The Man Who Folded Himself

First all, I have to comment that reading this book while traveling from Boston to DC was about the first time I have experienced, or remembered what I was thinking when I came up with "hypertravel" all those years ago. I was so involved in this book that time (and space) literally flew by in an instant. Perhaps I should revisit this story/concept.

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold is without a doubt the book Jim told Eileen and I about years and years ago about the man who, through time travel, was both his mom, dad, and child all at the same time. I have spent countless nights and years contemplating how that paradox is possible. It has always intrigued me from the moment he said it and I never forgot it. Well the book definitely lives up to my expectations. It was genius. It ask all the questions about time travel that I ever have imagined and more. Gerrold tackles whole time/space mythologies and conundrums in a paragraph or even a sentence. Daniels that go crazy, Daniels that are homosexual, free will, identity, everything. How would you define yourself if time and space were not part of the definition? What sort of existence would you have? In essence, what is at the core of our identities? The possibilities are endless and indeed, infinite. That is how Gerrold views time, as infinite. It isn't linear, but a million different strands that cross each other. I'm not quite sure how more than one Daniel can exist in each strand, but that seems to make sense in the universe he has created. It is his rationalization of the mother, father child paradox that is still impossible. He talks about changing the sex of the child at birth, but this could never happen if he wasn't a girl to begin with at one point, which of course could never happen because if he was a girl to begin with then he could not inseminate himself as a boy. Although once there was a boy and girl version of him he could go on folding himself forever, theoretically. The only way I imagined this happening is some sort of futuristic gene therapy sex change operation, which could work, but not at birth the way the book describes it. The book isn't really about the paradox, but what it means, psychologically, to be your own entire world.

I liked the Timestop and Timeskim features. Daniel breezes through thousands of years of history we all wish we could see, observing (but never participating in) countless event of humanity (50-54). He knows the truth and destiny of the human race. History is the ebb and flow of life, the study of humanity itself, the triumph of individuals that never quit. He is a temporal ping pong ball. He also realizes that he doesn't have to be subjected to his own mistakes anymore because he can just go back and change them. Well not for himself, but for a another Dan, and then when "excises" something he changes his world again, as he sees fit. So it truly is only his world and he is the god of it. It makes sense then that he would be his own father, mother and uncle. He can always go back and change things, until he cannot, and that is the tragedy of Diane and old Dan going back to meet her. He is all powerful, but he is alone and only has himself. His sexuality is something he does despite the warnings of other Dans and Dons. He sleeps with himself willingly and is happy about it, believing he has a choice in what he does. But is sexuality a choice? Dan believes he has free will, but then says that he is merely living one strand and that other Dans live all the other possible strands of time and so they ultimately have no choice because they are all each living one strand of infinite possibility. Dan believes that he is the cumulative effect of all the other Dans' changes, but all the Dans perceive themselves to be at the center in the same way. Really the whole story is about identity and choice vs. fate and what defines us with sexuality making up a small component of this discussion. It will be interesting to discus this book in the context of the class.

"Respect for Acting" Uta Hagen (Part 1)

Hagen had constructed a mask behind which she would hide throughout the performance, using "tricks" which were representations used convey emotions. She lost the love of make believe. Harold Clurman was the one who refused the mask and demanded Hagen in the role. She felt this broke down the wall between her and the audience. (p.8)

Representational vs. Presentational - illustrating a characters behavior vs. complete human embodiment of the character. "Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting-intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen" (p.13).

What I don't understand about "Presentation Acting" is yes, it makes sense to embody the character, but people become who they are by living through their lives and developing traits and emotions and unconscious reactions to events that show in their face and their expressions and their mannerisms. How can someone who is attempting to believe they are someone else in order to act as them going to know all these mannerisms? They have, after all, only lived their own life and if they are copying someone else's mannerisms, no matter where their psyche is, that is still representational. Is it possible to develop these mannerisms accurately and in a short time so as to truly act Presentationally? Perhaps my Alex experiment will shed light on this dilemma.

