OUR CLASS Rehearsal Update

A report from Robert Duffley, Assistant Director on Our Class

Rehearsals for Our Class, opening in October, have begun. Last week, director Derek Goldman started the rehearsal process by introducing the play’s cast and production team to the multi-layered world of the play. The group watched documentaries, explored the script in table readings, and conducted frank discussions about the play’s challenges.

Taduesz Slobodzianek’s play follows ten classmates—five Christian, five Jewish—in a small Polish town through the chaotic years leading up to and away from World War II. Haunted by memories, this ensemble-based production weaves song, lyrical storytelling, and dance. Though entirely fictionalized, the script draws on the events of the 1941 pogrom in Jedwabne, Poland. In July of that year, an estimated 1,600 Jewish townspeople were murdered—not by German occupiers, but by neighbors they had known their entire lives. Giving voice to a spectrum of narratives, the play examines the complex human dimensions of atrocity as the ten grade-school classmates find themselves transformed by crisis into victims and aggressors, allies and rescuers.

Rather than to lament or to forgive these events, Derek Goldman explained to the cast that the play strives to embody a community’s process of “remembering, recovery, and moving on.” Through this embodiment, Derek hopes to achieve an honest remembering which is “generative, healing, and an opening of dialogue.”

Slobodzianek’s characters repeat the question “What could I do?,” often with chilling effect. For Derek, the question is raw and searching. The production, he said, searches for much-needed answers. Grappling with the play’s elements of violence, the cast explored the idea that in emergency contexts, communities find themselves divided not necessarily into different types of people, but into people in different kinds of situations.

The cast are using a variety of historical and academic resources to understand the complex situations influencing their characters over the play’s 70-year scope, including historian Jan T. Gross’ groundbreaking book “Neighbors.”

Last week, the team also watched the documentary Sasiedzi (“Neighbors”). In the film, Polish journalist Agnieszka Arnold interviews witnesses, participants, and survivors of the massacres in Jedwabne and nearby Radzilow.

One of Our Class’ particular strengths is bringing historical voices onstage. To start building these voices, the cast spent the first week of rehearsals in table reads, first surveying the script and then focusing on individual moments and details. Working with dialect coach Jennifer Mendenhall, the cast also began to encounter the characters’ vocal details. The actors will speak in a slight Polish accent and sing an array of songs in English, Polish, and Russian. (for more photos from the rehearsal room, click here)

By the end of the week, the actors had spent a lot of time coming to know each other and their characters. They also spent time choreographing waltzes, polkas, and fistfights, and beginning work on the play’s music. Moving into the second week of rehearsals, the cast has begun to put the show on its feet before designers will watch a run-through on September 24.

For updates on the play’s progress, stay tuned to this blog. We’ll keep posting news, information, and photos from the rehearsal process. And don’t forget to see Body Awareness, playing at Theater J through September 23.

Acknowledging TJ supporters Who Made Our Trip to Israel Possible

As we wind down our Israel-trip postings (hopefully we’ll bring them to a sterling conclusion with the close of 2011 and then turn full attention to the excitement that is our upcoming, brand new, “Locally Grown Festival” in 2012) we want to repost a casual comment that deserves its own billing:

An acknowledgement, that without Stephen and Margaret Hahn-Stern’s initial contribution, followed by support from more than a half dozen other Theater J Council members, there wouldn’t have been a Theater J delegation to IsraDrama.  So Jennifer, Shirley, and Ari want to publicly thank Marion and Larry Lewin, Elaine Reuben, Patti and Jerry Solwalsky, Margot and Paul Zimmerman, Al Munzer and Joel Wind, Debbie Carliner and Robert Remes, and Theatre Lab alum Richard Fiske who, along with Stephen and Margaret, contributed to the travel fund to allow Shirley Serotsky to represent Theater J’s Literary Department, while providing additional support to help underwrite Associate Artist in Residence Jennifer Mendenhall’s travel, and that of Ari’s as well.  We’re grateful to our community, and grateful all the more to the conveners and the underwriters of IsraDrama for their wonderful hosting, and for making our stay at the Hotel Cinema such a pleasant and enjoyable week.

