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I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT (IMPROV THEATRE EDITION)
I am recruited to act in a play. It’s a sort of improv guerilla theatre, where plays are staged in found spaces and actors are cast as you go along.
In this case, the “stage” is a sort of indoor Chinese garden, at the center of which is a huge rectangular pond full of koi carp. Chinese lanterns and other decorations are everywhere, and the railings are made of gold-trimmed teak.
As the point is to recruit actors on the fly, the play is already in progress when the director selects me. He hands me a creepy horsehead mask and a script with my lines. It's a monologue. According to the script I am “Horse”, a mythological manifestation of Native American vengeance, and at the end of my monologue I’m supposed to shoot one of the characters with a shotgun. It’s up to me which one to shoot, I just have to give him/her a verbal or visual cue before I do it.
The other actors don’t pay any attention to me. They stay in character and do whatever it is they’re supposed to do. They won’t acknowledge me until I begin.
The director gives me my cue. I put on the mask, pick up a prop shotgun lying on a stool and cock it dramatically, as though to get the attention of the other characters. It’s up to me how to play the character. Before starting, I thought about delivering the lines in a deadpan William Burroughs style, but when it’s my cue, I find myself giving it more gravitas.
I start the monologue. “I am vengeance, older than the world and angrier than all the gods. Time is my watchdog. And I have come to set the clock right.” Something like that.
I’m allowed to read from the script – no need to memorize the lines, since there’s no time for obvious reasons – but it’s only at this point that I notice half of it is printed on the back of a large potato chip bag. And it’s in Portuguese. So I wing it and mumble those parts as though talking to myself like a madman. I look around the stage trying to decide which actor to shoot.
But I wake up before I can shoot anyone.
Vengeance is mine,
This is dF
In this case, the “stage” is a sort of indoor Chinese garden, at the center of which is a huge rectangular pond full of koi carp. Chinese lanterns and other decorations are everywhere, and the railings are made of gold-trimmed teak.
As the point is to recruit actors on the fly, the play is already in progress when the director selects me. He hands me a creepy horsehead mask and a script with my lines. It's a monologue. According to the script I am “Horse”, a mythological manifestation of Native American vengeance, and at the end of my monologue I’m supposed to shoot one of the characters with a shotgun. It’s up to me which one to shoot, I just have to give him/her a verbal or visual cue before I do it.
The other actors don’t pay any attention to me. They stay in character and do whatever it is they’re supposed to do. They won’t acknowledge me until I begin.
The director gives me my cue. I put on the mask, pick up a prop shotgun lying on a stool and cock it dramatically, as though to get the attention of the other characters. It’s up to me how to play the character. Before starting, I thought about delivering the lines in a deadpan William Burroughs style, but when it’s my cue, I find myself giving it more gravitas.
I start the monologue. “I am vengeance, older than the world and angrier than all the gods. Time is my watchdog. And I have come to set the clock right.” Something like that.
I’m allowed to read from the script – no need to memorize the lines, since there’s no time for obvious reasons – but it’s only at this point that I notice half of it is printed on the back of a large potato chip bag. And it’s in Portuguese. So I wing it and mumble those parts as though talking to myself like a madman. I look around the stage trying to decide which actor to shoot.
But I wake up before I can shoot anyone.
Vengeance is mine,
This is dF