Last Friday night, the show finally settled into a place where the bones were there. I don’t know when we started using the word bones to mean "a good structure." It’s not a good metaphor for my structure as these old bones are starting to wear. But, even with my left knee (which apparently is all bone, no cartilage), we finally found a rhythm to a good deal of the show. Friday night was a bit of elation after some sluggish runs.
Then, the all-too short weekend came, a weekend I was completely robbed of as a corporate event with my company ate up most of my Saturday and another impromptu line rehearsal at the theater ate up a lot of my Sunday, including the travel time. But when Cliff, Ray, and I entered the theater, the stage floor had been painted to reveal the gray landscape along with the rough road that Pozzo and Lucky travel on. The elements of the technical aspects of the show were slowly appearing.
When we reconvened Monday night, those bones we had started to splinter and crack. Maybe this is what happens when you have two days without the movement and maybe it was the impending opening date. Whatever the reason, Monday was...for a lack of a better term...a Monday all over.
The Misunderstanding
Tuesday night brought with it many distractions. As tech rehearsal will be this upcoming Sunday, the costume designer, the set designer, and the sound/light operator added to the numbers in the small theater. Then, a terrible moment of tension came. Three quarters of the way through the first act we were asked to “pause,” Keke’s standard work for a break. This break was longer than most of them and we cast members began trying to nail lines and cues for the next scenes. Instead, we were asked to try on costumes, interrupting the flow we needed at that precise moment.
Then, Godot spoke—I mean, God. Every theater has a "God mic"—perhaps it’s used as the instrument that reminds the patrons to silence their phones—it has various uses, especially with tech rehearsals. But the voice was not Keke’s. The Artistic Director, who will also double as a kind of Stage Manager, asked us all a question. “So, what do you think is your main problem right now?” As the rehearsal still had a lot of “Line!” calling, I offered helpfully (for once), “Well, the lines, obviously.”
She countered, “The problem is you can’t get the lines because you’re all in your heads.”
There are certainly moments where such a thing occurs. One may be in brain overload and that gets in the way of the physical process. But, at that moment, at that time in the rehearsal process, it felt like a misreading of what was going on in the room. We were in our heads because we were dealing with a new dynamic having a new Pozzo, we were in our heads because we were searching for cues we still did not know, we were in our heads because we remembered where lines had been flubbed and we were angry wirth ourselves. This rehearsal period has been such a short one for such a complex play. Yes, we were in our heads, but without our heads, we would be lost.
Now there are actors who work primarily through movement and those who are more cerebral. Cliff and I fall into the latter category—we are looking for through-lines, moments of logic (and Godot does have logic, it’s just fuzzy). The other cast members do seem to work more from physical places. But, again, that ain’t the leads in this case.
Keke, through the Stage Manager, asked us to let all our frustration out through dancing to a track from one of the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtracks. Pozzo, Lucky, and the Boy began the exercise. I began wringing my hands (an involuntary sign that a panic attack was on the way). Cliff was still, leaning against one of the audience chairs and we were muttering to each other “This is now what we need right now. This is not what will help us. This is not what we need right now.” I became more nervous with the loud music, Cliff became more pensive. The music finally stopped and Keke asked, appropriately, why Cliff and I didn’t participate. After all, we’ve never done many exercises outsides of blocking and rehearsing the scenes and this was one of the one few extra things she was asking us to do.
But Cliff and I were stymied. I was heading into hyperventilation as an argument arose between Cliff and Keke. I couldn’t express my emotions or back him up. The thing about theatre is you form a family and families often fight. This was a fight, one for which I was unprepared.
At that time, we felt we were robbed of more than half an hour of precious rehearsal time with this exercise and the aftermath. Was it just the tension of an impending opening night? Was she right and we were wrong? Regardless of all these things, I wracked my brain all morning Wednesday. The fact that I had not played ball could spread word that I was a difficult actor and would ruin any chances of being in other shows. But slowly, I’ve realized this will most likely be the last time I act onstage. When prepping my bio for the program, I ended it with, “This one’s for Dad.” While other family members always encouraged my youthful acting path (rare for where I grew up), my father was the one who was my biggest champion. Though he’s not here to see it, this one has turned out to be for him, not for me. It was a slow realization.
So, with the idea of acting finally ending in my life, I was technically free to voice my opinion and my resulting text message to Keke took hours to formulate. While productions of Godot are rare, even most theatre people would likely not put themselves through it. For all its hope, the play has a brutality and a sense of that little-known belief that if we all saw the world in 20/20 vision, we would go around with nooses round our necks. The vast majority of the tickets sold so far are people I know—friends, family, work colleagues. So, I set about for that all impersonal, but to-the-point form of communication known as the text message.
I gave Keke, from my perspective, a run-down of all that had occurred the night before. Earlier in the day, cast members had reached out to check on me, but I thought Keke was scared to (in the end, she left her phone at the theater and did not even read my text until Thursday). In the message, I felt, stupidly, all I could do was offer an ultimatum: that I would walk if such an event occurred again.
When my text message was read, and replied to, Keke and I worked out our differences. I had lost my head and the depressing nature of some aspects of the play had seeped into my behavior. It is hard to admit when you’re wrong, but I did. Thursday night brought with it the best run we’ve had so far.
Sometimes, a little letting out of the tension in the air is a good thing, if painful when it occurs.
Members of the cast will appear on Talk of Alabama on Wednesday morning on ABC 33/40 and hopefully more than just my family will show up during the run.
I suppose this is the time to say what a great, dedicated cast we have, what a cool director we have, what a great opportunity this is.
Will this be my last role? Probably, but it will have been a pleasure to do it.
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