My inaugural stint with the theatre group that produced Dead City ended last Saturday, the nineteenth of April. After just one week, the experience is already beginning to mellow into a rosy memory, full of forgiveness and forgetting. But before I allow time to melt the hard edges away forever, I want to say a few things while I still give a damn.
As I told the 1.3 cast members that would actually engage in remotely honest conversation with me, my rehearsal and performance experience reminded me of a line from the Steely Dan song, Reelin' In The Years: "The things that passed for knowledge, I can't understand."
Whether it was the difference in our ages, some X/Y-Gen rift, or some unidentifiable mental blinders I wore, this show's director and I were on different planets. I ultimately blame neither of us, of course. But at the time, I just couldn't understand his methods. And he wasn't about to explain...anything.
Nothing was discussed, unless it was discussed behind closed doors and away from the prying ears of those who needed it most. Actors performances were not discussed with the very actors acting them; each of us was left to direct his or her own self with no discussion or analysis, no tweaking or polishing. Costumes and props were not openly discussed until about four days before the show opened. Imagine that: four days before the show was to open, someone decided that maybe we should go to the effort of actually dressing ourselves in something and giving ourselves some crap to carry around. These things obviously must have been talked about earlier, but apparently only to a cadre of three or four pairs of deserving ears.
I found myself wondering whose model of theatre production this troupe based its operations upon. I'd never seen things done this way. And here I had thought that a theatre company that seemed so big for its britches must have some justification for conducting itself in this manner.
There's a concept referred to as 'actor intensive' theatre. There's another concept called 'minimalism'. These two concepts are thought to work in harmony with one another when the budget allows no sets, but when the writing and the direction and the performances are so good that the show doesn't even need a set. (%&!$@&#*!) Instead, for me, the show felt unexamined.
I'm very grateful for the chance to have been on stage, doing a bit of what I love to do, and getting to work with some extremely talented actors.
This show saved my life in ways. Back when I was first asked if I wanted to do it, I'd been sick with something intestinal for the previous couple of months, and I'd experienced a lot of emotional and physical ups and downs in that time. When the opportunity for the show came along, it created a much needed immediate purpose, something tangible to focus upon, a place I could feel needed. Very few of those mental visions of purpose and involvement actually evolved, but at least I finished the project intact. I've come out on the other side, still breathing, and with no more friends or enemies than I had on the way in. Just different ones.
There's so much more I could say about my Dead City experience, and perhaps I've said too much. I've intentionally left a lot out of this story so as not to seem as though I'm attacking anyone. In fact, as I understand it, the only individual who is responsible for the success or failure of a play is its director. Everyone else plays along with the laws set down by that entity. And we all did...to the letter, and then some.
Now that it's over and we all move forward, I'm left with the feeling that we all worked so hard at something we all must have cared about at the outset, but which got away from us somewhere along the way. I could chart those ways one by one and detail by detail, since I was there watching them happen.
I'm happy just to be alive. So being asked to be in the best play someone had read in five years (our director said that to me) presented an amazing challenge. Getting to 'wake-up' onstage next to the beautiful and talented twenty-nine year old actress playing the lead role and getting to stare into her eyes six inches away for a few fleeting moments , as well as my seven-minute monologue that closed the show every night...those two things...I'll cherish those.
Ever since the night we all parted ways for the final time, I haven't heard a peep from anyone involved in the show. I'm not pretending to be surprised by that. If I lived in NY or LA I wouldn't hear a peep out of anyone either. But, it feels funny just the same: actors act for each other even when they're off-stage, just like everybody else.
And no discussion. There will be no discussion about how this production went down. No, no. Shove this show and its memories into a box and leave it on the sidewalk for the homeless guy.
Translation: I'm ready to talk about it any time you are.
Goodbye, Sheila Callaghan's Dead City.
