Actors are curious beasts.

I saw a dress rehearsal of "Antigone" at Theatre du Nouveau Monde last night (I'm so special, I saw it before the rest of the public gets to) and once I got past the giggling about the fact that in French 'anteeginee' is pronounced 'anti-GONE' I had a great time. I don't see nearly enough plays which is tragic because I'm supposed to be a theatre student. I nearly forgot about that excitement the audience gets when the house lights go down, and characters burst onstage and everything is new and fresh and the audience is ready for anything.

That's why I am in theatre... for those chills you get right before a world is unveiled right before your eyes. And I cannot believe how long it has been since I got those chills. Anyways, it was a dress rehearsal and there were a few rough spots, but that is the beauty of theatre. People can and will fuck up right before your eyes. Actors are still building up for that opening night intensity and I found that their holding back was pretty interesting. I could actually see them think. I could see them say to themselves "shit, that didn't sound so great" or "oh my god, there is finally an audience here".

After the show, the director ran over to block the curtain call. This director was trying to organize the longest, most complicated curtain call on the face of the planet and actors being actors were just not getting it. Ismene kept walking in the wrong direction. Antigone squinted past the glaring white lights and just stood absolutely still for what seemed like hours, her face all squished up and when she finally realized that every other member of the cast was in fact, offstage, she scuttled off like an embarrassed little puppy. I thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Until the actors started to be hams. After a certain point, the actors began to notice that there was still an audience in the house and they had no more lines to say and no more blocking to go through. So while they waited for their next direction, they milked their places in the spotlight for far more than what they were worth. They said lame jokes, did little tap dances and sung classic songs like "pump the jam".

Still in costume, with no character to hide behind, these actors looked scared. And then they looked like court jesters. Curious little actors.

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As for the play, it was good. Lights were great, set was fun but the costumes were cliched and had no continuity. The acting was generally solid, but Antigone was too angry and had no build. If she is freaking out right from the opening scene, she has nowhere to go later on. And all the actors seemed to really like looking up. What was up there?! The Gods sure weren't because they all looked down when they mentioned the gods, which is silly because only Justice is mentioned as actually being underground. I figured the rest of them were on that mountain, which would be up, right? The woman who played Eurydice was fantastic. Only two lines in the whole play but her presence was simply spellbinding. Also, she was the only one who didn't need to be a dork onstage while the director fumbled around with herding the cast into complicated risewalkstopbowstopsplitwalkstopbowbowwalkpausewalkbowwalk sequences.