Bio: Theatre Design major and film minor. Took fundamentals of acting with Carrie Baker in spring 2007. Acting in Two Gentlemen of Verona, directed by Carrie Baker in fall 2007. Acted in various youtube videos in and out of classes.

 

assignments:
Final Scene:
Peer Gynt - Act 1 Scene 1

Written by Henrik Ibsen in 1867, became a very significan playwright. A tough play to stage because it was written to be more literature than a play. First staged in the US in 1907 and has been staged many times since. It is a lengthy play to stage as it is 5 acts long and also presents tough choices for a director, one of them being that one scene is done in complete darkness.

Character Analysis:

who:Peer Gynt, son of a drunk who is passed away. Raised mostly by his mother, who can't always keep him in line.

what: trying to loaf around the house and get his mother to get off his back.

why: Thats what i do. I follow in my fathers footsteps and i don't see a problem with that.

where: Rural Alaska

when: Modern day.

Master Gesture: shirt open and shirt closed. Walking cool, walking straight up like a grown up proper man. 

At the beginning of the scene i am a teenager that thinks he is so cool and slick. By the end I am growing up trying to not only make my mother happy but also making myself a better person.  

Actors Text [thought] line [action/emotional verb]


ASE Peer, you're lying!
 

[why do you always think i'm  lying] PEER No, I am not! [disbelief]

ASE Well then, swear that it is true!

[your always so dramatic]PEER Swear? Why should I? [question]

ASE See, you dare not! It's a lie from first to last.

[come on] PEER It is true-each blessed word![challenge]

ASE Don't you blush before your mother? First you skulk among the mountains monthlong in the busiest season, stalking reindeer in the snows; home you come then, torn and tattered, gun amissing, likewise game;- and at last, with open eyes, think to get me to believe all the wildest hunters'-lies!- Well, where did you find the buck, then?

[just like i've been saying]PEER West near Gendin.[retort]

ASE Ah! Indeed!

[i have got a keen eye]PEER Keen the blast towards me swept; hidden by an alder-clump, he was scraping in the snow-crust after lichen- [amazed]

ASE Doubtless, yes!

[see i am doing good things out there]PEER Breathlessly I stood and listened, heard the crunching of his hoof, saw the branches of one antler. Softly then among the boulders I crept forward on my belly. Crouched in the moraine I peered up;- such a buck, so sleek and fat, you, I'm sure, have ne'er set eyes on.[teaching]

ASE No, of course not!

[as good as i may be things don't always go as planned]PEER Bang! I fired! Clean he dropped upon the hillside. But the instant that he fell I sat firm astride his back, gripped him by the left ear tightly, and had almost sunk my knife-blade in his neck, behind his skull- when, behold! the brute screamed wildly, sprang upon his feet like lightning, with a back-cast of his head from my fist made knife and sheath fly, pinned me tightly by the thigh, jammed his horns against my legs, clenched me like a pair of tongs;- then forthwith away he flew right along the Gendin-Edge![excitement]

ASE [Jesus save us-!

[do you even know what it's like out there past this house and property]PEER Have you ever chanced to see the Gendin-Edge? Nigh on four miles long it stretches sharp before you like a scythe. Down o'er glaciers, landslips, scaurs, down the toppling grey moraines, you can see, both right and left, straight into the tarns that slumber, black and sluggish, more than seven hundred fathoms deep below you. Right along the Edge we two clove our passage through the air. Never rode I such a colt! Straight before us as we rushed 'twas as though there glittered suns. Brown-backed eagles that were sailing in the wide and dizzy void half-way 'twixt us and the tarns, dropped behind, like motes in air. Ice-floes on the shores broke crashing, but no murmur reached my ears. Only sprites of dizziness sprang, dancing, round;-they sang, they swung, circle-wise, past sight and hearing![dramatic]

ASE Oh, God save me!

[it's a scary place out there, often dangerous]PEER All at once, at a desperate, break-neck spot, rose a great cock-ptarmigan, flapping, cackling, terrified, from the crack where he lay hidden at the buck's feet on the Edge. Then the buck shied half around, leapt sky-high, and down we plunged both of us into the depths! Mountain walls behind us, black, and below a void unfathomed! First we clove through banks of mist, then we clove a flock of sea-gulls, so that they, in mid-air startled, flew in all directions, screaming. Downward rushed we, ever downward. But beneath us something shimmered, whitish, like a reindeer's belly.- Mother, 'twas our own reflection in the glass-smooth mountain tarn, shooting up towards the surface with the same wild rush of speed wherewith we were shooting downwards.[awe]

ASE [Peer! God help me-! Quickly, tell-!

