Showman/Shaman - The Crucible

My fifteen minutes

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 22:12:00 -0400

The other Disney movie Ella is obsessed with – even more than Lion King – is Beauty and The Beast. This was not on my mind when I wrote the Spring integration, but the Spring integration was on mind the other day when I found myself alone with Ella for a few hours, and we played “Beauty and The Beast.”

I screwed up face and jutted my lower teeth out. I dropped my voice in to a raspy growl. I lumbered around like a giant ape, and all the while Ella played Belle. I tried to engineer the scenes so that, for some reason, Beast had to take a lot of naps. Ella liked this, because it allowed her to play out the “going to sleep” scenario with her on the powerful end, as the one putting some else to bed.

“Go to sleep now Beast. No crying.” she would tell me, before planting the world’s most tender little kiss on my lips. Within a minute she would wake me up. Some nap. I would pretend to cry.

“I’m hideous.”

“No, no Beast. You not hideous.” And she would kiss me some more. She pronounced “hideous” remarkably well for a three year old.

At least I’m not so hideous I can’t be on the radio. I had an interview about The Actor’s Way last Wednesday. It was for a local public radio show called “Radio Times”, which Susan and I listen to a lot. So when I showed up at the studio and was greeted by the host Marty Moss-Coane, I felt as though I was going to hang out with my cool aunt Marty in the radio station where she works and chat about some stuff we were both interested in.

I had spent the previous two weeks “rehearsing” this interview: playing out questions she might ask and answering them with glittering charm and intelligence, fielding awkward subjects (like alcoholism and tenure) with aplomb. But of course, Marty was way too sensitive to ask anything approaching an awkward question, and the questions she did ask were so germane to the book and my concerns, my effort was to pare down the 14 responses which lined up in front of me to the one or two which seemed most urgent. Marty asked questions about psychodrama and the wounded actor, about the criticism thread in the book and about what happens in acting classes. We got some call ins from all over. I left feeling kind of high from whole thing.

In the hallway afterwards, I had a comical talk with Marty’s producer, the red-haired Devora, about toilet training. It turns out she has kids about the age of mine, and had some good advice for Ella’s challenging relationship to her own poop.

“Have you tried just letting her sit in her shit for while?” she asked with charming bluntness. God I love strong women. I replied that Ella seemed to not mind that, or at least preferred it to sitting on the potty. “How about rewards?” she asked. “One piece of candy for just sitting, two for pee-pee, three for poop.”

Marty and Devora are a part of the community I serve. How I love my community.

The next day, The Crucible returned in the form of a horribly mishandled “evaluation” meeting at People’s Light. The issue at hand was my conduct in those difficult rehearsals of 2.2, in the jail, and my attachment to my initial vision of Hale the shattered man. Without getting into the whole thing, the meeting was based on second-hand information – essentially “he said, she said” stuff – and had the wounding quality of a reproach, although Abbey and Steve kept telling it wasn’t. I left feeling very hurt and confused, and resolved to go back to continue the conversation.

That night, Sooz left me and the ids to go to the Cape to be with her dad again. The end is near, I think, and death is like the haze of hot day in our lives, draping us in discomfort, blurring our vision slightly and making us want to just stay inside.

I took night off from child care top go see a festival of ten minute plays downtown, one of them by friend Michael and directed by my friend Joe, another featuring Jenny, one of our babysitters. It was a festival of the smaller companies in town, and it had the quality of a plate of hors d’oerves made by different kitchens. Some made you wanted another taste, others didn’t. One of my favorites was Heavy Metal Dance Fag, pt 2 – a riotous piece of physical theatre in which the title character did comical choreography to the likes of Guns ‘n Roses.

Then I went to a fundraiser for two local companies a The Khyber, a notorious local dive bar and music venue. There I got hang out with my “tribe”, seeing friends from the theater community who I had lost touch with, and just be a part of the merriment. To my shame, I smoked a few cigarettes that night, I strategy I frequently employ to make myself feel more “with it” when I go to bars, but, of course, don’t drink.

While there, I had my first fantasy-author moment. I was talking to a friend when a young girl, moving through the crowd at the bar, suddenly turned and stared at me.

