Filed by Bil at 11:19 pm under Fightin' Words, The Arts

It feels pretty strange, I will admit, to switch so suddenly from show mode back into rehearsal mode. Like shifting from fifth gear to first without depressing the clutch. I even make that awful grinding noise. But back into rehearsal mode we must go, ready or not, so onward and upward…or, in this case, downward, since the whole second half of Orestes takes place in hell.

We undertook a very interesting exercise in rehearsal today: Fearless Leader Jeremy played us some eerie music while we looked around at our set of hell, and just sort of let our imaginations run wild. I, not thinking very practically, did not imagine any sort of useful creations regarding my character at all, I just sort of went through what it meant to be in hell. Whenever I think of hell, I think of the two boldest statements about hell I’ve ever heard: “Hell is other people,” and “Hell is yourself.” In thinking more deeply about it today, I toyed with the slightly more complex idea of “Hell is both other people AND yourself.”

There are these tree-like structures on our set, and I thought about how if these were all there were in hell, I’d have to assign them their due importance, because if I didn’t, then there would be no importance at all, and thus their presence would just be some kind of futile invasion. So each individual tree was given importance and validity for the entire duration of my observance of them. There were also other actors, but they were easy enough to ignore, and I felt no desire to assign them any importance; if they wanted importance, they could assign themselves. I’m not their mom.

Giau, who plays my brother in this show, found himself following me around, and I found that annoying. Then I got annoyed with myself for thinking so, because if hell is such a lonely place that I need to assign meaning to things in order to accept that they are even there, then I should appreciate his presence. In this way, hell is indeed both myself and other people. In a long-term sense, this is far worse than physical torture or remorse or being frightened, because this is wholly my own doing - I punish myself - and I am aware of it but powerless to stop it.

That’s good hell. Real good.

I think “Orestes” is going to be very, very, very, very interesting. I think it’s beautiful, but also frightening. And Anna Weiler is back as Electra, a sacrificial lamb, but a bat out of hell, too.