Decisions

Awesome rehearsal yesterday with two sound hiccups. Spoke to Karl at KRVS yesterday (the man has unlimited supplies of patience) and he recommended a website for mic cables. I ordered ten cables with overnight shipping, so this time tomorrow (well, perhaps not exactly "this time" since I don't plan to start rehearsals at 7am) we'll have new cables.

As much as I would like to pretend that everything is in order, I still have to say that sound worries me. There are always explanations for the things that go wrong, but the point is -- perhaps I should communicate this out loud today before rehearsal -- the point is that, on the day of the show, if there are sound mistakes, the audience will not want to know why things didn't go as they were supposed to. They will only notice that things went wrong. Because of the format of our shows (months of rehearsals, two intensive weeks, one show), we do not have the luxury of error. Things go well or things go wrong. Perhaps I'm not able to communicate how important precision is for the rhythm of the production. Perhaps I should explain that one of these productions is, for me, the equivalent of a book, or of any other peer-reviewed publication: as a writer you don't want to be "almost" right; you don't want your sources to be "semi"-exact, or your argument to be "kind of" thought-out, do you? Same thing here: approximations do not work. Precision does.

Speaking of precision: out of the 10 things that needed work, we solved all but 3 which will be resolved tonight. Seth is getting better and better. Dan has surpassed anything I've ever imagined about Larry and his transitions between moods (between moments of despair, or tenderness, or boredom, etc., etc., etc.) are seamless. Conni walks on the stage with an ease I almost envy. There's something so natural about her character's actions even when she does the oddest things (I do have her "looking outside the window" which is, in fact, a giant ladder upstage right, or photographing the surreal tree whose branches carry all the ships and flying machines), that the spectator never questions her actions. Mike is...God. How do I describe Mike? He can take direction -- the most bizarre suggestion -- and turn it into something worth watching. His character is cartoonish -- a strange combination of neurotic and exaggerated behavior and yet it makes sense somehow: the fact that he sleeps on a floor lined with maps of the world; the fact that, at regular intervals he crosses out a country, or a continent, an ocean or an expanse of land; that fact that he has a baby scorpion (named Jake) whom he treats as if it were a child; the fact that he breaks into San Quentin, at the end of the play, to save Caryl Chessman; the fact that he takes Chessman hostage in an attempt to save Chessman...A loud, irrational, impossible character made completely believable because Mike is just that good.

Ellie is very funny. Realization: my child is funny. I have a funny child. Comedy is difficult, and she does that extremely well. The few moments that still don't work happen because of variations in volume (that's the risk of using mics on the stage), but those are the things I'm going to work on today. Yesterday she said, "When I go to Chessman's cell I tell myself I'm going to suck and then I get there and I suck because I knew I would." A shift does happen when she walks to Chessman's space, but I still think it's a question of blocking. We'll see what happens today.

The most important thing has been accomplished and I know that I repeat myself constantly when I talk about rhythm, but that's the truth: when a production has found its rhythm, everybody involved feels it, and that kind of energy and confidence communicates itself to the characters. Their movements become fluid, transitions between scenes happen seamlessly, and every second counts. That's why precision is so important.

There is a scene where each character is in his or her space -- radio station, apartments, prison cell -- and an Edith Piaf song is heard in the background. One by one, the characters break down and start crying -- first tentatively, then louder and louder until the stage is overwhelmed with weeping, tears, cries, hysteria. I love this scene. Everything that we carry inside (that therapists are trying so hard to get to) is revealed here. That is the point of the scene: if we were truly honest with ourselves, at some point, we'd have to break down. There's a part of Gabe's monologue where she talks about Life (her character often tackles "big subjects") and she she says "life...life feels itself." The weeping scene is connected to that thought. Life -- ordinary, everyday life -- observed in its most intimate moments is often depressing...I'm not explaining this well. Remember Chekhov? (my other obsession). His characters burst into tears most of the time (when they don't have meaningful conversations about the weather) and that's not because they're miserable people, potential suicides, but because his plays allow us to see these characters when nobody else is watching. Totally private moments, when the characters are stripped of any pretense. And in those moments "life feels itself" and that feeling is often too much for the people involved. And so they weep. I love the verb: weep not cry. Weeping is more personal. A statement, not an action. That's why Larry says "I weep, so you don't have to," and not "I cry..."

There are so many scenes in this play that I love. The characters' completely artificial freeze frame before they go to sleep: small actions afterward -- Jean kissing his gun and his baby scorpion then lying on the maps on the floor, Gabe drawing an imaginary bed (in chalk) and sleeping inside its meager outline, Dominique looking outside the window at a world of her own making, Chess in his cell hugging Prometheus, the fish...(Seth is totally attached to that damn fish, by the way. Yesterday when I said I had to take Prometheus home with me to draw the prison stripes on him, I had trouble convincing him to let go. Seth takes Prometheus home every evening. He's afraid that if he leaves him on the stage somebody will swipe him...A giant fish made out of batting and a pillowcase...Oh well. To each his own)

I love that scene. And I love the stupid infomercials we came up with, and the phone conversations and Larry's inflections. I'm having a tiny crush on my own character. I did say to each his own, didn't I?

Today I'm meeting Susan at 1 to go to Kinko's and make our posters. Susan is awesome. At the end of each rehearsal she hides the three giant canvases she painted for the show behind the back curtain. The paintings are huge (6x7ft) and when she carries them out she's so tiny that the paintings cover her completely. So we turn around and see these large canvases "floating" towards the back curtain. It's hysterical. During rehearsals her laughter keeps the cast alive. If a scene works well -- particularly if tiny elements are added every day -- she laughs out loud and her laughter is so infectious that both I and the stage manager start laughing. We just can't help it. Susan painted the striped canvas for Chessman's cot yesterday. It's a huge relief to see the green ugly cot turn black and white. Now I have to put the same stripes on Prometheus. He is, after all, a prison fish...

I'm trying out the costumes tonight and tomorrow Jamie comes and the lighting work begins. The first day of lighting is exhausting. Every scenes has to be lit, every area, people have to stop after every other line, Jamie runs on the stage, moves a 30ft. ladder around, climbs to the top, hangs a light, climbs down, runs back to the lighting booth and so on and so on. It takes a long, long time. After the initial offer of help, I haven't heard back from the Theatre Department. Let's hope they keep their word and lend us a few instruments.

So here we are: I woke up at 5 convinced that Derek had forgotten to burn the new soundtrack. He had. So at 5:10, while eating his cereal, he was making the CD for tonight. Good times.
The house looks a bit tragic (Whenever I treat my house like a cheap motel -- wake up, shower and go, come back late in the evening, go to sleep -- the house ends up looking like a cheap motel). Pakki needs a bath. My poor, once white, dog looks a bit gray. The laundry needs to be done. Cooking? Ha. A distant memory. But after next week (next week?! Oh my god. I have 8 days left!) all will go back to normal and I will cook, and do laundry, and farm like a pro again (I miss you, Farmville. Even my farm looks abandoned these days).

In the meantime decisions have to be made about the end, about the possibility of error and means to correct it, about the smallest details that make a good production great.