In Praise of Friends -- Cyndi Scarr Crittenden

[scribblerworks]

Sometimes when you first meet someone, you have no idea of how closely you will connect with them later.  It was that way for me in meeting Cyndi.

When my family moved from Michigan to Texas, I was about to enter 11th grade.  On the sugestion of our real estate agent, I was registered at Bellaire High School.  But the courts felt Houston's plan for

Comments

[kalimac]

the difference between how a writer thinks about a story and how an actor does.Reminds me of a bit in one of the Shakespeare books I was recently reading, about actors going to critics for advice on their roles. The critics wanted to talk about technical matters like verse speaking, but the actors were capable of figuring that out on their own. What they wanted was help in figuring out, or at least assistance in deciding for their own purposes on the answers to, questions about motivations and what had been going on offstage - things the characters would know, but that aren't made explicit in the text of the play. (e.g. there may be critical dispute over whether Hamlet is really mad or not, but an actor playing the part is going to have a tough time if he can't decide on the answer, at least in his own mind for the purposes of that production

[scribblerworks]

There certainly were times when the "literary approach" was helpful in giving notes on a scene. But to be shaken out of it and made to look at whether or not the way a scene was played actually conveyed the necessary information - especially the emotional line - that helped me learn that the details of presentation were important. It pushed me further along the line of not writing "Sam was furious" to "Sam's teeth clenched. His skin flushed red. His whole body was suddenly wound tight."

Acting Shakespeare is, of course, a more tricky thing. And I can understand actors wanting a better grasp of "the big picture". After seeing some of the "lesser" (as in less frequently performed) plays (thanks to the BBC series back when), I can see that with Shakes, the beauty of the language can disguise story aspects.