Showman/Shaman

So I arrive at our last preview last night to discover Madi rummaging through a plastic bag full of cards and gifts. "Hey", I say, "you're a day early for opening night gifts!". Chris, the sound designer, standing next to me on stage says, "Oh, didn't you hear? They moved opening up a day."

They moved opening up a day?

Sure enough, sitting in the front row last night were three - count 'em - three critics, note pads and pens at the ready. Two things struck me as strange about this. Firstly - the front row? In a house that only seats eighty? When you are basically on stage with the actors because of lighting spill? In my experience, critics have tended to want to blend in and not draw attention to themselves (whether it's because of modesty or fear of stoning I will leave to others to guess). So it seemed weird to me that they essentially announced themselves that way.

Secondly, since when do critics sit together? From what I've seen, there's usually a stiff, professional distance between critics. I've never noticed herd mentality at work amongst them. But there they were last night, elbow to elbow in the front row. It was almost comical. It was if they were saying "We're here. We're weird. Get used to us."

Part of me - the grandiose part - thinks they were forming a united front in the face of my critical antagonism, in these virtual pages and elsewhere. The other part of me - the rational part - thinks they arrived late and sat in the only seats that remained. In any case, of course we had the lamest house so far, though they warmed up as we went. And we and a couple of costume and scenic malfunctions, including John and I improvising around a frightening wig pin he discovered in my Bertha wig, which i finally ripped out of the fake hair. Then I nearly obliterated the phone as Pearl, dialing with my cane. Earlier, I came on with my Pearl dress jammed into my underware, so I was flashing a sizable part of the house.

But all of this is the fun of this show. These kinds of "mis-haps" are going to happen a lot, and the warmest moments we had last night we ones in which the audience felt spontaneously included, either in a wayward wig pin, or in the second act, when Vera and The Reverend speak directly to them. The truth of the comic energy of Greater Tuna has been born out through the previews: it's the playing of it that's fun. The jokes, as written, vary in comic punch, and some of them are frankly dated (agent orange?). So what the audience delights in is me and John, whirling around in outrageous costumes and silly accents, with enough character precision and actor chops to lift it slightly above burlesque. And when we invite them into the fun, through ad libs or staged moments, they have obliged with gusto.

Some jokes that got reliable laughs in rehearsal are falling flat in performance. Two examples: my over-emnphasis of "ass" in the Sheriff's line "Yeah, I'm going to charge your ASS, boy." Gets a chuckle or two, that's it. And R.R.'s deranged cat U.F.O. chase is a chuckler too, not a belly laugh. I think it's because, in rehearsal, the gags were set up, and it was their invention which which amused. In performance, the audience has less information, and has to react much more immediately, and so the jokes lack the set up they had previously.

Looking forward to more fun in Tuna . . .

PS: The Inquirer critic liked it. To read her review go here.

Mid way through our second ten out of twelve. The company is in good spirits. The zany energy of the play has infected us all, and even the ridiculous six-second costume changes don't get us down. John and I frequently come off stage and look at Jess and Angela in a panic, having no idea who we're supposed to be changing into. The girls tend to steer us into our next costumes and position us for our entrances. John is finding some comic gold, especially with two of his drag performances: Charlene and Vera. I struck my own gold as R.R. yesterday, when I chased a "U.F.O" lighting effect around the stage like a deranged house cat. Leonard Childers is so fat I resemble a Macy's Day parade blimp, and Bertha's buns are padded right down the backs of my thighs. I display said buns prominently at my first Bertha entrance. For the first time today, I got through the Rev. Spike's eulogy without calling for a line. I'm not saying I got 'em all right, I just didn't ask for 'em.

Greater Tuna is the kind of play looked down on by the theateratti. It is low-brow comedy in the best American tradition: populist, self-effacing, uncomplicated in its message. There is barely a plot - it's really a series of comic sketches loosely strung together through the conceit of a day at the local radio station. Its value lies in the performance of it, and so it claims its place as pure comic theatre along the lines of commedia dell'Arte, successful only if a talented enough company can bring it to life, meeting the transformational challenges it presents with brio. I hope we are up to it. I sense we are, but we will learn a lot as we add audiences in previews next week.

The Walnut Street theatre, which is producing this production, is Philadelphia's great populist theatre. Long sneered at by our local theateratti, it has never-the-less maintained the most robust subscription base of any local theatre. It thrives by knowing who its audience is, giving them what they want and doing it well - at least well enough that the theatre remains fiscally sound. I sneered at the theatre myself when I arrived I arrived in town some thirteen years ago. I raised my nose at its consistent menu of American musicals and "old chestnuts". But as I have matured, my nose has lowered and my perspective has shifted. I now admire this theatre for being what it is unapologetically, and am grateful for the work I have been offered here (three shows in four years). Interestingly, Greater Tuna is a collaboration between one of Philly's most outrageous theatre artists (Madi diStefano, our director) and its most conservative theatres, in terms of play selection. Madi is founder of Brat Productions and well-know for both her direction of gritty, site-specific Conor McPherson plays in local bars, as well as her theatrical performances in her own plays, Popsicle's Departure and Sweetie Pie. But she has made a useful alliance with Walnut Street, having appeared in at least one of Neil Simon's Broadway Bound plays here. Bernard Havard, the artistic director here, has taken a shine to her, and I remember being in auditions watching the two them - Bernard in tweedy British jacket-and-tie style and Madi in post-punk black leather and bleached white hair - and laughing inwardly at the pair they make.

