. . . the open lesson . . . acting students open their 'work' to an interested public . . . the question "what is the lesson?" hung in the air as the students bravely, though for the most part, presented ill-prepared material around the theme
Hospitals . . . what is the actor's research? . . . the actor's processes? . . . what is theater? . . . questions which circulated as the action began . . . two hours later very little remained but shallow wallowing in pools of dissipated energy . . .
. . . most of the material hinted at the compellingly humane which unfortunately resolved into the hopelessly mundane . . . there was movement but no developed study of the movement . . . no attempt to test limits or boundaries of space&time whether physical, imaginary or theatrically . . .
. . . the students exercised a presentational stance - posturing and playing for an audience who might catch much of their 'in-joke' humour and pathos . . . the overlong improvisation could be excused if at the core was an act of self-penetration . . . too often the humour was cheap, gag-like and self serving . . . at the expense of rather than serving the material . . . lines were lost and sloppily delivered . . . bold actions dissolved . . . the collective voices were weak and unsupported . . .
. . . occasionally a deep and rich moment would surface in both the traditional and more experimental . . . two moving monologues from classic world theatre touched the power of the word incarnate . . . a powerful étude between a man and a woman mesmerized with a precise and engaging, meditative, ritualized rhythm of understated life-or-death urgency in a landscape that was beautiful but chill and depersonalized - the actors had skin, bone and a sinew of their own, a subtle spin . . .
. . . the lesson learnt seemed that without careful, sustained, and vigilant work students will lapse into bad habitual practices, will lose the point of concentration, may miss the focus on the eternal act of creation, betray their craft and stray from the way of the actor . . . the lesson learnt was that the educated imagination demands a rigorous self-sacrifice and deep study . . . again & again . . .
Thoughts, wrote Nietzsche, are shadows of our feelings: always darker, emptier, and simpler than these. And the written word, it strikes me, is but a shadow of our thoughts. 
