Quantcast

Video of the Day

Masthead

Editor-in-Chief
Alex Carnevale
(e-mail/tumblr/twitter)

Features Editor
Mia Nguyen
(e-mail)

Reviews Editor
Ethan Peterson

Live and Active Affiliates
This Recording

is dedicated to the enjoyment of audio and visual stimuli. Please visit our archives where we have uncovered the true importance of nearly everything. Should you want to reach us, e-mail alex dot carnevale at gmail dot com, but don't tell the spam robots. Consider contacting us if you wish to use This Recording in your classroom or club setting. We have given several talks at local Rotarys that we feel went really well.

Pretty used to being with Gwyneth

Regrets that her mother did not smoke

Frank in all directions

Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais

Simply cannot go back to them

Roll your eyes at Samuel Beckett

John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion

Metaphors with eyes

Life of Mary MacLane

Circle what it is you want

Not really talking about women, just Diane

Felicity's disguise

This area does not yet contain any content.

Entries in theater (3)

Friday
Feb032012

In Which We Wonder How He Pays His Bills

Things I Can't Ask My Date

by JACKIE KRUSZEWSKI

Brian is an actor. He took me to an off-Broadway opening at American Airlines Theater one recent Tuesday night, followed by an opening-night-celebration dinner/open bar at the B.B. King Blues Club nearby. If he had given me an itinerary of the evening beforehand, including mention of the "red carpet with paparazzi" entrance, I might've laughed aloud at such a clichéd plan to impress a suburban girl like myself. I had already slept with him, hadn't I?

But I forgot that the neon glow of Times Square - vis-à-vis my conception of being inside a Super Bowl halftime show - can open up to a moving art form known as Theater, built upon a craft known as Acting, which sometimes happens inside an airline-sponsored theater. An art form that, at some point, almost all of us thought we might flourish in - become famous and universally adored, buy a château, languish comfortably in the satin of fame, lend our face to makeup lines and charities, inspire the masses, and defy all our families' expectations of mediocrity. I forgot that I was genuinely impressed, and amused, and vaguely envious of Brian's world.

Some of those theater dorks you knew in high school actually went and studied drama in college. Then a smaller few of them moved to New York and went thousands of dollars into debt for grad school at Tisch, where they learn to stay afloat in the acting world AND, perhaps more importantly,  prove to casting directors that they are serious enough to go thousands of dollars into debt to be in the business. The occasional high school drama dork even loses their acne, keeps their hair, generally grows into their faces/voices/personalities, experiences amazing luck and becomes famous. But that's another story.

Then there's a vast lot of them who make do in theater, commercials and bit TV parts. They might have a couple agents, one for commercials, one for theater, one for TV. They float on and off unemployment. They pay out-of-pocket for bottom-of-the-barrel health insurance. Their parents bite their tongues supportively and buy them iPhone plans for Christmas. They reach 30 without knowing whether they'll ever have a steady income, yet more convinced than ever that this is the life for them.

I attribute this necessary self-delusion partly to the fact that they all hang out together - mostly in the little town of New York City. Some, like Brian's friend, consign themselves to production jobs in sleek, professional shows like the one we saw, and they hand out free tickets to their grad school friends, who in turn crowd around afterward congratulating them for being involved in such a brilliant show - "Those programs you designed were amazing!" Brian and his friends immediately sequestered one of the tables at the after-party that was on the stage of the B. B. King. I couldn't help but joke about the hubris of the aspiring young actor crowd staking out a table on the stage when Blythe Danner was present. That joke didn't go over well.

Neither did the joke where I told Brian that I'd thought he was gay the first few times we hung out. (If I had a nickel for every former boyfriend who once thought I was a lesbian, I'd have at least 10 cents.) He seemed perturbed by the revelation. "I know you're not gay now though." We went to our separate homes that evening and that was the last time we saw each other.

Oh yes, the play. Road to Mecca starred cinema Spiderman's wet-eyed aunt ("With great power, comes great responsibility, Peter") and 2 other tony-looking and Tony-award-winning actors, whose feats of line memorization and voice projection I will never attempt.

In 1970s South Africa, the young, progressive schoolteacher visits her older friend, a free-spirited Afrikaner widow. This is a pure friendship, we are asked to believe, that stands as a model to platonic, soul-completing romances everywhere, built on serendipity, on benevolence, and on the mutual appreciation of surrealist, Warholian lawn sculptures. (Just go read a summary, OK?)

