I don’t know why I am obsessed with the things that I’m
obsessed with, and I can’t change or redirect my obsessions, but at least I’m
aware of them in every play. Does awareness count?
The first Registry rehearsal happened tonight and although
this is a tale of bureaucracy and romance, a large-scale play (the opposite of
Revision), my obsessions remain the same: relationships, failures, fantastical
beings.
We started with 20 pages of text – a huge victory for
me. Usually, I barely have a few pages on the first rehearsal. What I didn’t
tell the cast is that everything we read tonight was written in the past ten
hours. I didn’t have time to write before today (beginning of the semester
madness), but I wasn’t worried: I’ve carried
The Registry in my head for so long, I knew it was just a matter of sitting
down and writing it. I stopped after 20 pages because it was 5 pm and we had rehearsal
at 6, not because I was done.
Before reading the script I tried to go over what I
call “the unhappiness list,” mainly because almost everyone in the cast is new.
Over the years, I’ve compiled a list of things that can potentially make people
unhappy: my rhythm, my process, underestimating the amount of work that goes
into the making of a play. The cast has seen some of the plays I’ve done, but
we’ve not worked together on stage. I forget how difficult it is to explain to
newcomers how The Milena Theatre Group works. The principles of Creative
Writing come to mind. I can tell and tell, but until I show, until they
experience the process, the description alone doesn’t count.
I say: the text
evolves, it changes, it grows with you. I say: we improvise this scene, and only
when I have enough (the best!) material, that’s when the scene gets written. I
say: the script will be complete at the end of the rehearsal process, not
before. More difficult things to say: please leave your life at the door when
you enter the rehearsal space. It makes all the difference. This is why I don’t
have intermissions, so the public won’t leave the performance space and
remember their problems. It is difficult, almost impossible to ask this of a
cast. Stuff, real life stuff, happens all the time, and I am not prepared for it.
I can’t explain, not in a way that makes sense to anyone new to the process,
that I get ready for a rehearsal hours in advance, that an hour before I sit in
the empty room and think of nothing else but the play, that I draw diagrams of
the stage, imagine every movement and every voice inflection, that I listen to
the soundtrack obsessively choreographing every scene in my mind, that once
people come in, I no longer see their true identities but those of their
characters. It’s a little bit like being in a trance (I’ve never been in a
trance…) Perhaps it sounds merciless. It probably is. But I don’t know how to
do a play otherwise.
Months after a show, I meet people who tell me they’re
still thinking about the latest play. They tell me there’s something haunting
about the Milena Group productions. I think this is where it comes
from: this total immersion in the reality of the play, without the need to look
back. Remember Orpheus and Eurydice? That’s how he loses her forever: by not
believing in that fantastical promise, by turning back to verify reality, by
forgetting to play his part. Rehearsals are the anti-Orpheus. Don’t ever look
back. Pause reality. Forget…
After we read the script – basically the opening of
The Registry – we spent a little time improvising with superb results. I saw a
company’s rehearsal once where the actors stood in a circle paying each other
compliments for about 15 minutes. “You have grown so much as an actor these past
three weeks…” “I love how kind you are…” “You have such pretty hair…” Were they
honest? Perhaps. I grasp the scope of
such an exercise (bonding, building confidence), but do these things really
work? That image – people in a circle taking turns to say nice things to each
other – stayed with me and I knew I’d use it in a play someday. The Registry is
perfect for this: a collective of semi-fantastical clerks in charge of human
relationships, starting every day with uplifting circle-compliments. That’s
what our improv was about. “Your stapler is really polished.” “Oh, thank you, I’ve
had it since my undergrad days…And can I say how impressed I am with your
organized desk?” “Thank you! I’m really trying…I’m so grateful for your respect
of deadlines. It makes my life so much easier,” and so on. When the head of HR told
the youngest female employee (whose nickname is Baby): “Baby, I like how you
pound that stamper,” and she replied “Thank you! That’s because my ink pad is
really moist,” (ok, so it's not that kind of play, but - still funny for a first improv) I knew that, once again, I had assembled the perfect cast. There
was some nostalgia there as well: some of the people in the cast are graduating
this year, some will start their PhD exams, some are half-way through their
dissertation. I’ll never work with some of them again.
Perhaps this is our last play. The stage manager graduates as well, my
right-hand girl, irreplaceable, intuitive, amazingly reliable. This is our fourth play together. I
keep saying this: nobody truly knows anybody until they do a play together. Nobody
really knows me until we meet on stage.
The stage is set. Rehearsals have begun. Questions (all
the questions) will be asked, and answered, crises will happen, solutions will
be found. There is a joy – almost a giddiness – I feel at the start
of The Registry that I don't remember experiencing before. Perhaps it’s the subject (a
comedy of bureaucratic revenge); perhaps it’s the people; perhaps it’s that I get reunited with my first lighting designer after more than five years. Perhaps it’s all these things.
If this production will
haunt someone, it will not be us, it will not be me. Let it be you, then.
