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This evening I begin my first acting class. What is odd about this is that I’ve been in 17 productions already since about 2011 and, oh yes, retired from acting about 5 years ago. But, on a lark, I’ve decided to heed the advice of a director years ago and take a class out of curiosity. Our text is by Stanislavski.
I’ve been on the community theater stage enough to have lost most of my fear of it. I’ve played a drunken Scotsman, several British detectives, sheriff Tate in To Kill a Mockingbird, a mute king in Once Upon a Mattress, a bishop and a cardinal in A Man for All Seasons, and someone in Harvey, among other plays.
Acting is quite a bit more involved than one might think. Obviously, you must memorize your own lines, but you must also know many of the lines of others in order to recognize your cues. The goal is to suspend disbelief and give a convincing portrayal of your character and contribute to the overall emotion of the scene.
One of the most difficult situations to come along on stage is when you or another actor forgets their lines. Unless somebody says something quick, a dark and silent pause washes over the audience, damaging the 4th wall. The other actor may cover for you by continuing with the dialog hoping you can pick up on it. Sometimes the other actor may skip a whole page of dialog leaving you to recognize the unexpected gap and carry on.
The best actors I’ve been around are able to fill a lapse with improvised language that covers the slip up long enough for the other actor to catch up. I’m taking the class because I was never good at improvising to cover a memory lapse. But no matter how good the other actor is, you still must slip back into dialog as seamlessly as possible. Inconceivably, audiences don’t always notice slip ups.
Improvising lines as opposed to sticking with the playwright’s text is very unappreciated and frowned upon. On a fundamental level, the playwright owns the content and every word is put there on purpose by the writer. On a practical level, other actors depend on you to say their cue lines properly. It is a good way to become unwelcome.
Another difficulty for me were the rapid back and forth dialogs with the other actor as would happen an argument. The scene is very satisfying when done fast and with verve, but a total loss of dramatic effect when done slowly.
Theater is a blast and theater people are fun to hang out with.
I sit in solitude in the lower dressing room, below the stage, at the Rialto Theatre in Loveland, CO, waiting for my cue to go on. The rest of the cast are upstairs in the new green room dressing and applying makeup. My preference is to get some self time before I go on. I have a bit part in our production of Father of the Bride.
The stage is set and the popcorn machines in the lobby are popping away, blowing a magical waft of diacetyl and hot corn into the dimmed auditorium. The curtain is closed and the blue low-wattage lights backstage are shining on the floor and black curtains in the wings. The stage crew are making last minute adjustments to the set dressings. Background music is playing and a few patrons are shuffling to their seats.
In a minute I’ll apply some makeup so my pasty white face topped with whitish hair will display a bit of facial expression in the bright stage lights. A bit of mascara to darken the eyebrows and some eyeliner to make the whites of the eyes pop out a bit: All to accentuate the emotional spin I will apply to the lines. This will emphasize vocal nuances contrived to convey the emotional intent of the playwright.
One of the key ideas in acting is listening. An actor must listen to the lines being said not only for the cues they may contain, but for pacing and to convey a realistic sense of the interplay. For many of us in life, conversation consists of waiting for others to be silent so we can talk. The best actors sound natural in part because they are also listening.
Opening night of our 2 week run went well. We need to fill the seats with backsides to fund the next production. Snow is predicted for tomorrow, Mother’s day. Hard to tell what effect that will have on attendance.
7:30! It’s show time!
Our theatre group has (finally) locked in the upcoming season. I just ordered scripts for Dearly Departed and for Kitchen Witches. We’ll do another play in the spring written by a fellow board member. Later this month we’ll do a reading of another one of his plays for some theatre folks in Denver. It’s called Cow Dung Dust and is about an odd collection of characters hitchhiking on a cattle trailer along Route 66.
Recently I was part of a public reading of a screenplay set in the 1870’s. It was about the US expedition to Korea. It’s historical fiction told through the eyes of a photographer. It’s fun to dissect the story and look at it from the movie making point of view.
Th’ Gaussling attended his first acting workshop this evening in Boulder. The attendees read monologs and cuttings in front of a director for much needed feedback and coaching. The four of us from our local theatre group read a variety of things.
I am particularly proud of my colleages, one in particular who read a very intense selection from Shakespeare’s Richard III. It was astonishing how she captured the frightful urgency and fear in the character. I knew she had a good bit of experience, but I had not personally witnessed her do such a dramatic part.
Another colleague portrayed a mentally disturbed character recounting driving a cab in Manhattan and picking up LBJ and Bob Hope. Her voice work was quite good, but her facial expressions brought it home.
My monolog was about an angry guy working as a department store Santa Claus. I pulled out my Brooklyn accent and mannerisms from The Odd Couple and went to work. It was a lot of fun.
Our theatre group is producing You Can’t Take it With You in 5 weeks at a modest venue in our small village. We’re heavily into rehearsal now. We have a cast of 19 and all of the attending problems that go with a mob that size. I play a Wall Street business man, so I get to be slightly more bellicose and uppity than normal. We have a handful of very experienced actors from local community theatre. They have been very gracious in putting up with tedious wannabe’s like myself. Curiously, I am not the only chemist on stage. The other chemist is far more experienced than I and she does a fantastic job.
