15 Days

Left to prepare my two pieces for my audition to get into Melbourne University. I am beginning to grow skeptical of my progress, which is why I decided to write this blog. To keep a record of this progress and ensure it does exist.

I will make an entry every one of these 15 days recording the work completed and the work to come, any ideas that arise and so forth.

The first of my two pieces and the one I have put the most work into is a soliloquy from Hamlet. I would give a number but different sources tend to argue with each other, it is from the scene in which Hamlet hesitates in killing Claudius while he is praying. I have borrowed a friend's sword for the piece as I feel I often work better with props, I am still mulling over whether it is better to mime however. I have not had much chance (room) to block it properly but I have done an extensive amount of research and grown quite attached to the character, I am only halfway through reading the play and I believe it would be in my best interests to finish.

The second piece was initially based on a simple metaphor, "You must empty your mind in order to enter it" was my preamble I suppose. A man pushes around a heavy box and tries to sleep on it. Failing in this he eventually discovers the box itself is the problem and open it up, a mist rises out of the box and he climbs in. End. Too simple, lacks substance.

My current idea is another underdeveloped one that I've had for a while, but it has much more potential than the former as it has a strong character. The character is not strong in his content (yet), but in his image. He is inhuman, blind, distorted, crippled. A real monster of a being, but a tragic one without salvation, or clarity, or communication. My initial idea was to mimic humanity, parody almost. Give this character a routine and draw attention to the nonsense that is the western middle class lifestyle.... But even done in a unique way, it is a tired subject.

Now I'm thinking, maybe the content can be derived entirely from the character. We have this pitiful, lame monster in a realm without intimacy, occupation, sense. How would an entity act in these circumstances. How does a newborn child act? A newborn child locked in a room with no object, light or sound. Surely they die, but what attempts does nature make to prevent this? He would attempt to map his surroundings and find no pattern, attempt to call out and find no response, see no pattern, hear no pattern.

Learn nothing but his own muscles and mind.

Maybe, I'll come back to this.