New Discoveries

I had a sort of epiphany last night at a rehearsal... that I was at a rehearsal, playing a challenging role in a fun and exciting new play at a theatre I'd never worked at with people I'd largely never even met. Whoa, sensory overload of great and new stuff!

Probably this should have been less of an epiphany. But at this point, rehearsals, commuting, learning lines and blocking, coming and going from all those different things has become so business as usual. On the other hand though, this play isn't, this is different from anything else I've worked on. I guess it's sort of comparable to Speech and Debate, in that this character is a homosexual like Solomon but he was closeted and had all that other stuff going on. Speech and Debate is a pretty good play, but I think this one is better. Oh what is it? Why it's Swimming in the Shallows by Adam Bock. It's a sort of surreal romantic comedy about three couples, one falling in love, another rediscovering it and still another falling out of it as it were. My love interest is a Shark. He is being played by a man. In the world of the play, that he is a Shark is not especially strange. He lives in an aquarium, he works there, and he swims all day. At the plays beginning, my character is romantically frustrated. He has an easy time meeting men, and he sleeps with them quite frequently, but usually after sleeping with them once and early on in their relationship it then fails to progress into anything more significant. In addition to that, he has sort of a "Romeo complex" not that he's constantly finding himself in doomed, star crossed romances, but I guess more that he wears his heart on his sleeve and finds very deep feelings for these partners in a very short period of time which are then expressed through you know, sex, then not returned. Basically he sleeps with them and they don't call. My part of the play is about how he goes about identifying and changing that pattern of behavior so that he can have a real relationship and an outlet for all of his emotions and desire for love and to be loved.

Did I mention at the climax he and the Shark kiss? Do they then have sex? You'll have to wait for the play to see...

Actually though there is amongst the numerous very funny and poignant scenes an especially touching one between Nick and the Shark at the beach which largely inspired me to agree to this play all the way out in Salem. Despite the heightened universe it exists in, there is something very real and true about the way the two characters discover one another and explore their romantic feelings before it culminates in the aforementioned kiss. I feel like in some way this is an archetypal dramatic scenario. The party scene from Romeo and Juliet being kind of another example. I've played anger, platonic love, farcical love, and various other states of being on stage before. But never something like this. And so for all those reasons, I'm excited to work on this show. Oh and the chance to play! After just a few rehearsals with this group, I can tell that's going to be central to the work we do. And when the work you do is playing, is it even work? Exactly! Now if you'll excuse me, we open March 5th and we've just started rehearsing this week *ahem* so I have lines to learn.