A Staged Reading of "Over the River and Through the Woods"

It was a bit of a whirlwind for me, and for my cast. Though I had been granted the privilege of directing a staged reading of this play at the Winchester Little Theatre more than a month ago, several factors contributed to it's being a difficult project to get off the ground.

To begin with, a project that absorbed almost the entire talent pool for the WLT was scheduled for the same day. Those few that were not in said project went to see said project. Which meant that from the start I had fewer people available to me. Casting it required a few weeks, and some help from a few insiders with connections I do not have with the community. (The play only has six people in it.)

Once it was cast, the schedule conflicts were a disaster. There we no days when the entire cast could meet on the same day. And I had only envision two or three rehearsals anyway, given that it was a reading. So after much moving around, I was able to set aside two days this month, each one only missing a single person.

Some unfortunate events prevented me, however, from attending the first rehearsal of my own reading. Thankfully the cast seemed to like each other, from the reports I got, and had great chemistry. I saw this first hand a few days later when I finally was able to attend a rehearsal. (The second one.)

I never intended to give notes and suggestions of great complexity and depth in regards to character and motivation issues, due to the limited time we would have together as a production. Readings can be creative exercises, but unless you've got the same amount of time to rehearse them as you do a regular play (and that is rarely the case), I feel that directors best serve the project by focusing mostly on mechanics. Volume, pacing, even the set up of the chairs and podiums and such. Coordinating rehearsals. Explaining the overall vision of the piece. Being available to actors for concerns about nuances in scenes and within speeches, but basically allowing such things to form naturally within the well maintained structure of rehearsals and the performance.

That being said, I of course had hoped to have a bit more time with this cast than I did. However, once I finally saw them all (minus one) read the script together, I knew the reading was in good hands. The reports I got via email were correct; everyone played off of everyone else quite well. I did have some mechanics to take care of, and a few rough spots that needed polishing, but I was pleased with what I saw from the beginning. I had even less to do in regards to performances than I had imagined.

That second rehearsal was only a few days before the one and only performance of the reading. Due to availability, we had yet to rehearse it on the actual stage it would be performed on. So we decided to have one more run through, on the actual stage on the very day of the performance. It was the first time the entire cast and myself were present. It was even the first time I had met one of the cast members, as crazy as that sounds. But such was the nature of this experience.

I gave a few notes, mostly mechanical again. Dusted off a few things, cleaned up an aspect here and there. There was not much that had to be done, however. The directions I gave were incorporated into the reading, and after the extra run-through on the day, I was satisfied. There is always more you can do, if you have more time, and I am sure more things could have gone even better, had we had another few rehearsals. But we didn't have that luxury, and I wasn't going to let that bother me, or the cast. I reminded them all that we were story tellers, first and foremost, and that if it went as well that night as it had gone during the final rehearsal, the audience, whoever they may be, would enjoy themselves.

After a brief "speech" to the cast before hand, wherein I thanked them, and hoped they had had fun, I left them backstage while I went out to the lobby of the theater to await my short pre-show announcements. Believe it or not, I was anxious and nervous for it all to start. Not because I feared for the quality of the show, but because I was excited to see how it would all turn out on such short notice. (I had been together with them for less then a week, officially, and it was all about to end in less than two hours.)

The crowd, much smaller than it otherwise would have been if not for the other project I mentioned still managed to fill one of the three small sections of seats in the little theater. They were warm and receptive to my introduction to the piece, and remained so throughout, laughing quite a bit at various places. Their responses made them sound like a crowd twice their size, actually.

At intermission I went backstage and told the cast to keep it up, and that I had received compliments already before it was even finished. They did not disappoint in the second half, and neither did the audience. Everyone, myself included, had a nice time that evening. I could tell something had gone right, given that the cast wished they could do it all again. There was even talk about trying to put together another reading of it at another venue. (Only a theory at this point.)

