Filed by Bil at 11:32 pm under Shameless Plugs, The Arts

I discovered a new level of emotional involvement for Pamphilos at tonight’s rehearsal: frustration. Unfortunately, this new layer has tipped the balance in my brain, and all night long my affected accent was all over the damn place. It was almost as bad as Russell Crowe’s accent in “A Beautiful Mind.” Interestingly enough, though, it was on exactly the same cycle: at the start of the play, I was clearly southern, by midway through I was plain ol’ American, by the middle of Act 2 I was almost Australian, and by the very end I was southern again. One thing I learned in history class is that doing what Russell Crowe does will get you what Russell Crowe gets, so I’m going to take this accent thing as a good sign, because Crowe won his Oscar for that terrible film. I’m not sure how a live play is going to get me an Oscar, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen.

However, this should be fixed by opening, so the Oscar judges will probably never witness the glory. Whatever.

The last few rehearsals have been incredible, and I haven’t been blogging about them because I’m both exhausted and craaaaazy busy. But since Electra opens this Thursday and Hatemail Live is TOMORROW NIGHT, I don’t imagine I’ll have the mental or physical capacity to type much this week. And since nobody has chastised me for not blogging about it, I won’t apologize for not blogging. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.

For one brief moment during tonight’s run-through, I took a break from worrying about why my accent sucks so bad to think about the meaning of the play, and it dawned on me that of all of Jeremy Menekseoglu’s plays, this is the most thematically Existentialist. The story inadvertently shows how we bring our own consequences upon ourselves, and how we can’t just blame the world around us for our lot in life, regardless of the rules of society or government or even religion (for in this play, the gods exist and their laws are absolute). Every character exemplifies this notion by their actions, even the Chorus – the Chorus became Chorus by their own actions (we’ll find out more about that in the third play in this trilogy) – and every character suffers their own consequences, and no one else’s…which is actually part of the irony and the tragedy at the end of it all.

Dammit, I wish I didn’t care about not spoiling anything. I could extrapolate on this thought for many, many more paragraphs. But I do care. I must shut up. It’s really frustrating.

Come see the play, and then talk to me about it. That’s a better plan. Much better. We open Thursday!