So here's a thing I do: I hear about a project that interests me and I start doing research on it before I even know if I'll be a part of it. Example: A college friend of mine, Liz Shipe, just posted an audition notice for her new commissioned work based on Robin Hood adventures. Liz is brilliantly talented (and already cast herself as Maid Marian - shameless pet projects are kinda Liz's thing, and she's totally allowed these because they always turn out, well, awesome.) Have I plugged her enough? Cuz this blog is about me, damnit. Anyway, since playing Marian is out of the picture, I immediately set my sights on showing off my sword skills and auditioning for Will Scarlet (who has been re-imagined as a girl before)... needless to say I spent a lot of my morning looking up various iterations of the character. And not just for the dreamy Christian Slater pictures.
I just got cast in a production of Glass Menagerie. When I told this to my mom, her hands immediately clasped in front of her heart and she almost yelled "That's a perfect part for you!" .... my first reaction to this is, really? I like to think of myself as a sword-wielding, red-hooded badass... but alas, I am a bit of a waif. (Working on it - swear to god I went running this morning!) As much as I love being in plays, I used to feel like the character of Laura suffers from the same flaws as too many non-heroines, like Ophelia or that girl in Les Miserables (I'm bad with musicals.) Their own insecurities cripple them to the point that all they can do is fall in hopeless love with some jerk and never really achieve anything for themselves. Yuck. Kinda weak. (At least Laura doesn't commit suicide.)
But! I started to look up some interesting factoids about this play, and Mr. Tennessee himself. Apparently, Glass Menagerie is incredibly autobiographical - Tennessee (actually Thomas!) had a sister, Rose ("Blue Roses") who suffered from some kind of vague mental disorder, and while he was away, her lobotomy (because back then when something was wrong with you they either electrocuted your head or cut a chunk out of it) got botched and she remained institutionalized for the rest of her life. Needless to say: holy cow.
After re-reading the play a couple times, my instincts all point towards Laura definitely having some kind of high-functioning autism. I pushed these instincts aside of course, because pretty little actresses playing pretty little roles aren't supposed to want to be anything but pretty and little - fragile and young, sweet and incomplete without a male love interest. Barf. I don't know how I'd get through that. (Those people don't exist unless they were written by a totally lame playwright - which Mr. Tennessee is NOT.) Laura, to me, is quite obviously missing a couple gears, but she compensates for them in some really fascinating ways. This is my "in" to this character... I know more about neurodiversity than, say, typical female-gendered behavior. I've been reading this and loving it. I feel like I'm starting to finally know what Laura's all about. This is how I get to know my students, too - I look at them and go "There's something atypical about how you approach reality, how you solve problems" and I talk to them a little and try and understand how they learn. It's my opinion that everyone is a little diverse in the way their neurons are wired - some of us just moreso than the mean. As the linked article states:
I just got cast in a production of Glass Menagerie. When I told this to my mom, her hands immediately clasped in front of her heart and she almost yelled "That's a perfect part for you!" .... my first reaction to this is, really? I like to think of myself as a sword-wielding, red-hooded badass... but alas, I am a bit of a waif. (Working on it - swear to god I went running this morning!) As much as I love being in plays, I used to feel like the character of Laura suffers from the same flaws as too many non-heroines, like Ophelia or that girl in Les Miserables (I'm bad with musicals.) Their own insecurities cripple them to the point that all they can do is fall in hopeless love with some jerk and never really achieve anything for themselves. Yuck. Kinda weak. (At least Laura doesn't commit suicide.)
But! I started to look up some interesting factoids about this play, and Mr. Tennessee himself. Apparently, Glass Menagerie is incredibly autobiographical - Tennessee (actually Thomas!) had a sister, Rose ("Blue Roses") who suffered from some kind of vague mental disorder, and while he was away, her lobotomy (because back then when something was wrong with you they either electrocuted your head or cut a chunk out of it) got botched and she remained institutionalized for the rest of her life. Needless to say: holy cow.
