Raising The Stakes

As cheesy as it may sound, ever since I was a little girl, I've wanted to make movies. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be a director. I wanted to make costumes. I wanted to write. I wanted to do it all. I still want to do it all and that is exactly what I'm currently trying to do... sort of. I wish that film majors had an acting specialty, but since there isn't one, I decided to major in theatre. Now, I love the theatre - I'm especially enthralled by the history of theatre in ancient Greek and Roman times. But my passion is film, and it is in film where I want to make my career as well as my craft.

I'm enrolled in a scene study course at my university, instructed by Graham Beckel, the actor. I'd consider him a successful Hollywood actor, seeing as he's been in a plethora of projects such as Brokeback Mountain, Pearl Harbor, and a ton of guest spots on different television shows. Anyways, I respect him immensely not only as an actor, but as a teacher. He is incredibly badass - I've never met anyone like him. So anyway, I'm in the most fun class on campus, right? And we've done monologues and we're just beginning our scenes with our partners and from the beginning he's always said this one phrase and it's really becoming embedded in my brain:

"It's not the line, it's the life."

It's not the line... it's the life. Words of wisdom that couldn't be more true. In class today, we watched that scene from Sophie's Choice. You know the scene. The scene everybody hates watching because it is so incredibly painful. Graham likes to call it the "cumshot" of the whole

movie. Yeah, that scene. So the lines in the scene that the godly Meryl Streep says are pretty basic (even though they're in German). It's pretty much "no, I can't choose, don't make me choose, blah, blah, blah." I mean, I don't think I'm wrong in saying that's not exactly complex... Anyway, I cry every single time I watch it. And it's not because of the lines - it's because of the life. I can feel the horror and the drama of the situation because Meryl Streep is so honest and real. Like, this woman is being forced to choose which of her children lives and which one dies. FUCK, it's so intense. And the stakes are so high - which brings up another lesson of the wise Mr. Beckel - raising the stakes.

The stakes are pretty much what make a scene. It's like that whole über-want thing. Nothing is casual. If it's casual, it's boring, and who is going to watch something that is boring? Nobody, that's who. So, stakes must be raised. I'm working on this scene right now from John Patrick Shanley's "Savage in Limbo." It's sort of funny, but super intense. My scene partner is a friend of mine and she's playing Linda. After an extreme rough draft performance of our scene, we kept being reminded of the stakes. The stakes. And Linda's stakes are pretty simple, I think. She just has to keep her boyfriend because that's all that really matters and blah, blah, blah. I, however, am playing Denise Savage and I think her stakes are a little bit more complicated. So that's what I need to do - figure out what her stakes are and raise them.

In this particular scene, Denise - a loud woman in the Bronx - reveals to her old classmate Linda that she is still a virgin. But the stakes aren't just that she wants to lose her virginity - it's nowhere near that simple. She needs to succeed in a relationship. Every single relationship she's ever had has clearly never had any success because if it did, she would've lost her virginity eventually, right?

And she states that she wasn't holding out for just some guy, and the option has always been there for her to lose it and she doesn't want to take that road. So clearly, the sex isn't the real problem - the problem is her inability to have a successful relationship. Also in the scene, she basically admits that she doesn't have many friends and is not very good at friendships - so it's not just successful romantic relationships she is failing at, but friendships as well. Now, my problem is figuring out what her stakes are in this scene. From my perspective, she doesn't have anything to lose until later in the play. She doesn't have any real friends and her love life is non-existent. The only real thing is that she has all of these emotions about ideas and love and her emptiness and has never expressed them and they're finally coming out. But why are her stakes so high? Maybe they're high because she's finally opening up to someone she hasn't been very close with? She's finally sharing herself with someone, which could be something she's been unable to do in the past, and a reason why she's had so many failed relationships. She practically barricades herself in her apartment with her sick mother - hiding from the real world and real relationships. I feel like I can understand her frustrations but I'm having trouble with the stakes because I don't see that she has anything to lose. Maybe she's afraid to lose herself?

I've gotta raise the stakes. I think I need to raise the stakes in life too - but that's an area far too complex for me to even dive into right now.

It's not the line, it's the life.