Theatre

Friday: much nerves and excitement, followed by a tentative show. Not terrible, just not risky. I think we were playing it safe in front of our first audience. We used very few devices (swinging doors, etc.), for fear of stepping on each other in front of the audience. The result was that some scenes went on too long. Writing this now, I can't remember who I was or what I did, except that I delivered the first personal monologue, inspired by a card that said "I want to have your baby". My story was about how one's life can be divided in two by babies: before baby and after baby. I was also in in a confrontational rodeo scene with Joe. Afterwards, Bobbi gave notes that chafed some in the company. I think we all knew we could have done better and were sensitive to criticism, even if delivered gently.

Saturday: I arrived pissed off and distracted. The company seemed spacy at check-in, but I wasn't one to judge. We warmed up on the stage which was good. Then, feeling the audience bearing down on us from the lobby, I think we rallied and focused. We changed backstage and committed to taking more risks and using more devices. As I passed into the theatre after "places" I felt the murmur of the audience like soft shove in the chest. I felt electricity shoot up my back. The air was charged.

Arriving on stage for the opening I could tell it was a full house. Sometimes you walk into the audience's smell when you walk on stage, on nights when they are packed in tightly and the humidity is just right. On Saturday, their scent enveloped us like a warm hum as we stood before them. As we began reading the cards (I had "I love unicorns" and "I'm not particularly fond of your singing"), their laughter was percussive, visceral. Again, I was led to deliver a personal monologue, this time inspired by someone else's card about having shoplifted as a child. So I told a "getting sober" story, in which I described confessing my own shoplifting to my first sponsor, who then buried my shame with his own shoplifting story. He liked to steal live lobsters from up-scale seafood stores in New York when he was ripped on coke. Top that. I dare you.

The rest of the night felt just magical. Meg and I did the "main scene" together - the story of newlyweds on the coast of Maine, with the hint of alcoholic trouble in the family. At the end of the night, Meg called it back 40 years later, with the two of us as an old couple, and me an old drunk. It was deep. In between, there were hilarious shoplifting scenes, poignant domestic dramas and one homicide. Joe and I had done a scene as car mechanics, in which it was revealed (through swinging doors) that I was sleeping with his wife. Then, during call backs, Joe whispers to me on the sidelines, "Lie down so I can drag you". So he dragged me on stage dead. The audience roared.

Afterwards, the lobby was thick with well-wishers. Bobbi was jumping up and down with excitement. We had clearly nailed . . . something. But what? Unlike a scripted play, there was nothing to take home as a "lesson learned" about this scene or that one. What was learned was learned about ourselves and each other - as people and performers. Could it be as basic as this? That we are best when we have faith in each other and ourselves and go for it? And something was learned about that intense bond between audience and actor, which on Saturday felt nearly erotic. They were horny, we gave them what they wanted and a good time was has by all. Maybe it's not exactly sexual. But for a magical night to happen both of those conditions need to be met: the audience arrives hungry and the company feeds them well. My friend Kathryn said to me, "I didn't want it to end. I felt like your were all making something just for me." And we were.

Sunday: the inevidible "how can we top last night" demon arrived with us. We went on stage Sunday afternoon for a less full and less hungry audience determined not to shoot ourselves in the foot by comparing what we were doing to the previous show. But it was inescapable. What we did was fine: creative, fun, serious. But we had tasted what we were capable of and, like all good performers, were left unsatisfied by the good show, having known a great one. Afterwards, we all agreed we wanted more. But when and how remains to be seen. We may be performing at Ursinus on Sept. 20th - still unclear as of this posting.

I want to tell you what my thoughts are about long-form improv generally, but it's late and I'm tired. Next time.

We've finished our second installment of long-form "training camp": two and a half days this past Labor Day Weekend. Saturday saw us back in the little rehearsal room at the Adrienne. Bobbi has settled on a form for us:

Cards/3 personal monos/snog/main scene/decon scenes/char. mono/cocktail party/snog/wordless scene/decon scenes (callbacks)/char. mono/main scene callback.

It sort of has this shape < > - < >.

Or maybe this } > - < { .

Or maybe " " /// < { } !!! { } >.

