This week we started rehearsals for ”The Next Curve.”  As a writer, this was utterly fascinating.  Yes, I have already had the intriguing experience of workshopping plays, both my own which I discussed here, and someone else’s, which I described here.  But rehearsals are yet a different kettle of petunias, so to speak.  It may seem obvious to say, but in rehearsals you have the actors themselves who will be portraying these roles there doing the work. Obvious yes, but that is a  huge difference.  When the hired actors are there, they have more at stake.  They have already begun the process of creating their roles out of their own experiences.  They came on day 1 having already done research and given a great deal of thought to their characters.  Even Day 1 is far from starting from scratch.  So what actually has happened in the first few days of rehearsing?

Our Director, Ellie Joseph, began with the question, “What does the text tell us about the character?”  We then went through every page and made a list of what we know from the words themselves, everything from the obvious “He’s a man” to the surprising, “By saying X she’s showing she’s not as confident as she lets on.” By the time we had gone through each play in its entirety, we had created an incredibly full picture of what the playwright had told us about his characters.  I put those words in bold because what happened next was where the alchemy started.

Anyone who has ever taken an English class in school knows that there are layers upon layers within any well-written text.  The fun, and the struggle, is to find those layers that the playwright might not even have been aware were there.  Our Director began that process of discovery with some improv.   The actors were asked improvise various scenes that may have occurred  before the time frame of the play itself.  “What was their first meeting like 20 years earlier?”  “How did the earlier offer of help come about?”  Through these improvs the actors are able to spontaneously begin the process of changing their characters from figments of somebody else’s imaginings to creations of their own, based not only on the playwright’s clues from the text, but also from an understanding of the motivations and impulses that can be inferred from the text.  While necessarily remaining true to the author’s intention, the play becomes something new.

All writers know that their words have subtext.  As humans, we can’t help it.  Our lives inform what we write, and as readers, how we receive what has been written.  But the beauty of the rehearsal is that you can see it actually happening right before your eyes.  It is magic, and it’s enough to make you want to write for the stage — as crazy as it may be.
        ——————————

PS: Thanks to all who posted their congratulations about the publication of my next novel.  It really means a lot to me to know you are all out there rooting for me, just as I’m indeed rooting for all of you!