Well fortunately for me, Hagen has described how this works in the remaining portion of Part 1. Chapter 2, titled Identity is about getting to know yourself as a person and a human being in order to use your own experiences to identify with the character you are playing as opposed to illustrating the character. Becoming self-aware does not mean understanding a pigeon-holed preconception of who we think we are, but understanding how we respond to all different sorts of emotions in all different sorts of situations. Like in David Antin's class when he talked about all of us as being actors because we all behave in different roles depending on who we are talking to. Our assignment was to explore what happens when this roles collided and fractured. I chose to do myself playing the role of the daughter back in Colorado meeting my new found self as an independent woman in college. It seemed pertinent at the time when I was struggle to break free and these 2 roles I played collided in a confrontation with my Mom. All part of growing up, but I didn't know so at the time. Hagen describes it the same. We may not consider ourselves as a person who would look down on others, but "if a drunken, bigoted doorman gives me a hard time, I appear snobbish and pull rank" (26). So it is important not only to recognize all facets of of our feelings, even ones like greed, selfishness, envy, panic, but also to connect these emotions to the "behavior which ensues...The continuing job of learning to find out who you really are, of learning to pinpoint your responses--and even more important, the myriad, consequent behaviorisms which result--will help you begin to fill your warehouse with sources upon which to draw for the construction of character" (26). Do not put ourself behind a mask of someone else's behaviors on stage. This is representation! People stare at a cat on stage because it is focused, strong-willed and spontaneous where an actor can be predictably busy. As adults we may not be vengeful people because we have learned to control desire for vengeance, but that doesn't mean we have not felt the need to be vengeful and this can help you play a vengeful character (Ingrid Bergman expl). If we are limited in our time and social standing we can imagine and be curious (as children do) and out ourselves into stories, other times, paintings and other people's shoes. Curiosity and imagination can go a long way in discovering who you are and in creating characters. --> I always do this so perhaps I'm as far behind as I thought thanks to my crazy imaginations scenarios.

Chapter 3, Substitution, is about how to take what you know from your own experiences and transfer them into what the character you are playing is feeling. She wants "to find herself" in the part. "Once we are on the track of self-discovery in terms of an enlargement of our sense of identity, and we now try yo apply this knowledge to an identification with the character in the play, we must make this transference, this finding of the character within ourselves, through a continuing and overlapping series of substitutions from our own experiences and remembrances, through the use of imaginative extension of realities, and put them in the place of the fiction of the play" (34). Example of the girl snatching her "soiled panties" and hiding them behind her back. The director cannot help you with your substitutions because she doesn't know your life experiences, but "(S)he will help you with the character elements she is after, dictate the place, the surroundings, the given circumstances, and define your relationship to other characters in the pay, but how you make things real to yourself, how you make them exist is totally private work" (37). Each object on stage or set needs to be made particular, with a history and a connection to your character so you react appropriately when you see it. Objects also need substitutions from your life, every moment on stage does. Perhaps you will have to combine a dozen different relationships with a dozen different people to create the relationship with your "sister" on stage if you do not have a sister or a single relationship to stand in for it. But you can combine different moments from different relationships for each moment in the play to build that relationship. Process is always in flux, from the beginning of the homework to the end of rehearsals. This is how you build a "sense of reality and faith in the character" but she has not yet connected this to actions, what the character will do (39).

Think about the meaning behind the words. Daniele always talked about this, and this is why the exercise we did with the same dialog, but different meanings was so important. Saying "I hate you" could actually be a cry for attention from someone you love. It is the directors job to dictate the relationship and meaning and the actors job to substitute and bring it to life. But ou must transfer the essence of the substitution to the play so you are using it to live he realities of the scene. You must take "the substituted psychological reality and transfer it to the existing circumstances and events of the play: transferring the essence of the experience (not the original event) to the scene" (40). Use your life to understand how the character is feeling in that moment and then make it real for that character and you. --> I believe we are all actors in everyday life and this awareness of self, substitutions and eventually actions, when we get to that part of the book, is an essential part of everyone's self awareness, not just an actor, but especially important for a director or writer to understand. I think experimenting with this in my everyday life as well as to an extreme through "Alex" can only make me a better creator/director.