Fun with symbols! We practiced it Saturday morning, then 15 of my students from Ursinus came by bus in the afternoon and were our second audience. Having my students watch me act is always nerve-wracking, and in this case, in that little room, we were almost in their laps. But I've noticed that long-form, more than conventional plays, leads me to that island of focus Stanislavsky calls the "circle of concentration", in which my awareness of the audience dims as I become more and more captivated by the events on stage. I think the students were impressed.

Sunday we moved to Abington Friends School, to work on the main stage there courtesy of Meg, who is their director of theatre. It was good to be in a big theatre space, and be forced to make intimate choices heard in the back row. We each stretched gratefully into the size of it and allowed it to lead us into larger, more theatrical choices. We did the form twice there, and Bobbi told us our second time through was our best ever. Alex, my former student from UArts, is now fully our musical partner, and has learned the form along with us. His music, made with a giant Casio synthesizer, adds something wonderful to the work. He, and it, are our sixth player now.

Today, we met again in the little room, to do the form once for a small audience of invited friends. Bobbi had paid me a nice compliment before the form, and I think it made me a little cocky. I reverted to my impulsive over-initiating a bit, which was noted afterwards. Alex continued to grow as a collaborator, and is now editing scenes (beautifully) with music. I had to leave notes early to pick up Griff and Ella, who had spent the morning with Susan at the National Constitution Center where she performs in Freedom Rising.

Later, at home, Bobbi called me with more notes. I was tired from kid duty, and I bristled a bit at some of what she said, even though it was accurate. I recognize this trait as a sure sign that I am owning the work more now, and want to be left alone to find my way through it, mistakes and all. There is always this passage for me, with any director on any piece of theatre, during which I politely say a vaiation of, you can fuck off now, and they politely say a variation of, no Ben, I can't. There is nothing amiss. There are no hard feelings, only love for each other and the work. It's only the natural progression, like a child becoming a teenager and needing to individuate, wanting to stand on his own and find his own way.

One of our company arrived today in a state, upset and near tears over a troubling phone call they couldn't discuss. This work is so personal and we have grown so close, that I felt a major ripple flutter through our circle before we started, each of us wondering if and how this anguish might appear in the work. But again we were given a healing lesson in theatre, in which we were all taken away by the work; taken away from our troubles and uncertainty to that island I wrote of before, an island we create anew each time we meet. It's my new long-form query before we begin: I wonder where we'll go today?

Riding the bus downtown for Saturday's LEAP rehearsal, I had one of my "fall in love the world" moments. It's one of those unexpected endorphin rushes, or caffeine pops, or God caressing. I looked around the bus at the different shapes and colors of humans on board and felt kinship. And I was reminded again of Wim Wenders' extraordinary film Wings of Desire, in which angels sit invisible next to subway riders and listen.

I think LEAP had something to do with it too, and during my check-in that morning I shared with the group that I felt that there was something profoundly important about what we were doing. Beyond the enjoyment of watching actors create scenes from nearly nothing, the amusement of seeing us commit to occasionally absurd choices, or the poignancy of our sad ones, there is something spiritually unifying about the work. This is partly due to the cards the audience fills out, which describe secrets or unsaid things, and which propel us into the form.

But it also has to do with the absence of the playwright and director (traditional director, since Bobbi is directing us through the form). Compared with the traditional play, we lose something in terms of elegance, artistry or focus perhaps, but we gain something mysterious and unifying. When it works best - and we got a little taste of this in front of our first audience Saturday - it's as if all of us, audience and performers alike, are creating the thing then and there. And the thing created is life itself, performed.

And this is why I am continually reminded of Quaker worship by this experience, and continually imagining ways to return to "Meetings for Theatre", or their descendent, "Creative Worship". What happens in conventional Quaker worship is a spiritually-driven long form comprised of personal monologues and separated by long periods of quiet. I think it would be no great leap (pardon me) to put this work in a spiritual context, teach some forms and see what happens.

Our performance was a good first step, allowing all of us to work through various degrees of terror and excitement. We did okay, with room for improvement but no train-wrecks. Afterwards, my friend Chris, who had come to be a part of the small audience, said, "It's like church." The comment took my breath away, speaking to my condition as he was. But now I say, amen brother.

PS: Cambridge University's New Theatre Quarterly has published an article of mine about my Quaker - Theatre exploration. The article is called "The Paradox of Quaker Theatre." You can read an abstract here.

