2008/09 » Arden Theatre Company Blog

Assistant Directing Something Intangible – Part 2

By Matt Ocks: Assistant Director for Something Intangible

And then there’s that cast. In the roles of Tony and Dale Wiston, the Arden was smart enough to nab Scott Greer and Ian Peakes. Scott and Ian already are “brothers,” even if they don’t have the same parents or the same last name, so we could skip the difficult step of having to construct that relationship between two strangers during rehearsals. The Wiston boys have been with us, and with each other, from day one.

Supporting Ian and Scott we have Sally Mercer as Dale’s trailblazing psychoanalyst, Sonia Feldman. Sally’s persevered through several different rehearsal chairs of varying comfort levels in our makeshift set. She’s also persevered through several different rehearsal candies (her character is a bit of a sweet tooth, even though she is not).Fortunately for Sally, Scott has generously stepped in to consume the candies she herself isn’t fond of. It’s saved us all a lot of heartache. No one wants to see Jolly Ranchers go to waste.

Rounding out the cast are Doug Hara and Walter Charles. I’ve seen Doug in several plays at the Arden, and have marveled at his physical prowess along with everyone else here. It’s been remarkable to watch him find not only the physicality but the emotional core of whiz kid animator Leo Baxter. Just the other night, sitting atop rehearsal cubes with a “do-for” whiskey bottle, he made a breakthrough in his big scene in Act 2, and I will not soon forget it.

One of my favorite rehearsal experiences to date was watching Walter Charles work with a dialect coach in preparation for his portrayal of the flamboyant – if a bit nefarious – German conductor Gustav Von Meyerhoff. Walter walked into the Arden conference room with a mental sketch for this character. He came back out an hour later with a fully fleshed out portrayal of a truly Teutonic tyrant.I cannot wait for our audiences to hear how he pronounces the word “quibbles.”

And as for our director – the captain of the ship, the leader of the pack – what makes Terry Nolen so brilliant is…well…Something Intangible. I’m not sure what to say about him, but I’ll give it a try. He is by turns loud and quiet, public and private, spontaneous and prepared. He is a drill sergeant and a cheerleader. And he is Yoda. “Do or do not. There is no try” in Terry Nolen rehearsals. I remain in awe.

And finally, I will write on this blog about Stage Management, because no one ever does. As much as everyone else I’ve just written about does, Stephanie Cook and Gary Thayer do ten times more. They record the blocking, they keep track of all the props, they make haircut appointments and schedule tanning sessions. They are the first to arrive and the last to depart, and that’ll be true every day for the next 9 weeks of performances. Fortunately for all of us, Stephanie and Gary were both born on Planet Krypton. They have x-ray vision and are impervious to physical pain, not to mention ribbing from knucklehead actors.

Check back tomorrow for Matt’s final post before previews begin on Thursday!

Assistant Directing Something Intangible

Matt Ocks is the Manager of Institutional Giving at the Arden. Currently, he is doubling as the Assistant Director of Something Intangible.

Dear Arden Insiders,

When I was in high school, I never got invited to parties with the “in-crowd”, but Something Intangible rehearsals have been nothing if not that. We have the cream of the Arden crop breathing life into this brand new play, and it has been my pleasure and great privilege as Assistant Director to serve as Fly on the Wall (with the occasional stint as Leader of the Line-Through, and slightly more frequent stints as Fetcher of the Coffee.).

I asked to work on this play because, as a young writer, I was eager to see how a playwright with more experience handles the rehearsal process. The mint on my pillow has been the chance to watch so many other brilliant artists – not just Bruce Graham, he of the shiny head and sharp wit – - but the director, actors, and designers, working at the top of their game. On those rare occasions when I get up the nerve, I actually get to engage with them as a colleague and fellow storyteller. It’s spine-tingling.

We’ve been lucky to have a phenomenal dramaturg join us from time to time in rehearsals, and for a discussion that often continues over late night e-mails among the rehearsal staff. Michele Volansky has helped us all hone in on exactly what story we are telling, and she gives the playwright a good kick in the pants when he needs it (and sometimes when he doesn’t, according to him).