Tonight, peering out from backstage during a break, I took in Madi and our designers sitting in the dark house, their faces lit by the pale ambient light of computer screens and small note-taking lights. Each is doing what they love, I thought, and isn't that a measure of success? I am particularly fond of Elisa's costumes (all 20 of them) and Christopher Coluccci's sound design. He's picked some great southern rock for accompanying music, and given us a variety of goofy sound effects to use as Thurston and Arles in the radio station. Turning my head, I saw Jess and Angela scurrying around and getting the next change set up, and John dressed half in Petey and half in Arles. I felt proud to count myself one of them: an artist at work, hell-bent on making people I don't know laugh as much as possible.

I long for an end to the snooty judgments. But as I have written here before, I fear our academic institutions are too deeply invested in passing judgments, and they pass on that tendency to the students they instruct. And so we get a division along an ancient fault-line: on one side the academic intellectual aesthetes, on the other the populist, pragmatic workers. For years I have been trying to live on both sides of that line simultaneously, and the result has been a certain amount of stress and academic professional disappointment. It's as if I am being led again and again away from colleges and universities, led backstage and into costumes and out in front of audiences. But I am stubborn and head-strong. I refuse to leave my students. I refuse to believe I can't have it both ways. There must be a way to lift up Greater Tuna next to Antigone and say "both/and" rather than "either/or".

Making people laugh is serious business. Indeed, in this wounded war-torn world, one might argue it is more urgent than the business of making people cry. So just watch it if you lift your nose at me about Greater Tuna. I just might poke it.

Tech looms. We are working through the insanely quick costume changes in the rehearsal room. It's both fun and demanding, taking an enormous amount of patience and preparation, and utilizing the skills of the ASM (Angela) and the dresser (Jess) to help us backstage. The two of them have a "costume change playbook" that would make some NFL coaches proud. They are the kind of unsung heros the theatre doesn't recognize enough. This play would not be possible without them. I suggested, aloud, that Angela and Jess should take a curtain call.

Madi is deeply involved in the process, having acted in Irma Vep in this slot in this theatre last year. It's another two-actor, costume change parade. We tease her, and she teases herself, about how many times she says something that begins with "It's like in Irma Vep last year . . . " I make a joke about not saying things like "Well, when I was in this play before . . . " Today, Madi was felled by a mysterious malaise which led her to direct us from an Equity cot, like some diva auteur, which, of course, she is. Madi is also eminently focused and clearly a theatre artist to her core. It's been great to get to know her better.

And everyone got to know John and I pretty well today, as we traipsed around the rehearsal room in our skivvies. Jess would turn to one of us in between changes and say matter of factly "Clothes off, please." It's another reason actors are held in suspicion by some. Stripping to our underware in front of people we hardly know is par for the course. But isn't really a sign of health? I often think that actors instruct in ways we are hardly aware of, as in, here's my body. I'm not ashamed of it so don't be ashamed of yours.

At the beginning of the second week of rehearsing my second go-round with the little comedy that could: Greater Tuna. In 1996, I appeared in the "Arles track" at the Gretna Playhouse in Lancaster County, PA. That summer, I acted in the play with Pearce Bunting, my best friend, and was directed by Ken Marini. The three of us were about to go to Scotland to produce my play Psychodrama at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with some others, one of whom would later become my wife.

Now, at The Walnut Street Theatre in Philly, I am playing the other 10 roles in the "Thurston track". Already it is clear that a great deal of my performance will be an homage to Pearce, especially his portrayal of Pearl Burras, which I have essentially stolen outright. John Zak is Arles and Madi diStefano is directing, and we make a jolly trio. We are doing "straight sixes" - six continuous hours of rehearsal a day, as opposed to eight with a lunch break. It's a more efficient use of time and it helps enormously with child care, but boy, am I feeling my age. The play is a high-voltage parade of quick changes, with both actors going from one broad comic role to another. Besides the line-learning required in the short time allotted us by the theatre, I have felt daunted by the energy expended slowly bringing these characters to life. Fighting off the cold Ella brought home from school last week doesn't help either.

I am also experiencing a curious ennui about acting generally. As usually happens when I begin a project, I am made aware of all the things I can't do because I am an actor: go to Quaker meeting, attend weekend events with my kids, participate in volunteer activities. More than ever, I am smarting at the strange professional schedule of actors, which eats up the weekends and gives us Mondays off. Mondays off? Sorry, I have to teach, and the do all the things I couldn't do on thee weekend because I was rehearsing. I am under-prepared for my week of teaching because by the time I get home, I am too spent to do anything but put the kids to bed.

But perhaps it is larger than that. Perhaps I am finally wearying beneath the endless insecurity of my profession. Now, at 45, I find myself fantasizing about managing a Starbucks, owning a franchise, or driving a bus. A regular schedule, with regular income, and no particular emotional attachment to what I do - it sounds dreamy. My domestic situation is in a state of flux, the swirl of which is stimulated by the unpredictability of my professional life.

Perhaps it is mortality. Perhaps the weariness is the weariness of middle age, and the ennui comes from a creeping sense that now is the time for doing what is essential, what calls to me, what leads me. The phrase "I'm too old for this" has meaning for me now. I'm not too old for Greater Tuna - it's actually great fun and requires comic bravery and precision which thrills and challenges me. But I sense the clock ticking away, and I wonder . . . how much longer do I have to do the things I really want to do? And what are those things?