Miss Helen and Elsa Barlow fawn over each other, they fight, they search themselves, they save Miss Helen's house and freedom from a meddling but affectionate pastor, and they realize deeper truths about themselves in the sepia-tinged glow of Miss Helen's apartment. Candles are used as a metaphor for the light of self-realization, and we know who the good guys are because they disagree with apartheid. Suicide, abortion, racism, love - it's all here, and it was a compelling, beautifully-acted play.

Brian held my hand through the entire second half. I had bought us overpriced wines before the show started - "don't worry, I have the money," I said. He leaned in at some point during the show to tell me it was a "fixed set," meaning everything was on a slight inward angle making the audience feel more ensconced by the scene. "Notice how they haven't moved the chairs at all - that's because the legs are cut on an angle." I felt duly ensconced.

While Elsa and Miss Helen were crying over their love for each other on stage, I was wondering if I could ever love an actor. Sure, he was personable, fun-loving, confident, complimentary, and a good lover. He had taken a Xanax before he came - I tried not to be appalled that he would volunteer that information so soon - but he had taken a Xanax for ME! And yet, he lived in a world that I couldn't help but view as if through a snow-globe.

Actors are not artists. I've dated Artists - they are wild and driven by some deep, creative impulse that makes them all the more attractive. They are the conduits through which art is created and their bodies are these tempestuous, bipolar tangles of wire that can magnetize as easily as they can electrocute.

Actors, though - actors are themselves the Art. Their personalities, their mannerisms, their style, their affectations - they have cultivated themselves so thoroughly by the time they're my age that they are polished, concrete versions of the person they want to be, even if the insides still run on anti-depressants.

In the end I never got to ask my many questions - how do you pay your bills? Why do you have a picture of yourself as your background on your blackberry? How do you afford a blackberry? Have you ever written a cover letter? Will you ever quit acting if you're not at a certain level of steady income by a certain time? Did you just take me to that play because you knew your ex-girlfriend's sister would be there? How do you have the self-confidence to submit your constructed Self to the brutal process of auditions on a regular basis? Will you marry me and raise our children and let me support you and your dreams?

Instead, I emasculated him piece by piece - shrugging off the price of theater wine, being overeager to buy dinners, joking about thinking he was gay - and I deserved the radio silence I got from him after that Tuesday night. Actors are men too, it turns out. And I shook his neon, snow-globe world a little too hard in my attempt to marvel at it.

But the play was lovely.

Just, lovely.

Jackie Kruszewski is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in New York. This is her first appearance in these pages. She blogs here and here and twitters here.

"One Soul Less On Your Fiery List" - Okkervil River (mp3)

"Plan D" - Okkervil River (mp3)

"It Is So Nice To Get Stoned" - Okkervil River (mp3)


Saturday
Apr252009

In Which This Week Everything Was Nothing And We Had To Watch It

The Week In Review

This Recording is the theater of all my deepest desires, most of which entail dark travails and a massive expense account. When I was at Yankee Stadium last week I took a bath that cost $40. I also had some pizza and other assorted appetizers. I sat in the bleacher section and brainstormed articles for you to enjoy later in your private life. My public life becomes your private life.

In my first life, things were more relevant and important to my existence. Rome in those days was the theater of all my struggles and ideas, as Andrew Zornoza once termed it in these pages. I was a titan of Rome, now I just blog hard and I need your support. Buy a CapGun for christ's sake. I'm tired of looking at you.

If I couldn't be myself, I'd be Ingmar Bergman, who no doubt would have recommended these articles to others using Google Reader had it been invented already.

Who would you be if you couldn't be yourself?

Don't forget these sterling blog entries:

Real life imitates fake life, which creates history. It is so easy to invent important statements like this, which will later by chronicled by my biographer as evidence I thought I was more clever than I am. I was always overrating myself, even back in Rome. Enjoy these:

Basically the world is unfolding as it will, and all we can do is stop, look around, and read the blog entries on various subjects of interest.

digg reddit stumble facebook twitter subscribe

Have you heard the new Maccabees album? Besides the Patriots selecting safety Patrick Chung, it was the highlight of my weekend. Happy Sunday, readers.