And then there are the designers. We’ve got Jorge Cousineau doing sound. Even if you don’t know Jorge personally, you’ve seen his name in countless Arden programs, and I can vouch for his status as a master craftsman (or handwerksmeister, as they say in his native land). We’ve also got Jim Kronzer designing our set. The first year I worked at the Arden – a shy, sheepish apprentice – Kronzer decided it should rain in the Haas during Caroline, or Change, and our genius/miracle worker technical director Glenn Perlman made it happen.

We have just entered technical rehearsals for Something Intangible, where the designers and technicians come to the forefront of the creative process. I cannot wait to see what Cousineau, Kronzer, Perlman, and the other designers and technicians have cooked up for Graham’s play. To quote Something Intangible (sorry, I live and breathe it 6 days a week now), it is sure to be a “veritable feast for the senses.”

Check back on Monday for a new post from Matt about the cast.

What’s it like to be an understudy?

Peter Roccaforte discusses what it was like to go on as Asher for one night in My Name Is Asher Lev.

When you take on an understudy position it is almost understood that the likelihood of you going on as that role for a scheduled performance is similar to the likelihood of being able to make a five minute visit to the DMV. When I accepted the understudy role of Asher Lev I was just excited to have a 90 minute audition in a lead role for the casting director of the Arden and call it a day. However, about a month after we had that understudy run for the staff at the I received a call from Erin Read, the Artistic Assistant at the theatre. She said that Karl Miller, the man playing Asher, has been having a little tickle in his throat and is going to the doctor to get it checked out. This unnerved me just enough to go over my script that night before bed, just in case. On the other hand, the truth is I have had tickles in my own throat and been perfectly fine through a run of a show before.

I did not expect the phone call I got the following morning. Karl was sick. He was given steroids and antibiotics to rehabilitate his voice and was going to sleep through the day so he would be ok for the show that night. At this point as an understudy one begins to feel an urge to suppress whatever hopes or fears they might have, because Karl was going to sleep it off and be fine for the 8 o’clock show. He had all day to wake up with a voice. When Erin called me again at 5:45 PM I felt a sensation similar to being at the peak of a dangerous roller coaster ride. A wave of fear, then a wave of joy and excitement, followed promptly by another wave of fear. After leaving a rehearsal I was in the middle of and calling out of work for the night; I freaked out in the middle of the street on Locust and 12th, scared several passer-bys, collected myself, and rushed to the theatre as fast as I could. The staff, crew, and cast were incredibly supportive and helpful from the moment I walked in the door. Also, having the chance to perform with actors of such merit as Adam Heller and Gabra Zackman was remarkable. I knew that I had some challenges in the sense that Asher doesn’t leave the stage, has quite a few lines, and it had been a while since we had the understudy run. There wasn’t going to be a time where I could double check the script, or try to figure out what was going on if I lost it, I just had to be right for 90 straight minutes.

Suddenly, I realized how rickety this roller coaster really was. I spent the time before the show running it aloud in my mind looking to rough out patches that might have left me since the one time I ran the show a month ago. Regardless of how surprising and difficult understudying can be sometimes, the point is that that is your job. The job is only to be able to go on if the person playing the part is out, and you have a responsibility to that job. Having that sense of responsibility was the only thing that made that evening an enjoyable experience over a scary one.

On the stage I found myself very nervous, in an unfamiliar space, working with incredibly talented actors that had been doing this over and over again for weeks, and also in front of a sold out house. The first few scenes I felt jittery, I wanted to jump lines to prove to myself that I knew the script, and I had trouble finding balance in my shaking legs. Then something changed, and all of a sudden the work that I had invested to do my job if the time came was married with the passion I had for the show and the joy I felt. The rest of the show went smoothly for me, and although the underlying nerves never left until it was over, I enjoyed my time as Asher Lev. It was such an amazing opportunity to be able to perform as a lead role at the Arden, even for a night. I’ve never been so excited to do my job before.

Arden Professional Apprentices, A View from the Trenches: Episode Three

A View from the Trenches: APA Katherine discusses her experience as Assistant Stage Manager for My Name Is Asher Lev.

