Timon Week Two

Timon is coming along quite well. I am a bit behind on my lines, as I've been buried in finals at BoCo and Suffolk, but school officially ended last night, so I am all set to jump in and get my hair wet, finally.

I'm not so worried, line-wise, anyway: the four "clowns", as I've been calling us, don't have that much to say. And as far as characters go, none of us has a great deal of psychological terrain to machete thru. What's more of a challenge is the "Irma Vep" like way we are expected to play all these different people. We leave and come right back as someone else, so differentiating these people, both physically and vocally, with a style that we all agree on, is the challenge, but one that I find to be great fun, as there's so many ways to go!

The world Bill has created is quite arresting and unique, I think. His inspiration, visually, is the art work of Kandinsky (particularly his "Improvisation" series, above)

and Sol LeWit. The time period is vaguely thirties in style. The gigantic mural that the Artist is working on in the first scene, depicting Timon's ascent towards Fortune on a sleepy Mount, is actually being constructed by all four of us clowns (ie, Steve, Michelle, Joel and me) as our "Painter" characters. We wear white, paint-splattered cover-alls thru out the play, adding/taking away costume elements for each different character, but the idea is that, at our core, we are these omnipresent, rather cosmic painters: we know all and see all, we have a sense of what will happen and go about pulling the strings. We have an eye into the future, and like the painting, can see ahead towards Timon's downfall.