At some time or other, nearly everyone has a dream that they
are thrust completely unprepared into an extremely uncomfortable situation.
Maybe you showed up naked to school. Maybe you got to a meeting at work to give
a presentation, and suddenly you worked for a totally unrelated company. Maybe
you went to church and were handed a manual and told to teach the adult class
with no preparation. (Okay, that one happens in real life more often than you
think – it’s not such a big deal when it’s the kids, though.) If you
participate in theater, you arrive backstage to find that you are going on
immediately in a role that you have not rehearsed, and probably never seen the
script. This is so common in the Arts field that it has a name: the Actor’s Nightmare.
For all that a stage manager is technically supposed to be able to fill in for
any role at the drop of a hat, this really doesn’t actually happen. (When it
does, it’s part of a meta-theatrical play; see Noises Off.)
The closest thing to a real-life Actor’s Nightmare happened
to me yesterday – and I survived.
(Dramatic, much?)
* * * * *
A few months ago I decided that I needed to get out of the
house, needed to participate in theater again, needed to try to get back
onstage, even. I auditioned for a Shakespeare festival put on by a local
children’s theater; I had attended one of their Shakes festival plays in a
previous year, but that was all I knew about it. The plays were to be Henry V and Taming of the Shrew; I knew Kate was a long-shot, depending on how
old the casting went, and with almost no female roles in Henry I figured The Chorus was the only possibility. I couldn’t
decide which way to go, so I memorized a monologue for each part.
At the audition I ran into a friend of mine, a girl I knew
from a different theater who, coincidentally, also has short red hair. We were
the only two in the audition group, and she had performed at that children’s
theater before and was familiar with the directors and producers. She was asked
to go first, and it was lucky she did – she auditioned with the Chorus
monologue I had prepared! I followed up with Kate the Shrew, and I felt like we’d
both done quite well. Turns out she was cast as the Chorus/Narrator in Henry V, while I landed the part of the
Widow in Taming. (You’re not familiar
with the part? No big deal – she has no name, just ‘the Widow’, and only shows
up with six-ish lines in the last scene to fill a structural conceit. Nifty.)
The rehearsal process was… interesting: our director was a
70-year-old grandmother who just wanted Shrew
to be ‘funny. For the kids.’ She had no concept that the content might be in any
way problematic for a modern audience, and when I suggested a way to ‘flip the
script’ so that things veered toward ‘girl power’ and away from ‘domestic abuse’
she looked at me blankly and then said she didn’t want to add any ‘layers’ to
the play. (Because heaven forbid we should do anything to make sure the parents
that brought their children to the theater ALSO enjoyed the experience and didn’t
have to answer any awkward questions about content later.) The director did add
a couple of walk-on bits for my character in the first act, and had me singing
opera (badly, my contribution) in the second so that it wasn’t such a surprise
when she showed up in the last scene. I would have found that a creative, fun
approach, except that the director was also trying to re-create a production of
Shrew that she had done who knows how
many years ago. (That generally doesn’t work, FYI.)
Anyway, I learned my song and learned my lines and because
my character was rather obnoxious and chasing after a younger man in order to
re-marry I decided she had a nasally laugh and spoke with a Jersey accent. The
director didn’t get around to blocking the final scene until a couple of weeks
before we opened (and with every-other-day rehearsals that didn’t leave much time
for run-throughs) so she didn’t hear my delivery until after I’d been working
on it for weeks. She hated it, and wanted me to go British instead. Oy. Oh, and
she also cast her 25-yr-old grandson in the part of the guy I was chasing; he
was in another show and missed the first half of rehearsals, and decided on
sight that he didn’t like me. At all. (He had also played that part in his
grandmother’s previous production of Shrew, so he was able to pick up his lines
and re-instate his character very quickly, which was nice for him.) He did
everything in his power to avoid speaking to me, argued with me if I did make a
suggestion, and has not once, to date, used my name. Good times.