My Name Is Asher Lev has its final performance this Sunday evening. From what I hear from former apprentices, the final week of a show’s run – particularly shows that, like mine, run in the Arcadia for 8 or 9 weeks at a time -tend to have the assistant stage managers humming “The Final Countdown” between quick-changes. And while I feel that perhaps it is about time to let go and move on to other pursuits within my apprenticeship, I don’t think it will be at all easy for me to say goodbye to this extraordinary group of people, whom I have been honored to work alongside telling this story night after night.

I first read Chaim Potok’s novel when I was fourteen. In my opinion, it’s the perfect age to discover this story. I was hopelessly nerdy as a kid, to the point where when the recommended reading material (in this case, Potok’s The Chosen) wasn’t on the shelf, I simply moved on to the next title in line. I’m pretty sure I might have held off on reading it until I had finished all of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but once I did finally open to the first page, I was hooked. Asher’s struggle to define himself – as an artist, as a son, as an individual – resonated strongly with me, at a time in my life when I was first beginning to explore the conflict between the person my parents wanted me to become, and my realization that their dreams for me were not necessarily my own. Although the book is set within a Brooklyn Hasidic Jewish community – a world that could not, at least on the surface, been more different than my Irish Catholic upbringing in an Albany suburb – it is, at its core, a family story much like my own. I would have been hard-pressed at the time to tell you why, but the truth is, I read and re-read Asher six or seven times that year. It was a time in my life where I began to ask myself what it was that I was passionate about, what motivated and inspired me. Not only that, but it was at this age when I finally began to see my parents as imperfect beings, and had to start that journey towards accepting and loving them as people, flawed and human, even when I didn’t agree with them. It all fits neatly into context now, of course – although at the time, I’m sure I couldn’t have explained why the story resonated with me the way that it did. I just felt somehow connected to this character, and felt an overwhelming sense of recognition as I read Chaim’s words on the page and Identified my own, previously unknown emotions, articulated in front of me as clear as if I’d written the words myself.

Fast-forward to age twenty-two, lounging around my college dorm room in my sweatpants and nervously trying to prepare for my first “real” job interview, typing “Arden Theatre Company” into Google and trying to ascertain whether or not this was a place I could see myself being happy. While, to be honest, the job description, the salary, and the promise of health insurance were pretty big factors in deciding to apply, my heart skipped a beat when I saw that Asher was on the docket for the next season. (In fact, both Asher and Candide – two stories I have long loved – were hugely thrilling to me artistically. Of course, I was so nervous that I wouldn’t get the job that I spent several months trying not to dwell on how very much I wanted to work on those two shows, consequently bringing up none of this during either of my interviews and stammering out something like “Next season? Looks neat!” It’s a wonder I was hired at all).

Of course, as it turned out, I was hired. And I knew that each apprentice would be assigned one show to work on as an assistant to the stage manager (in addition to the multitude of other duties we are assigned in all areas of the building). And although I’d be hard pressed to say why, exactly… I had a good gut feeling about Asher Lev. Next thing you know, I’m in a design meeting with Dan Conway and Thom Weaver; then taping out the stage floor with stage manager Alec Ferrell, and then, whaddya know – I’m shaking hands with Adena Potok (widow of Chaim Potok and artistic consultant), and meeting the cast and creative team who would be bringing the story to life.

I wish I had the words to fully explain the rehearsal process. Thanks to the generosity of the Edgerton Foundation, we had five weeks of rehearsal for Asher, and it made all the difference in the world. In a shorter amount of time, I am certain it would have been more focused upon “we just need to finish – even if it’s not perfect, it’ll be done.” What we did, instead, was make wild and sprawling discoveries every day. Personal stories from everyone’s childhoods would be interspersed with period details from dramaturg Michele Volansky, quietly taking notes in a corner. Actor Karl Miller would ask questions about Asher’s character, motivations, or word choice, to adaptor/director Aaron Posner – more often than not ending in a heated argument or philosophical debate, but also admittedly a much stronger script. With the help of Arden Drama School students Orin and Cooper (as well as their parents!) – the actors were able to rehearse their scenes with actual small children, and could observe firsthand how kids behave, talk, walk, and draw. Adam Heller and Gabra Zackman, complete strangers to each other at the beginning of the process, grew to become close friends, invariably strengthening the onstage relationship between Aryeh and Rivkeh Lev. We added props and subtracted them again; I ran countless times between the rehearsal hall and the photocopier with more and more revised scripts; we celebrated Channukah together with Adena’s famous latkes. And what startled me the most were the moments where my opinions would be asked. Not always, certainly. But how wonderful to find I had a voice in the room, and could share my own stories, and could contribute in a tangible way. Certainly not always the case, as any assistant stage manager will tell you. Certainly not expected, that anyone would really care what the shiksa from upstate New York had to say.

