Here is part of my production response for Carmen Funebre. The topic is addressing one actors performance. I think you'll find it interesting so give it a read.
I feel like the experience I had with Carmen Funebre was extraordinary. The actors themselves did not speak much and were relied on heavily for their movements and guttural sounds, which made it very interesting to me. But I feel that I was more privileged than all other audience members in attendance in that I was given the rare opportunity to dance with one of the long-haired actors, making him (obviously) stand out to me. But if you read the last sentence closely, you will see that it was not the fact that I stared into his eyes while dancing around the stage that allowed him to stick out in my mind. It was that fact that the long-haired actor I danced with was the ONLY long-haired actor in the production. I did not realize it until curtain call.
This actor, whose name I do not know as I did not keep a program, amazed me AFTER the fact. His characters did not seem at all alike. When we first saw him (that I can recall), he was a refugee dragging a small metal stove. The sparks the smoke made seemed to me to be the drive he felt to keep hope alive. His walk was brisk but tender, and his eyes were strong but gentle. His frizzy hair framed his hardened but sensitive face. He made a connection with another refugee, a woman, and in their combined efforts, they became slightly human again. Although this sense of humanization was quickly stripped of them again, his role as a refugee was a complex, complete and fulfilled one.
The soldier or guard who emerged later to torture the beautiful blonde woman by spitting wine in her face was a different man. His energy was chaotic and disruptive. His demeanour was dirty and abrasive, and I instantly hated him. Watching him made me sick. When he pulled out the picture of Maria, who at the time I did not know was me, I was glad she had escaped him. Then he turned, and his eyes met mine. He knew what he wanted, and he made a bee-line straight for me. His eyes were wild with lust, and when he grabbed my hand, my body told me not to go with him even though I knew he was just an actor onstage. Dancing in his arms in the middle of the scene, I experienced his world. He got my discomfort to crack, and an awkward smile eked across my lips. He even got me to bite the picture of Maria and taste the wine he spat on a defenceless woman. He was manipulative, and his manner made the world a blur. He stripped me of the compassion I had felt and made me enjoy the spiral into intense guilt.
At the end of the show, I was shocked when the two characters emerged as one actor. In my mind, I had made them into two completely separate people, and the colliding of the stark contrasts between the refugee and the guard shocked me. I did not consciously think of this actors effectiveness, which made it that much more powerful when I did think about it. To me, this actor stood out among the others because even his unique appearance among the small cast could not breech his performance. I could not see the same man in either character. He stood out to me more that the men on stilt with leather masks, bare chest, orange pants and whips. He stood out to me more than the character of death on stilts and more than the beautiful blonde woman whose pleading face could break your heart in an instant. This man wowed me without my even knowing, an experience I have never been a part of before in a theatre.
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