My Year In Review--Theatre-wise anyway Part 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.