We finally got to the opening show – I was also
participating in the morning show for the Festival (the potential subject of
another, shorter though perhaps even more rant-y, post) and we’d had to come
even earlier to get another tech run in before opening that show. Then the
girls were in the dressing room, hair and make-up-ing and trying to make costumes
work, and the director came in for a pep talk. She hugged me and gushed at me
and told me I was the ‘Most Improved’. Quite frankly, I was a little offended
(I’m still trying to let go of that, actually. That’s on me). Two masters
degrees, 10 years coaching competition Shakespeare teams, no character
direction from her until two weeks before we opened, and I was ‘most improved’
with my two-bit part and a scene partner who preferred that I not exist.
Lovely.
Honestly, all of this has nothing to do with my ‘Actor’s
Nightmare’ experience. I just wanted to get it all down so I’d remember how not
to treat fellow actors, how to behave as a director, and how to think about the
audience.
In the meantime, Brooke (red-headed friend) had been
rehearsing with the Henry V cast. With rehearsals on alternating nights I didn’t
see people from that cast if they weren’t also in Shrew. Brooke was heading up
the Costume Repair booth at the upcoming Comic Con in Salt Lake, and I signed
up to volunteer for a few shifts since it sounded fun. (Yep. NERDY.) We had
initially talked about Brooke understudying for me for the one performance where
I had a conflict (one of the other gals ended up doing it – Jana’s not as big
as me by any stretch, but she is bigger than Brooke and so could fit in my
costume and can sing). Brooke realized that it would be very difficult for her
to handle her Saturday shows and her Comic Con responsibilities, so she asked
me to cover for her for one performance of Henry.
I attended a rehearsal during tech week and the opening
performance, taking entrance/exit notes and writing down any changes. I copied out
the lines at least twice, as I’d read that hand-writing notes helps you
remember things better. (I think it did help.) I even bought a prop old-school
looking blank book to carry, so I’d have my lines and movement notes with me
all the time to glance at between narrations. What I didn’t have was a costume
or any kind of rehearsal time.
We had two weeks between opening the Festival and me
performing in Henry V – with no more tech/dress rehearsals, I had nights free
to work on lines and figure out what to wear. There was so much to stress
about: older means ‘it’s harder to memorize’, I couldn’t fit into Brooke’s
costume and didn’t have time or the contacts (or inclination, honestly) to find
something similar in my size, and in looking for a different take on costume
(plus book!) found a different take on the presentation. It was fascinating,
and CRAZY. I went with all-black, with boots and a leather skirt to relate back
to the guys’ costumes and leather pieces. The text lent itself to using the
book really well. Brooke and I had talked through (almost) everything, and
since the narrator never interacted with any of the characters from the play it
looked like all was as well as it was going to be.
Holy cow, it was nerve-wracking. I performed the morning
show, then performed in Shrew, and in between I was writing out lines and
practicing the Shakespeare monologues. Then before Henry I tried to get onstage
to walk through entrances and exits; I had about 8 minutes before I was kicked
off for fight call. And then – GO; the first third of the first act I spent
onstage, trying to be sneaky about checking my book for cues while making it
look like I was following the action as if in a storybook, or something.
Offstage, finally – breathe, and get ready to help somebody with an unrehearsed
costume change. The big monologues were in the second act. For one scene I was a couple of
seconds late getting on because I was checking to make sure I knew where I was entering
from; and during another monologue I kept expecting things to happen while I was
talking and nothing did. Turned out my final line was the action cue, and I
didn’t know I just needed to push through. Ah, well. The last big monologue was the
roughest; I had to switch out a couple of words I couldn’t quite remember, but
I stayed on topic and carried on (which is HARD with Shakespeare!). The epilogue was a nice
strong finish.