Today, Bobbi put a bunch of big pieces of construction paper up on the walls. They were divided in black marker into four sections, and the sections filled with "forms". One might go: Cards/3 monos/decons/char. mono/cards again/char. mono/decons (callbacks)/fugue; or, Quotes/2 monos/ A1, B1, C1/short decons/A2, B2, C2/2 char. monos/A3, B3, C3/Family ronde/Fade. Each of these describe an hour of long form improvisation and are descriptions of various combinations of actors, types of scenes and long-form "devices". Such has been the nature of our "training camp" this week, that when I came in this morning I could read the nine different forms she posted as if they were baseball box scores. We have been trained.

So my desire for structure has been met in spades. Even so, after our first form today, Bobbi admonished me to not initiate so much. It is my tendency to jump in and make a big offer right away, or edit too quickly. I even snogged a scene before editing it, and the two actors just looked at me like, are you changing our location for us? I had an extra cup of coffee this morning and it showed.

The five of us have gotten to know each other well this week. On a long-form level, we are beginning to know what each of our tendencies are, our character types we default to, our comfort and danger zones. We each have unique rhythms, and in some strange way, an essential aspect of ourselves is revealed in blazing relief through the many, many characters we have invented this week. We feel very much like a tight ensemble to me, and so the training camp metaphor is apt. We are a team now.

But on a deeper level, as friends, we are getting to know about each other's private lives. Our rehearsals begin with "check ins", where we sit in a circle and talk about how we're feeling. These are occasionally venting sessions for one vexation or another, sometimes tender confessions about the strain of being parents, artists, homeowners, spouses. And our forms will sometimes begin with cards we fill out anonymously, which describe a secret or something we want to say to someone but haven't. After a bit, you begin to think you know whose handwriting is whose. And the secrets and things unsaid have been sometimes funny and sometimes profound. Then, these vexations, confessions, secrets and unsaid things are the inspiration for the creative form which follows. I have found myself watching my friend perform a version of my deepest fear through a character he has just invented. Sometimes, I am in the scene with him, playing someone else.

Tomorrow, we add our first audience. In one of many ways Bobbi reminds me of Fava, she knows it is all about the audience, and there is only so much to be learned without them. So tomorrow we will have a small group huddled in the rehearsal room with us. We'll see how much of our personal revelations we will share, and whether or not I can rein in my initiating-itis.

Long form improv shines a light on one of my challenges: the need to have a plan, to create a "script", to join events together into some holistic pattern that has meaning for me. When we do an extended form together, I am constantly trying to create links between scenes, by performing corollary scenes to ones we have seen before, or perform "subsequent" scenes. I even tried playing someone else's character to create such a link before Bobbi told me that was no-no. She is much more interested in having us create a "collage" of scenes with no direct linkages, until the end of our aimed-for hour of improv. Given what is happening in my life both personally and professionally, it is no surprise that I am drawn towards having a plan, and fearful of ambiguity and uncertainty. I also recognize the seeking of patterns as a quintessential Quaker trait. It's aspect of my faith, which calls me to take responsibility for sensing the Divine patterns.

I was also struck yesterday by the connection between this form and commedia. In both forms, the story being told is subservient to the relationships between the actors/characters doing the telling. Both forms rely on an intense kind of focus from the actor, who needs to focus both in the shared work between herself and her partner and also on the shape of the whole thing the ensemble is creating together. Commedia is a much more structured and formalized form, with its stock characters and well-known plots. Long form is more mysterious, and in some ways more immediate. It's hard work - there is absolutely no tuning out allowed. Even when off stage I am nearly on stage, so complete is the listening and watching required to prep for an edit or a snog.

I hit a bump yesterday around the idea of "tone" - specifically comic tone. We did a sequence of exercises meant to buff our comic skills and sensibilities. What ended up happening is that some of us - like me - created over the top characters, and others simply continued with creating scenes as we had before, which weren't especially funny. The things is, we have each created funny scenes, but they are funny almost by accident, and when we draw our attention to "comedy", it seemed to send us off into some other territory. Bobbi and I had an interesting discussion about the word "realism" too. I tend to regard any kind of character transformation as unrealistic, though it can be quite truthful. Bobbi uses the term more to identify an aspect of believability.

Anyhow - onwards.