[as wild and dangerous as it may be i always find my way home]PEER Buck from over, buck from under, in a moment clashed together, scattering foam-flecks all around. There we lay then, floating, plashing,- But at last we made our way somehow to the northern shore; buck, he swam, I clung behind him:- I ran homewards- [proud]

ASE But the buck, dear?

[why don't you go out there yourself]PEER He's there still, for aught I know;- [Snaps his fingers, turns on his heel, and adds:] catch him, and you're welcome to him![challenge]

ASE And your neck you haven't broken? Haven't broken both your thighs? and your backbone, too, is whole? Oh, dear Lord-what thanks, what praise, should be thine who helped my boy! There's a rent, though, in your breeches; but it's scarce worth talking of when one thinks what dreadful things might have come of such a leap-!
Oh, you devil's story-teller, Cross of Christ, how you can lie! All this screed you foist upon me, I remember now, I knew it when I was a girl of twenty. Gudbrand Glesne it befell, never you, you-
[where do you think i get it from]PEER Me as well. Such a thing can happen twice.[proud]

ASE [Yes, a lie, turned topsy-turvy, can be prinked and tinselled out, decked in plumage new and fine, till none knows its lean old carcass. That is just what you've been doing, vamping up things, wild and grand, garnishing with eagles' backs and with all the other horrors, lying right and lying left, filling me with speechless dread, till at last I recognised not what of old I'd heard and known!

[you are really being disrespectful, lucky you're my mother]PEER If another talked like that I'd half kill him for his pains.[angry]

ASE [Oh, would God I lay a corpse; would the black earth held me sleeping! Prayers and tears don't bite upon him.- Peer, you're lost, and ever will be!

[whoops, i'm sorry maybe that was a bit far fetched]PEER Darling, pretty little mother, you are right in every word;- don't be cross, be happy- [calm]

ASE Silence! Could I, if I would, be happy, with a pig like you for son? Think how bitter I must find it, I, a poor defenceless widow, ever to be put to shame!
How much have we now remaining from your grandsire's days of glory? Where are now the sacks of coin left behind by Rasmus Gynt? Ah, your father lent them wings,- lavished them abroad like sand, buying land in every parish, driving round in gilded chariots. Where is all the wealth he wasted at the famous winter-banquet, when each guest sent glass and bottle shivering 'gainst the wall behind him?

[when will you shut up]PEER Where's the snow of yester-year?[sarcasm]

ASE Silence, boy, before your mother! See the farmhouse! Every second window-pane is stopped with clouts. Hedges, fences, all are down, beasts exposed to wind and weather, fields and meadows lying fallow, every month a new distraint-

[ok i get it, lets just move forward]PEER Come now, stop this old-wife's talk! Many a time has luck seemed dropping, and sprung up as high as ever![optimistic]

ASE Salt-strewn is the soil it grew from. Lord, but you're a rare one, you,- just as pert and jaunty still, just as bold as when the pastor, newly come from Copenhagen, bade you tell your Christian name, and declared that such a headpiece many a prince down there might envy; till the cob your father gave him, with a sledge to boot, in thanks for his pleasant, friendly talk.- Ah, but things went bravely then! Provost, captain, all the rest, dropped in daily, ate and drank, swilling, till they well-nigh burst. But 'tis need that tests one's neighbour. Still it grew and empty here from the day that "Gold-bag Jon" started with his pack, a pedlar. [Dries her eyes with her apron.] Ah, you're big and strong enough, you should be a staff and pillar for your mother's frail old age,- you should keep the farm-work going, guard the remnants of your gear;-
aoh, God help me, small's the profit you have been to me, you scamp! Lounging by the hearth at home, grubbing in the charcoal embers; or, round all the country, frightening girls away from merry-makings- shaming me in all directions, fighting with the worst rapscallions- Oh, you brawler! You will bring me with your doings to the grave!

