Yesterday I was in the play rehearsal. My character is an old angry mother, with a very old husband. My husband is a narcoleptic, which means he falls asleep all the time. At one point I am supposed to wake him. In the creative spur of the rehearsal we tried to choreograph my husband slapping me. He hit me with his elbow and I got a nose bleed. Now, it wouldn't have been decorous of me to start crying. My audience expected me to be a grown up about it. The hit didn't hurt so I was able to play my role easily.
You do what you need to do at the moment. When you manage to act as you are expected to you learn to read your audience. That change one makes when it is needed can be seen as an attempt to act decorously. Every situation in life has a different character to be filled with. You develop a personality, but that is a collection of multiple yous.
Decorum helps us fit in. We play by the virtue of the others or we make them act by our virtue.
Virtue can also be called values. Heinrich's explains, social acceptance of the word values over virtue came because men didn't want to be called virtuous, since that was a feminine attribute: "Hey, pal, who are you calling virtuous? The word connotes weakness and dependency-a sexist's idea of femininity".
Is this how they want to look like?
Oh yeah all muscle...
I think we were luckier with this one. Don't mind me being virtuous...
No comments:
Post a Comment