The quote above is from Tennesse Williams's play Summer and Smoke. The other really exciting piece of material I got to work on at the end of the semester was a very sexy and incredibly touching scene from this play in my acting class. This was probably my favorite scene I have ever worked on because it was such a vulnerable character named Alma who is just so uncomfortable and insecure about herself. The plays takes place in 1916 Mississippi where she is 22 years-old and the daughter of the minister. She is a very pure girl who runs a rectory. She is in love with John, the boy next door, who is a young doctor, and quite a bit of a player who always has a new girl. He is in love with her also, but in a different way. He wants to possess her and love her body, whereas she wants to love his soul. She goes to his house at 2 in the morning because she is having a panic attack (of course regarding her love for John) and can't sleep. She wants to see John's father, who is also a doctor, but she instead has to have John examine her as she knows that in the next room is the woman that he is having a current affair with. It's such a good scene, and it's such a great play!
The play is a constant conflict of the two wanting to love and be with each other, but knowing that they can never be together because they are not right for each other. I guess that is life, though. So many musicals and movies consist of the nice girl managing to change the tough guy and make him good, but is that really life? Yes, we can change elements of ourselves and certainly compromise qualities for people we love, but we never really change who we are. John can't get Alma to become a provocative girl who sleeps around with men and Alma can't get John to be a pure man who wants to love someone's soul. They are who they are.
I am always amazed how early our character traits are developed and then they never change. I was thinking about this because it was our last day of junior acting studio on Friday and we had to talk about our growth and what we learned. I started talking about the birthday parties I would go to when I was seven or eight that were at craft and ceramic places and you got to paint a mug or do something artistic. I was always the first person finished and it was not because I was this amazing visual artist. It was because I couldn't accept the creative process and just wanted immediate results and instant gratification. As a result, my mugs were sloppy, unspecific, and not very unique.
I'm 20 now and I'm still dealing with the same problem. My life has moved away from mug-painting and ceramics classes, but creating a character and a meaningful scene or song demands the same creative process that takes time, and I find it very hard to be in the moment and stop focusing on what the final product will be. While I have gotten better at this, it is most definitely a problem I will always face as a person and an artist.
Of course it's all connected. And it is an issue that everyone deals with, trying to live in the moment and not worry about the future. I'm currently singing Georgia Stitt's song "This Ordinary Thursday," where this woman is so happy because she is in love with someone and can just live in the moment of her love and not think about what tomorrow might bring. I love theater and art that deals with problems such as that which everyone can relate to. That's the kind of theater I want to do. And that is why I love theater and want to spend the rest of my life dealing with all issues regarding humanity and insecurities. We all want to change ourselves and deal with the struggle as we realize we can't really ever change who we are.
So living in the moment in a scene might be my issue, but it's a life issue for anyone and everyone at some point in their life. It is a universal theme and as they say in Monty Python's Spamalot, "in a thousand years, this will still be controversial." Summer and Smoke still affects me in 2009 because of the themes of lust, love, and attempting to change oneself. Those will never leave society, but that's what makes good art so incredibly cool.
On that note, here's one of my new favorite songs by contemporary musical theater composer Scott Alan about just being in the moment and owning what you're doing
right now.
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