“You’re Ben Lloyd aren’t you?” she asked. I said I was. “OhmiGod! You wrote The Actor’s Way! I’m only half way through and that book is changing my life!” I grabbed her hands and told her she had just made my whole night. She told me her name was Amanda, she was telling all her friends about the book and we talked about it for a while. You know that scene in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, when the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes to big? Yeah. That was me. Now I have to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to my head.

What "crucible" means

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 22:03:00 -0400

I need to record something that happened at the end of The Crucible. It was significant to me and it didn’t make it into this blog. During the talkbacks, a frequent question would be, “Why is the play named The Crucible?”

“Well,” I would reply, with great authority, “the word ‘crucible’ means a tipping point. Imagine a seesaw. The place where it balances is the crucible. So Miller is using the word to illustrate the way the choices in the play can go one way or the other.” Sounds good doesn’t it? The only problem is that it’s complete bullshit. I have no idea where I got this idea from. But I know I didn’t make it up. I had this distinct memory of someone telling me this. Recently, I heard a piece from the radio show This American Life about the dangers of a little bit of information. In the show, a person talks about writing for “Jackass Magazine” when they go on and on about something they know very little about. I was writing for Jackass Magazine, in front of my peers and thousands of young people, for about two months.

By the end of the run, some in the cast began gingerly approaching me. “Ben?” they would say, “I checked up on it and I can’t find that definition of the word ‘crucible’ anywhere.” My first reaction was bluster.

“Bosh! I’ll find it and bring it in for you.” Then I went looking. Imagine my distress.
So after the very last show, I gathered everyone together and made a comical and public apology for my mistake.

This was significant for two reasons. One was that no one ever told me I was mistaken. I think this had to do with the authority I generated when I spoke. This is a dangerous ability, the ability to sound authoritative even when one is full of it. I could raise some questions about politicians and academics, but I won’t. You get my drift. I was alarmed that I had fallen into this trap myself, and it was a useful warning.

The second reason it was significant was that I apologized for it. This is relatively new behavior for me. I hate admitting I’m wrong. I’d rather eat something disgusting, all the while proclaiming it’s tastiness, than admit someone’s assessment of it was better than mine. I am proud of that confession and apology. It is a sign of progress for me.

Salempost 13: Integration 4

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 21:14:00 -0400

“Whore!” screams Proctor, and he rushes to take down Abigail, who is shaking from a “chill wind” she says Mary has sent upon her. In the ensuing speech, after Willard has pulled him off her, Hale gets the answer: “I have known her!” screams Proctor. With this admission, Hale’s search is over. He suddenly understands the entire proceeding in a way he never could before. Standing in the midst of the courtroom chaos, images flash back before me of my visit to the Proctors: Elizabeth’s strange behavior whenever Abigail is mentioned, Proctor blanking on the adultery commandment, Mary Warren’s recounting of Abbey watching her make the poppit. Worse, I think back to my own arrival, and Abigail listening to what I say about the signs of witchcraft, and watching the drama of my effort with Tituba. It’s too much to say that Hale thinks he is to blame right then, but there begins a creeping sense of responsibility - and his new objective: save the innocent. This is his first objective in 2.1, he discovers it at the very end of the scene and it drives him through to the end of the play. And like all good objectives, he fails to achieve it.

Searching, searching. It is what I am doing in my life . It what Hale is doing in his. The actor and the character are enjoined. I want to know what God wants of me, how I may I best be of service to Him? This is precisely Hale’s mission too, but on different terms. I am full of portent, I live in the sense of something about to happen that will affect me and ones I love deeply. So does Hale. But his sense has more fear in it than mine, though we are both ride on the spiritual cusp of the unknown.

Also in 2.1 I witnessed some the worst actor behavior in performance ever. Suffice to say that there were private agendas and aesthetic vendettas being executed on stage in front of audiences against other actors and witnessed by the whole company. That the play didn’t come grinding to a halt and a fight break out between actors was miraculous. It took some stern lectures from Chaz to put an end to it all. The gossip around it backstage nearly became intolerable. I was not immune. But I finally had to let someone know that I wasn’t interested in passing judgment on others. Of course I do pass judgment on others, but only with my wife and closest friends, and not while the play is up and running. We make light of the different ways actors work. But these differences can manifest in antagonistic ways, and simmering conflicts over process can evolve into bizarre ad libs and warped staging in performance. It is my observation that older actors are particularly prone to this, as convinced and set in their ways as they are.