After re-reading the play a couple times, my instincts all point towards Laura definitely having some kind of high-functioning autism. I pushed these instincts aside of course, because pretty little actresses playing pretty little roles aren't supposed to want to be anything but pretty and little - fragile and young, sweet and incomplete without a male love interest. Barf. I don't know how I'd get through that. (Those people don't exist unless they were written by a totally lame playwright - which Mr. Tennessee is NOT.) Laura, to me, is quite obviously missing a couple gears, but she compensates for them in some really fascinating ways. This is my "in" to this character... I know more about neurodiversity than, say, typical female-gendered behavior. I've been reading this and loving it. I feel like I'm starting to finally know what Laura's all about. This is how I get to know my students, too - I look at them and go "There's something atypical about how you approach reality, how you solve problems" and I talk to them a little and try and understand how they learn. It's my opinion that everyone is a little diverse in the way their neurons are wired - some of us just moreso than the mean. As the linked article states:
"Was Rose Williams one of these misdiagnosed, lobotomized autistics? In a way, this question misses the point. To apply the word misdiagnosed to aberrant behavior is to suggest that an objectively correct diagnosis of such behavior is possible. Because behavior is only aberrant in relation to a perceived norm, however, labels of cognitive and behavioral divergence will always be relative and subjective."
Of course, I haven't walked into the rehearsal room yet. And I don't know a lot of people who can hear something like "I think this person is autistic" without getting thrown by that - down a path completely counter to what I'm trying to describe. The autism spectrum is creeping closer and closer to getting depathologized - something I explored deeply in a play I wrote already. Still, people hear "she might be autistic" and think I mean there's something inherently wrong or sick or negative with the way she thinks. Nothing of the sort. I'm of the opinion that it's actually more problematic to think of Laura as neurotypical: Laura might seem fragile and sad, but only because a typical audience, like Amanda, like Jim, like the doctors of Tenessee Williams' era, automatically think Laura desires to be cured, to become normal, to break of her unicorn horn and join society. I'm confident that Laura is comfortable all by herself, that the main conflict in the play is external of Laura and not within her. Laura would be fine if there weren't any external forces desiring her to be something else. People might like her fine the way she is, (who doesn't love a unicorn?) but they all know she just can't function in society as herself (people need horses). If she lived in our modern world - one that tends to make a little more space for a-typical unicorns like some of the kids I teach- maybe she would have had a chance at realizing her full potential just as she is, rather than being pushed into the form of her mother's past life: a southern belle with plenty of gentlemen callers, a pretty little ingenue who can fall in love and get whisked away to marital and financial bliss, a regular horse. She's just not. She knows that. I know that. But that's all she's allowed to be. When you can't fulfill that role, you get cut out and cut off - lobotomized, sometimes literally. Tennessee wrote this play right after Rose got her operation... the unicorn horn metaphor is a pretty heavy one.
Anyway, maybe this will come up in some rehearsal in September (that's right, they've cast it months ahead of time) and I'll have to find a different "in" than this one. I've found this all enlightening only because it's in line with how I already approach character - that whole "to a hammer, every problem is a nail" bit. There's always gotta be a way to get your character to leap off the page, and some times you have to sit down and learn why your character is more like yourself than the way you've seen her played before. (Heads up: if I'm ever cast as Juliet, I'm playing her as a tomboy.) But, learning to find a new avenue into the role of Laura may have to happen, and it may be a struggle, but it'll be a fun one. I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure the job of an actor is to do a bunch of research and then prepare to throw it away if the director hates it. The cast is excellent, the director is AMAZING, and the whole crew is gonna make it rull pretty... so I am excited.
Anyway, maybe this will come up in some rehearsal in September (that's right, they've cast it months ahead of time) and I'll have to find a different "in" than this one. I've found this all enlightening only because it's in line with how I already approach character - that whole "to a hammer, every problem is a nail" bit. There's always gotta be a way to get your character to leap off the page, and some times you have to sit down and learn why your character is more like yourself than the way you've seen her played before. (Heads up: if I'm ever cast as Juliet, I'm playing her as a tomboy.) But, learning to find a new avenue into the role of Laura may have to happen, and it may be a struggle, but it'll be a fun one. I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure the job of an actor is to do a bunch of research and then prepare to throw it away if the director hates it. The cast is excellent, the director is AMAZING, and the whole crew is gonna make it rull pretty... so I am excited.