Oh, the places you’ll go! The spaces you’ll see! – Part Two

Jennifer Mendenhall Writes from the ISRA-Drama conference:

Continuing to keep track of the plays and the venues:

Friday in Haifa, we saw Argentina by Boaz Gaon, directed by Sinai Peter, at Kriger Hall. This is a Haifa Theatre production about a young woman’s search for the truth about her father’s disappearance in Argentina. The play deals with the Jewish community, some of whom were active in fighting the repressive regime responsible for “Los desaparecidos”, and the involvement of the Israeli ambassador in negotiations with the dictator.

Next up, Ullysses on Bottles by Gilad Evron at Haifa Theatre. An imaginative story about a man imprisoned by the government after he was caught trying to float on a raft he made from plastic bottles, down the coast and into Gaza, in order to bring Russian literature to the Palestinian children living there. The issue of human rights and the importance of literature are central to this play.

In the evening, as it was the Sabbath, we went to an Arabic theatre in Haifa, Almidan, to see In Spitting Dstance by Taher Najib. A one man show about living under occupation in Ramallah, both moving and amusing, and certainly educational.

Saturday we saw Happy Ending by Anat Gov at the Cameri Theatre. A comedy with music about cancer. Features women dealing with various types of cancer, oblivious doctors, and an actress’ decision to refuse treatment. An interesting observation is that we in The United States seem far more at ease talking about cancer than people in Israel do. Thus the play lands differently here.

Stephen and I walked over to the beach between shows, and we saw the ruins of the nightclub at the Dolphinarium, which was bombed in 2001. 21 teenagers were killed, and many more wounded. The building is an arresting sight, and a reminder of the violence people in this land have experienced.

In the evening we saw Rachele’s Wedding, by Savyon Liebrecht. This is a Beit-Lessin Theatre production, but we saw it at Herzliya Performing Arts Center. If a play is successful in Israel, it will be booked by different venues across the country. These are often huge auditoriums that seat a thousand people. Most of these large productions use microphones, either on the floor at the front of the stage, of a body mic on the actors. Rachele’s Wedding is a second generation play about the daughters of a Holocaust survivor from Poland, now living in Israel. The oldest daughter’s new fiancé turns out to be the nephew of a kapo responsible for the death of the father’s little brother in Auschwitz. Many people in Israel are the children of survivors, and have grown up with traumatized parents who cannot speak of their experiences.

Sunday morning we went to Nachmani Hall, a venue used by the Itim Ensemble, a group associated with the Cameri Theatre, to see Sinners by Joshua Sobol. A hooded figure is buried from the waist down, and a man is gathering stones. As the play unfolds, we learn about the relationship between an older woman and her younger male lover, both in arranged marriages to other people. Features passion, poetry, a rendition of “Misty” and the expectation of a stoning.

In the afternoon we went to Tzavta, a venue in the basement of a shopping mall, to see My Father is not a Bird by Shahar Pinkas, based on a short story by Bruno Schultz. The production was part of Exposure festival, which features small, independent and often adventurous pieces of theatre. In the play a young boy struggles with his father’s gradual transformation into a bird, and the responses of the family. Highly imaginative staging and props, including a whirling trunk and handfuls of feathers. Big clean up job afterwards.

In the evening many participants saw Hanoch Levin’s The Suitcase Packers at the Cameri, but a small group of us went to see Dogs by Ido Bornstein, a Theatercan production. Again, a fringe event, independent of the larger theatres and any association with them. A group of men, including two Palestinian brothers, are persuaded to rehearse a musical version of Romeo and Juliet, or Rami and Yulie. Features plastic buckets and trash bags used inventively and decoratively, a male pregnancy, violence, no surtitles and no Juliet. One of the most exciting and joyful productions of the week.

That’s all for now, it was a great week, I will write some more pieces soon.

Jennifer.

Oh, the places you’ll go! The spaces you’ll see!

