We open Dark of the Moon at Dublin Coffman High School in two days...as usual, the past few days have been fraught with last minute set painting, costume adjustments, prop gathering, etc etc etc...but the kids are ready, more than ready, to get this bad boy up in front of paying customers...this is my "From The Director", my thoughts on the play...
From the Director
Dark of the Moon is a supernatural fantasy tale that is made up of equal parts of Romeo and Juliet, The Crucible, Harry Potter, and old campfire tales that travel down the years, growing in embellishment with each telling. At its core is the old Celtic song Barbara Allen, though the playwrights rewrote the story of the song to suit the action of the play. It has a dark heart—one critic said its characters were the characters of the musical Oklahoma, if their true natures were really shown. I consider it a sort of satire of the old morality plays, in which the best people in the community are the worst people in the community—rather like The Beggars Opera, in which thieves and murderers are the cream of society.
The students and I had a number of conversations early on about the human world of Buck Creek, and the supernatural world that lurks on top of Mt. Baldy. We proceeded from the position that this is a “heightened” existence, meaning that it is a fantasy, and makes certain assumptions for the sake of the story that bear little relation to the “real” world—the Christianity depicted in this play is not the Christianity that is practiced in our churches. The wants and needs of the citizens are skewed and are not always logical (witness their dialogue which echoes the repeats and refrains of old songs)—even the mythology of the witchcraft practiced in this play is unlike any other “witchy” stories. This led us to discussions of “given circumstances”, and what constitutes “ truth” on the stage—and our conclusion is simply that, for the purposes of performance, “truth” on stage always trumps “truth” in real life. This is why characters in musicals break out into song at regular intervals, or Shakespearean characters speak in iambic pentameter as a matter of course. It’s why a magical school exists to teach young Britons how to hone their witchcraft, even why three bears keep a traditional house which is ransacked by a blonde child.
The play has survived, since it was written in the 1940s, because, simply, there isn’t another play quite like it. It has been the source of controversy over the years, since a young Paul Newman first played the Witch-boy on Broadway. Back in the 1970s, high school productions of Dark of the Moon were picketed or even shut down. By the 1980s, it became a staple in high school repertories-- Dublin Coffman last performed it in 1989, roughly five years before most of tonight’s cast was born.
At its core is a love story, between Barbara Allen, whose reputation for “easy virtue” has reached beyond her town to the dark beings who live up on old Baldy, and John the Witch-Boy, who, riding his eagle one night, looked down among the human world and was instantly smitten by her. Their story is one of an attempt at redemption, a kind of reset of their lives, a belief that true love can cure all evils. But as we see, it isn’t the moonlight that illumines and defines their tale, but rather the dark shadow from its other side.
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has announced that non-Christians are not his brothers or sisters. So much for that Governor of All The People thing...actually, that sentiment is more in line with his previous job, as the villain in Poltergeist II...
So. I had a month between the closing of The Miracle Worker, and the start of Born Yesterday, at Otterbein University, where I'd been engaged as a guest artist for their fall production. I spent it watching my half-assed garden wither and die due to neglect, since I was out of town most of the summer. I read the script and wondered what the hell to do with Harry Brock. He wasn't a bucket list role at all, and at first pass, I found the play to be a little dated--though the themes of government bought and paid for are certainly current. But there was a certain Pollyanna-ish streak that ran through it that gave me pause, until I started reading it again. It was, on the 2nd time through, a lot more frank than the film version, or indeed many plays of the same period. The language was pretty salty for its day, and beneath Pollyanna's skirts lurked a certain snide cynicism that has always appealed to me. I started to enjoy the rhythm of the language, that sort of "say, what's the big idea" snappy type of rapid fire dialogue from the old Warner Brothers films.
But what to do with Brock? Like many actors, I suspect, once I have a role it seeps into my every waking thought. This can be annoying, because I miss a lot of conversation in the real world--I am busy enough with conversations in my head to pay attention to ones directed at me by my loved ones. Or they co-join, like two radio stations crowding each other in the same spot on the dial:
SHE: " Honey, would you like me fix some grilled cheese sandwiches?" ME: "Hmm? Oh, well...maybe, I guess...does Harry Brock know how to tie a necktie on his own, do you think?" SHE:" I am going to take that as a yes."
Harry began to walk around with me, nudging me in quiet moments. I am not one of those actors who gets totally immersed in a role--not for me the Daniel Day-Lewis model of staying in character all the time and all that. It works for him, I guess, but it wouldn't work for me. It would be too exhausting, and I suspect he does it more for show and effect. I doubt he takes a dump in character, or reads a book in character. He stays in character in public, so people can say "He stays in character ALL THE TIME." It's legend-building. So much silliness goes into the craft of acting, so much humbug and flummery. My immersion is less obvious to people, except to Dani, who always knows when my brain is otherwise engaged.
