A most intense young man

Still stupidly busy. I may write for real soon, but I may not. Brief update: I’m $3000 in debt and hope to get my car back today. Show is going ok. I’m behind on grading and presentations. There’s some girlfun. I’m going to a philosophy conference in Texas this weekend.

In the meantime, a post from my Buxton blog:I think, at least on a good day, that I am a good enough actor to play Jack Point. It’s a challenge — my biggest challenge to date — but I do feel up to it.

I also think that I am a good enough singer to play Jack Point. His music is not particularly vocally challenging. It’s easier to sing, for example, than Bunthorne’s music. Some of it is tricky and complex, as in the Act I trio, but this just requires focus and hard work, not excellent vocal technique. The Act II patter song is one of the toughest in the cannon, but that just requires excellent diction and stamina; a mediocre singer can be a very good patter-er.

So my singing and acting is ok. One might think that’d be enough, but it’s not. And this time, it’s not the usual culprit of dancing that is throwing me off. None of my dancing is particularly involved, and I really do feel comfortable with it. I’m good enough dancer to play Jack Point, too.

What I am not a good enough example of, I grieve to discover, is a stunt man. Over two nights of rehearsal, choreographer Nina and I spent some sixty minutes of practicing the mechanics of Jack Point’s end-of-Act-II-finale collapse. And, well, I’m a slow learner. Apparently, the key is to relax all of my muscles as I fall — thigh, side, and especially neck. And the thing about my muscles is, they don’t relax. I’ve sort of always been aware that I’m a tenser-than-average person, but it took Nina’s friendly but incredulous stares at my repeated dismal failings to relax to make it clear to me just how shocking my unrelaxability is.

The repeated pattern: Nina would show me a way to fall. I’d try, but be too tense to look natural. She’d chide me about relaxing, and I’d try again, focusing on relaxing. It’d feel slightly better, but look not at all better. Repeat a couple of times, then switch to a simpler fall and repeat the whole process. Switch to a safer fall. A fall that disguises my tense neck. At one point I hit my head on the ground, and Nina said, shocked, “it’s not physically possible to hit your head from that position.”

This is all sort of funny, but I hate not being good at things. I’m still working on it.