 Jennifer Mendenhall Writes from the ISRA-Drama conference:

This is day three of the festival proper, though some of us started early, on Tuesday night. I’ve been taking photos of the various theatres and trying to keep track of the shows we’ve seen. Here’s a list of three theatres we’ve visited so far, with photos, and brief descriptions of the plays.

Every performance we attended has been packed with audience members. It is enough to make a Washingtonian – make that an American – weep. Not only do these theatres have several spaces, not only are their restrooms as impressive as their cafes and restaurants, not only do Israeli schoolchildren clearly get dragged to the theatre on a regular basis, but their houses are full, full, full of people who go regularly to see theatre. Check out the web sites and get to know these performing arts venues and their histories and productions. Many theatres here have a repertoire of plays that they bring back over a period of years, utilizing a company of actors who can reprise the roles they have played since the production opened.

Tuesday: the Habima National Theatre to see Kochav Yair, by Shlomo Moskovich.
A play about the damaging effects of serving in the military and oppressing Palestinian people, on the Israeli male psyche. The story follows three men, all damaged in some way, unable to succeed in their relationships with wives, children, a blank page or anyone, really. A Russian nurse-cum-free-spirit helps them to heal.

The Habima was recently renovated, and is overwhelmingly impressive, with gleaming floors, high ceilings, multiple theatre spaces, and stunning restrooms.

Wednesday: the Cameri Theatre to see The Grocery Store, by Hillel Mittelpunkt.
A family living in Jaffa in the 1970′s, in a grocery store, with aspirations to move up and out to a new suburb, has their plans foiled but nevertheless succeeds in leaving their home. The memory of the Holocaust and the hope of getting money from reparations from Germany is featured. Colorful characters, some of whom were based on the playwright’s own family members – he grew up in Jaffa – earthy domestic humor, and the dangers of sleeping next to a barrel of brined fish paint a vivid picture of life in Israel soon after the Six Day War.

We also saw the Cameri production of Hamlet at a student matinee, where a theatre usher placed a paper cup on the stage and invited everyone to dispose of their gum. We complied. You know the story of Hamlet. This was also presented at Signature Theatre. Alley staging, using the perimeter of the space, with the audience seated in swivel chairs. Fortinbras was portrayed as a military thug in full camouflage, armed, with bad table manners.

The Cameri is situated next to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. There is an enormous, paved, open area in front of the theatre. The building is spacious, with several performing spaces.

Thursday: the Jerusalem Khan Theatre, to see Eating by Yaakov Shabti.
Based on the story from the Bible, of the king who demanded his neighbor’s vineyard. The story follows the queen’s manipulation of the king and his lawyers, in her successful quest to seize the vineyard. The neighbor was portrayed as a Palestinian. He was murdered by one of the lawyers. The actors ate a whole lot of delicious food, as one sumptuous dish after another was brought to the table.

The Kahn theatre building was a 19th century Ottoman silk factory, built on the ruins from the times of the Crusaders. Later it served as a hostel for pilgrims arriving at night, after the city gates had been locked. It resembles a cave, or several, and has an interior courtyard. There is a cafe where live music was playing as we left.

More soon, on Haifa theatres, and Herzliya Performing Arts Center and Nachmani Hall.

Jennifer’s The First to Blog from IsraDrama!

We’re four of us attending the IsraDrama Festival in Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa; the four of us being Ari, Shirley, Jennifer and Stephen.  Here’s Jennifer’s first post:

Blogging on the go.
Wednesday:
Getting ready to go to Israel tomorrow. Sinai has sent me his cell phone number and says he’ll be at the airport. I’m finishing up corrections on three audiobooks at once, have press-ganged the kids into clearing the living room which is due to be painted next week, juggled suddenly being a one car family thanks to the eedjit who totaled our 14 year old wagon, picked paint colors, what else? Haven’t packed or done laundry yet…

 Imagine if you will, a total change of light and sound and air, an immersion into a foreign city filled with different nationalities and languages and foods, a peaceful apartment with a spacious balcony overlooking a lemon tree, the kindness of my hosts, who feed me and take me on excursions and indulge my mania for taking photographs of absolutely everything.

