I have been delinquent in keeping up with my journal for the past couple of weeks. Between some health-related issues, a trip to Oregon, and a very busy time at work, I’ve not prioritized my journal. I will do my best to add some thoughts regarding the last few weeks of working on the first text with Christine.
The text work started prior to actually getting the text that we would be working on. Instead, we got the nerve for each of us based on the scene that we would be doing. For me, the nerve was “I must keep this all together.” We were then to craft circumstances based on the nerve. For our first week, I chose to take a literal approach. I brought in some marbles and tried to construct a pyramid out of them. The circumstances were that we were former lovers at a spiritual retreat, and Christine had ghosted me a while ago. Trigger was that I just found out she was marrying my best friend. To relieve myself I had to stack the marbles because I am hurt. Overall I felt good about the exercise, although I was aware that I was holding on to the Hot Who (gutless weasel) pretty strongly, and that I didn’t always pick up because I was just so angry. Feedback was that I held on to the anger too much and wasn’t picking up. In this case, the behavior I was getting from Christine was feeding my Hot Who and circumstances, so I was confused that the feedback went that route. I remember feeling a bit defeated at the feedback.
The next week I decided to make the circumstances more joyful. Father/daughter getting ready for the first holiday where the whole family was going to be together. Trigger was that I just found out Christine was pregnant. I had to string popcorn and cranberries to celebrate because I was happy. Hot Who was Angelic Holiday Savior. This week went much better. I think because the circumstances (for me) were joyful, it was much easier to pick up on Christine’s behavior and react to it. The feedback reflected that.
This past week, we got our text. Proof by David Auburn. I love this play, and the father is a part that I would love to play. We had to create a repetition based on the circumstances in the play. What was particularly challenging for me was to create a trigger and activity for the scene that was selected – it’s a flashback scene so none of the events that had happened in the play up to that point had happened yet, although there were some great hints in the scenes leading up to this that helped. I was able to glean that the father was concerned that he was losing his grip on reality again, and that even though he had been well, he knew that it was not going to last. My trigger then became “I had just experienced my first hallucination in 7 months.” Hot who for Christine was “My last grasp on reality.” Since the father is a mathematician, I thought a good activity would be something involving math, but it had to be something physical. I Googled “math puzzles with toothpicks” and found some good geometry-based puzzles that didn’t have solutions printed. So, I have to solve these puzzles in order to reassure myself because I am frightened. I did find myself at one point veering down the path of reacting based on the text, but overall I thought that our repetition went well, although I need to find a trigger that I can relate to better (or try using the preparation method that we were provided). I definitely did not feel “filled up.”
Christine and I are meeting later today to review lines from the script. I’m about 60% there right now…should be pretty much off book by Monday.