The question of Richard Armitage has intrigued me for awhile. He played a great part in a mini-series and in several other tv series. But how many people would that describe? Several. Maybe not legions but several. He’s good looking. How many fit that description? A bunch more. He’s very masculine. Even more fall into that category. Oh wait he also seems like a nice guy. We like how he presents himself, and his co-workers like him. Yep, a few more are like that. And did I mention he’s smart? I’m going with my gut on that one. The guy is smart, and I completely trust my instincts about this — instincts that have rarely let me down when taking an accounting of someone’s grey matter. So is it that he’s “the complete package?” Maybe. But that’s still not quite it. I have actually known good looking men who were smart and talented in something aesthetic (read that: they were sensitive enough to be talented in something aesthetic) and also very masculine and nice guys. Yes, I’m telling the truth! I worked with a man for years who had played football at Michigan State, was brilliant, super good looking, helluva nice guy, could sing really well, and he had a great sense of humor. Sometime I’ll have to tell you his story — it’s a doozy — but not today.
So what makes Richard Armitage special? Let me rephrase that? What makes Richard Armitage special to me? I have mentioned before that I think he’s special? Oh I haven’t? What the hell do you think this blog is about?! Or does me saying that he’s special to me make you feel weird? I know it’s made me feel weird. It made me feel so weird that I had to find out why I thought it. Since SO is the love of my life (despite our ups and downs and all arounds — plenty of those) and having four great kids… yes, dammit, I’m biased; they’re great, and I don’t want to hear anything else :D…I did not understand what was going on in my obsession to watch Richard Armitage.
Of course some people have distractions like this, and I’m not going to say I’m above having a distraction like this. Not at all. But watching his stuff is not merely a distraction from all of the really tough things going on in my life. Yes, there are some really tough things going on in my life. No, you don’t want to hear about them, and granted, some of watching him has been a distraction from those things. I admit it! But that’s not why I’m writing this post. That’s not why I started this blog. I do have an obsession, or am otaku as my friend James describes it. But my obsession is not Richard Armitage. It’s something else, and I think Richard is obsessed with it too.
I’ve said several times I wanted to avoid getting in Richard Armitage’s head, but my friends, I can’t help it. I had to get in his head in order to understand. Since I wasn’t going to do anything invasive with respect to his privacy, because frankly, I would be very upset if someone did that to me, I decided to investigate some indirect evidence of what may be in his head. This required a look at the influences on his professional life. Of course Miss Pat and Pattison’s College were of interest. But it was too difficult to glean much without crossing boundaries. So I’ve consigned that experience to one that will have to wait for RA or some biographer to tell us a good deal more. I concentrated on LAMDA and some of the ways of thinking he was exposed to there.
As part of study at LAMDA, the students are required to have some proficiency in the history of the theater, its evolution into the modern theater and in part what we now think of as method acting, which I’ve learned can be a bit of a nebulous term. Since the term has become a little fluid, I went back to the sources that RA was expected to go back to. Namely Edward Gordon Craig, Constantin Stanislavski and Bertold Brecht. You may be thinking, “I don’t want to hear about those guys. I just want to know how Richard Armitage does what he does.” Go back and read this post from the beginning again because there is no way to really understand unless you know a little something about these people. And let me say that reading the works of these three guys and a handful of others was life changing for me. I don’t make a habit of throwing that comment around without good cause, so I hope you will respect what I’m saying here without knowing anything yet. LOL!
And I’ve written so much on this and don’t really want to edit, that I’m going to do the unforgivable and leave you hanging until tomorrow.
edit:
The thoughts continue here.
RAFrenzy 