Nearly eighty-some-odd performances later, it’s a radically different script from when I first read it. It’s in many ways a different show with each different audience. The actors still are finding nuances within these words they have now long committed to memory, and that playful spirit still sneaks in at unexpected moments, allowing them to make new discoveries nightly.

I am, frankly, someone who usually has zero sympathy for actors (and please, please understand that I don’t mean to sound like a callous, horrible person when I say this. I say this because I come from a costume background, and I’d be hard-pressed to find a costume designer who doesn’t have a few horror stories about actors who can be divas or jerks; I say this because no matter how many hours the actors are working, trust me, I see what goes on backstage, and the technical staff is always working more). And I was initially terrified of the notion of spending nine weeks with these unknown actors, in much the same way as I was terrified of the first day of kindergarten. Partly due to the question “Are these people up to the challenge of this material, nine times a week for nine weeks?”…but, okay, also,”…and will anybody be nice to me?” And in yet another unexpected surprise, I have found myself amidst something wonderful and rare – not only are they good actors, but they are also quite good people, and that has made all the difference. The sense they have helped instill in me is that I am a critical component to the show as a whole, that we all function as one unit in telling this story. We all work together – not “for” anyone else. On those days when I just want to hit the snooze button, it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. If I’m having a lousy day in the box office, set build, or any other of the thousand tasks I could be doing on a typical “apprentice day,” I look forward to the time where I can drop out of my life and into the story. And to be able to come to work and get paid to help three smart, funny, and talented actors tell a story I’ve long loved, bolstered by my eminently capable stage manager Alec – well, then, I think I’m just about the luckiest apprentice of them all.

I understand, of course, that all things need to come to an end, and change is almost always a good thing. I am looking forward to some elements of the show closing – getting a night off, for one! – and I am hoping for some new and exciting projects to tackle that I simply couldn’t take on due to the time demands of running nine shows a week. I do know, though, that the Arden will seem a little strange to me without the comfort of the same familiar, wonderful group of people that have been a part of my life for the past three months. Somewhere in between tracking script changes and changing over the laundry, I have made some unexpected and true friends, and it is my hope that in sharing this story with our audience, Asher Lev has had an impact in an unexpected and true way as well.

Notes from the Costume Shop

Richard St. Clair is the costume designer for A Year with Frog and Toad. He also designed the costumes for the original Arden production of Frog and Toad in 2004 as well as last season’s production of Sleeping Beauty, both of which earned him Barrymore Awards.

Lindsay Warner, the Arts & Culture Editor of The Bulletin, spent some time in the Costume Shop with Richard as he described how to dress a cast that plays many different animals, without making them look like school mascots.

Read the interview here.

A Year with Frog and Toad: A work in progress

Jonathan Ward, Property Master for the Arden, discusses prop design for A Year with Frog and Toad.

Since I began working as the property master at the Arden, I found that making the props for our children’s productions is my favorite part of the year. The stories allow me to stretch my imagination and create another world for our audiences to enjoy. I use my background in visual art and design to aid in fabricating out-of-this-world creations for the stage.

Looking at objects for inspiration and materials is a common occurrence in my line of work; one of my favorite stories of finding and reusing what we have on hand were the musical instruments that I made for Sleeping Beauty. I constructed them out of broken fiddle heads left over from our award-winning mainstage production Opus.

Remounting an original production like A Year with Frog and Toad has advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, we are lucky enough to have most of the kinks worked out because we’ve done the show before. We already know how big the furniture will need to be, we already know how much blue Mylar confetti we will need and we already know how the magic kite will fly; a lot of the important questions are already answered this time around.