I had about five ten minutes between my 2.1 exit and my 2.2 entrance – less for the morning shows. I change shirts and return to the blue great coat, flipping my hair forward now so it cascades around my head down to the top of my chest, giving me an oddly effeminate air. Hale is changed when he enters the jail. I’ve already told you, friends, about my desire to have him arrive shattered. The compromise we have come to is a kind of end-of the-rope directness. The word “gibbet” is my cue, and for the forth time, I enter the wings, passing my wife in the greenroom as she covers herself in stage dirt for her final scene. Only Proctor and Hale are in all four scenes: the insider and the outsider. Jeb comes up behind me in the darkness, but there is no ass-slapping now. All is quiet focus and marshalling of resources.

I barge into an outburst of Parris’. Danforth nails me with an icy blue stare. Here begins a rapid fire exchange of tactics. He compliments me. I make a demand: pardon them. He bristles. I beg him. He lectures me. I am defeated, until – he wants Elizabeth here, to plead with her husband. A ray of light. I sooth him. He condescends to me. The straw breaks. I challenge him. He faces off with me. I release, shaming him, slamming him. He defies me. I scare him. He retreats, I heap it on – and there’s Elizabeth. He entreats me to speak with her, this woman covered in the shit of the jail, this woman who was so strong and proud three months ago. This woman who’s life, I think, I’ve ruined. I beg her. I plead with her. Nothing. Then Danforth goes to her and – surprise – she relents. Proctor comes, a bent and twisted piece of wreckage. Guantonimo Bay, I think. The jails of Bagdad. We leave the Proctors alone.

In the green room, Graham wants to talk about the scene. I don’t. Ceal sits as Rebecca in quiet contemplation. I am sure she is in Quaker worship. I sit near her in spiritual affinity. Something is either building in me or it isn’t. Either way I want to be still and open to its arrival if it comes.

“Proctor will confess!” shouts Hathorne and we gather offstage. A moment and we stream on, Danforth in the lead. I am transfixed by Proctor, this beaten man. Here begins another long passage of watching and listening for me. Some nights it is like a slow-motion wave of feeling, cresting with Proctor’s howl “Because it is my name!” and then tears spilling down my cheeks, choking me as I watch he and Rebecca clutch each other on their way to the gallows. Some nights, when Sooz and I are left on stage together alone for the final image of the play, my last line is a sobbing mess of snot and tears, and my collapse to the stage is pure and genuine exhaustion. But other nights the wave does not crest, the tears do not fall, and all is splendid pretence; the skill of sensitive dissembling all actors must make their peace with (indeed, there are some who feel this is better than the great emotional release, and I have shared the stage with them). Either way, one hopes the audience leaves feeling that they have not been taken by shysters, but rather taken by artists to someplace terrible and true, and haunting in its familiarity.

My emotional relationship to this final moment waned as the production went on. This is natural. The thing that reliably moves you to tears will grow common through repetition, no matter how skillfully it is brought to life. And yet there was a constant opening that happened to me in these final awful moments, even though it was not reliably manifest in tears, and its consistency was bred from the love of the actors I was on stage with more than the story being told. It was the look on Chris’s face, and Ceal’s that knocked the wind of out of me. It was the personal connections between these human beings that generated the feeling. The night before the final show, Chaz read a selection about community. There are two communities at work in those final moments: Salem’s and People’s Light’s. And the interplay between them makes something greater than the sum of its parts. That final show, I was a mess at the end.

But I was also led to this thought: that just as the emotion of a moment dims for an actor over time, so too the repetitive witness of horror leads to numbing in us all, and this has implications in our culture, in which horror is the stuff of mass entertainment, and our children are raised watching dramatized killings. Part of what was so poignant about The Crucible was inhabiting the innocence of these people, for whom a child who sleeps a lot may be in the Devil’s grasp. We are numb to horror now, and so there is barely a horror left that will move us to action, and along with horror, we have lost our wonder: of the earth, it’s creatures and of each other. Acting asks us to find that wonder again, to hold it and light it ablaze, and warm the weary who come to see it. Acting asks us to enchant an audience often resistant to enchantment.

