We've finished our second installment of long-form "training camp": two and a half days this past Labor Day Weekend. Saturday saw us back in the little rehearsal room at the Adrienne. Bobbi has settled on a form for us:
Cards/3 personal monos/snog/main scene/decon scenes/char. mono/cocktail party/snog/wordless scene/decon scenes (callbacks)/char. mono/main scene callback.
It sort of has this shape < > - < >.
Or maybe this } > - < { .
Or maybe " " /// < { } !!! { } >.
Fun with symbols! We practiced it Saturday morning, then 15 of my students from Ursinus came by bus in the afternoon and were our second audience. Having my students watch me act is always nerve-wracking, and in this case, in that little room, we were almost in their laps. But I've noticed that long-form, more than conventional plays, leads me to that island of focus Stanislavsky calls the "circle of concentration", in which my awareness of the audience dims as I become more and more captivated by the events on stage. I think the students were impressed.
Sunday we moved to Abington Friends School, to work on the main stage there courtesy of Meg, who is their director of theatre. It was good to be in a big theatre space, and be forced to make intimate choices heard in the back row. We each stretched gratefully into the size of it and allowed it to lead us into larger, more theatrical choices. We did the form twice there, and Bobbi told us our second time through was our best ever. Alex, my former student from UArts, is now fully our musical partner, and has learned the form along with us. His music, made with a giant Casio synthesizer, adds something wonderful to the work. He, and it, are our sixth player now.
Today, we met again in the little room, to do the form once for a small audience of invited friends. Bobbi had paid me a nice compliment before the form, and I think it made me a little cocky. I reverted to my impulsive over-initiating a bit, which was noted afterwards. Alex continued to grow as a collaborator, and is now editing scenes (beautifully) with music. I had to leave notes early to pick up Griff and Ella, who had spent the morning with Susan at the
National Constitution Center where she performs in
Freedom Rising.
Later, at home, Bobbi called me with more notes. I was tired from kid duty, and I bristled a bit at some of what she said, even though it was accurate. I recognize this trait as a sure sign that I am owning the work more now, and want to be left alone to find my way through it, mistakes and all. There is always this passage for me, with any director on any piece of theatre, during which I politely say a vaiation of, you can fuck off now, and they politely say a variation of, no Ben, I can't. There is nothing amiss. There are no hard feelings, only love for each other and the work. It's only the natural progression, like a child becoming a teenager and needing to individuate, wanting to stand on his own and find his own way.
One of our company arrived today in a state, upset and near tears over a troubling phone call they couldn't discuss. This work is so personal and we have grown so close, that I felt a major ripple flutter through our circle before we started, each of us wondering if and how this anguish might appear in the work. But again we were given a healing lesson in theatre, in which we were all taken away by the work; taken away from our troubles and uncertainty to that island I wrote of before, an island we create anew each time we meet. It's my new long-form query before we begin: I wonder where we'll go today?