In transferring the substitution, Hagen gives the example of swallowing a lie from her husband and then getting him a glass of water. She substituted dragging her insubordinate daughter to the sink and forcing her to drink and this made her realize that her husband, in that moment, was like a child to her. She did not need to substitute anymore, she had used the substitution to find the reality on stage (42).

She warns a director against using generalities or essences like colors, textures or music to describe what they want because those are very personal and likely mean something different to the director than they do to the actor because their life experiences differ. (Same thing when writing, be careful how you describe a character. She gave the example of "suggests a moth" which completely blocked her sense of who the character was, because she imagined too vividly the character as a moth.

Don't share your substitutions!

Chapters 4-10 continue t o discuss different kinds of substitutions and then how to take these substitutions and make them actions that the audience can see, since it is a visual medium we are discussing. I will give some highlights, but the meat of the book was in the aforementioned 2 chapters. Emotional memory is the recall of a psychological or emotional response to an event which produces sobbing, laughter, screaming etc. Sense memory is in dealing with physiological sensations (heat, cold, hunger pains, etc) (46). Both of which can be used for valid substitutions. Emotion in life happens when we momentarily suspend our reasoning and lose control because we are unable to cope with an event logically, but humans don't want to lose control and are constantly fighting to regain control of our emotions (as adults anyway). She says there are trigger objects to emotional pain, little things that you unconsciously associate with the pain of an event that will immediately recall that feeling for you and it's these little objects that will catapult you to extreme emotions on stage. They should never wear out for professionals because you have to make the object synonymous with on on stage, not anticipate when the emotion should come and not transferred it to the experience of the play or you are fearful that it won't come.

Sense memory: "the body has an innate sense of truth" and we must learn some "physiological facts to help us avoid the violation of the physical truth" (52). If you must be in a deep sleep then simulate how the body acts in a deep sleep, lie down, concentrate on your hips, or a specific body part, center your eyes under your eyelids, focus on an abstract object and then jump to thoughts as you wake, what time is it, have I over slept? Your body will be heavy and slow as if you just awoke from a deep sleep. Yawning to get oxygen to your brain, or shivering to increase circulation, know these things will help you to reproduce them. She believes sensations occur most fully at the "moment we are occupied with the attempt to overcome it" (56).

Be alert to all of your 5 senses. We don't actually listen to the words, but the intent behind them. We also listen with our eyes. We see someone's intent through their unconscious actions (if we aren't busy being insecure and looking away). But even when looking way, we are thinking about inner objects, what we will say next, how we feel. Think is much faster than talking ans much can go on throughout the course of a conversation. You can't write out your thoughts ahead of time because real thinking is active. It "precedes, is accompanied by and follows action" (65). Example of putting on her coat to go to the grocery, unless there is a problem with the coat she is compiling her grocery list in her mind or thinking about the friend coming to dinner tonight that she is cooking for. These inner thoughts have influenced her actions. If she is angry at the friend she might be aggressive with her coat. If she loves her, she might caress the coat. These are the actions the audiences sees, influenced by the thoughts in her head. I think it is the directors job then to tell her that she is thinking of and anticipating the friend's arrival in this moment, and also her current relation to the friend and then it is the actors job to think and make real the moment.