Over all, this experience had some problems, but we overcome them. So much so that looking back over the last week, it almost seems as if there were no real problems leading into this reading after all. I know some things could have gone better. I regret the schedule conflict with the other project, and a few other things. But given how little time we actually had, the size of the production and the size/responsiveness of the crowd that came to see it, it wouldn't be absurd to conclude that, by proportion at least, this was one of the more satisfying theater experiences I've had over the last few years. Nothing can replace a true production on stage, but i have said before and will again that staged reading can be a source of great enjoyment in their own right for everyone involved.

One-Man Learning Process

I just finished up a session of working on my one an show. (As yet untitled.) As I've mentioned before, it is a show that incorporates Shakespeare speeches, particularly from the histories. My hope is to make some of them seem more accessible to every day people than they are generally recognized as being.

I am at this point totally off book for the first half of this presentation. Originally intended for a presentation this fall, plans changed and I will now perform it locally at the end of February 2015. Given the time frame I did slow down the preparation pace a bit, but I am still making progress. Frankly, I think the first half of the presentation is the harder part of it anyway, though much work remains to be done.

There have been many things I've learned on many fronts during this project. On the Shakespeare front of course I have learned something new, or discovered a potential nuance in the writing almost every time I review the speeches. As is so often the case with Shakespeare, it opens up the more you do it, as opposed to some writing which closes down, shrinks, and becomes less palatable over time. Whether you are experienced with reading/performing the words of Shakespeare or are tackling them for the first time, there is an internal gratification that comes with the almost constant education and near-limitless possibilities that open up the longer you study the speeches.

I am also learning on the one-man show front. I have never been in a one man show written by anybody, let alone one I have written myself. Except for an intermission I won't be off stage at all, of course, and that requires constant energy on my part, more so than in a standard play, when I can go off stage for a time and re-calibrate and brace myself as it were. I'm still a ways off from doing this with all the props and costume on the actual stage, (I've been rehearsing and workshoping it in my home), but the skeleton of what it will have to be like is coming to me now. It  helps that at least for the debut of this show, I am intimately familiar with the stage I will be performing it on. I'll rehearse on it here and there in the months to come.

Willingness to edit is an invaluable trait in any writer. I've always known that, but it is especially true for a one man script such as this. I find that many one man shows over indulge in lines. There has to be enough there to make the show worth doing, of course, but there is a common conceit that audiences will be willing to absorb as much talking as possible out of sheer appreciation for the fact that someone is doing a shoe all by himself. I think that's a tad obscene in a way, and certainly self-important on the part of the playwright. I perhaps may have the willingness and energy to talk for hours about something, either as myself or in character, but that doesn't mean an audience is willing. I don't believe in catering 100% to a future audience, but at the same time they are going to be the ones I am performing this for. To assume they will give me undivided attention for as long as possible would be foolish.

Then there is learning about myself. It's not as navel-gazing as you may think. I;m learning what my strengths are as a writer and actor. I'm learning the boundaries of my persistence and creative energy. Though the concept of my one-man show is not revolutionary, it is the first time that I personally have tackled writing, performing and directing my own production. (Ideally someone else would direct even a one-man show, but nobody was available to me.) I'm learning as I go the value and the cost of going alone when I want something to happen on stage bad enough, and don't have others willing or able to help me do certain things. This entire experience was born out of the supreme difficulty of getting others excited about or interesting in participating on my ideas. So I turned to myself, and have learned that it is sometimes the only way to get creative enough. I don't know how the final product will look, or be received just yet, but I know I made the right, and possibly the only decision to undertake this task, given the shifting promises and willingness of others.

So it is, and will continue to be, a learning process for me on multiple fronts. now that a great deal of the memorization is complete, I have at last begun to delve into the nature of base character, as well as each of the Shakespearean ones I use in the show. Once I get further into that, a who new set of things to learn will emerge. In the end, that's the second best thing about doing this, the learning.

The best thing, of course, is the possibility of entertaining other people.