The challenges will come in recreating the world of Frog and Toad for a new generation of audiences to experience without abandoning the roots of our previous production – and what made it so magical the first time around.

Prop design is such an interesting job. I have to be able to change from carpenter to electrician to sculptor, adapting to each new project that is put in front of me. Currently I am working on refurbishing the furniture and other props that were saved in our storage facility from the first Frog and Toad. Lucky for me most of the items were in great condition. A small amount of work will have them prepared for rehearsal.

My next step is to bring a new life and meaning to these objects. Without changing the pieces too much, we are bringing a new “Adirondack mountain” feeling to the interior and exterior of each of the characters’ houses in the show.

A Year with Frog and Toad is a Philadelphia favorite and a wonderful project to be a part of. I feel lucky to be working on such an incredible show that has been honored by audiences and critics alike. The production staff is a tight knit group of artists that I look forward to collaborating with over the next few months.

Let me know if you enjoy the results!
jward@ardentheatre.org

Arden Professional Apprentices, A View from the Trenches: Episode Two

A View from the Trenches: APA Hillary Rea takes us through three days in the life of an APA.

Every Thursday I grab a ruler, my cell phone, my planner and some magnets. The weekly apprentice schedule has been posted and it is a non-ruled paper matrix of what to do when and where to go then. The ruler is for lining up each apprentice assignment with its beginning and end times. The cell phone is for plugging my entire schedule into a mobile organizer. The planner is my paper and pen back-up schedule. And the magnets are for tacking up the original schedule copy on my fridge. This may seem crazy but sometimes I spend the day in four different departments and need business casual attire, a crescent wrench, and a James and the Giant Peach t-shirt. Things can get hectic and sometimes overwhelming, but every week I look back, assess what I have learned, and feel really great about accomplishing each assignment listed in my phone, written in my planner, and posted on my refrigerator.

A few weeks ago I decided to keep track of my apprentice life for a week in a journal and below are three days out of the six-day workweek.

This morning I threw on my James and the Giant Peach t-shirt and went down to the lobby to be the House Manager for a 10am school group performance of (you guessed it!) James and the Giant Peach. The ratio of students to teachers and chaperones was so great that I envisioned 300 elementary school kids storming the stage and launching a revolution atop the most ginormous peach in existence. Luckily, ushering students, class by class, into the theater went smoothly. During intermission I caught a little girl just before she tried to climb under the riser seating to fetch her coat that she had dropped through the seats. I climbed under the seats instead and returned with a miniature blue puffy jacket. After completing a checklist of end-of-show tasks, I headed upstairs to the administrative offices for my afternoon assignments in the General Management department.

Wednesday

Most of our apprentice schedule is divided into three-hour blocks of time. But today I had a 9 to 5 day in the Production department working on building the set for the upcoming production My Name Is Asher Lev. The first time I was assigned to work in the scene shop with Glenn the Technical Director and Will the Master Carpenter I was slightly terrified. I had never used power tools (could I even name them all correctly?) and my 25-foot non-centering tape measure was weighing my pants down. Would I need to purchase a tool belt? But in that first 8-hour day I learned how to use a chop saw, a steel grinder and a cut a Giant Peach stem using a jigsaw. Though covered head to toe in saw dust I thought to myself “This is actually fun!”

Now the dread and fear of a Glenn and Will day is pretty much gone and I think the scene shop is awesome. My challenge for today was to read the set design blue print and try to understand how what we were building related to the design. This particular set has many wooden floorboards and roof panels. The floorboards are made of lauan (a type of manufactured wood) and I got to sand down the edges on a whole bunch of them. By sanding down the edges, the boards can look old and worn. I probably spent too much time on each piece of wood but they turned out pretty cool. The most rewarding part of the day was carrying the stacks of wood boards from the scene shop, down cobblestone and across 2nd street while they precariously balanced on my shoulder. And thanks to a SEPTA bus stopping in the middle of the street to let us pass by, the set made it to the Arcadia in the proper number of pieces.

