tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5578764475698868093.post5964302064587666436..comments2023-10-08T03:32:33.151-04:00Comments on bookeywookey: DO NOT SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED (Penelope Fitzgerald, Sherlock Holmes, Harris Burdick, tesseracts, oh! and a cool weblog)Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05511240514127283024noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5578764475698868093.post-72013716627462955912007-09-10T00:53:00.000-04:002007-09-10T00:53:00.000-04:00I looooove the Mary Russell series-so glad that yo...I looooove the Mary Russell series-so glad that you've started the first one! (note to self: must blog about it at some point)<BR/><BR/>I also loved The Mysteries of Harris Burdick when I was younger; I was in a gifted and talented program in elementary school, and we did a lot of neat stuff with the book. I've thought about it on and off for years, but I never knew the title. So thank you so much for posting about it!Evahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06703372903532502944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5578764475698868093.post-46263636935442146792007-09-09T11:56:00.000-04:002007-09-09T11:56:00.000-04:00I guess it's the old - you can't play a negative a...I guess it's the old - you can't play a negative action thingy - not just in acting, in life in general, I think. That's not to say that we sometimes don't look back and discover that awareness of our quotidian world has been absent for a while, but we can't demand that that happen directly ourselves and we should assume even less about what we can do to manipulate others. Anyone who ever tells me about an acting or directing technique that involves their certainty about how they are influencing their audience is a BIG FAT LIAR. Not that I have any strong opinions on the matter. However we can, I think, learn to encourage our own belief, some of my students used to call it "soft effort" and that's what technique is all about. A director or painter or writer can also invite the audience into a certain kind of experience in which we establish some rules, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, and gently provide them entry into our universe, but the rest is up to them.Tedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05511240514127283024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5578764475698868093.post-38691960889938597462007-09-09T10:23:00.000-04:002007-09-09T10:23:00.000-04:00I love how much you love Harris Burdick - best gif...I love how much you love Harris Burdick - best gift I ever gave!!<BR/><BR/>And I don't think we've ever discussed the whole "willing suspension of disbelief" thing - but now I really want to. I REALLY see your point with this .. it's interesting - I posted a quote from one of Madeleine L'Engle's books yseterday (I think it was yesterday) - and it has to do with "belief". The simple belief of children - first of all ... and what they can teach us.<BR/><BR/>That's why I like to say I belong to the "bang bang you're dead" school of acting.<BR/><BR/>When kids pretend to shoot each other and go into a swan-dive of "death" - there is no "suspension of disbelief" - even though the gun is imaginary, and they are 5 years old and NOT dying from multiple gunshot wounds. They don't "suspend disbelief". They flat out BELIEVE. <BR/><BR/>That's how I've always wanted acting to feel to me - and I'm not always there, of course - and sometimes you need tools to help you believe - but, to me, the best kind of acting is when you see someone, an adult, in a full-blown state of make-believe. They aren't "pretending" to believe - they DO believe. <BR/><BR/>Hard to describe the difference - but it's so clear when you see it!!<BR/><BR/>And rest in peace, Madeleine. Thanks for everything.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com