changing my mind

i started off this year wanting to keep a daily record of every day this year. just a little sentence or two or a list of things that happened that day that i found memorable. that failed miserably. i just forgot about it after january 12th. "wow," you gasped, while i shamefully muttered, "i know." however, there is a silver lining! i am required to keep an acting journal for my acting II class, so i thought that every once in a while, i would share an entry on this little thing. what do you say?

*this has to do with a production i am in right now, Our Town. sorry if you aren't familiar with it*

"While driving home today, I was thinking a lot about Emily; her relationship with George, but mostly I was thinking about her 'goodbye' monologue. With George, I know she loves him, but how much? Nine years have gone by since their wedding and their kid is four. That means there are five years that is just the two of them, which was very rare back then. At the turn of the century, couples would get married and have kids right off the bat, because that is what was done back then. It was the social norm. I think that George and Emily wanted to spend as much time together, just the two of them, as long as socially possible, becasue they didn't just love each other; they were IN love with each other. They were absolutely crazy about each other.
So I then thought about my 'goodbye' monologue and I was greatly upset by the fact that she says goodbye to clock ticking, but not to George and the baby. If she was so in love with him, why didn't she have one final farewell to him. Then it hit me. The point of the monologue is for her to finally say goodbye to life so she can embrace death. If she even thinks about George, she won't want to forget her life. So she can't remember him.
At the end of the monologue, I think she has fully embraced death, however, George comes back in and is sobbing at her grave. By that point, she has completely forgotten about George so she is taken aback to see him. Then, when she says 'It's George!" the second time, I want to say it full of remorse and sorrow, becasue all my love for him, both the love I felt in life and the realized emotions I know I have now in death explode throughout me. But when I see him sobbing, and I ask Mother Gibbs 'they don't understand, do they?' I realize that the love he, as a human, has for me is NOTHING compared to what we could of have if we had lived every moment of every minute of our lives, which is one of the lessons that Thornton Wilder is trying to teach through this play."

allison