The opening night audience, all a-flutter with anticipation, arrives at what is known as the summation scene of a mystery thriller, the famous detective having cleverly solved what was heretofore a thorny puzzle. He meticulously lays out the clues and their natural conclusion, the culprit is apprehended, and lights come up, and everyone goes home …
Acting 101: For All of Us
Here’s what actors do, in one way or another. Imaginatively, they work to enter the experience of a person, a character, imagining circumstances, beliefs, thought-life, sensory preferences, histories of relationships, and perhaps most importantly, what their particular characters are hungry for, long for, and have been living without. They then shift their physical and emotional …
5 Positive Things Critique Can Do For You
I finished the 4th draft of my new play, and in spite of as much focused and deep work as I've done on a play and a group of characters, still missed the goal by a mile. (Well, maybe more like a half-mile, but still.) Not that there are not some good things about the …
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Humor Abuse: See It at The Seattle Rep
I'm not really a clown kind of guy, but years ago, back in the 80's, I spent a memorable evening of theatre in the presence of one of the best. Avner the Eccentric, he called himself, and I remember laughing as hard as I have ever laughed that night. You know the kind of laugh …
George Bernard Shaw and the Fight for Pygmalion
"Don't talk to me of romances; I was sent into the world to dance on them with thick boots--to shatter, stab, and murder them." -- George Bernard Shaw. (His Collected Letters) The basic facts are these: George Bernard Shaw wrote the play on which the musical My Fair Lady is based 99 years ago, in 1912. …
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JEFF BERRYMAN 