Discovery

I've made some fun discoveries over the course of the past few rehearsals for Our Town. At first, when presented with the challenge of playing Mr. Webb, one of the play's two father figures to the couple central to the play's story, I thought of playing my own father. As is often the case however, changes happen, and with plans evaporate or morph. With the encouragement of the director, and through my own engagement and sense of play with the text, I've found Mr. Webb to be much closer to myself then I initially thought, but a different side of myself then I usually end up playing. I find it easy to inhabit the comedic "Woody Allen" archetype or a variation on that form for many of my roles, it's a template I return to frequently because I know how to do it and it works, and it reflects an aspect of my self which I can magnify appropriately for a role. That isn't the rhythm I'm finding for Mr. Webb though, who throughout the play finds himself in the position of "winging it", and with some hesitation but not so much as to be crippling, tackles the issue at hand and finds a solution with humor and bravado. Sounds like someone I know... that would be myself, but a more mature version of myself, who has experiences to draw on and knows how to handle situations and find answers to questions. Mr. Webb is in his own way, a take charge kind of guy. He has an easy going but confident manner, he stands up straight, he tells it like he sees it, but again does all this with his own charm and humor. I find myself really liking the guy, and rather then drawing on a comic stereotype of myself as a kid or variation on a man child, I'm playing an idealized version of my adult self, who doesn't always have the answer but when he doesn't is able to find a reasonable compromise.

My director has been extremely helpful in this process, and I've been having a great time. He's more of an outside in kind of guy (I wonder if that has to do with his design background, oh yeah probably), and in this production is interested in using different levels of stylization to achieve the best story possible. He has an awareness of theatre as a heightened reality but which is constantly grounded in the experience of the audience, taking in the play. The style of the play is a naturalism which appreciates it's own status as a style and acknowledges that it is not set in the present, and allows the characters to represent people from the past. I could go on trying to describe the aesthetic and the slight Brechtian elements (no stop don't be turned off it's nothing bad or crazy just slightly deconstructed), but I'll hold off for now.

Regardless, I'm having a good time and it will be a production worth seeing of a play not commonly done well. In other news, Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead came to a close, and I am left with mixed feelings. Certain aspects of the production could have been executed better. Rather then go into detail, I'll allow that anyone reading this from the show knows what I'm talking about, and I'm not blaming anybody just stating a fact. At the end of the day, for me as an artist, I didn't leave the theatre being all that satisfied with having done something worthwhile, and I mean that in the most selfish possible sense. I, the actor, was at no point in the spotlight in any substantial way or contributed to the production in a way that made a difference to the rest of the piece, and that was a little frustrating, putting the hours commuting, rehearsing, etc for no real pay off or gained experience which I could draw on in a substantial way in the future which I would not have gotten from just reading the play a lot, maybe.

On the other hand, I made a lot of friends and enjoyed the company of some really good people who I hope to work with again in the future, or just have a beer with at some point. And that's certainly worthwhile. It's kind of a funny contrast, in that I usually feel somewhat more of the former (satisfaction with my artistic contribution) then the latter (a sense of camaraderie and friendship among my peers) just because I'm kind of socially awkward and often have a hard time getting really comfortable with a group of people, and knowing they will take my sense of humor the right way. But I did have that in this particular dressing room, and I'll miss the folks I had it with. C'est la vie! Until the next one, right?