Let's take a paragraph or two to talk about process. On second thought, let's not. Listening to actors talk about process is as boring as listening to someone talk about their golf game. I will confine myself merely to observing that, having never majored in theatre in college, I never learned how to do the "Such and Such" Technique, or the " This and That" Method. I suppose they have value, at least as points of departure, but I have always trusted my intuition and insight, which I like to think is fairly highly developed. I can "get" people most of the time. Years of practice have endowed me with technical prowess on stage, and once I learned to access whatever inner resources I have, I was able to begin to divine the inner workings of my characters. This came late to me, relatively speaking, but just in time, if you know what I mean. Every play is different, every role is unique, and I don't believe you can apply a one size fits all approach to developing a character. It isn't as if all you have to do is type entries into an Excel spreadsheet and out pops a solution to a character.
So I began with Harry's insecurity. I think everything he does pivots around that pole. I decided he was probably a clean freak, one of those low rent guys who, once he hits it big, spends a lot of time on the surface of things, because he isn't very equipped to focus on the inner things. I read once that Sinatra took three or four showers a day, and changed suits just as often. Harry spent his life as a junk man, and once he made his first million, he tried to get the stink of the yard out of his nostrils, and out from under his nails. I asked for a handkerchief, once we started rehearsals, and worked out ways to always wipe his hands after every handshake or handling of some object. I gradually, over time, whittled that down to just a few times during the performances.
As far as his clothes were concerned, I figured he liked George Raft and that kind of guy, and took his cue to dress from the movies, and probably even hired someone to coach him on how to dress. I loved working with the costume designer of the show, who asked me for my ideas about what to do to emphasize character. That's the way it should be. I hate working with costumers who have a "my way or the highway" approach. Costume is character, in some sense--how a character looks is how he chooses to present himself to the world, and that should never be solely left to the costume designer. We added doodads like cufflinks, and watches and stickpins and all that, and all my suits in the show were first rate. It was important that when Harry looks in the mirror, he tries hard not to see the hard-scrabble man beneath the tailored outerwear.
Working at Otterbein--this was my second stint as guest artist there--is a treat. The young actors always add an extra dash of enthusiasm, and remind me why I fell in love with the whole thing in the first place. In past gigs working with young actors, I could see (sometimes very starkly) the difference between talent and skill. All of them are talented--that's why they got into their theatre departments in the first place--but most of them weren't very skilled yet, and didn't know how best to bring their talents to bear. That comes, I suppose, more from experience than something you're born with.
But the cast of Born Yesterday blew the curve on that particular test. There were some young actors who brought a level of skill to the party that surprised and delighted me. Especially my co-star, Stanzi Davis, who is a 40 year old in a 20 year old's body. She has great poise, on and off stage, an old soul, and has, as they say on American Idol, mad skills when it comes to acting.
So anyway, Born Yesterday opened in late October and ran for a few weekends. We played on a beautiful set, to enthusiastic crowds, and I was grateful for the gig, the money, and the chance to work with such good young people. And I thought that would be it for my year. In fact, I bragged, that once I finished directing the school staff show at Dublin Coffman, I had a nice long Christmas holiday full of nothing but reading and eating ahead of me. But...
Whore that I am, I accepted an offer to perform in A Sanders Family Christmas. This was a production mounted by David Caldwell, a frequent guest director at Otterbein and many other theatres around the country. I had never met him, but knew of him through my friend Don, who went to college with him. He called Don to ask if I sang or played the guitar, and Don told him more of the latter than the former, which is dead true. I got a call from Elizabeth Saltgiver, who works at Otterbein, and who was acting as a managing director for Caldwell's production company. They asked me to send a few picking/singing clips so David could get an idea of my range. She emphasized this wasn't an audition--I was already in the play, but this was they could best determine the role for me. So I sent off a few clips, and was given the role of the Sanders family patriarch, Burl, whose playing and singing chores were much less demanding than the other male role of my type, which was just fine with me.
We only rehearsed 10 days, and played in a chapel in Worthington, which was perfect since the play is set in a Baptist church on the eve of WWII. I had a ball, and got to check off a bucket list item, namely playing guitar in a band, on stage, before an audience. Caldwell, who in addition to directing the piece, also played the pastor, was funny as hell, and two completely different people in those roles. As director, he was all business, slightly aloof, and dead certain of where and how to play certain moments (he's done more than a few versions of the Sanders family plays, of which there are 3). As the Rev. Oglethorpe, he was hysterical, silly, touching and never seemed to fail to land his jokes and more serious moments. His funny moments were so funny, I am ashamed to say I corpsed nearly every time. I couldn't help it. I laughed right along with the audience, but I figured since Burl considers him a man who is bit of a figure of fun, I could justify laughing in character.