Thursday

I would say that this Thursday was the most adventurous day of the week. From 9:30am to 1:00pm all of the APAs were scheduled for “Distribution Blitz” – a Marketing Department sponsored day of hanging up posters and handing out postcards for James and the Giant Peach all throughout various Philadelphia neighborhoods. My assigned neighborhood was Chestnut Hill and I needed to take a regional rail train to get there. I arrived at Market East station only to discover that I had just missed the R8 to Chestnut Hill West and the trains only run every hour. After an awkward period of time people watching in the basement level of the Gallery mall, I hopped on a train to Philly’s outermost “borough.” While perusing the train schedule on board, I noticed that the only train that would get me back to the Arden in time for our weekly APA meeting left just 25 minutes after I will have arrived. I had done one other Distribution Blitz in this neighborhood before so I was able to sprint up and down Germantown Avenue frisbeeing postcards into each local business. Besides one tiny hold up in the Kitchen Kapers when the shopping bag that contained my postcards tore and dispersed my collateral everywhere, I made it back the train station and safely back on the train towards Center City.

After an hour in apprentice meeting – sharing personal stories, work related reports, and discussing the various factors that go into to planning a season of shows – I reported to the Development Department to work on invitations for an upcoming Sylvan Members special event. At the last minute we needed to add a logo and greeting to the front of the invitation’s envelopes and I had fun figuring out how to do that.

Immediately following the mailing, apprentice Bobby and I were briefed on our next assignment. We were informed that we needed to pick up a mattress and box spring from local actor Greg Wood’s South Philly home and move it on over to the Artist’s House (the Arden’s residence for actors and designers while in town for a production) in Old City. Before we could say “Huh?” Bobby and I were on Washington Avenue (far from the cobble stone streets of the Arden) with former apprentice Meghan at a truck rental facility. My heart was beating a little bit too fast because as I reported during apprentice orientation, “I am a skeptical driver.” Luckily Meghan was the designated driver and Bobby and I were along for the ride and the heavy lifting. We all hopped into the truck only to find out that there was a driver seat, a passenger seat and a huge gap to the floor in the middle. Megan obviously took the driver seat, Bobby buckled up in the passenger side and I took the huge gap to the floor in the middle. And we were off. The mattress pick-up and delivery was a success. Who knew you could “taco” a mattress to get it down a flight of stairs?

My day of running around the city concluded with some meditative stickering and stuffing of envelopes for the Marketing Department.

My Name Is Asher Lev

My Name Is Asher Lev is on stage now through March 15.

Arden Professional Apprentices, A View from the Trenches: Episode One

A View from the Trenches: APA Bobby Bangert discusses his involvement with the workshop of Dennis Smeal’s new play Meticulous Gentlemen.

Last week I had the privilege of spending some time observing a workshop of a new play written by the Arden’s literary manager, Dennis Smeal. Meticulous Gentlemen explores the complex relationship between two men, Gus and Tad, who unexpectedly reunite after more than two decades of estrangement.

One of the things that drew me to the Arden when considering this apprenticeship was the work the Arden does with new plays. As an aspiring writer and director, I jumped at the chance to see the process by which new work comes into being. Terry presided over the workshop, Dennis sitting opposite and watching, absorbing everything.

The timing couldn’t be more perfect, everyone bundled in sweaters and surrounded by poinsettias as the actors worked through lines about The Nutcracker, which plays in the background throughout the play’s action from start to finish. The music presents a unique technical and artistic challenge, in which the actors’ opinions proved useful. Ian, who played Tad, shared his dislike for music that imposes itself on an actor’s performance or an audience’s experience, as if dictating the way he should perform or an audience should feel. It was decided that the dynamic of the music would change throughout the reading, but the general goal was to have the music “dust the air,” in Terry’s words, highlighting the performances without overwhelming them. The exchange of opinions between actor, director, and playwright helped them to arrive at what worked for everyone, and, most importantly, for the play.

Fortunately, no one lacked opinions. On one occasion more than a half an hour was devoted to debating the merits of two words, in which Tad describes Gus as “guzzling, slurping”‘ and in that half an hour of discussion I was surprised to find the entire emotional content of the scene excavated and dismantled, then put back together. As the discussion progressed they found that those two words had drastically different implications to each of them, and that two simple words could change the whole scene. In the end, Dennis informed me that those words were cut, but the final outcome did not seem as important to me as the process by which they arrived there. It was inspiring the way every phrase and every note was crafted with such care and discernment, the same love with which Tchaikovsky must have composed his Nutcracker.

