Destiny

Once a person is in a play, once person is a character, he/she has to work it out, act it out and show the true self of the character. That person has to learn the way of his/her character’s behaviors and characteristic. Even if a man plays a woman’s part, a woman plays a man’s part, it’s the same thing. As long as you know deeply inside who is the character’s true feeling, you surely can act it out. It is just like Song, acting as a woman, it is a hard core job to do. However, he learns and somehow already knows how the Asian women behave and the stereotype of how the Western men think about the Asian women, Song applies these ideas to help him become a perfect he-woman actor. Putting on the “glassmask”, the actor/actress will truly become the character that he/she plays. Before I took an acting class. One of my acting challenges, I had to act as Hellen Keller, a blind, deaf and mute girl. It was a hard challenge for me. I had to learn her behaviors, characteristics, and feelings. Moreover, I challenged myself to live like her for one day, being mute/blind/and deaf. Somehow from that point, I had a connection with her. Somehow I acted like her on stage. Right before my act, I was still me. But as I walked on the stage, I had an incridible feeling. I became her/she became me. We blended together. surprisingly, it was like I put on my face a glassmask, a Hellen Keller’s mask.

That is why I could relate to and understand how Song could do such a good job of fooling and playing Gallimard around as a toy.

The day in our class that we paired up and tried to act the character we were assigned to do, I got paired up with Fatima. We acted the part where Chin and Song were discussing and getting informations from Gallimard. I was Chin, Fatima was Song. We acted and discussed the stereotypes that appeared in this act, which of the props that could be used in this act, what we could do to improve it better, and lastly the connection between M. butterfly and Mme. Butterfly. During the rehearsal, I tried to be Chin, but I thought I had to fix my acting. One of the problems was I didn’t know about Chin that well. I had no idea about her character. Then during the real performance, I tried my best to become her and somehow I felt there was her in my performance. It wasn’t that strong but somehow it made me happy. As I reached to the part: “JUST CHECKING”, I wasn’t planning to make it funny, somehow my “audiences” laughed. From that point, I knew the play doesn’t have to be so serious all the way to the end, adding a little of humors could make the play be more interesting to watch.