We have banished mystery in favor of the comfort of logical answers and rational processes. We are slaves to the tyranny of judgment, in which God’s glorious grey is separated into clear and boring black and white by the tincture of intellectualism. This dry approach has crept into our creative lives as well, leading us to the error that we can understand a creative act before we enact it. Our minds trick us into comfort, but it is a false comfort, and the faithful cannot abide it. Because faith explores mystery, admits doubt, seeks wonder. Faith says there is something bigger than my brain, and I worship it.

During a talkback with a high school audience after the show, a young person asked: “How has this show affected you spiritually?” Somehow, over the course of the talkbacks, I became the One who answers the God questions, and on that day I surprised myself by saying the following: “As a Christian, I found this play deeply challenging”. As a Christian. The words just flew out of me, so many little birds bursting from the bush. I have been born again. He is mine, I claim Him, I am his Friend.

Sooz and I are out of costume and climbing back into the car. I drive now, the designated one, as she sips a beer or glass off wine. We speak of tragedy. A person in our extended artistic community was killed in a car crash coming home from seeing The Crucible. Neither Sooz or I knew her well, but I can’t stop thinking about possibly of being part of the last images she held inside, and about Caesar’s molecules. On the ides of March, in physics classrooms across the country, they talk about Caesar’s molecules. It is apparently a statistical certainty each time we inhale, we breath in a few of the molecules that Caesar exhaled just after saying “Et tu, Brute?”

The Pennsylvania countryside slips by under the warm spring night, and I inhale from an open window, trying to taste the molecules that left my dead comrade’s lungs in her last moment, trying to taste the ones that floated about Golgotha on a hot day in Palestine some 2,000 years ago, or the ones that left Burbage’s lips on the banks of the Thames, the first time he played the Dane. We are all One. Revival will return soon, and I have interviews with institutions which may result in us packing up our things and leaving this community behind us. But tonight, warm in the glow of a job well done, grateful to be alive with my wife by my side, I cannot fathom anywhere else I’d rather be.

Faith is being blindfolded and led to a diving board. “It’s nothing but pillows and mattresses below!” shout persuasive and familiar voices. “Jump!” I keep thinking I’ve arrived at the diving board. But then He leads me to a new one. And I don’t think I’ve jumped . . . yet. Or have I?

Salempost 12: Integration 3

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 21:04:00 -0400

During intermission I try to lay low. Sometimes I look at the clock and imagine my kids asleep, and the journey I have left to go before I see them. I’ve been realizing lately all the things I don’t do – don’t even consider – because it would take me away from them too. I remember a full professor at Villanova telling me, “Never, never use your family as an excuse for not doing something here.” I’m sorry – fuck that. Being an active Dad is a conscious choice in my life. I am aware that it sets me apart from a lot of other professional men with families, who either put other priorities first, or who work in patriarchal environments where men aren’t supposed to be as interested in their kids as they are in their work. If I could, I’d take them to work with me. And while Griff was on spring break, we did just that, and he scooted out into the house to watch the morning shows in between books in the greenroom or computer games on the iBook. My backstage boy, growing up in the theatre.

“Your family is an accomplishment, Ben” my Quaker therapist said to me one day, and a little sun exploded in my chest. I saw then that it’s true – the four of us stand as an accomplishment in a world where artistic careers are belittled, men are supposed to put work first and women are the child rearers. Perhaps it’s because I was raised by my Dad that I have such an instinctive and deep desire to be a father myself. I shock Susan occasionally, and keep Ella home from daycare when I have a free day, not because she’s sick or the place is closed, but because when I am with her I feel complete, joyful and bound to God. And because she’s growing up, and I am already aware that when she is big I will miss terribly this little person with the enormous voice. The world steals me away from my children. Every moment with them is one I steal back.

“Places!” shouts Chaz and we in the 2.1. head into the dim wings. As Chaz’s thumping music begins we dance silly Puritan disco in the offstage darkness. Jeb waves his ass at me and I slap it playfully. Peter seems to be air drumming on something large and Japanese. Mark bends over and beats his thighs in syncopation. Graham hovers in the doorway, removed.

