Pretending to Be Mean
Toronto, Ontario
It was the second conservative evening in a row that I called in a few of our community actors to get the chance to channel their creative energies, and to put out their worst. By worst I mean “be mean”. Be the Kauravas! Jab those Pandavas! Knock them out of their misery! Let greed and ambition prevail!
For those who know the story of The Maharbharat, it runs a classic theme of fratricidal confrontation with Pandavas as the virtuous sector and their cousins as the greedy bloodhounds.
I played for the actors one of those screechy, scratchy electronic dance pieces and I asked those enthusiasts to enact the scene of the vicious Kuru assembly and to move to the beat. Gambling, selling people away and dishonouring a queen in a roomful of men was the actors fixation. All nastiness. The body motions I called for were jerky, sharp, angular, passionate, aggressive and restless.
Not until Krishna enters the room (rehearsed by one actor) did the sizzling sinisterism simmer. Krishna.
It had been a while since our group had come together and we realized what we had been missing. Example I can suggest, “Let’s be mean. Let’s be dirty.” And that we are. We can identify with it, but not to the extreme as the Kauravas may have conveyed. When you do play-act “mean” you don’t really mean it. You can say I know this feeling or emotion but I am different from it.
That’s why the dramatical exercises are so therapeutic. It let’s you separate the you from the sensations.
Now, if only I could separate or distinguish between the sensed and the soul?
12 KM
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