The end result was a reading of the newly revised play in which Arden staff members and other invited guests watched. Having read an earlier draft before the workshop and seeing some of the revisions throughout the week, it was a particularly rewarding experience for me to hear the changes and see the growth that had taken place over the past few days. By the time the Hallelujah chorus from The Messiah rang out over the final moments, it became clear that their work, both passionate and meticulous, had paid off.

Meticulous Gentlemen

Dennis Smeal, literary manager for the Arden, discusses the workshop of his new play, Meticulous Gentlemen.

So the name of the play is Meticulous Gentlemen and I wrote the first draft exactly two years ago. When it wasn’t immediately greeted with unanimous praise, submitted for the Pulitzer Prize for best unproduced play and placed on the Arden production schedule, Terry told me, “Smeal, if you wanted to write an easily producible play, you would have. But you didn’t. You wrote a play that needs a workshop first, and you want a 68 year old British actor and a 45 year old American actor with very specific looks and sexual orientations which you probably shouldn’t reveal if you ever actually get that workshop and find yourself blogging about it.” Terry actually said some of that – the first part. Anyway, the workshop is finally happening and what is unspoken and unpromised and TOTALLY the elephant in the room is that if all goes well and I do my job and turn this rough draft into something that will amuse and inform and transport Arden audiences to another world through the miracle of storytelling, it might (finances, designers and actors availability pending) make it onto the production schedule next year!

The first day of the workshop consisted of the actors, Russell Leib (Caroline, or Change) and Ian Merrill Peakes (All My Sons, etc.) reading the play once straight through, and then reading through the first act and talking about it. This was the absolutely first time I’d ever heard the play out loud per Terry’s request. I had never been able to hold out before but now that Terry is the director of an Obie Award nominated play and an Emmy nominated short film, I guess we all should maybe pay a little more attention to what he says, right?

The actors read the play. The actors are awesome. The play has its moment. (Oops that was a typo. I meant to say “moments” but think I should leave it that way now. Maybe it’s a Freudian slip. Well, not exactly Freudian because it’s not sexual, so more of a non-Freudian slip. I guess that would be just a slip.) But you know what IS sexual? This play. It’s actually got sex stuff I can’t describe on a website your children might read. And it’s gay. The Arden is going to try to tell you that you don’t have to be gay to like this play, and while that’s true enough, trust me, you’ll like it best if you’re gay or you know someone who’s gay or you wish you were gay or you wish you knew someone who’s gay. ‘Cause there’s a lot of gay in this play. For example, the word “gay” is used 72 times in the play. To be fair, 9 of those times is in rapid succession and in reference to a beloved American composer who isn’t Sondheim. That’s actually a good test of whether you would like this play. If you know who that probably is, you would like this play. If you don’t know who that is or might be, you ought to see this play anyway because while you might not like it, it will be good for you.

Anyway, bottom line at the end of day one – the first act has some problems and apparently it’s the playwright’s job to fix them. So I take my script to Fork where the lovely Ellen is leaving to go to a holiday party in a lovely black frock and after a hug from her I get to work. Hugs from Ellen are one of my playwriting secrets. Ssshh. I don’t need Michael Hollinger or Bruce Graham hearing about this. They already have the advantage of having been born with a lot more words than I was. Terry seems to think they just make better use of their time and talents but I know it’s all in the number of words you were born with. By the way, at Fork, I have the Chef’s Selection of tapas which includes the most amazing calamari ever, delicious albondigas, and a pretty terrific crab cake in a spicy but not too spicy aioli. I sit at the bar for four hours and rewrite the first 30 pages of the play, trying to make it “flow” better and hopefully making it less “bumpy”. Here’s what I try to do. I try to NOT be smart, ’cause I like to be smart but being smart is easy. I try instead to be honest, which is hard. That’s one of the interesting things about storytelling.

You’re making something up, which is inherently a lie, but then you have to make it honest if you really want anyone to connect with it. So basically the rule is “Lie honestly.” So this is what I try to do. Then back to the Artist’s House to type the pages, call home and get some sleep.