It is strange how your understanding of a play changes. It normally happens after a performance and you suddenly think, 'So that's what that line really means' - it's like a light going on.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I get the impression sometimes that a play arrives in a sequence of events that I have no control over.
When we watch a play under the standard circumstances, we've lost volition and time is passing. A still play feels like an existential threat.
If you play a part that's been done before, on stage for instance, you feel like you're carrying a torch and staggering under the weight of it for a bit and then passing it on to somebody else.
In the first place, it must be remembered that our point of view in examining the construction of a play will not always coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its whole dramatic effect.
I've been in enough movies to know that when you're on the set and you start shooting, you're looking at playback and you get a sense of what it's going to be like.
When you're in between the white lines, the game face is on. I was only focused on the task at hand - out, safe, ball, strike - leaving little time to think about how special a player, moment or game happened to be.
A play is not a play until it's performed, and unless it's a one-person play that is acted, directed and designed by the author, many other people will be deeply involved in the complicated process that leads to its performance.
You really have to take your time; you have to know your character and your scene. The line you are about to say comes from the moment right before. It's not what's said, it's what is in between the spaces, it's what's in between the lines; that is the most important to play.
Plays are about understanding what happens, what it means. If we just leaned into the story, for lack of a better word, it would still be a powerful story but, like delight, it might disappear an hour after you saw it.
When you're doing a play you get to go full speed ahead, all night, in front of an audience. It's a roller-coaster ride, responding to other actors, it feeds you.