My Life in the Theater (Part V)

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

- probably not Leonardo da Vinci

George Bernard Shaw
born July 26, 1856
(112 years before me, to the day)

A theatrical production has a strict time limit. From the beginning, you know when it will end; there are set performance dates, so when you are cast as an actor, when you have been assigned a role, you have a set period of time in which to prepare.

David Mamet says you don’t need to prepare anything, just read the words on the page, in the right order, all the rest is self-aggrandizement. In this, as in so many other things, Mamet is just wrong. Silly and wrong. It is true, the audience can’t see your backstory, will never know or even care how many books you read – in a very, very short time – to learn about the time period, the setting, the particular brand of tea your character might drink.

But as a twenty year-old in 1989, playing a twenty(ish) year-old in 1904, there are things that are seen and heard by the audience that are very important. After all, this isn’t a movie. The set helps, the costumes help, but the performer is the primary focus and it is the details, the immersion into character that either transports the audience or it doesn’t.

True, there are actors who are so compelling in and of themselves that they do not need to do any kind of deep research. The rest of us try harder.

My third year at school was the most challenging, and revelatory. I won’t get into the details, but following a near nervous breakdown in the fall, I was (for the first time) reborn with a renewed sense of purpose, and expanded my major from acting to a general theater degree. It was as the man said, “Look to your left, look to your right, only one of you will complete a degree in acting.” I was not the one.

Winter 1989, I had no acting practicum. I had not been cast in either mainstage show, I had no lab work, I focused on my studies, worked to control my diet, grew my hair, tried to be what today they call mindful.

That spring, however, I had three shows to split my focus; a role on the main stage, I had written a one-act for the playwrights’ festival, and I was assigned a role in a lab production of George Bernard Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband.

Third year undergrads were paired with graduate level directors to create an evening of one-acts. It was a class, so rehearsals were during the day. Our director was, or he seemed to me at the time, a rather intense man, charming in his way, and we spent weeks on the text with him. Weeks.

We were a three-person cast, I was He, the ingénue. It was the only time I have ever played a fresh-faced young man. She was my then ex-girlfriend Jules, and Her Husband was played by my best friend, Rich. The four of us sat in chairs around a small, square table on the stage of the Little Theatre, like we were about to play Bridge, only we had scripts instead of cards, and George, our director, led us through the piece, word by word.

We would read a word, or a short phrase, and we would stop and he would talk, and ask us questions, while throughout he would handroll a cigarette. This was part of the process. Every mechanical part of rolling a cigarette would take a significant amount of time, each rehearsal. I don’t mean to say he moved in slow motion, just that, as one of us read a phrase, he would get out his papers, and stop and we would talk, his hand holding the envelope of papers, for however long the discussion lasted, maybe five minutes, before moving on, now the envelope was gone, but the paper was between his fingers, and so on, forty-five minutes into rehearsal there might be tobacco resting in the the fold of the paper, I would be fixated on one strand of tobacco leaf hanging from the edge as he held it there, as we discussed the text, it may finally be a complete cigarette after an hour or so. It was a mystery to me and we never commented on it.

I imagine this ritual prevented him from smoking throughout the rehearsal, in this way he limited himself to one. But I found it fascinating. Time expanded as we ruminated upon the manners of the very early 20th century, for a piece for which every word is carefully chosen.

As a writer, I do appreciate that one thing above all other considerations, is that actors say the words, all the words, and in the order that they are set down upon the page. But you will never have so much time to read, understand, consider, and digest them, as you will at school.

I know this is not entirely the case, there are those theaters that make it a practice to spend months on a production. But they are the exception. A LORT production will have a very short turnaround, where are actors are often expected to arrive on day one with lines memorized, because of the cost. Time is, as they say, money.

On Smoking

Julia avec cigarette.

When I was a four year in college, we did Balm In Gilead, Lanford Wilson's tribute to pimps, dopers, losers and twinks. Everyone smoked. I don't just mean the characters smoked, we all smoked cigarettes. Live. On stage. The show was in the round -- the entire audience was practically smoking for the haze that hung over the stage. This was in 1989.

My friend Pete was not a smoker, but he had to play one in this show. And like most non-smokers, he was "bad" at it. By bad I only mean anyone who actually smokes cigarettes can tell when someone who doesn't smoke is just playing at it. It's not just that they puff lightly on it and poof out a little ball of smoke, they can't even hold one convincingly. It wasn't him. It was any of them. There was us, and there was them. And we were smoking like hell, I mean, damn, the school was paying for our cigarettes! They were a prop!

Eew! Smoking!

And maybe that's the point. Cigarettes are always a prop, for everyone. Sometimes they facilitate thought. In general they satisfy a chemical urge. But for so many, especially those in the theater community, they are about image. In olden days, they said glamor. Today they say, fuck you.

In any event, in America at least, they day of the cigarette is over. This isn't the demise of a centuries-old custom, it was a 20th century phenomenon. Chain-smoking wasn't exactly cost-effective for the average Victorian prole. The rise of Big Tobacco changed that, at least for a while.

In the meantime, a lot of playwrights wrote a lot of plays about those kinds of people who smoke. And modern theater companies have to deal with the consequences of strict non-smoking regulations, with varying success.

I have seen countrified Noel Coward dandies take out their cigarettes, and their lighters, fiddle with them with intention, get distracted and put their cigarettes away ... as if that ever happens. I have seen actors cope with electronic cigarettes which appear to light and even emit a wan, feeble "smoke" ... and like everyone else, have completely stopped listening to whatever is going on, irritated by the artifice.

And yet, here we are. Technology will catch up. Weak tea is readily accepted as hard liquor, because it looks like it. Last weekend I saw The Whipping Man at Cleveland Play House, which employed a lot of candles, all of which were fake, which I noticed at first but then promptly forgot about, because they were so successfully handled by the actors and flickered and glowed with realism, in a manner which was not possible even ten years ago because they didn't exist because nobody needed them.

I imagine most professional playhouses are relieved to not have to deal with open flame whatsoever. What a headache! The fire marshal has a lot less to be suspicious of, everyone can rest easy. The Globe will not burn down.

The second part of These Are The Times takes place in the mid-1950s among a troupe of young performers. Historically, such people would smoke. Do they need to smoke? Good question. Even if they could, which they can't, each scene is so short, jumping from rehearsal to performance to backstage, lighting and stubbing smokes all night would be ungainly and prohibitive.

But ... it's a look, it's a style. It's a prop. See: Mad Men. See: Good Night and Good Luck. Last night Mark called a rehearsal for the four actors who make the core of "The Times", my fictional improv comedy troupe. We discussed cigarettes. It just so happened that Valerie had brought her own personal collection of fake cigarettes (see above). Mark and were both impressed with how realistic they look. They accomplish what is required, to be that thing.

I'm gonna go out to Big Fun and get a bunch of them for everybody.