We spill out onto the stage, Giles Corey in a rage. I knew this outburst was coming – Hale has been aware of this pending challenge to the court’s authority but has said nothing. He was determined to present it himself when the moment seemed right, but Cory has blown it all wide open. Soon the room fills with people. Hathorne demanding indictments of contempt, Danforth questioning and Proctor – poor farmer, awkward, unsure – here to plead his case.

I watch and listen. This is the great effort of 2.1 Strangely, I spend most of it just standing on stage, trying to actually listen as opposed to look like I’m listening. The intensity of concentration required to stay engaged is staggering, especially when I have nothing to say for pages. The temptations are legion: wow – there’s a hot chick in the front row; was that Pearce’s laugh? I think that kid’s going to throw something onstage! No – back, back to this. Danforth is considering now – he’s not going to dismiss these charges outright. Good news. But he uses Nurse’s petition as a pretext for issuing more warrants and slaps Giles in contempt. Proctor’s in trouble. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. This girl he’s brought with him is a mess – Danforth’s going to eat her alive. I know – he needs a lawyer, someone who knows how to play this game. I feel the impulse rise. I speak.

When we teach script analysis to actors, we often teach them to break their parts down into a seamless series of tactics united in the pursuit of an objective. But a few years ago I began to feel that this technique was missing something. What about those moments when the character himself doesn’t know what he’s doing, or what he’s looking for? I used to tell my students, well your character may not know, but you need to. But there was always a voice inside me that thought – bullshit. Sometimes you’re just searching – for truth, for direction, for answers. And Hale in this scene is a perfect example. When the scene begins, he has no objective. He is in what I have come to call a transition. He is in between objectives. Broadly speaking, he is searching for the truth. More specifically, he wants to know why Proctor is so convinced this girl Abigail would try to frame his wife. It doesn’t make sense to him. Until the great eruption.

Salempost 11: Integration 2

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 20:56:00 -0400

At my first entrance, everyone on stage stares at me. Everyone in the audience stares at me. I am the intruder, the outsider. There is a suspended moment, a breath, then I speak as Hale for the first time: “Pray you, someone take these!” and Parris comes to take my books from me. Hale is constantly interrupting awkward moments, arriving in the middle of arguments. He does it in the first two scenes of the play, and then again in the last scene. Inadvertently, he witnesses this community in its pain. This speaks to him as a minister. It’s information that gets stored away, then detonates in the courtroom. But here, he is all business. He is the expert consultant, called to discover, or not, the Devil at work.

Act 1, scene 1 memories: the way Chris slinks off stage as Proctor. Marsha’s eyes when she tells she’s lost seven children in childbirth. Holding Claire in my lap and connecting to Hale, the father of two. My little scene with Tom as Giles over the book. Julianna as Abigail screaming “I want the light of God!”

Then there’s the Tituba sequence. It is where the fear becomes horror enacted. Tituba is thrown to the floor and knows that in order to live she must admit to seeing the devil. This moment got disturbing laughs from some high school audiences. The image of Lenny being thrown to the floor struck some of them as funny. Lenny was occasionally furious backstage afterwards. “Little fuckers” she would mutter. It has been a painful experience for her – the one person of color in this cast – playing the slave. It is an open wound for her, and the children’s perverse laughter was especially galling. But for me, it was working with Lenny in this scene, in which Hale tries to save her, which either propelled me into the rest of the play, or warned me of heavy lifting when I was tired.

The people of Salem Village are ensnared, the girls are screaming accusations, Chaz’s percussive, pounding sound design kicks in, the lights dim and we quickly move scenery offstage during the change. I hold the curtain to the green room open for Lenny and we check in with each other. Sooz is standing there as Elizabeth, quietly focused. We softly slap hands as I pass her. Marsha hands me my coat and hat, occasionally complimenting us all for a scene well performed. I have 10 minutes or so before my next entrance in 1.2. I usually sit quietly, background listening, chatting softly with the offstage company. I hear Sooz as Elizabeth and Chris as Proctor arguing. I think, what a modern relationship in the midst of an ancient culture. A husband and wife battling through their pain and betrayal, locked together because there’s no way out. And despite the infidelity there is still something speaking to them both which says, we’re better together than apart.