Hagen talks about what Daniele always talked about. All movement must be connected to a motivation. A person never moves without intent and so an actor should never move without an intent. Even if s/he is wandering aimlessly, it is because s/he is restless or nervous or anxious and trying to calm the feeling. There is always intent to movement. An actor is just an actor and his movements are affected when s/he moves without purpose. Clothing also influences character just as it influences our actions or confidence in everyday life. One outfit may make me fit right in to a given crowd so I will act comfortable and confident. The same outfit somewhere else might make me feel under dressed or like a child who wants to hide. Just as Daniele said, we must learn what a character wants out of any given situation and under what conditions s/he wants it so that the blocking can be organic because the actor/character is propelled into genuine verbal action that comes from the needs of the character. This is the subtext between the dialog!

Reality is often times unbelievable. Also we must not forget that what is on the stage or screen is an illusion of reality. Real snow will melt, real steam could scald you, and distract the audience. The actor must see past some realities of life and set to create the illusion of the stage reality. This is where my suspension of disbelief paper comes in. How does the illusion of reality presented on screen become reality in the minds of the spectator and at what point is the audience distracted by the "how did they do that" of the special effect or explosion? This is a balance in action films that I want to explore.

This book is incredible, not just for actors, but for living everyday life and self-awareness. The next section is about training yourself as an actor and I will attempt to implore these techniques in my everyday life and write about them throughout the summer.

Birds of Prey: Between Dark and Dawn

I chose Birds of Prey because it was a group of women, led by a woman and, written by a women, Gail Simone. The book I read was issues #69-75. What struck me most about the comic was that it did not feel different from the other comics I read that were written by men. Eventually the women seemed to have more "friendship/bonding" scenes than I would expect in a male written book, but it was surprisingly similar as far as action, sexplotation in the costumes and drawings and overall feel of women kicking ass for pleasures sake. Especially for Simone who is apparently famous for being a feminist and pointing out how women have been used in comics only to provide fodder for men to be triggered to action (got this off wiki). At one point the girls seem to be bonding over lunch in a rose garden where they comfort "Babs" over the loss of her sentimental photos in the explosion of her secret hideout, the clock tower. They have a moment of silence before an angry Babs says, "Healing time's over. Let's kick some ass." It almost felt as if she was overcompensating for women's "vulnerability" by making them super tough. At points Babs has to cope with being cripple which no longer allows her to be Batgirl and losing the love of her life, Nightwing, but this emotional challenge is always put in the backseat to her strength and triumph. Over all it just felt like these characters that were supposed to be so flawed and real were overly strong and resilient, at least for the kinds of super-heroines I want to create. The Huntress was supposed to be overtly angry and troubled, but she just walked all over the men and her anger never presented a problem, it just gave her strength. Again, I think I want more moral ambiguity. Good and evil, strength and weakness are always so black and white in this series.

Another thing I noticed was just how wrapped up in the comic book universe this series was. There are so many superheores and references to other comics that it was hard to follow at times for the casual comic book reader. Superman shows up as an ambulance, the Justice League is name dropped, Batman is joked about, random superheroes are mind controlled and used as martyrs. It is all very integrated in the mythology. I need to keep this in mind when I make my own series. Is this a world where superheores run rampant or are these people just regular ladies inspired by comics or movies? This could be the points of humor, as inside jokes, these references, but they can't make up the whole world. I just couldn't follow since my comic knowledge is so thin. What is the audience you are trying to reach and how can acknowledging comic heroes be addressed without isolating those that don't know the whole canon of superhero history?

Overall, I don't think I'll continue to read this series, despite the fact that I am leaning toward an ensemble webseries with 3-4 ladies as the lead heroines and this seems similar in that regard. Ultimately it is just not the direction I want to go in. I'm still interested in watching the short lived TV show, if only to learn from how they failed.

