Original link: https://wangpei.net/2023/07/13/on-the-rehearsal/
“Rehearsal” The Rehearsal is a live-action documentary filmed by Canadian comedy documentary director Nathan Fielder, produced by HBO. The drama is not long, only 6 episodes, except for the first episode which is more than 40 minutes long, the others are all within half an hour, so it is easy to finish watching.
Shakespeare said: Life is a stage, and you and I are actors. We also often say: there is no dress rehearsal in life. But Nathan gave life one more chance and several rehearsal opportunities. He finds volunteers who are facing life’s difficult problems and helps them rehearse this difficult time in their lives.
The first episode is about Kor, an African-American uncle in his 50s. He is a bar quiz enthusiast. The hurdle in his life is bragging to his colleagues that he has a master’s degree. In fact, he only got a bachelor’s degree. He was afraid that his companions would despise him if they knew the truth, especially a female columnist named Trisha. So Nathan recreated an exact replica of the bar, using extras to play the bartender and customers, and especially asked someone to play Trisha.
Interesting things happened, it turns out that in our lives, those trivial but crucial details are often overlooked. For example, the uncle actually likes Trisha a little bit in his heart, since both of them are single, it’s okay to have some romantic stories. But the uncle didn’t admit it. As a result, when he was playing with the actor, he unconsciously touched Trisha’s hand lightly with his fingertips, and was spotted by the sharp-eyed Nathan.
With Kor’s conundrum solved, the story progresses even weirder. A single woman in her 40s named Angela wanted to experience what it was like to raise a child. Nathan grants her wish. They rented a farm for her, where men could farm and women weaved, and hired a group of child actors to play her son. Due to the law, children are not allowed to work for more than 4 hours, and the crew needs to change child actors every 4 hours, and change to an electronic baby model that can cry at night.
In order to speed up the process of time, Nathan let the child grow three years old in a week, and grow from three months to 18 years old in a few months. This live-action version of Sims will inevitably confuse the audience. Especially the play within a play, the rehearsal about the rehearsal, and the constant archive and replay of life, which makes people doubt the ethical boundaries of this show. Especially later, Nathan himself got too involved in the play and played the role of the child’s father himself, making this episode a performance by Nathan alone.
I really don’t like cheating, any kind of cheating. When I knew that although Obsidian’s plug-in imitated the flowstate, it disappeared by itself. It didn’t really disappear, but could be saved with control + z. interest. I need actual combat with real swords and guns, not this kind of fake drill. So, I switched back to the flowstate software on the mac and started playing for real. If I don’t type in 5 seconds, all my hard work in this session will be in vain. Every word I type is lost forever.
The ethical issues of the rehearsal are embarrassing. There is a 6-year-old boy, Remy, who has no father since he was a child. After he entered the film crew and played Adam, he really regarded Nathan as his father. Even when the show was over and the contract was terminated, he did not come out of the play . It is too difficult for a 6-year-old child to distinguish between acting and reality. Nathan did some remedial work in the episode, but I believe that the child’s psychology has been deeply affected.
The rehearsal made us think about the mutual understanding between people. We often say long live understanding, but who can really enter the heart of others. Nathan adopted a series of transposition methods. In Episode X, he became a Field Method amateur actor training class. In the class, in order to experience the feelings of the students, he played the role of the students himself and asked a student named Thomas to come play yourself. It was only when he was sitting down in class that he discovered various problems in teaching. For example, the placement of tables and chairs is far better than sitting in a circle. By standing in someone else’s shoes, English is in someone’s shoes, he can better improve teaching. This is worth learning in my course.
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