Today is Monday, I think? For three days I have been absorbing everything, and l am full of a kind of beautiful chaos of experiences. Toda. Todaraba. This means thank you, thank you very much. Thank you Sinai and Timna, for welcoming me so completely. I am forever indebted to you. Thank you to Ari and Steve and Theater J for this chance to visit Israel, and to the organizers of the Isra-Drama festival, which begins on Wednesday evening. Some of us are starting early and will see a production at the Habima Theatre on Tuesday evening: Kohav Yair by Shlomo Moskovich at the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv.

We are seeing ten plays in five days, taking a tour of Jerusalem, attending a symposium about political playwrights at the Cameri Theatre and a presentation by El-Maidan Theatre, an Arab speaking theatre in Haifa. Being an orderly sort of person, I thought I’d write a blog each day about what we saw and did.  But I have succumbed to this place, where everything is mixed up and intertwined and you cannot take a step or eat a plate of food without stumbling into history, politics, nations and geography. Inextricable is a word that seems appropriate for this land.

Driving around Haifa with Sinai, he points out the beautiful old Arab houses, with intricately carved stone work and elaborate grills,  balconies rising floor by floor to the deep blue sky. I ask him who lives there now, and he shrugs. Sometimes Jewish, sometimes Arab. There are Christian Arabs, and the Achmedim of Kababir, who decided not to fight and whose families are still in the houses they built a hundred years ago. It is so much more complicated than the picture we receive in the United States, so much more sophisticated a set of puzzle pieces than we are accustomed to putting together.

In preparation for this trip, I read The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan. It is a true account of the history of two families: the Arab family who fled their home and land during the war of 1948, always imagining they would return, and the immigrant family from Bulgaria, fleeing the horrors of Hitler, who became the new residents of the beautiful house with a lemon tree in the back yard. Please, read this book. It is helpful for those of us with no direct experience of this land, and also for those who might be afraid to look beyond the familiar. The story of Bashir and Dalia illustrates the struggle between Palestinian and Israeli: two people’s right to a home land, the same land, bitterly, mutually exclusive. There is also hope, which seems hard to believe, that accord can be reached; this will not happen if people refuse to learn, or refuse to see and understand.

The two characters I played in Imagining Madoff and After The Fall were complete opposites in mindset, personality and physicality. But they shared an astounding confession. The Secretary said “I didn’t know. I just didn’t know” about Bernie Madoff’s fraud. Hola said, about the concentration camps, “It was my country – for longer, perhaps, than it should have been – but I didn’t know. And now, I don’t know HOW I could not have known”. There is so much I do not understand about the conflict in this part of the world. But if I keep my eyes and ears open, I will learn.
Laila tov. Good night.

A recap of “Portraits of Egypt” + an interview with playwright Yussef El Guindi

Batya here.  For those readers who don’t know me, I’m the (first!) Professional Apprentice in Theater Management at Theater J, and was the line producer for the latest “Voices From A Changing Middle East” reading series.  I interned at Theater J in ’07 before going off to college, and I’m thrilled to be back.

A Recap

Theater J closed out its latest “Voices From A Changing Middle East” reading series last Monday, with an evening dubbed Portraits of Egypt.  Such a Beautiful Voice is Sayeda’s and Karima’s City, two one-act plays by Egyptian-American playwright Yussef El Guindi (adapted from short stories by Egyptian feminist Salwa Bakr), were presented.

The readings, directed with understated elegance by our very own Shirley Serotsky, were deeply moving, at once heartbreaking and hilarious.  And the acting was tremendous.  It was a privilege to see Frank Britton, Veronica del Cerro, Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, Jennifer Mendenhall, and Salma Shaw breathe life into the characters who populate El Guindi’s plays.

After the readings, the audience, led by Artistic Director Ari Roth, engaged in a lively discussion.  We were lucky to hear from a number of audience members with expertise in the areas addressed by the plays.  Their responses were both insightful and impassioned.

