The first rehearsal went quite well.  Most of us had met at callbacks and the atmosphere was quite open and generous.  So, the first read was not filled with the typical anxiety of trying to impress.  We’re all, I think, grateful to be working, and glad to be working in our own backyards.   The company has been around for about four years and trying to establish itself as “community-based” professional theatre–talent and material by/of the community.

The director encouraged us to go for it and not fear over-doing.  The play–an absurdist comedy–really demands strong, active choices.  The trap is, of course, falling into cartoon performances that might get easy laughs, but not good ones.  (I have a lot to say about laughs, but I’ll post that another time. )

The rehearsal hall is a vacant office space, so there is a lot of echo and I found that interesting and fun.  It reminds me to stay open to what the space offers as well as what my fellow actors offer, and to use both.   It is a little cold, but that isn’t so bad for comedy, either.

We were all very good about keeping our noses out of the script and making as much contact as possible.  This really helped shape the read and, as I mentioned in the first post, was useful in my desire to let the other actors guide my choice-making.  The play is short-ish–about 90 minutes–so we didn’t feel pressed to unnecessarily rush.  But there was already a sense of fluency and progression that the text demands in our speech, which also began to create some impact on our physical behavior.  Alignment and impulses to move were already evident–and I want to keep open and not to come to quickly to behavioral choices.

I play three characters–Leonard, Michael, and Al.  I hesitate to define them in terms of type or even by the facts offered in the play because they are less types than FUNCTIONS.  There is some hint that all the characters are actually manifestations of the one constant character–the Man.  I guess I should go back a bit and state that the premise of the play is that a Man is revealed to be on the ledge of the seventh story of a building.  he appears to be contemplating leaping off when one by one these different characters (nine or so) come to their respective windows/balconies and interact with him. The director is thinking that one way to go is that this is all, in fact, the Man’s dream.  It certainly has dream-like actions and there are some textual clues that can be read as the play being a dream.  But we’re not ready to make that choice yet.  So, I play these three men and at the reading I kept characterization to a minimum and really allowed myself to go with the text and trust my instincts.  I just wanted to feel the words in my voice and body and attend to my partners.  Leonard is apparently a psychiatrist who works nights at a hospital and days in a private practice, and claims he hasn’t slept in three years.  The text indicates that he is high strung, over-wrought, and possibly paranoid.  His function seems to have something to do with the idea that we’re all crazy, that nothing is what it seems, and that we all carry the burdens of our problems and would probably be very glad to dump them on someone else.  Michael is an interior designer who has an exclusive client, Joan, and together they have re-decorated Joan’s apartment 18 times.  His function appears to have something to do with the artist in each one of us.  Temperamental, imaginative, exacting, demanding, creative–MAKING meaning, even if it means making it over and over and over again.  Finally, Al is man who throws parties at which all he wants is to get rid of his guests, and goes to parties so he won’t miss a good one.  I suppose this has something to do with looking for a good time and never finding it.  I’m most open about this guy.

At the end of the rehearsal, the director offered some observations, the upshot for me being that I have three strong results to try today (in a few hours).   He wants me to try Leonard ala Peter Sellars as Dr. Strangelove, Michael as a kind of Brooklyn tough (ala Chaz Palmenteri in Bullets Over Broadway), and Al ala Steven Wright–deadpan and depressed.  I was a bit surprised at the specificity of these directions, and I confess a bit annoyed at the result-oriented nature of them.  But what the hell?  I fooled around with these ideas today on my own, and I can make them work.  My feeling is, keep it coming!  Give me results, let me fool around with them, and he can pick the one he likes.  That said, I probably will have an opinion about what version is most effective, too.

I’ll get back to you on that tomorrow.  PK