Flashback To Act is to Be [WIP - Under revision]

[Gemini]

21, Fall, 507 AV "I don’t act, I become." - Gemini Acting and impersonation go hand in hand. One cannot act without mimicking the subject of portrayal. Similarly, one cannot impersonate without acting out the actions of the target. For Gaios, this was the fundamental philosophy in his craft of theatrical performance. Ever since his first performance a while back, Gaios would wake before first light every morning to wander out into the empty streets of Alvadas, indulging in the tranquil silence that enveloped itself in darkness before dawn. He would dance into the unknown with his eyes closed, carefully extending each of his limbs, stretching out his body to its full limit. He would savour the sensation of his fingers passing through the cold, crisp morning air, of the slight breeze that brushed past his locks of hair. He embraced them. In the uninterrupted silence, he would then begin to act. People, animals, things - they flooded into his mind. A cat? Nobleman? Priest? A symenos acrobat ? He didn’t care. All that matters is that a role is conjured within his mind. Once a role was chosen, he would then attempt to bring it to life, whether he himself was willing or not. That is the extent of his devotion to the act, whatever it may be, as long as he understood its essence, he would portray it to the best of his ability. Each role was formed by both a "core" and a "husk", it was easy to become a certain role once these two unique components have been studied and understood. Gaios didn't know when or how he began grasping such concepts in the art of acting and impersonation, but he believed and followed it with reverence. It allowed him to lose himself in the role, to deliver performances that transcended mere acting. Closing his eyes, Gaios took a deep breath of the crisp morning air. Then he felt it. A small, spherical part of Gaios's being detached itself from the whole. His senses grew distant, his consciousness distorted into a murky blur. Veins and tendons bulged and contracted as his body tensed, then gradually soothed into tranquil relaxation as the detached constituent gently drifted through him, developing a sentience of its own as it delved into the deepest parts of his mind. It would search, seek for whatsoever it wanted as it waded through the fragments of his consciousness, piecing together the scattered bits of memory and understanding that Gaios had obtained for any one character. After it finished recollecting whatever it had been seeking, the sense of reality would then rush back with the tips of his touch reattaching themselves first, followed by a tingling sensation throughout his body as a wave of emotion swept through his nerves. The process gave Gaios a newfound clarity of mind. The detached component of himself would return from the depths of his memory as the "core" for the role that it had pieced together, while the detachment of his own senses from reality allowed a new "husk" to manifest itself within his body. "Jester,” the boy uttered to himself. That was the role that had been chosen. Slightly moving his left leg forward and landing it with a tiptoe, Gaios swung his right hand in front of his abdomen, keeping his left behind his back as he bowed his torso down in a typical jester’s bow. He then drew an outwards crescent with his left foot as his entire body twirled around in a backwards motion, leaving his arms extended in a v-shape towards the open air as his chin was held up high, a wide and proud smile across his face. He imagined an audience in front of him, watching his every move as he diligently performed. Of course, the movements he executed weren’t exactly of a high calibre, yet what he lacked in form he compensated with in spirit. Though there was a slight rigidness in his mimicking of the jester’s movement, his liveliness in the role made it seem as if the stiffness in movement had been intended as a part of the Jester's performance, more than making up for the blunders. Gaios felt the role gradually sink in as his vision began darting around the surroundings in quick and sharp curiosity. Everything banal and ordinary now seemed to be an object of significant interest. Each step he took forwards grew to hold a elated bounce at the tips of the toes. His arms swung through the air in a cheerful rythmn. Bringing a sudden, jolting stop to his current steps, Gaios then suddenly dashed in the opposite direction in a frenzy, running for dear life, only to feint tripping over an invisible object then genuinely failing an ill-planned front flip, landing face flat on the floor. He laid there unmoving for a good few moments with his limbs positioned comically in the air before he scurried back up to his feet in a fit of exaggerated anger, staring intensely into completely random directions while impatiently stomping his foot. Without any warning he swung his leg at the invisible obstacle he so imagined, stopping it abruptly mid-air as it seemingly made contact, which upon he faked a loud wail of pain. He then hopped away on the other foot as he clutched the seemingly injured one in an awkward manner, his expression of extreme agony. All this effort surmounted to a mere above-mediocre attempt at the typical slapstick comedic performance of a Jester. On stage, jesters seemed to be mere fools that utterly lacked the common sense of the other, more normal roles that roamed the scene. As a result, the misconception that acting as jesters require little skill from the actor develops among the common audience. More informed members of the audience and the actors however, know only too well that playing a Jester, on the contrary, requires a tremendous amount of skill and experience. The actors needed to know how to achieve comedic effect, they had to know how to "seperate" the segments of their body, how to loosen and relax. They had to truly detach themselves from what they know of the world and see everything as a mindless jester would see it. Abandoning reality - for most it wasn't such an easy feat. Gaios, though giving a performance that could be considered brilliant for his amount of experience, was not quite at the level required of a professional yet. His form was lacking, and he did not understand the role well enough. Most of all, he lacked experience. Gaios sighed as he ended his practice. Despite all the action, his limbs felt stiff from the chill of the morning, and the pain from the failed flip began to sink into the ball of his left shoulder. The pain helped him remember that for one, he had forgotten to stretch prior to beginning his little act; and that second, he would probably get a scolding for his careless bruise by Loren later on. Recollecting knowledge of what he was taught by an old friend, he lay down and stretched his body as a cat would when it woke from a quiet slumber. He took pleasure in taking in the numbing sensation as his limbs stretched to the limit of their flexibility and just a bit farther than he could stretch a few days before. He sat upright with his legs extended straight and managed to completely lay his body down flat. Putting pressure into lowering his torso onto his legs, the numbing sensation grew in extent to a painful extension of the hamstrings. Slowly but surely, he was improving. "Endure the pain," the boy spoke to himself. It hurt Gaios, but he knew it was a necessary process for his body. All of the other actors had started from a much younger age, and he would have to experience more pain than the others if he wanted to catch up. The ends of the street blurred into a disarray, only to flow back into clarity as the paved stone path he was on seemed to reconnect to another portion of the city. Gaios paid no notice to this however, as he concentrated on the pain of his stretches. The neck came first, then the torso, shoulder and arms, followed by the waist and pelvis, then the hamstrings (again) and at last his calves and ankles. The stretching session left his entire body painful but loose, but it refreshed Gaios.