Private Moment (Jackson Gets Down)

I performed my Private Moment for Jackson today, and I think I made some key discoveries that will help me as I continue to develop this character. In thinking of what to do for the Private Moment, I was really trying to pull some characteristics I had found with the blue heron that worked well. The key, I have found, to performing the blue heron is to imbue the heron with some kind of human characteristic. Matt is always talking about animals with human characteristics, and that helps me understand (get inside the mind of) them, because then I can judge how they will react to certain situations. (And if there is anything to be learned about acting from animals, it is how to react with complete and utter honesty. For example, an experienced CMU actor will not react in the slightest if the walls in the studio next to him start to shake, as often happens in our acting class - but how would a bird react if the walls started to shake? A bird, due to its lack of awareness of what's really happening, would perk up, recognizing a threat, and take every sound and movement into its awareness).

So, the upshot of this method of looking at the blue heron is that I took a key characteristic that I found in it and translated that to my Private Moment. I chose the word "proud," because, based on the costume I picked and the way I worked my character before the Private Moment, this seemed to me to be something I could hold on to. My blue heron, as all blue herons are, was king of his ecosystem. He will eat anything without prejudice, and he does a very good job of not getting eaten. With his incredibly large wingspan, he can soar off to different places with grace and ease, and finding food for him is never a problem. As I explored this in the exercises done after I picked my costuming (a blue polka-dot shirt, tight black corduroys, and flashy LaCoste white shoes), I found that this new human character wanted to be graceful, at ease in his situations, but he did not like being offended and had a very high sense of who he was. In translating this to a Private Moment, I decided to try dancing, because that is perhaps the perfect example of a being using their body with grace and ease while being proud at the same time. What really called to me for this moment was using dubstep - when I listened to it with my animal brain, I found that it had Jackson had a peculiar attraction to it.

So, for my Private Moment, I decided to go for it - to just throw it all in the wind and make a strong choice. Using the word "proud" as my guideline, I decided that, to Jackson, it didn't matter what people thought about his dancing, which freed me to dance however I wanted (a good thing considering my lack of dance training!) My choice was to have Jackson get ready in his house, prepare himself to look good, then go out into the street and start dancing to dubstep. The conflict of the moment occurred when Jackson accidentally tripped and fell - he was surprised that he had fallen, and it shook him up, but he is the kind of person that will get back up again and continue dancing, and that is what he did.

This moment worked for Jackson as a starting point, and comments from Matt afterward really helped me develop the character. Matt suggested that I really investigate Jackson's relationship to his dance - that perhaps "dance is a connection to his soul," and so when he falls, the fall is more severe - the stakes are higher. Instead of simply being embarrassed that he fell, perhaps he must stop the dance because his connection to the dance has now been severed. These ideas were quite interesting and will give me some things to consider as I rehash my Private Moment. What I would like to develop for the next showing of the Private Moment is 2 things: a better definition of who Jackson is, and a stronger story within the moment itself. At the moment, there is not much of a story because the stakes aren't very high, and I haven't found a strong ending - but by finding the conflict, the obstacles, the reversals in the action, and deciding on a strong ending, I will have something stronger to show the class.