Saturday, May 09, 2009

An Actress Prepares

I started working on this when I was hanging around the facilities during Dream Theatre's 24-hour "Theatre of Women" festival. I always like watching actors, or in this case actresses, work on getting their parts right. It's an odd sort of process, which varies from person to person.

She steps into the script as if she tried
a skirt on in the mirror, questioning
how well it fits her. Will it let her stride
across the stage? Will it let her fling
her lines with force enough to ring
the rafters? Will it let her breathe inside,
a second skin, with soft and pliant cling?

Gently she lets her personality glide
into the vessel of the written role,
her self an instrument to serve the play,
unsure, but pushing boldly, feeling her way,
toward the dim and blurry final goal:

Pulling it all together to portray
the separate facets of a sparkling soul.

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