animals....

have been brooding over Penthiselea and incorporating those "holes" in the character Matt brought up last week.

My first thought was "well, what animal are you?" With my original textwork, I had tossed around the ideas of a raccoon or a hen, due to their mischievous qualities and nosy, squawking characteristics, respectively. I was thinking about these animals this weekend, and neither one seems appropriate now. While walking past the Carnegie Art Museum on Saturday night and gazing up at the bizarrely interesting animal footage they have projected onto the outside wall, I realized the footage at said moment was of a falcon and just went BINGO. :) The sharp, pointed features in falcons faces and beaks, and the majestic, mysterious quality they hold (similar to Maria's royalty) make a lot of sense to me.

Here are some nifty Peregrine falcon facts:
*"Adult falcons have thin tapered wings, which enable them to fly at high speed and to change direction rapidly." (This supports Maria's sharp mind and mental observation skills. Something I want to play with in rehearsals this week is just how attentive to detail Maria is.. is she obsessive about the space being tidy, for example? About Toby's clothes being unruffled and laying flat? etc..)
*"Falcons are renowned for their exceptional powers of vision; one species has been found to have a visual acuity of 2.6 times that of a normal human."
*"The name "peregrine" means wanderer." (Maria masks it well, but she truly is a wanderer, without many friends or close family. She is extremely lonely, but again, hides it well.)
*"Falcons are solitary animals living alone or in pairs. They mate for life." (Maria is trying to get Toby to settle down with her as her life partner, though he seems to be just out of reach in each scene.)
*"English playwright William Shakespeare was a falconry fan who introduced falconry terms into popular speech: the word "Hag" or "Haggard" is the term for a mature wild hawk or falcon." (Imagine that! I just liked this fact. :> )
*"An extremely clever and ambitious bird." (This is definitely Maria.)

Here is a video link:
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBdn-B7OjM0