While the Sanders Family Christmas was rehearsing, I was also rehearsing the staff show at Dublin Coffman. About 7 years ago, the teachers and principals at Coffman were looking for some way for the Coffman staff to get to know each other on a more personal basis, and hit upon the idea to put on a musical. The first two years they did You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Tom Sawyer, and then I came on board, and they asked me to direct the staff show--they had been directing themselves before that. So, in the last couple of years I have directed Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Honk!, and then, this year, Snoopy the Musical.
It's always a fun, if stressful time, and the payoff is always worth it. You get to see people for whom acting is a mysterious and alien concept suddenly finding it, and making things work quite beyond what they thought they were capable of doing. The shows always sell out, and the money goes to fund classroom projects (field trips, special equipment, etc). The students love working on the show--they crew it, and I always have a ton of backstage and booth help for it. We all found the play to be a lesser one than YAGMCB, so I started augmenting it with moments from the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon, and from various Peanuts comic strips. I actually think our final product was better than the original play, though I am sure the authors wouldn't agree. But the little kids in the audience howled with laughter, the older kids loved watching their teachers and principals do something completely foreign to their experience with them, and the actors amazed themselves at how they were able to get it over. Directing them is always challenging, because, when you think about it, all teachers are alphas in their classrooms, and all principals are the alpha alphas, and every now and again I had to remind them that when they come to rehearsal, I am the alpha. Dani came to a rehearsal once and said I was Charlie Brown trying to direct the Christmas play--I turn my back, and the partying starts. But it all works in the end, and the staff always ends things with a great party at the principals house, and the camaraderie is priceless...
So that was my year--a year I began by announcing in a New Year's resolution that I was going to do less theatre... final tally: 7 shows, 3 directing, 4 acting.
Last January, my main New Year's Resolution was to do less theatre...I wanted to see if maybe I couldn't do a little more writing, a sort of return to my first love (without, you know, the creepy FB stalker thing that most ex's indulge in)--but that was a foolish pledge. In the last 12 months, I have directed 4 plays, acted in 4 plays, and written bupkes. Well, nothing I was interested in sharing with the world, anyway.
All my directing occurred at the high school where I work. We did Tira Palmquist's The Island of Dr. Moreau in January, which was a fantastic experience for the kids involved. They got to create something no other high school had ever done. We took it to the state thespian conference, where the kids were received like rock stars when it was over. They were never better, and I had a rollicking good time working with them. Later that spring, I directed my own little comic 15 minute adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which was performed during an evening of one acts.
Then I left town to spend 5 weeks in beautiful Granville, Ohio, where I was engaged for a 2 play contract at Weathervane Playhouse in nearby Newark, a summer stock theatre that puts up five plays a summer. I had a grand time, for the most part, met some wonderful people, got to play a bucket list role (Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady) and Captain Keller in The Miracle Worker.
MFL was a terrifying experience, initially. Those who know me know I am not much for the musical theatre genre. I respect it a lot more than I used to, but I still find it a little frivolous and too filled with "fabulosity" for my taste. But I always thought Higgins was in my wheelhouse, and a friend emailed me that spring to say she'd recommended me to Matt Trombetta ( the artistic director) for the role. I heard nothing from them and was mentioning to another friend how this tempting tidbit had been dangled in front of me, and then--nothing. She said she was seeing Matt that evening, and would mention it to him. She did, and he contacted me the next day, we arranged an audition, and I got the role, and was offered Captain Keller in the bargain. We set a fair price for my services, which included putting me up for the length of the contract.
I knew my Waterloo would be the songs, and learning them in a 2 week, summer stock format. I had a month between casting and first rehearsal, so I downloaded karaoke versions of Higgins' numbers, and drilled them into my head, every day. I decided against watching the movie (which I had never seen in its entirety), and figured I'd go it my way.
Rehearsals were long and intensive, and I learned a new respect for the musical theatre performer, and what it takes for them to get it all down. My main trouble was that, being deaf as a post, I couldn't hear the piano if I was singing (being profoundly deaf from birth, my life has always been mono, never stereo). Plus they placed the piano far, far away, in our echo-ridden rehearsal room. It was enormously frustrating--one of the few times I have really felt handicapped (another time was when I was fired from a convenience store job in college, because I couldn't hear the people talking on the speakers from the gas pumps). As a result, I was constantly going off rhythm, and slowing the progress of the show.
My pride wouldn't let me back out, however--I think one of the great things about the theatre is that there is always something you need to increase your reach for, and I couldn't have lived with myself if I'd taken the easy way out. Finally, I did the actorly thing--I threw a hizzy, and announced it was pointless for me to continue until they moved the piano closer, in the approximate with where it would be on the stage . I had asked for this before, but no one seemed to hear it (maybe they were deaf too). It took a raised voice and a scary countenance ( I can do both pretty well when I wanna) for people to pay attention, and they moved the piano, and I started to line up with the runway, finally.
