Does it make you want to vomit?
Yes?
Then it’s good art.
Beth Wilmurt said she was sick to her stomach the first two weeks of starring in “God’s Ear” at the Shotgun Theater in Berkeley, Ca. She plays a mother grieving the death of her six year old son. He drowned outside while she was in the house. She talks in cliche phrases and echos. She is unreachable until the very end of the play.
After I saw her scream her emotion in a raspy, hollow tone, her mouth looking like the one in Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, I felt sick too; although it very well could have been the birth control I had for dinner. “Closed mouths never get fed?”, hey there is one of those cliches from the play.
I was in a rush to get the theater on time, in which case it is not “better to be late than never.”
So anyway I felt sick leaving the theater, tears drying on my cheeks for the grief but also the work. The painstaking work that this ACTress had to do, has to do, to do a role like that. Always on stage, tongue twisting, emotional deep as the pool her son drowned in; a journey that is visible from beginning to end, and comedic timing! (did i mention it’s a comedy?) all this while the audience laughs at the absurd language. Hard work.
“I’m so ready to quit acting” she said though I didn’t want to believe her. And then I imagined myself doing it and I couldn’t imagine getting through it. It is hard, hard work and anyone that believes different just doesn’t know that to seem out of your mind takes technique as well as letting go. I don’t really know what that means but I want to gain the experience and the training so I can know.
And I know that the more you know the less you know, and that knowing is half the battle, and No way jose!, and not in my house, and take it to the house, and a house is not a home, and home home on the range, and ride em cowboy!, but don’t have a cow, and holy cow, and I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.