The Authority "Relentless"

My first real foray into the world of comic book reading, I went to Meltdown on Sunset yesterday and asked a very helpful young man for some comics with "women who kick ass." I'm doing research for my comic book inspired, LA lesbian webseries I want to make and so I figured I need to finally do some proper research. I watched Sin City for the gritty comic book aesthetic and I immediately thought, I must buy the graphic novel to see how this was translated. I want this feel from my webseries, but obviously I won't be CGing everything on green screen. I'm thinking of integrating artwork into the show as Sin City did, but I want the series to have more of a Girltrash feel than a CG feel. Anyway, most of my experience with comics is through cartoons or movies. Despite having bought some excellent X-Men books at comic-con last year I still haven't gotten around to reading them. What struck me most was just how cinematic the panels were. It felt like a storyboard for a movie, in fact I could almost picture it moving just like a film. No wonder they have become such rampant fodder for films.

Aesthetically, what struck me most that I want to incorporate into my webseries is the use of color. Often times whole pages where tinted either red or blue or orange to separate emotions, locations, etc. I think a mix of black and white and stylized color schemes like this will really sell that comic book feel I want in the webseries. Ultimately the show is about women superheroes so I don't want this to be a gimmick, but rather linked to the psychology of the characters. It could be flashbacks or during their superhero moments only. I don't know yet, but I want these women to be as real and complicated as possible. No Sydney Bristow where everything is hunky dory after you kill 5 people. Will it have a camp feel like D.E.B.S. or Girltrash? I don't know, but that seems to be the way to make it engaging on many levels. Must have humor, action and drama to work within that click-away happy medium.

Ok, back to The Authority. My Meltdown informant was right on the mark. Jenny Sparks, the leader of The Authority (a superhero group not unlike the X-Men) is one tough cookie. She is 100 years old and can harness the power of electricity. She smokes like a chimney and all the men are terrified of her. She wants to make the world a better place and will kill hundreds to save thousands. At the end of the first book, "Relentless," The Engineer, also a woman and a genius scientist with computer nanotechnology for blood, (that she created, like a self-made superhero in a world where many people are born heroes) says "We just did something very frightening...we changed a world" and Jenny replies by saying "maybe we just did what we said we would, all along. Changing things for the better. "One earth down, one to go." So I thought that they were calling it "frightening" because they were essentially playing god. They wiped out the entire population of Italy to remove the evil leaders there and give the world a second chance without the evil regime controlling it. I thought it would get philosophical as to whether they were entitled to judge what was right and wrong, but this wasn't an issue. Evil and good are black and white in this comic book, even when the good guys have to kill countless innocents to change the fate of millions. It was all about body count. They were happy to trade and barter lives as long as the net was positive in their favor. I'm not sure this moral certainty can be so easily achieved. I'd like more struggle as to whether it is okay to kill to save and whether or not they are fit to judge right and wrong and what is "better." Humans certainly aren't this simple. Jenny Sparks does appear to question herself once. After the first big battle she is talking with Apollo and says she doesn't like leadership, but then says "Bad things happen when I run teams. And bad things happen when I don't run teams. All this is a hellish gamble for me Apollo. But there had to be someone left to save the world. And someone left to change it." Very altruistic, with doubt and vulnerability that she never shows again. I think exploring this doubt and the psychology of superheroes and murders who claim to save lives is fascinating and definitely a struggle worth exploring. Would I kill one person if I was told it would save 2 others? I don't know if I could. This is why superheros are so fascinating to me.

Another void I felt in the book was that of the humans they were claiming to save. They were faceless children and regular people. No where do we see what it is like to live in a world where half a city is obliterated by super humans and thousands of people are killed by the good guys so that millions can be saved. What kind of climate and quality of life would that create? I'd like to explore the psychology of real people who live in this world. Are they grateful for the help? Fearful? Does it lead to riots and fear and terrorism politics? Who gains what from superheroes? What if a saved person isn't grateful? That could be funny and campy. Lots of panels were devoted to fighting and much less on the characters. I want this ratio to be reversed. To me fighting isn't cool unless we know why and what is at stake for everyone involved. Plus less fighting is easier to shoot. I'm sure with some practice I can keep things exciting with much less action. It will all be about balance, and refining the YouTube medium.