Opening night was one of the few times I have ever been stricken with nerves before a show. Though the sound level was better (this was the 2 piano arrangement of MFL), there were still many times when, if I was loud, I couldn't hear the pianos. Throughout the run, I did much of it by guess--I would sing, or sing/talk my line, then listen to the filler notes between the melody to see if I'd timed it right. There wasn't a single performance where I got it all on the bead, but I started to relax and actually look forward to the numbers. Most of them, anyway. I always dreaded " Ordinary Man", because of all the tempo shifts, and all the movement within it. But, strangely, a number of people told me afterward that was one of their favorite moments of my performance. That and "Accustomed to her Face", the final number, which was my personal favorite.
Weathervane has a terrible policy of lining the actors up outside after the show, so the audience can file by and shake your hand. It felt like an inspection line, or like I was a preacher standing by the church door and shaking the hands of the exiting congregation. I have always tried to eschew meeting the public after my shows. I prefer doing my monkey dance, get the applause, and then slip out the side door to my car. I hate all manner of pretentious "talk-backs"--a terrible practice currently in vogue in theatre. To my way of thinking, there is a contract between audience and performer, and I fulfilled my part of it by giving my all on stage. I never slack, I never phone it in. And I have nothing further to add than my performance. If your production needs the talk-back to illuminate the show, then the production is wanting. I know a lot of actors who enjoy talk-backs, but I guess I have always been old school that way. Weathervane doesn't do the afterschool special thing, but you have to stand there while the folks file by, shake your hand raw, and smile while all you really want to do is get to the bar or Rally's for an American Cheddar Melt.
I bring this up because, against my will, I started to enjoy it. I appreciated that people responded to my work so favorably, with hugs and back slaps, questions like "Will we see you in anything else this summer, I hope?"...even the tired old questions most civilians ask " How do you remember all those lines?" (My stock answer to that one is " How do you know I did?") Because Weathervane exists outside the normal theatre hubs of a big city, there is a proprietary feeling that comes from the patrons--it's their theatre, and they have a stake in it. And that's valuable. And the exchange takes on a more personal tone than it does in the cities.
The meet and greet for the next show was an entirely different color altogether, however...
On the final day of My Fair Lady, we did a matinee, an evening performance, and then struck the set, which lasted well into the wee hours. I was determined to sleep in my own bed, in Grove City (about 60 miles away), so at 3 am I said my goodbyes, and hit the highway, looking forward to my one day off, and hit my pillow around 4:30 am-- the roads were so foggy I had to travel about 30 mph most of the way home. At about 9am, I was awakened by a phone call from my pal Tim, informing me that Matt Trombetta, the artistic director and director of The Miracle Worker (which was a week into the 2 week rehearsal), had been killed in a head-on car collision, on the same road I had traveled, about 20 minutes behind me. I dressed and headed back to Newark, too late for the meeting with the board and admin staff, but in time to commiserate with the stunned and grieving company. Many of them had known Matt for years, to the point that he was like family to them.
One of these "family" members, Erika, who had directed MFL, had to step in and finish MW. It was a heroic effort on her part, a sort of focus I can only imagine. That final week of rehearsal was surreal, the usual joy and nerves replaced by a grim sort of realization that we had to get it done. Not for Matt, necessarily. But because in theatre, that's what you do. Theatre people attend. Life exists outside the building, not in it. I will often make that speech to my high school kids--theatre.people.attend. If your mom dies, schedule the funeral for a day that won't coincide with the rehearsals or performance.
And so we got the thing up. To standing Os every night, but I'm sure they were in honor of Matt and our ability to put aside the shock, rather than for our performances (though the little girl who played Helen Keller had some serious chops).
The people in the meet and greet lines hugged us all, and it became a situation where you had to remember why they were doing it. In their minds, we were heroic to get a show up under the circumstances. People would say, " This must have been hard for you.", and I would start to answer, well, the accent was challenging to bring off, then I would realize they were thinking about Matt. But in the adrenalined after-moments of performance, the mind, at least MY mind, wasn't on that at all. I was thinking about certain moments that could have been better, or why wasn't my prop in its place tonight, or "wonder who is at the bar" or "hope Rally's is still open". I didn't know Matt as well as most. My sadness was the sadness of a young life, any young life, suddenly gone-- not for someone who was an intimate part of my world, which he wasn't-- and I moved on as other priorities rose up. Selfishly, I discreetly lamented the loss of future work--Matt and I had discussed my returning in 2011 to direct a children's play, and act in Boeing, Boeing, but those plans were lost on that foggy night.
So, that get us up to July of 2010. Act Two of " Mark's Theatrical Self-absorption" comes up after these messages from our sponsors...