An Interview

Literary Intern Emily Edmond, who served as dramaturg for Portraits of Egypt, sent playwright Yussef El Guindi five questions about Such a Beautiful Voice is Sayeda’s and Karima’s City.  El Guindi is not only a masterful playwright, he also responds quickly to email.  What a guy!  Here are Emily’s questions (EE) and Yussef’s (YEG) answers :

1. EE: The notes in the script say that “the forces arrayed against Sayeda and Karima are much more insidious and widespread than a prevailing patriarchy.” What are the other forces imposing on the women, besides patriarchy? Could these plays have worked with men as the protagonists?

YEG: On a macro level, of course, this sense of oppression is experienced by both men and women. Some of it’s particular to Egypt, though a lot of it’s a struggle faced by all people around the world. Especially these days. The sense of being up against it, always, in every endeavor, until that continuos battle begins to wear one down, and insidiously enters the area where one hopes and aspires – with aspirations and hopes then becoming stunted because these daily battles to secure the basics of life seem to be never ending.

 This is why the recent revolutions and upheaval in Egypt and around the Arab world have gained such traction. This was a major revival to the spirit and heart; a hope that the rules of the game might finally change, and those who looked down the road and saw no alternatives to the hardships they faced might now, finally, be in a position to create their own destinies.

But – without straying too far from the question – having said it’s pretty hard for both sexes, women do face a much tougher challenge. When I cautioned in the stage directions to avoid making men the sole villains, it’s because it’s often the case that this patriarchy seeps so deep into the culture that certain oppressive measures become the norm and become upheld by women themselves. But again, I see this in the West too (women are expected to deport themselves in a certain manner, behave a certain way here too). It’s just so much more blatant in other areas around the world. In the Middle East, the oppression of women is engineered via old fashioned terms/ ideas, whether it’s concepts of honor, or in language that’s lifted from religious sources and used to keep people in their place.

2. EE: Who do you see as Karima’s predecessors–fictional or real, Egyptian or non-Egyptian?

YEG: I think Karima is heroic – or slightly out there – because she does what heroes in most stories do.  She challenges the norm, the stagnant status quo. She doesn’t settle. She speaks up. She dares. She’s not afraid to be ostracized for what she believes in.

Of course, these people are admirable in stories. In real life, they can be very annoying – standing on principal when you want them to just relax and go with the flow. Real-life Karima’s often only become admirable in retrospect, not when they’re busy alerting people to what needs to be changed.

And for someone like Sayeda – a quiet hero of another kind – the forces arrayed against her are also the forces that are terrified of change, of seeing people stepping outside their assigned roles. Wives and mothers (and husbands, etc.) are expected to conduct their lives in some prescribed manner- all having to do with self-sacrifice in some way or another. Sayeda dares to want something for herself. Instead of the duties that she is expected to execute daily on behalf of her family, she dares to pay attention to herself, her needs. In a manner that is deemed much too expressive and disrupting. And so the obstacles put in her way are expressed as concern (“this is for your own good”); wanting to make sure she doesn’t make a fool of herself (and bring dishonor to the family). It’s much more crippling when one’s dream is crushed by someone who is “really just thinking of you. What’s good for you.”

3. EE: Did you find it difficult to write the play with a woman’s voice/point of view? How did adaptation play a role in that process?

YEG: Bakr’s stories are so powerful and evocative that I didn’t really have to work that hard in adapting them. And as far as writing from a woman’s point of view, that’s never really been a problem. Maybe because I grew up with two older sisters!

These women appealed to me because they’re both trying to find their voice. As a writer this had special resonance, of course. Both women are struggling to make themselves heard, and that seems to be upsetting the people around them.

I suppose the struggle to find one’s voice – in whatever walk of life – is a universal struggle. And it was these universal themes in the stories that appealed to me.

4. EE: Bakr’s stories were published in 1993, and Karima’s City was first produced in 2003. What has changed in Egypt–for women, for the environment, in the government–since then?