Mary Warren exits and I put the great coat and hat back on. In one of my peculiar actor vanities, I desire to look different in each scene. I originally chose not to wear the grey dress coat for the Proctor visit, but Marla felt that the white of my shirt was too much. So I enter with the blue great coat unbuttoned, and hair tucked into the collar. Another peculiarity: the phantom VIP in the audience. I imagine someone I am connected to, or who excites me, to be in the audience: a director, an old friend, a family member. I think of that person out there watching the play and it somehow turns me on. I was embarrassed about this peculiarity for the longest time, but then, like audience peeking, I discovered what it was really about. It is my way of personalizing my relationship with the audience. The main stage at People’s Light is vast, and the phantom VIP helps me make an intimate connection to the masses gathered there. Ironically, when I actually know there’s a VIP in the house, it can rattle me, like the three shows I thought a director I was about to audition for was there (she wasn’t), or the night my half brother came with his wife, and I kept thinking I saw him in the house left or right delta (he was actually mid-way up the center section).

The Proctors are fighting and I am waiting in the woods. I stand there quietly for about two minutes, listening, centering, staring at the “trees”. “She has an arrow in you yet!” Elizabeth screams and I move into the woods, meeting Proctor halfway through the door coming at me. This is the second of Hale’s awkward interruptions. We stare at each other, and through the door I see Elizabeth whip around to hide her face and compose herself. I am invited in.

We spent a great deal of time in rehearsal talking about why Hale was there. David tried strenuously to move me to the position that Hale was making sure these were good Christians, but through my performance of this play 56 times, I am convinced of something else. Hale is there to warn them, though he doesn’t know how to when he arrives. He quizzes them about the ten commandments less because he wants to make sure they know them, and more because he has now witnessed the way it works in the Salem courtroom, with Hathorne bringing down Sarah Goode with the commandments inquisition. Hale wants to see what will happen to people like these if they are drawn into court and set upon by the judges in the same way. He isn’t happy with what he discovers: that the Proctors are imperfect people, which makes them vulnerable in the current climate.

He has also just come from Rebecca Nurse, and as I stood in my ready position for this scène one night early in the run, it dawned on me: what did she say to me about all of this, this woman I clearly hold in the highest regard? What did she tell me about the hunting of witches, about the activities of the court? I’m sure she said some thing like, “Mr. Hale, there is great danger in the seeking of loose spirits” which is exactly what she says in the first scene to Parris. Except at home, with me visiting and her husband by her side, I’m sure she expands upon that idea a bit more. So I arrive at the Proctors’ having just been schooled by my version of Mother Teresa. My confidence in what I’ve initiated in Salem has been shaken - not defeated, but shaken. Hale arrives at the Proctors’ wrestling with a doubt he doesn’t know how to express. The Proctors are at war with each other; Hale arrives at war with himself.

I stand in their house, aware that I have inserted myself into a painfully intimate moment. “You are Goodwife Proctor” I say to Elizabeth, and I say hello to my wife on stage. For the next five minutes or so, Sooz, Chris and I share one of the most subtle and nuanced scenes I have ever had the pleasure and challenge of performing. The scene with the Proctors around their table never got old, even in the haze of the busiest morning after a sleepless night in front of a restless crown of teenagers. But they were seldom restless here. Miller’s language and Sooz and Chris’s skill sucked me and them in every single time. It’s when acting seems too easy for words, and I’m almost embarrassed to be paid for it. Almost. Add to that the privilege of sharing the stage with a dear friend and the love of my life (who never felt like my love on stage, but his), and it was really a peak experience; a treasure I will always have now.

1.2 memories: Sooz telling me there is no mark of blame upon her life; my moment with Chris downstage right about what’s he’s said about witches; the sequence leading up to the rifle, one of many beautiful escalations in the play that – when we played them well – ended in that exquisite combined capture of company and audience, all breathing the same taut breath; my exit, having tried and failed bring Proctor comfort, and my admission that the world has gone mad and I haven’t a clue why: “I shall pray, God open up our eyes.”

Which might as well be my prayer.