I don’t know how to say my exit line.\n
I don’t know if y’all know the play. Essentially, A Trip to Bountiful<\/i> is about Clara Watts, who lives with her son and her daughter-in-law in a small one-bedroom apartment in Houston. She grew up on a farm in a North Texas town called Bountiful; after her husband died, she brought up her son at that farm, too. She hates the city, fights with her daughter-in-law, and dreams of returning to live in Bountiful. During the play, she sneaks away and takes a bus to the nearest big city, and then sweet-talks the local sheriff into driving her the rest of the way to her old house, which is now falling apart. Her son and daughter-in-law meet her there to drive her back to Houston.\n
She claims to have “found her strength and dignity” in Bountiful, or perhaps on the trip; she returns to Houston and her daughter-in-law meekly enough. There is some talk about everybody getting along, but the daughter-in-law is clearly not reconciled, and she herself twice ignores her daughter-in-law’s direct questions. So we’re not talking about a redemptive epiphany here, we’re talking sad, sad, stuff. If you care about the people at all, at that point, I suppose.\n
Anyway, I am playing the son, and I have no idea how to say my last line. It’s the end of the play, right? Jessie Mae (the daughter-in-law) has gone ahead to the car, and I fall behind to speak quietly to my mother.\n
LUDIE: Mama, if I get a raise, you won’t—
MOTHER WATTS: It’s all right, Ludie. I’ve had my trip. You go ahead. I’ll be right there. Look, isn’t that a scissortail?
LUDIE: I don’t know. I didn’t get to see it if it was. They fly so fast. The house used to look so big.<\/blockquote>\nAnd I exit. And then Mother Watts says “Goodbye, Bountiful” and exits as the lights go down.\n
So. How do I say the line The house used to look so big<\/i>? I mean, clearly, what I’m saying is that the house no longer looks big to me, either because I have grown (physically? emotionally?) or because it is so dilapidated that it appears shrunken. Or is it that the house used to loom large in my imagination, during the years that I refused to visit?\n
Digression<\/i>: One of the things I find irritating that actors do is to come up with background details about their characters that are (a) irrelevant to the actual production, and (2) juicy beyond anything really conceivable by non-actors. I try to keep my back-story within reason. For instance, I eventually decided that Valmont was having a little E.D. problem, rather than deciding it was the early stages of syphilis… anyway, Ludie is so adamant about not remembering his childhood home, even refusing to set foot in it once he is compelled to go to the doorstep, that it’s awfully tempting to imagine some very juicy reason for his behavior. Abuse, not to put to fine a point on it. I imagine Horton Foote would be horrified to have an actor read that in to the part. And the play belongs to Mother Watts; my job is to support her, not to draw attention away from her with Acting!<\/i> that will not be understood by the audience anyway. So I am repressing that thought. But still. End Digression.\n
The house used to look so big.<\/i> What an awful thing to say. At that moment, I mean. To my mother, who has claimed to have found her strength and dignity at last in visiting it. I mean, whether you believe that claim or not, it seems so utterly heartless at that moment to say to her The house used to look so big<\/i>. It’s so dismissive. And I know that Ludie is not a perceptive guy; Jessie Mae for all her bitchiness knows Mother Watts much better than I do. He never understands, for twenty years fails to understand, how much being in Bountiful would mean to his mother. And he is, I think, ashamed to have let his reluctance deny his mother that visit. Possibly ashamed of the reluctance itself. And after all that, there he is, in front of the house. Not in it, but in front of it. And it’s collapsing, the roof is probably half gone and the walls leaning and bending, and his mother is standing there convinced, convinced<\/i> that just being on the land has been her salvation. And he says The house used to look so big<\/i>. If his mother was listening at all, how would she take that? Or can he just assume that she isn’t listening? Or is he really so self-absorbed and oblivious that he can’t hear what that sounds like to her?\n
So. How do I say it? And I don’t just mean, what am I thinking when I say it, what emotions are intended to come out, that sort of thing. I mean, do I emphasize so<\/i> or big<\/i>? The Texas voice tends to accent the final word of sentences, but not if the speaker wants to emphasize something else. Do I say it fast or slow? Do I pause between so<\/i> and big<\/i> as if I am trying to think of what to say, or as if I was going to say something else and stopped, or do I run the words together as if I were trying to get the thing out and go? Do I gesture at the house? Or at the past? Or not at all? Do I say it while walking out, or say it standing still and then walk out? I’m not going to face Mother Watts (unless the director overrules me, which would be great<\/i> as it would solve the dilemma), but should I face the house or the audience or the car or just away-from-her?\n
If you have any ideas about it, please shout ’em out. I really am stuck over this, and it seems important. I don’t know that I will actually do what you suggest, but I will probably try it, and your suggestions will very likely spark something in my brain. And yes, I will ask the director, but I’d like to try a few things first.\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger is stuck, and could use a little help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theeyater"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18877,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12404\/revisions\/18877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}