Fundamentals of Acting

A woman appeared in September and made us release our assholes. She also made us cry in front of one another shortly before she abandoned us to be in a Broadway play. Since then, a man has come to teach the class. His name is Arby.

We start the session with “walking walking walking rhythmic clapping!” We often spend more than an hour talking about what we would like to do in the class while Arby scolds us for speaking to him “rather than to the group,” or for “speaking for others rather than for ourselves.” After 1 1/2 hours of this, Arby states, “Okay, I have heard you.” He has two hours left to kill without a lesson plan.

For a few weeks, we read three lines of an Irish play over and over, while Arby yells “again!” “again!”  Then, Arby has us stand with our eyes closed in a circle. He tells us to find a group rhythm out of silence. Each time a member of the circle starts clapping, he screams “No! Don’t force it!”

I am so bored that I slap my thigh. Arby doesn’t stop me. My wonky hand-jive and disgusting body percussion is permitted to grow into a group frenzy.  Arby is so proud of us that he begins to dance, awkwardly, in black socks, while smiling. This might have made me happy had it not sickened me.  Arby tricked us into having fun that a] had nothing to do with acting  b] was fun only relative to the unfun we’d already had, and c] was more appropriate as dance therapy for people recovering from strokes or drug addiction.