Wednesday, September 26, 2007

another acting class...

I am in another scene study class trying to stave off the immense frustration of attempting to put some kind of voice-over gig together. Working toward that goal is walking down a brick road built out of brick walls with brick walls on either side that ends in a brick wall.

This is a quick entry about one of the guys in my new scene study class. This guy is something. I can only describe him as frantic. He is like 100 superballs in a blender.
He is nervous and stammers and makes odd, eyeballs-bulging-out faces. He kind of reminds me, appearance wise, of Anthony Michael Hall, after the Breakfast Club, but before Johnny Be Good. Out of Bounds, maybe.
He was wearing an all black suit, and by suit I mean black pants and a black suit jacket. Under the black suit jacket, he had one of those T-shirts where the entire front of the shirt is a characters face. The character he chose was Elmo from the Muppets. (My sister decided to be a Critical Cathy about this sentence, so I must now edit. Elmo is a Muppet, yes, but is not from The Muppets. He is from Sesame Street. I feel so much better having cleared that all up.)
This makes two classes in a row where there was some reference to The Muppets in one way or another on the first night. I wonder if that is a trend.
Adults who are enamored of Elmo from the Muppets should have to put their name on a list so parents can look up where they live and keep their children away from there.
This guy works with children. I actually believe he is harmless, unless causing extreme annoyance is considered harmful. In that case he should carry a license, because he's got some deadly annoyance mojo working.
He makes little popping sounds with his mouth, on purpose. Like it's not that his lips smack together and he can't help it. He accentuates points with a little mouth-pop, eye-roll to the sky, finger pointing maneuver.
He also does the two handed quotes in the sky thing. People tell him he is "too crazy". He needs to "tone it down". He should "jump off a building".
I am sure there will be more about this guy. He is one of the many people I have come across lately who fascinate me.
I have an idea that everything he is doing is part of an elaborate performance art piece.
We are all tasked on the first night to present some monologue to give the teacher a sense of who we are, what level we are working at and how we might respond to direction. His monologue was about a person who has been tasked with selling tofu brains to an auditorium full of zombies.
Now, I am all about zombies. I love them. Love zombie artwork and movies and music and literature. I like zombies.
Zombies have rules. Although those rules are becoming more and more liquid, they are still there. This guy's scene and the way he was presenting it defied all the rules and basically made no sense whatsoever. The sales person is supposed to convince the zombies that tofu brains are every bit as good as real brains.
The dude cannot get the motivation down to make this make sense.
There is only one way this scene makes any sense, but I didn't want to pull out the massive I AM A ZOMBIE GEEK card on the first night of meeting these people.
Here's the only reality you can put behind the scene for it to jive.
Zombies are taking over society. You are a salesman. You have to convince the zombies to like the tofu brains. The government has assigned this job to you.
Your motivation is, the government will probably kill you if you don't do a good job, or, more likely, the zombies will kill you and eat you if you don't do a good job.
Coming at it from this direction puts all kinds of tension and tense humor on the lines and actions of the actor.
Elmo-shirt-ed annoying person decided the best way to present it would be to do an impression of Sandy Duncan on QVC selling Salad Spinners and nervously tap-dance at the same time.
Perhaps a zombie punched him on the way home, but in disdain didn't eat him. That would teach him.

4 comments:

rfox said...

FYI....Elmo is from Sesame Street, not the muppets

mister swarvey said...

Um... hello? From Sesame Street, yes. But STILL a Muppet.
For God's Sake.

mister swarvey said...

Supporting documentation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmo

mister swarvey said...

Oh. Damn it. I see your point now. I will edit the stupid post.
Thanks for being all nitpicky and ruining my day.

Nice.