YEG: Well, beginning in 2011 (and December, 2010 for Tunisia) everything. Cynics will say that what will follow these revolutions will be just more of the same in different guises. But I do believe something has been unleashed. There are those who will try to bottle it up again, but I have a feeling they will have an impossible time trying to do so.

As long as the struggle remains a struggle, where people can voice their opinions in a public arena, and via voting, things will be okay. Messy, problematic, uncertain, but okay. As they say, it’s not the first elections that matter, it’s the second and third. As long as those who come into power don’t shut the democracy door behind them – and as long as the people feel as civically responsible as they do now, and will never allow that to happen, I think the messy road to something better will remain open.

The Sayeda’s and the Karima’s in the Middle East are beginning to have their voices heard, finally. (And yes, in spite of the religious parties that are coming to prominence.)

5. EE: Do you notice a connection between environmentalism and human (women’s?) rights? Have you noticed a change in attitudes towards the environment, since the Arab spring?

YEG: Right now, honestly, environmentalism is the last thing on people’s minds. But there are many programs being instituted, especially in the poorer neighborhoods, where recycling (something that was always done, for obvious reasons) and solar power are actively being deployed.

 

As MADOFF Closes, and PARADE Opens, AFTER THE FALL Begins Rehearsals (& Jennifer Mendenhall has something to say about it – She calls her latest post “Ignorance is Bliss”)

(from Associate Artist in Residence, Jennifer Mendenhall)

Ignorance is bliss. Until it’s not. Then comes guilt, recrimination, and feeling like a fool.

I just closed Imagining Madoff, in which I played The Secretary who is, in the playwright Deb Margolin’s words, “bloated with remorse”. She questions how she could have been so blind to the activity on the floor below hers in the building where Bernie Madoff conducted his infamous Ponzi scheme, stealing 65 billion dollars and ruining so many people’s lives and financial security. She feels guilty about the man in Europe who, after losing all his clients’ money, jumped out of a window to his death. “I feel I played a part. I had a small part”.

Tonight we read After The Fall on the first day of our rehearsal process. I play Holga, a German woman who, once she became aware of the concentration camps, worked as a courier for the men who were planning Hitler’s assassination. She says to Quentin: “It was my country – longer, perhaps, than it should have been. But I didn’t know. And now I don’t know how I could not have known”.

The moment that those words came out of my mouth, I gasped, Ari laughed, and Jose Carresquillo (our director) lifted his hands in a gesture of “how is this possible?”

Two women, years apart, guilty of the same crime: ignorance. We are all in some way guilty of choosing to remain ignorant of certain things. There is so much that we have no control of. It becomes an unbearable task to move forward with one’s life, knowing that one cannot change an evil of which one is aware. So we choose. We do the best we can. We are as honest as we can be. And we turn a blind eye when it all becomes too much.

I spend an inordinate amount of time on facebook, because that is where I get the news that’s not in the Washington Post, which I read daily. One story that you won’t see much about in mainstream media is “Occupy Wall Street”. This is an anti-corporation, anti-Wall Street protest now in its second week. People are gathering peacefully but vocally to protest the choke hold of corporations on wealth and politics in America. Protesters are young and old – there’s a group of septuagenarians called Raging Grannies – white, black and brown, urban and from the suburbs, and from other states as well.

The NYPD has responded with aggression, using pepper spray on protestors who are standing still, behind police barricades. There is a clip of an officer slamming a young man’s head into a parked car. Police have been filmed hand cuffing the grannies, pressing old necks to the pavement and holding them there under uniformed knees.

Say what you will about the content of the protest: you may not think that the divide between rich and poor has become untenable, and you may not feel that the political process in this country is unhealthy and unfair. You might believe that the protesters are wrong to target Wall Street, with its hedge fund traders and their billion dollar bonuses, banks we bailed out which have reported their highest profits in years, and the whole corporation kingdom, whose CEOs donate millions to politicians (can you say Koch brothers?)