Some things: I had been so nervous about the Henry director not approving of my
costume and/or my approach to the character because it wasn’t what they’d
rehearsed – and for the first time, he didn’t attend the show. (Which is fine,
directors shouldn’t feel like they have to attend every show once it’s open – I
was just so nervous and then it all worked out so well and he wasn’t there!)
The Shrew director is also the
Artistic Director for the theater; she had been there for Shrew (and came in to the dressing room to annoy me afterwards – I feel
bad about that too, but I was so nervous! And hungry!) and also for the first
time didn’t stay for Henry V. I
finally had a performance, an un-rehearsed performance no less, that I was
really proud of, and she didn’t see it! SUCH a weird emotional roller coaster
day.
Note: I happen to be a really good cold reader. Give me a
scene or block of text, and I will immediately make a strong choice,
incorporate movement and interactions with other characters, and just go for
the delivery. I think that’s a big part of why this worked – it was very much
like an extended, metally-prepped, cold read... that was at least mostly
memorized.
The fallout was that while it had been intensely
nerve-wracking, it ended up being quite satisfying. The Henry cast was quite impressed (or, at least, very supportive and
complimentary – it was relatively rare to have other actors on stage when I was
narrating, so unless they were listening for cue lines backstage there wasn’t
much of my performance for them to experience. Still, they were lovely).
Remember my scene partner from Shrew?
The 25 yr-old who thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips? (A reference he is
far too young to get.) He is in Henry
and served as the fight choreographer. Did a great job with the fights, truly,
and is definitely not as good an actor as he thinks he is. Somewhere near the middle
of the second act he walked past me backstage and said, ‘Good work, girlie.’
Yes. GIRLIE. Still no name. It was a good thing he was moving and that we were
still doing a show or he might have gotten slapped. After the show ended he
followed that up with, ‘Really good work. Y’know, except for Harfleur – by the
time you got to the ‘gunner’ line we were all rooting for you!’ (That had been
the scene where I was expecting battle-prep to be happening under my lines, and
I was a little choppy because I was trying to give them time to get onstage.
Unnecessarily, as it turned out.) So maybe it’s genetic in his family to say
something intended to be complimentary that ends up being condescending?
Note to self: never follow up a compliment by pointing out
the one thing you think they did wrong.
My parents came to see the show, and they were amazed. They
hadn’t realized I’d be narrating the whole thing, and they really liked my
performance. (And I’m not even qualifying that with ‘…because they’re my
parents’.) As I left the theater (still in costume, because – why not?) I
walked past one of the actors and his family, and they stopped me to give me
kudos too. They were very nice, seemed really impressed. I looked at the actor
(Cole, I think his name is) and laughed, ‘Should we tell them?’ and he replied,
‘Nah. Just savor it.’ Smart kid. Good actor, too.
* * * * *
So, there it was. I worked through a show with energy and,
apparently, charm – had no catastrophes even though I was expecting at any
point to forget lines since there was no muscle memory for them, and even found
a look that worked with my character choices. And none of the artistic staff
saw any of it. (One of the ushers, a super-nice long-haired boy, told me my outfit was 'adorable'.) Ah, well. I’ve been walking around for the last 24 hours
randomly realizing ‘I really can do hard things’ and recognizing that that experience
was more of a performance rush than anything I’ve done in Shrew or the morning Shakespeare show. I don’t want things to be
that stressful – when learning a part, especially at short notice, always start
with the hard monologues FIRST! – but I would love to someday play the Chorus
in Henry V for a whole run.
That was the closest I’ll (hopefully) ever come to a
real-life Actor’s Nightmare, and we all made it through with the performance
intact.
And now I wish there were video, or at least pictures, just
to prove to myself that it really happened.
* * * * *
I did trip and fall during Shrew, gauging my kneecap and shin, so maybe I’ll just take a
picture of my purpling leg to prove I was truly there. Nothing like bruises to
demonstrate you’re living the actor’s life… or so I’m told!
Talk about your falling turtles... Watch out!
*
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