though, there are only about twelve students, so there is no way for me to avoid speaking up.
I have this constant feeling of dread immediately preceding and during that class. I do my readings, I take notes and underline important lines in the text, and yet I feel terrified that once called on, I will make a tremendous ass of myself. I keep picturing myself being called on and then saying what I think about the passage and the professor saying, "That's an interesting idea" which translates to, "I don't know where the fuck you got that one." Or worse, I picture being so scared that my answer is wrong that I just reply, "I don't know" which will lead to everyone in the class pegging me as the lazy / brainless one.
I know I seem like I've developed some kind of anxiety disorder, but really it's just that English is really really important to me. My English class is the one that I MUST do well in. And while it's trite to base a lot of my self-worth in how well I do in my English classes, it's just how I've always been. I can seem lazy or dumb in every other class, but I must impress in English. At the moment, I'm doing the exact opposite and it makes me feel, well, bad.
Aside from that, I really don't like English majors.
When the students in my class get called on, they go on and on and on as if they're delivering their own lecture. The answer could be "blue" and they'll say, "I believe it is a hue in the cooler family of colours. While the text can be read in a way that leads one to believe it to be green, I have found that the wording actually points to a navy or perhaps an ultramarine. If you read the line on page 327, it says..." and so on until it's all I can do to keep from screaming.
That's all.
There are three parts in the show when I walk the handheld microphone over to her and she says her lines into it, all backstage.
The other night, I walked up to her and handed her the mic. She's normally hyper-confident, so it was bizarre to see her wide-eyed and panicked. She looked at the microphone, then up at me, then at the microphone, then back at me, with this pleading look in her eyes, as if I was supposed to tell her what her line is. I didn't know the line either, so I just shook my head at her.
She said "um" a few times into the microphone, then mumbled a line that vaguely resembled the one in the script, all the while managing to look thoroughly terrified. Then she thrust the microphone back at me, and walked away, muttering to herself and shaking her head.
Every performance night, the script is altered just slightly by the actors. I've never actually seen anyone completely blank a line, though, and it was a weird experience to actually witness it happen close up. I don't know how to explain how it felt. I guess the feeling is the one you'd get from watching someone completely fuck up while they look to you for help. Not sure what that one's called. A mixture of pity and voyeurism, perhaps? I say voyeurism because while it was happening, I had the feeling I was witnessing something extremely private. When an actor messes up a line on stage, he hides it. Backstage, away from an audience, however, the woman was free to express her fear and confusion, and so what I actually witnessed was how, I suppose, every actor reacts internally to fucking up.
That was a really long description of a very uninteresting story. Sorry.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't like any of my classes this semester. As usual, my policy has been to remain silent during all of my classes. During my literary theory class, though, there are only about twelve students, so there is no way for me to avoid speaking up.
I have this constant feeling of dread immediately preceding and during that class. I do my readings, I take notes and underline important lines in the text, and yet I feel terrified that once called on, I will make a tremendous ass of myself. I keep picturing myself being called on and then saying what I think about the passage and the professor saying, "That's an interesting idea" which translates to, "I don't know where the fuck you got that one." Or worse, I picture being so scared that my answer is wrong that I just reply, "I don't know" which will lead to everyone in the class pegging me as the lazy / brainless one.
I know I seem like I've developed some kind of anxiety disorder, but really it's just that English is really really important to me. My English class is the one that I MUST do well in. And while it's trite to base a lot of my self-worth in how well I do in my English classes, it's just how I've always been. I can seem lazy or dumb in every other class, but I must impress in English. At the moment, I'm doing the exact opposite and it makes me feel, well, bad.
Aside from that, I really don't like English majors.
When the students in my class get called on, they go on and on and on as if they're delivering their own lecture. The answer could be "blue" and they'll say, "I believe it is a hue in the cooler family of colours. While the text can be read in a way that leads one to believe it to be green, I have found that the wording actually points to a navy or perhaps an ultramarine. If you read the line on page 327, it says..." and so on until it's all I can do to keep from screaming.
That's all.