For me, the hardest part is simply memorizing the lines. Nowhere in my life do I rely on memorizing large amounts of text. Being a scientist, I remember generalities and relationships and reason my way through problems as I encounter them. Recalling tracts of text from auditory cues is wildly outside my comfort zone. But that is what this is all about. Spending time outside the comfort zone and getting my remaining neurons active.
A few of us have formed a theatre company. It is a not-for-profit operation. It’s too sketchy to expect a profit in theatre anyway. May as well admit that up front. Among the founders is a playwright.
Our first performance as a theatre company is coming up soon and was written by our in-house writer. It is a play called Cow Dung Dust. The story takes place among hitchhikers in the back of a cattle trailer headed for California along Route 66 ca 1970. The same writer wrote the play Beets, which we performed in Loveland, Colorado, last spring. It was actually quite a hit.
The first public airing of Cow Dung Dust will be performed as readers theatre. This is much like radio mystery theatre with actors reading from a script and with a bit of lighting and sound effects. Since we do not have a few kilobucks to throw into set pieces, costumes, and lighting, readers theatre is what we are able to do first thing. It is like a garage band having to do a bunch of lean and mean gigs in order to build up a following. I have a feeling that after the readers theatre we’ll be keen to do a stage performance of it. This approach gives the playwright a chance to tweak the script after he sees the audience react to it.
The next performance will be a well known stage play. This requires paying royalties for use of the script, which is typically copywritten tighter than a piano wire. Should be fun. It is so wonderfully different from chemistry, I can’t help but enjoy it.
Yeston and Kopit’s Phantom is a musical version of Gaston Leroux’ The Phantom of the Opera. This musical actually predates Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera by a few years but, apparently, was never produced on Broadway. Yeston and Kopit’s Phantom is more of an operetta and, in my estimation, carries a bit more stylistic resemblance to late 19th century opera than does Lloyd Webbers version.
The production of Phantom we attended last night was at a local dinner theatre. The show was quite good, but the Beef Wellington could have used more beef and less Wellington. And, the bottom shelf Merlot had oxidized.
I am not a singer and am in no position to critically review anyone who sings on stage. But in my estimation, the entire cast produced very strong and clear voices in a style suitable for the context.
The stagecraft and lighting worked quite well. Three set pieces representing together a foreshortened wall with columns were set on moving platforms that were adjusted by the cast even while they were performing. It successfully gave the impression that many spaces within the building were represented, including a view from backstage toward the performers on stage. Very clever.
This was a perfectly acceptable interpretation of the book Phantom of the Opera. Yet, having seen a good production of Lloyd Webber’s Phantom, I sat the entire time in anticipation of a performance of Lloyd Webber’s musical numbers which never came. This is surely a common affliction.
After a nice evening of musical theatre we stepped into reality. A driving sideways snowstorm had come in to burst our bubble and, naturally, no scraper was to be found in the car.
We’re finishing the third weekend of the 4 weekend run of our play, Room Service. After 6 weeks of rehearsal and 7 shows to date, the cast is getting a bit tired. Even the director is thinking about the next show.
Stepping on stage in character with a paying audience sitting there is a very sobering thing to do. Botched lines or less than enthusiastic performance reflects poorly on everyone. As a cast and crew, we all struggle to maintain the suspension of reality.
Backstage there is no goofing around or bullshitting. Everyone is focused on their parts and silent, mostly. There are a few remarks, but that is it.
I skipped over a few lines last night, but the other actor deftly patched the holes with plausible lines and I folded back into the script a few lines downstream. It was fairly seamless, but importantly I didn’t faint or stand there dumbstruck. My fellow players didn’t comment, thankfully.
We finished rehearsal for the play last night. Full dress rehearsal with lights, sound, props, etc. Tonight we have paying guests. This is my second production this year. I have to say that I have not been yelled at this much since third grade (or grad school). But rather than being thin skinned about it, I have taken it fairly well. It has been a positive personal growth experience, which is the point of it all.
The best advice yet has been “be a better listener” on stage. If you are present in the moment on stage, you can better cope with the inevitable slip ups and mangled or omitted lines. Rather than spending your time thinking about your next line, try to be part of the flow. If somebody drops a cue line, you’re better able to improvise a line to steer the dialog back on track.
This is good advice in general. Like many people, in conversation I find myself thinking about what I’m going to say next rather than really listening to the person I’m conversing with. This is a bad habit and reduces conversation to a comingled set of monologs or pronouncements of opinion.
The other bad habit that seems to get worse with age and education is the tendency to answer the question you wished someone had asked rather than the one actually asked. This is an irksome and possibly incurable condition of mine that those around me suffer from. Participating in staged dialog has had the effect of causing me to be more aware of this.
The play opens in two weeks so rehearsal is getting intense. My brain has some kind of grip on the lines, but it is a delicate grasp and subject to fumbling. Rote memorization is not my strength.
The play was made into a movie by RKO in 1938 and starred the Marx Brothers. They made it look easy. The madcap and rapidfire banter is really quite difficult for a drudge like me. I have to work at it. Luckily, I have minor roles and only 10 minutes of stage time.
There is a big difference between doing voices for a reading and actually acting out the role with 3 or 4 other actors on stage. My previous two plays have only gotten me to the point where I do not faint or wet myself on stage. But realistically, I suppose, the last two weeks are when a play shapes up in rehearsal. Maybe there is hope.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
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