It was also my birthday today, and I was running late to rehearsal, crossing against the lights, racing down Boylston Street, getting stuck behind students strolling along with their noses to their phones (just move it already, would you?) and I came tearing into the rehearsal room with the cast standing around a table with all of our usual junk food, plus some really tasty cupcakes (Key Lime, yeah!) and some original turtles. Plus I got a rendition of Happy Birthday that I think spanned the entire American music canon.
We open in a little over three weeks. Starting yesterday, the cast is off-book, which means they are supposed to have their lines memorized. Watching a cast during the first couple of day of being off book though, relinquishing the security of a script in hand, is like watching a newborn deer or giraffe--any long-legged animal just born--struggle to its feet. They're gawky and clumsy. But actors plow ahead, reacting to moments and instincts, and you do suddenly start to see some serious strides in acting. It was also my birthday today, and I was running late to rehearsal, crossing against the lights, racing down Boylston Street, getting stuck behind students strolling along with their noses to their phones (just move it already, would you?) and I came tearing into the rehearsal room with the cast standing around a table with all of our usual junk food, plus some really tasty cupcakes (Key Lime, yeah!) and some original turtles. Plus I got a rendition of Happy Birthday that I think spanned the entire American music canon.
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The Turtles' design team had a production meeting last night at my apartment, which coincidentally is also the official headquarters of Boston Public Works Theater Company, and because of the meeting I didn't sleep a wink last night.
And not because it was a bad meeting. It was quite the opposite. It was a wonderfully productive meeting in which we figured out where we stood in putting together this incredibly tech-heavy play, and what we need to do between now and our production run next week, which is a rehearsal when the designers and the actors all get together and walk through the play. The actors will play their characters and the sound designer (Allyssa Jones) will be cueing the sound for that moment (road noises, thunder, a door opening) and the lighting designer (Barbara Craig) will be projecting images onto the set. This is also the time when our stage manager, Jadira Figueroa will start working with the cues so when tech week comes she'll already have a good feel for running the show. When I acted, what happened to me last night would happen to me all of the time. Suddenly, this thing, this being, this creature, this force would take over and fill up my body, completely out of my control. I just had to lie there and sweat it out. Today, despite not having slept, my mind feels alert and sharp. It's all part of the creative process. After the meeting Jeff, the director, and Amy, the production manager, stayed behind for a beer, and I commented to Jeff that things are going very well. He replied, As they should. Tonight the cast is meeting to run lines, which means they'll recite their lines from memory to get them hotwired into their brains. I hope this helps answer the oft-asked question actors get, How do you remember all of those lines?
So, I won't be needed in the room, and I'm taking the opportunity to see some theater. I'll be over at the BCA seeing Zeitgeist Theater's production of Bent. And with that, I'll leave you with this thought from Richard Schechner's Environmental Theater. You can also read it here on Google Books. Apropos of nothing, Boston Public Works should market a Turtles drinking game, and every time a character says a kind of animal, you have to take a drink. Turtles, coyotes, owls, rabbits, hamsters, and amphibians all are prominent in the play.
Tonight, Jeff worked with Nicole Dunn, who is playing the roles of El Diablo, Vern, and Emanuel, and they worked on characterizations. Obviously there is gender bending in Turtles. Not only Nicole, but Mal Malme and Elle Borders all play male roles, and the problem becomes how do women depict men without it becoming drag? I wrote the play this way because I wanted to give women the chance to play men in their lives, and I was curious to explore what they would do with the roles theatrically, and also how audiences would react to the results. A lot of tonight's conversations revolved around what kind of men Nicole's parts were, their situation in life and how it influenced who they were. Jeff is steeped in a lot of disciplines including movement, and a lot of what he and Nicole discussed were how each character moved, walked, and even stood still. It's easy to lapse into caricature or stereotypes; think about the stereotypical man who talks gruffly and swaggers around, and you understand that that was exactly what we were trying to avoid. The following pictures show Jeff and Nicole talking, and the final picture is her playing El Diablo. What do you think? I've always loved this iconic image of Sammy Davis, Jr. taking a break during a rehearsal. It shows how draining the work can be, and at the same time the reason why we work so hard is right outside the window. Turtles is rehearsing in classrooms at Berklee College. We're lucky to have access to the space, because one of the daunting obstacles every young theater company in Boston has to deal with is rehearsal space. We don't have NYC outside our window. But we do have loud street noises reminding us we're in a city, and we have the inviting(?) Rice Bowl just below us. This week we're working on specific spots in the play. Tonight we concentrated on that key scene in the second act where Bella and Jesus discuss (argue) what it really means to be human, while Finn, in his wonderful boyish way, shows us instead. Tonight it was just Alex and Elle in the rehearsal space, with Alex heading upstairs to work with Dialect Coach Lorena Calderon while Elle stayed downstairs to work with Jeff on Finn's metamorphosis into a bird.
Translation:
A polar bear grows its thick coat to keep warm. Grows sharp claws to be the supreme killer where food is scarce, where being a supreme killer is the difference between life and death. The polar bear has adapted. We are a species capable of destroying ourselves. There is a reason we have developed emotions such empathy, kindness, and hope. We developed them out of survival. If we hadn’t, we probably would have destroyed ourselves long ago. Can you imagine a polar bear feeling remorse for killing a seal? And while you are not perfect, you love and care for your children –you love another human being. I maintain, through your actions, there is a very good chance that you are further along the evolutionary scale. You might very well represent a higher form of the species, while others will go the way of the dodo. That is what it means to be human. We've now finished two full weeks of rehearsal. The rehearsal room is a strange and wonderful place, and it is also one of my favorite places to be. It is in the rehearsal room where the real work happens. The actors, the director, and the playwright talk a lot about the play and what's happening, and how things are and perhaps how they should be. This is where we see what works, and more importantly, what doesn't work. The actors move a lot, try different things, different actions, different ways of saying a line based on an internal motivation. They explore what causes them to say a line this way, rather than this other way? I'm in the room to give guidance (this is what I was thinking when I wrote this scene or this line) and also to gain even more insight into the script as it develops. This is new work, not something that's been staged time after time. Just for the record, some of think that's what makes it so much fun and exciting. There is a lot of laughing and joking around in our rehearsal room. Part of the reason is that everyone likes one another and gets along. I also think it's because a lot of the material in Turtles in very deep and serious, and the actors need release from all of the emotional work that is demanded of them. Because I am also acting as the artistic director on this project (the Boston Public Works' model is that each playwright works as the artistic director on his/her show), this particular production would reflect what a theater would be like if I ran it. Some playwrights simply want the actors to say the words they wrote, but in my artistic theatrical world, I want to hear from the actors and the director what is and isn't working for them. I like a more collaborative effort. You have to trust and respect the other artists in the room, and that their insight on a moment in the play is genuine and comes from a place that is grounded in their talent and theatrical expertise. Already we've changed, deleted, or added a number of lines, and in one case about a half of an entire scene has been rewritten based on input from the actors. Sometimes a line just grates on me, and I know then and there it needs to be cut. Sometimes the input comes from me noticing how an actor might always stumble on a line, and I'll ask them what's up. In the case of the scene, I knew it wasn't really working, and I'm so glad that our rehearsal room seems to be a place where the actors feel safe to not only try bold choices in their work, but open up and share their own lives with all of us. It was in this manner that I was given a clue about how this particular scene would work better. |
AuthorBoston-based writer/playwright/visual artist.Founding Artistic Director of Alley Cat Theater, traveler, reader. Likes a good red sauce. Archives
February 2018
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