Downplayed and Upstaged “As in a theatre, the eyes of men, after a well-graced actor leaves the stage, are idly bent on him that enters next.”

"Lord what fools these mortals be!"
-a Midsummer Night's Dream III, 2, 115

Near the middle of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream a troupe of actors are rehearsing a play when that merry hobgoblin, Puck, comes along and decides to have some fun. And what can be more fun than screwing with a bunch of presumptuous actors? So Puck changes the lead actor into an ass. The other actors scream and flee and the audience laughs uproariously.

I’m convinced that the spirit of Puck is alive and well – in every single show there is a moment when the shit hits the fan. Lines are forgotten, props break, entrances are missed, the power fails, a light fixture explodes, an audience member suffers a seizure, etc.

Side Note: All of the above have happened to me in various theatre performances I have either performed in, crewed, or watched.

Poor actors blink in the face of Puck’s mischievous prank and the show descends into disaster. Good actors maintain composure and push onwards. And great actors somehow turn the disaster to their advantage.

I’m reminded of a story of a show in Broadway where a famous actress (whose name escapes me – I want to say Carol Burnett) is onstage with a dog. The dog pees right there in front of the audience who bursts into laughter. The entire troupe freezes except for the leading actress who simply walks offstage nonchalantly, returns with a mop, and cleans it up as she continues on with the show.

That’s the very definition of a great actor.

Such incidents are funny, but sometimes Puck’s prank takes the form of something not quite as amusing. And if you’re lucky it happens during the rehearsal process. If you’re not – it happens during the run of the show. A few years ago during Othello – tragedy struck after the first weekend of the performance. One of the lead actor’s family members was very severely injured and the show had to be cancelled.

That’s a very extreme case, but in theatre, people say, anything goes. There’s lots of cases where actors have died, theatres have burned down, and in one very special incident – a president was assassinated.

Sometimes the figurative ‘shit’ that hits the fan is quite small. But it’s still important for the people working on the show to bounce back from it. It can take the form of something as seemingly insignificant as a bad rehearsal. I’ve seen a single bad rehearsal drag an entire cast down to the depths of mediocrity before.
Like last night’s.

The rehearsal stunk. There’s no other way around it. I stunk, he stunk, she stunk, we all stunk.

Dropped lines, missed cues, missing actors, and so on and so forth.

We stunk. And we all knew it. And we deserved every word that came out of our director’s mouth chastising us. We can go, “Well, so-and-so wasn’t there!” – but that’s just an excuse, and a piss-poor one at that. When the shit hits the fan and things get bad – it’s up to those of us onstage to soldier on and make something out of it.

But we didn’t. The energy levels last night was so abysmally low that I felt depressed while I was onstage. I’m not saying everyone is at fault for this – because some certainly did try to maintain the status quo of good rehearsals – but those of us (myself included) that stumbled every which way brought them down with us.

And for that, I am pretty pissed off at myself.

Theatre, more than any other art form, is collaborative. And one person stinking up the process has the potential to drag down the entire cast and crew. Tonight’s rehearsal will be a test of our fortitude – we will see whether or not we can bounce back from the awfulness that was last night’s rehearsal and turn it into something positive.

I sincerely believe we’re up to the task. I believe this because I know that we’re all very passionate individuals and we’re all determined to make the play succeed. So I’m not worried – but I wanted to express the feeling of a bad rehearsal so those people who read this blog (and are not theatre people) realize that the process of putting a show onstage isn’t all sunshine and roses. There’s plenty of bad moments to go around.

It’s how we bounce back from those moments that will end up defining the show.

And like I said, I’m not worried. I know we’re going to be fine. In my experience, Puck never wins. In the end everything gets put back together the way it should be.

Second verse, same as first.

I'm not going to go into details about the second day of auditions as it was essentially the same as the first day.

Only with different people.

The only thing worth noting is that I was better prepared for the challenges this time around, and the energy level of the second day was just as high as the first.

Fade out.

Cut To: Next Day.

The cast list is now up and it has come with a few surprises. As cast lists always do. For example, I wasn't expecting the role of "Everyone" to be split between four people. And I'm dying to see what Dan, the director, has in mind for that.

Me? I'll be portraying Death.

And I'm already off-book.

...'cause I got no lines!

Tangent!

A couple of years ago I was working on the rehearsal process for the Winter's Tale where I was horribly miscast as Antigonus. You know the famous Shakespearean stage direction "exit, pursued by a bear"? Yeah, that was me. Before being chased off, I was forced to do battle with the bear onstage. The bear in this case was a five-foot-four guy in a bear suit built for someone who was around six-feet tall.

For a better visual picture, just think of it this way: the bear had a saggy ass.

The whole scene was so absurd and so bad that, from what I understand, the house manager had to warn people that if they laughed inappropriately during it, they would be taken out of the theatre. Which was too bad, because Antigonus' soliloquy/monologue prior to being attacked by a guy in a ill-fitting bear suit is one of my favorite speeches in all of Shakespeare.

"Dreams are toys."
-the Winter's Tale III, 3, 1531

Anyways, very early in the rehearsal process I was told, essentially, that I was not allowed to use physicality to convey the character. The character according to the director, since this was Shakespeare!, had to come out solely through the language. "Let the words flow, like a river," were his exact words.

He then made a wave gesture with his hands.

I was then admonished for using my own hands when I spoke to emphasize whatever pathos I was trying to get across. I was told to keep them close to my body, at my sides, hanging limply.

No, I am not exaggerating.

This is the exact opposite kind of actor I am. I'm physical. I talk with my hands.

I read once that less than twenty percent of human communication is verbal. The rest is all body language, eye contact, spatial distance, etc. The Winter's Tale is the second worst theatrical experience I've ever had in my life. It didn't help that the play itself just wasn't very good either. Except for the second half when the comic portions of the script managed to sneak through the static direction.

Random Note: The worst theatrical experience I ever had in my life was Othello. I'll share the details sometime in the future. To tantalize you, let's just say this: it involves an ancient curse that shall not be named.

During that entire two month rehearsal process, I started wondering if it was possible to convey a character without the use of language. Is language necessary to convey all the weight of the emotions needed to craft a character?

End Tangent!

Death, in For Every Man, Woman, and Child, does not speak. He uses sign language perhaps once or twice in the entire show. The rest of his "dialogue" is performed entirely in mime or conveyed through physical expression.

Death is, essentially, my chance to see if language really is necessary for communication. This is one of the roles I've been dying to tackle for some time now - and I'm finally getting the chance. The biggest problem I foresee with the character is the lack of textual clues, which means I'm probably going to end up drawing from past incarnations of Death in literature and other outside textual sources.

Its probably a little more extensive than necessary, but I used to be a Theatre/English double major - and its the Literature nut in me sneaking out, I guess.

Random Note: I'm only maybe a semester and a half away from picking up my English degree if I ever save up enough money to get it. Then I can have TWO economically non-viable degrees instead of just one.