The Crew

September 13, 2013

I’ve always found prep work as interesting as the final result. Let me explain: people go to the theatre and what they see in that hour and a half is the result of hundreds of hours of rehearsal, and long, often exhausting discussions with lighting, sound, and costume designers, with the stage manager and the rest of the crew. In my case the exhaustion is triggered by a lack of funds (S. and I have pretty much paid for all the materials necessary for every production), lack of proper venues, lack of support for this odd way of working on a play: months of prep and then one single show.

I’ve explained many, many times why the one show, but for all the new people who might be following us this time, here it is again: this theatre ensemble is my research lab. I do a play when I want to try something new, that’s why I never start with a complete text, a clear idea, or a rigid structure, but with something like an incomplete image that’s trying to find a shape. Whatever I learn on the stage in the process of producing the play, I take back to the playwriting seminar in an often desperate attempt to stop the “theatre on paper” movement that assures people that they can write plays without ever leaving their studies, as if they were writing a story or a poem.

I never charge admission (I don’t work in a theatre department or a repertory theatre so I don’t have to have a certain number of shows or make a profit). By the time we present the play, I think of it as a successful experiment (the image has a shape, the play its rhythm), or perhaps a classical concert offered only once. By the time the opening (and closing) night comes around, we have achieved whatever it is that we were looking for so repetition would accomplish nothing. Because I’m doing this mostly for me and my students (the people I work with), because they are students with insane schedules and busy lives, all I can ask from them is to work with me and sustain the intensity I demand of them for one evening. I can’t ask them to do this for weeks, show after show, I can’t ask them to go on tour. It wouldn’t be fair or possible. So I/we exist in this relative anonymity which gives me/us enormous freedom.

I was talking about the prep work, the backstage world the public isn’t privy to. I’ve always made that visible, not only because it is that backbone of every production but because, for me, the crew and the cast members are interchangeable. In a perfect world, the cast of a play would become the crew of the next production and vice versa. I think that the more the actors know about the work of the sound guy or the lighting designer or the stage manager, the more they can appreciate it. I’ve often had the actors interact with the crew during productions; I’ve had sound guys leave the booth and perform, for a while, on the stage; I’ve had characters have extensive discussions with the lighting designer, I’ve gone out of my way to make this clear: what you see is only half of what goes into a production. Let me show you the rest, the other, parallel world that sustains the reality you inhabit at this moment.

“Noir” is no exception to this rule, only the rule has changed slightly because, for the first time in 11 years, I’m not working with the same lighting designer. I am, in fact, working with no lighting designer which seems insane, seeing that the visual element in my plays dictates their mood entirely. This decision was not made in haste: I simply cannot bring myself to work with someone else. I need a moment to process this loss. This is a problem, a difficulty which I’ve decided to treat as an opportunity. I decided to light the stage with dozens of lamps of all shapes and colors. I also decided to bring the public onto the stage, create some sort of intimate, claustrophobic performance space, almost theatre in the round but not really, where the public is about two feet away from the actors. This way, instead of watching/judging the show from a distance (impossible without good lights), they’re part of the show, and the illumination, improvised as it is, seems familiar, like any kind of lighting one would have in a private space –  a living room, or an office. That’s my hope anyway. In reality, I have no idea what the set will look like…

So S., who’s the artist responsible for my sets for about 9 years now, will be a silent character in the play, Night’s charwoman, who will dust, and clean, and turn lamps on and off as scenes demand it. S. can be immensely funny, and although her life has been a bit shattered lately, I know that I can count on her as I have for the past decade. These work relationships turned friendships that nothing can destroy are experienced by few people. I am lucky. I have very few friends, but they are people I will always know, people who will always trust me.

I asked J to do sound not only because he came highly recommended by the best stage manager I’ve ever worked with, but because, having worked with him in the playwriting workshop, I knew he had a brain, a sense of humor, and rhythm. J is a poet, and a very good one (a rare occurrence in a creative writing program), so that’s already a guarantee of rhythm. Also, there’s something about his appearance, some sort of understated assurance that looks great on the stage. J will be visible, his soundboard placed somewhere behind Night’s desk. Before the play begins, as the public walks in, I want them to feel like they’re intruding on J’s territory, slightly inconveniencing him. When the public occupies the safe place which is the house, seated at a respectable distance from “the action,” they feel detached, spectators not participants; they feel entitled. Let’s see what happens when this safe space no longer exists, when they have to walk on the stage and disturb J who’s having dinner, chatting away with the cleaning lady, eating and drinking like a lunatic Viking. I’m sorry. I’ve no idea where the Viking image came from. Probably Hollywood productions where Vikings always eat a lot before having rough sex. The sex is never shown on film (this is old Hollywood we’re talking about), but would be implied by the incessant food and wine consumption. An insatiable hunger would translate into a lust for life – something like that. But back to J: I want him to eat with abandon, with recklessness. Not quite sure why yet: perhaps because when we spot insatiable appetites we feel uncomfortable. Ok, so there’s a bit of Artaud here as well. There always is.

S.B. is the stage manager. I nominated her for the drama award last year (which she got, by the way) for writing a play inspired by a poster announcing, I believe, the construction of a mechanical goat. How can one not nominate such a text after drowning in all that realism? S.B. is very efficient and, what’s more, she claps happily and giggles approvingly (but not annoyingly) whenever a scene begins to work. This is incredibly beneficial for the morale during rehearsals when I forget to thank people for their work because I focus so intensely on the parts that are still out of joint. (S., the artist, used to do this in every rehearsal – she would laugh and clap every time, with renewed enthusiasm – not the loud, fake, theatre person laugh…you know what I’m, talking about, right? That obnoxious, loud, “Ha!Ha!Ha!” one hears during mediocre shows that nobody else finds amusing…so no, nothing like that. S. would confess later that, with every rehearsal, she’d notice other nuances to the comedy because the actors would add subtle inflections, or pauses, or something that would make an already memorized dialogue line new.)

I expect it will be difficult working with two new actors and an almost entirely new crew and not relying, for the first time, on a lighting design that can make the ordinary beautiful.

I’ll have to work with ugly, and claustrophobic and desolating, which is the world of Mr. Night, a world he often makes disappear by closing his eyes. But what I cannot have in lights I managed to accomplish in sound with songs that are neither entirely melancholy nor just haunting, but a combination of the two – sounds of collective solitude and unguarded affection which often foreshadow the impossibility of a happy end.

This is the crew.