Last night was the final performance of Uncle Vanya. It's incredible how theatre continues to surprise me. On our final ride through Cambridge, I told Ann Marie Shea who was my transportation lifeline for much of the process how strange it still felt after so many shows, the sense of connecting with a group of people very deeply and spending such inordinate amounts of time together usually in the final moments leading up and then over the course of the performance of a piece. Then at the end, you never see them. Well I'm sure I will continue to see these people in different contexts, usually at theatre related things like auditions or performances and we talked a little about seeing our co-actors upcoming projects together as a group which would be fantastic. But of course the likelihood is that I won't be working with this same ensemble of characters again in the near future.
I also continue to surprised by how much I like people. You know, I guess it was really only in my time doing academic theatre in high school and college that I ever went through a process feeling disconnected from the people around me. I tend to enter a company expecting that, and of course it takes time for people to open up and a common language to develop between you and I found that in Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead, where I met a lot of people I really liked. I assumed my liking those people was an anomaly, but then I found the same thing was the case in Our Town and now in Uncle Vanya. I guess as I get older, I'm less harsh and more open. I'm not the bitter teenager I used to be, it would seem!
Anyway, all good things come to an end, and that is now a truism of the Vanya estate. Man, what a fantastic production. Probably the best thing I've done yet. Wandering the halls playing my guitar was really a joy. This is the second time I've played a musician, the first being Marat/Sade when I was in undergrad, both times it kind of happened by (happy) accident and it's fun and different exploring a theatrical performance with musical notes instead of text. In the case of Marat/Sade, I was kind of faking it off of the lead sheets to the RC Peaslee score that was included in the back of my copy of the play. It's a funny coincidence, come to think of it, how that came to be. My friend was one of the producers, but he was too lazy to do any photo copying and as an Extension student I had access to free printing at the computer lab, so I made all the scripts. My recollection was that I saw the music at the back, didn't think it was important, and didn't print it with the rest since there was a print limit and it would have been more effort on my part breaking up the job across the hundreds of pages I had to print.
I like though, when possible, working from a bound copy of a text rather then a photocopy so I had bought a copy of the play from a used book store. At a rehearsal, the director sort of tried to enthusiastically lead the cast in some of the music as he, being tone deaf, had sort of remembered it from I guess the movie version. I pointed out the music in the back of my text, and someone who played piano pecked out the melody and we figured it out that way. Later on, it came out that I played guitar and I was moved from being a member of the staff of the hospital to a guitar playing inmate in the asylum, the rest being history.
It's funny that in Uncle Vanya, myself included three of us had been in productions of Marat/Sade since it's not very commonly done for understandable reasons of it being fucking insane. But it was a new and fun experience, that also helped prepare me for Uncle Vanya. In this case, I had a much longer leash to fill space and did quite a bit of improvising as well as learning a couple of classical pieces and Russian folk song, which was fun! Hey by the way, if anybody is doing The Cherry Orchard or another Russian play and needs a guitar player, I'm your man.
Oh, and there was a question of what I'd be doing next, if anything in the immediate future. One of the auditions I blogged about did come through. I won't say which until I know for sure it's on, but I'm pretty excited to be working on it. It's a role that I think will be a great opportunity for me to learn and grow, and I'm all about that right now.
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