"Love You Better" — The Maccabees (mp3)

"Bag of Bones" — The Maccabees (mp3)

"Dinosaurs" — The Maccabees (mp3)

The Maccabees myspace

Monday
Apr062009

In Which Even Fourth Walls Must Come Down

artwork_images_826_167407_sol-lewitt

WALLS

by MOLLY LAMBERT

all images by Sol LeWitt

Four walls create a room, the illusion of an enclosed space, divided off from "the outside." It takes two more (a floor and ceiling) to stop nature from intruding. But even in a six-sided enclave the effects of being "inside" are primarily psychological. Tents act as protective caves, but they are purely symbolic when it comes to protecting you from bears. Houses are the best shelters we've got, but pretty useless against a nuclear bomb. It is notable that English uses the same word to refer to an external wall, and the internal sides of a room. This is by no means universal, and many languages distinguish between the two. 

artwork_images_826_167408_sol-lewitt

There are walls on the stage and in the mind as well, and they are mostly conceptual. On stage and screen "the fourth wall" refers to the concept of breaking character and stopping the plot to address the audience. 

sol-lewittCHARACTERS WHO BREAK THE 4TH WALL:

the narrator in Our Town

Groucho Marx

Bugs Bunny

(what's it all about) Alfie

Alvy Singer (Annie Hall)

Ferris Bueller

Wayne Campbell

Zack Morris

Clarissa (explains it all)

Deadpool breaks the comic book fourth wall (fourth panel?)

sol-lewitt

But there are other fourth walls in life. And they occur when people drop the pretenses required by society and subject you to real talk. Sometimes this is enlightening but it can also be super scary. It's like an outside context problem. You may not even have known the wall existed until it temporarily came down. 

sol-lewitt

PARENT/CHILD

This is the one where if you're lucky your parents attempt to make your childhood something of a stable affair. And part of that is pretending to know what is going on at all times even when you don't so that you can placate the fears of your terrified kids. Times when this wall is known to break down include: death, disasters, drunkenness (holidays). 

sol-lewitt

INTERNET

The internet fourth wall is a large, strange, and important concept in our modern social relationships. Most of us now have sprawling online identities that encompass sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Pages that are easily found through a rudimentary search and reveal a lot of personal information. Facebook is actually the perfect place for the numerous photos of your wedding/vacation/interactive online media related event that nobody other than you will want to see.

I didn't invent the human desire to archive and I don't claim to understand it, but I'll be damned if you can stop me from uploading ten thousand Jonas Brother macros. this is related to the dating 4th wall, wherein it is tacitly implied that everyone is facebooking each other but it must never, ever, be spoken of in public. Emily Gould requests that a fourth wall for the internet be built.

sol-lewitt

TEACHER/STUDENT

The horrible fact is that teachers are completely aware of the class's social hierarchy, of who is beautiful and who is repulsive, of how much power they have over you by virtue of being both an adult and a teacher. You know how sometimes you'd befriend a teacher who'd relate to you on an "equal" level, and then they'd drop some truth on you one day i.e. peel back the curtain between adulthood and high school and it would severely freak you the fuck out? It's the sort of thing you'll mull over repeatedly at dead-end jobs throughout your twenties; "THEY WERE TRYING TO WARN ME." It's a lot like how time travel works on LOST.

sol-lewitt

SEX WORKER/CLIENT

Strippers don't want to fuck you, hookers are humoring you. Sorry guys.

EX BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND

This is when you get too drunk and remind somebody that you swallowed their cum and then you're immediately plunged into an alternate universe where you and Penelope Cruz are both cats and Snake Plissken is your dad but also Atticus Finch and you get to act out Bob Dylan album covers and fall off buildings. 

sol-lewitt

SOME OTHER WALLS

Pink Floyd's The Wall

Sartre's "The Wall"

Wall Street

Rahul Dravid

WALL-E

The Berm

sol-lewitt

foo@foo:~$ wall <filename>

Lasiommata megera

Wall Drug

facebook wall

Wat's Dyke

Green Monster 

 

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording.

Bookmark and Share

sol-lewitt

Sol Le Witt is an American artist.

Walls (Circus) - Tom Petty: (mp3)

Wallflower - Bob Dylan: (mp3)

Knockin' Pictures Off Da Wall - Yungstar: (mp3)

sol-lewitt