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Or, production meeting blues. The place where reality meets vision. Sort of like running into a brick wall full speed. Some things give and unfortunately they’re all you. Your tooth might leave a mark, but don’t count on it.

So, yeah. What else is there to say? Does it mean the play will stink? God, I hope not. Regardless of the resources not being as anticipated there are many dedicated theater folks working on this play, and I have been assured by Zoldessy that he’s got a solid vision and that it is do-able. The bells and whistles will be shifting lights, crepe, and whatever I roll out of my basement. God knows, with the content, I’ve already emptied out my attic.

I spent the evening up until now in re-writes: it took me 3 hours to get through 21 pages. (Only 28 more to go!) Talked with Mike earlier and got some context for the re-write notes of my earlier post. He helped clarify and map out a plan. Talked with Zoldessy this afternoon. It was constructive. He had draft feedback from Draft 3 that spoke well to changes I intended for Draft 4. I told him I’d turn around the script as soon as possible given his (and the actors I’m sure) interest in getting the thing in their hands asap. The major re-writes, according to the time table we where given at the first production meeting, are due 1/31.

Had a strange moment last night. When I was in college I read a book called Crisis and Story (well, part of it) which was to accompany The Bible. The first book providing context to the latter book. (Not the book of latter day…) Anyway, I have decided to re-set and start reading from the beginning again: Bible, Greek myths, Greek plays, etc. Begin at the beginning because there has been a lot I’ve overlooked in my years and with the MFA coming to a close I will now have to self-motivate, which will not be easy. So, anyway, I open up the book to the first chapter in Crisis and Story and what do you think it’s called? Patterns of Memory. Patterns of Memory. The fact that my play is named Patterns aside… And the thematic message of the chapter? How story shapes identity. How stories are re-interpreted through time to meet the needs of people in that time and how the time in which stories are re-interpreted informs the stories and how the stories, of course, impact that time. To me, it was a sign. A sign I’m on the right track. That taking a moment to “breathe” and look around was warranted. That I can refresh my vision for this play (one last time). Sure, I know, sign shmine. I know I read the book before (part of it–hey, it was undergrad…) so a good argument can be made that all that stuff has just sat latently around in my subconscious dying to get out in some way, and that may be true. But to discover it again at precisely this moment…

So, right now I’m procrastinating, sort of. Avoiding the rest of the task which must be done. Claire Robinson May’s play Mother Tongue is up at Big Box tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday. Saw her just yesterday morning dropping off the kids, and in the reading of Patterns on Tuesday. Lots of the playwriting folks are there tonight. Hope all went well for her. Looking forward to seeing it tomorrow. Got my tickets two weeks ago–glad I did because it’s sold out!

I think the highlight of my bearing witness to auditions came several years ago when a very attractive student actor at CSU performed a pole dance / strip routine for my play Only Sing for Me. Unfortunately, we were not able to cast her as my play required no women. The cheap thrill remains, though.

The auditions at CPT were quite a bit more professional and much more reserved. Alongside Beth Wood, Associate Artistic Director at CPT, two of the directors sat at a long front table covered with note pads, binders, scripts, head shots and actor’s cvs. Behind this front table, on chairs rising toward the back of the James Levin space, sat the playwrights, stage managers, and various others, including Mike Geither who is running the NEOMFA portion of the festival.

Auditions were run in one hour blocks with between 5-8 actors in an hour. An actor would come in, led by Lindsay Carter, Festival Production Manager. The actor would go to the main table, deposit his or her head shot and cv, engage in brief chit-chat, and then go out into the space. He or she would say the piece they would be performing and then go. If there was interest, a director would ask him/her to do it again with some variation: louder and farther back (projecting), softer with greater nuance, in a different enunciation or accent. Sometimes, an actor would be asked to do a bit from Shakespeare (i.e. they had two pieces prepared–contemporary and Shakespearean). Interestingly, I learned that whenever there are auditions schools with acting programs send students to practice auditioning, so on one night several students came through.

It was a machine. Actors were processed through quickly, orderly, decisions were made. I was appalled at how quickly I adapted to the attitude. I was shocked, in retrospect, at how quickly I came to view actors according to specific attributes that the play required, and not as people at all. I believe the human mind is easily conditioned to systematic modes of thought: that the brain’s approach to things is easily conditioned, in this way, to chilling itself to emotion and becoming clinical. The danger of this mode of thinking is historically documented and is not a direction I intend to go with this blog entry, but I note the attitude nonetheless.

Geither advised me that the key attribute to look for in an actor was the willingness and ability to respond to the director. So, above I mentioned the director might ask an actor to do their piece again in a certain way; this is when you see how the actor responds and how well. Regardless, here are some excerpts from my own notes on the audition to get a sense of what I was discussing above:

Forced emotion. Not a good sense of delivery. Tense and constricted.

Good comic sense. Good delivery. Good shifts: speed up and slow down. Dynamic. Good smile. Confident.

Good eye contact. Strong presence. Good delivery. Good timing: funny.

Pretty convincing emotionally for a short audition piece. Direction? Takes it. Don’t know how well she projects. Seemed to do well, but would she hold up? Expressive. Did increase volume.

And so on…

On one night there were 14 auditions. Something similar on the other, I think. My play is the only play with women, so my play had the pick for the four actresses I needed. For the men, it was a bit tougher. All three plays have men and there weren’t many men auditioning to begin with. This led to some “negotiations” amongst the directors about who got which actor, etc. This conversation was almost as interesting as the auditions.

Brian asked me my opinion on some of the characters, my main character Aisa, for instance, who really must carry the show; and another prominent character: Harry Collins. Other than that, I felt that the casting was Brian’s decision, and Brian is working with a vision of types that I can only watch develop.

This is a point, as well, where it is important to comment on the vision of the playwright as the play is written, versus the reality of the play as it is produced. When the play is written it is staged, produced, and run in the mind of the playwright. Unfortunately, that is a production that will never be visible–or if it is, the technology that will make it possible is far, far away from where I’m sitting in time. This reality means that there will automatically be a disconnect between the vision of the playwright as the play is written, and the auditioned/staged reality of the production.

One benefit of Geither’s effort to get playwrights in productions at CSU is that I confronted the disconnect between my imagined version of the play and the real production many years ago. Consequently, I have moved beyond the superficial assumptions about what my characters would “look like” or “be like” in reality to realize that they will emerge through the writing.

After two days, Brian and I came away nearly fully cast. There were two holes in the play that were filled within the following week. What followed is the scheduling of rehearsals, calendars, contact sheets, etc.

Moving on next to the first production meeting.