But the issue of police aggression should definitely be publicized in our mainstream media, and those officers should be held accountable for violating our right, as citizens of a free country, to express our opinion peaceably without fear of violent reprisal.

Laurence O’Donnell of msnbc filmed a “The Last Word” segment on police brutality, which includes detailed clips of the scene on Wall Street. He is scathing in his report, condemning the American police force in general, not just the NYPD. He refers back to Rodney King’s beating in LA, which could not be covered up because a civilian had captured it on film. Many of us were shocked, O’Donnell says, but not black Americans: “there’s a Rodney King every day in this country, and black America has always known that”.

Occupy Wall Street, and the police brutality occurring in New York City, is barely being reported in the mainstream press, and you don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to think it’s because Wall Street owns the mainstream press.

I do not want to say what my characters do: how could I not have known? It is always easier to believe what the reigning powers would like you to think. And the oppressed are usually portrayed in negative terms, which makes dismissing them that much more justifiable.

Until it’s not.

Mendenhall: On the Actor’s Fear (on a Day of Triumph)

(a second posting from Theater J Associate Artist in Residence, Jennifer Mendenhall, currently appearing as The Secretary in Imagining Madoff)

“Fear Factor”

Arturo Tolentino is a young actor here in Washington. He is currently appearing in “The Country Girl” (The American Century Theatre), opening this weekend at Gunston Arts Center, Theatre 2.  Arturo sent me a message via facebook after seeing Imagining Madoff during preview week. I responded impulsively and probably overshared, but when I reread our exchange I deemed it worthy of further examination, touching as it does on stage fright and technique.

Arturo:
I saw you in Madoff last night. I’m really glad I went. As a young actor (career-wise) I always observe a show from a very technical aspect. Somewhat like my own personal study of the veterans of the “game.” I was intrigued by your ability to remain frozen for such a period of time and jump into character and move the story along unexpectedly… Bravo… and thank you.

Arturo:
.. and by the by, it was great show!

Jennifer:
Thank you. It is truly terrifying. My heart races, my mind refuses to be corralled into paying attention, and wanders, then my stomach drops as I question whether I know which is the next speech. And, to avoid horrible aches and pains, I keep moving verrrry slightly all the time – neck rolls, spine waves, shoulder hunches… I’m glad it doesn’t draw attention. Keep this between us!

I do hope, however, that you can sometimes bring your heart into the house and not just analyse the technique. The technique is just the tool used to open the heart and mind.

Arturo:
wow… thank you!

* * *

I am a self-admitted theatre geek. I have always been fascinated by the mechanics of acting. An actor’s instrument is his or her body and mind. You fret the strings of your soul, daub the colors of your own imagination onto the canvas of the character, enlist the muscles of your arm or thigh to express the ideas of the playwright.

In college, I didn’t take an acting class until my third year. I thought it was incumbent on me to get an academic degree, and that kept me away from the drama department at the University of Virginia until my room mates kindly informed me that it was obvious I belonged over there.

That first class was like a drink of water in a desert. Finally I had found something that was compelling, seductive, bottomless. You tell a story to an audience using your mind and your body. How elegantly simple! How endlessly complicated and challenging! How…frightening! When it all goes right, you feel like you are flying. But one seagull in the propeller, and you come crashing down in the agonizing flames of a very public humiliation.

There is a perhaps apocryphal story about researchers wiring a jet fighter pilot and an actor on opening night to measure fear and stress levels. Guess who had the higher rating? For some people, the idea of speaking in public is more frightening than the idea of dying.

Fear is counter-productive to the creative process. Fear tightens the muscles and freezes the mind. It shuts down receptivity as the reptile portion of your brain searches desperately for a stick to beat up the monster attacking you, or a door to run through. Neither of these is an option on stage, in the instant of panic.
So how do we manage fear? Well, sex helps. Good acting has a lot in common with good love making: focus, imagination, intimacy, physical exertion, courage, vulnerability and a great sense of humor. And above all else, a desire to connect with someone else, to reach out to another mind, perhaps even to give a nod to the vastness of the human experience. And not to mind the mess.