[i've put you through alot, but i've changed]]PEER No, you're worth a better fate; better twenty thousand times! Little, ugly, dear old mother, you may safely trust my word,- all the parish shall exalt you; only wait till I have done something-something really grand![promise]

ASE You!

[you havn't seen my best]PEER Who knows what may befall one![recant]

ASE Would you'd get so far in sense one day as to do the darning of your breeches for yourself!

[i will be the best, do something so grand everyone will know me]PEER I will be a king, a kaiser![confident]

ASE Oh, God comfort me, he's losing all the wits that he had left!

[i'm not going crazy, i'm serious]PEER Yes, I will! just give me time![argue]

ASE Give you time, you'll be a prince, so the saying goes, I think!

[i've said this many times but i mean it this time]PEER You shall see![strong]

ASE Oh, hold your tongue! You're as mad as mad can be.- Ah, and yet it's true enough,- something might have come of you, had you not been steeped for ever in your lies and trash and moonshine. Hegstad's girl was fond of you. Easily you could have won her had you wooed her with a will-

[you've thought highly of me]PEER Could I?[surprise]

ASE The old man's too feeble not to give his child her way. He is stiff-necked in a fashion but at last 'tis Ingrid rules; and where she leads, step by step, stumps the gaffer, grumbling, after.
Ah, my Peer!-a golden girl- land entailed on her! just think, had you set your mind upon it, you'd be now a bridegroom brave,- you that stand here grimed and tattered!

[i'll show you what i can do then]PEER Come, we'll go a-wooing, then![lead]

ASE Where?

[i'll do it right now]PEER At Hegstad![hungry]

ASE Ah, poor boy; Hegstad way is barred to wooers!

[we can't wait]PEER How is that?[leading]

ASE Ah, I must sigh! Lost the moment, lost the luck-

[stop stalling]PEER Speak![command]

ASE [While in the Wester-hills you in air were riding reindeer, here Mads Moen's won the girl!

[stop making up stories and lets go]PEER What! That women's-bugbear! He-![impatient]

ASE Ay, she's taking him for husband.

[you stay here then]PEER Wait you here till I have harnessed horse and waggon-[growing frustration]

ASE Spare your pains. They are to be wed to-morrow-

[i'll be back later and it will be a success]PEER Pooh; this evening I'll be there! Never fear; 'twill all go well.[confident]

BLOCKING:Center stage upper left corner is Ase's place. My bad place is CSR, my story place is upstage C and right. My good place is LDS.

Overall: Peer Gynt is a great role to play in, there are a lot of directions you can go with it. He can be seen as a bully, a lost teenager, a pig a brute etc but from what i saw in him and in the play overall is that he is lost and is searching for his own identity like almost every other human being in the world.

 

 

R+G Acting Review:

In my acting review I will just discuss the acting of the Tradegians. The only Tradegian with an actual name is the little boy Alfred. Jenna Weisz (a girl actress) plays Alfred and this is a very complicated role for her. She is a young woman trying to be a little boy being a prostitute. Nothing was really done with the costumes or makeup to make her appear that she was  a little boy and so she ends up just looking like a real prostitute who is just a large group of male actors play thing. I think in future casting of the character Alfred, if the character is casted as a woman either more has to be done with make up and costumes to make her appear as a small boy or the name has to change from Alfred to a girl name. The other option is to find a male who can act like a girl.

The only actors that i am aware of that tried to create a individual character within the Tradegian group were the actors Ramiro and Sam. Ramiro is a monkey then a bigfoot creature and then a human. I got the fact that he was a monkey, big foot and a human pretty easily because he told me but for an audience member i don't know if his actions were big enough. You could tell he was doing something different but you wern't sure what. I think his monkey actions could be more monkeyish, more shuffling, scratching head ect. I'm not sure what he can do for big foot besides taking large clumsy steps, which is basically what he did. Sam was supposed to be a Former Soldier. I know this because i spoke with him about it. He walked with his umbrella like a rifle, his steps were like marching steps, right hand following left foot etc. When he claps in the final scene, he squares his feet like he is at attention and then while watching the show as an audience member he stands at parade rest. I think he could have made the steps bigger and done more left/right flanks as well as more about faces (only one i saw was after he claped and the death by duals started). The other Tradegians either did nothing big enough to recognize or actually did nothing at all besides be Tradegians. Which is kind of disappointing but many of them are new or inexperienced actors so it is expected.