The Show within the Show

Live theater bears much resemblance to clouds, fractal patterns that repeat out over and over. There was not one opening night performance for A Man for All Seasons. There were 63. The audience, actors, crew and creative staff present that night each had their own experience. My opening night show was unique to me alone and yet part of this larger experience shared by many. It began with a traffic accident on highway 20 while driving in from Albany, complete with a flaming car. That’s a slight exaggeration. By the time I passed it, the firefighters had put out most of the flames. Arriving at the theater by the 6:30 call time, I spent an hour fighting with false eyelashes and spackling on makeup. (Stage makeup has to be heavy so you’re not washed out under bright stage lights). Let me tell you, the effort is disproportionate to the results. You end up looking like a $20 crack whore. Most of my show was spent in the left-hand stairwell. There was a continuing parade of costume changes, entrances, exits, and moving plants in that stairwell. 

It’s fascinating to watch an actor in the moment when they move forward into the wings preparing to go on stage. The mundane drops away from them and they become something else. This too is fractal. One person might dance, jumping up and down like a wild man. Another might preen like a bird lifting a chin or raising their arms like feathers settling into the ‘display’ of their character. A third might go quiet and still mouthing the lines for the scene they are about to enter one last time. –I won’t tell you who did what back stage on opening night. That’s their story and their opening night show, not mine. 

Create your own experience at A Man for All Seasons December 8-11th. 

Buttons, Pearls and Bedazzlers-Oh My!

I have been pouring over old portraits from the 1500’s looking for patterns in the jewelry and meaning in the colors. It feels a little like the The Da Vinci Code, but much better dressed. If you accept the idea that clothing, like art, is symbolic; then the tension becomes how to reconcile the clothing code of Tudor England with that of the modern day audience. During the reign of Henry the VIII, purple was a royal color and ‘real’ men wore pearls. Imagine Steve Jobs in a purple turtle neck and pearl bedazzled glasses (yes Bedazzlers can do that). See what I mean about tension? 

In a perfect world, the color of your shirt or the length of your skirt should never define your character. But that’s another blog for another time. Costumers could be seen as code-breakers. You take old images and symbols of power, break them down, and then translate them into new symbols of imagery that make sense to the audience. How did we do it in A Man for All Seasons? Take a sneak peak at some of the rehearsal photos in this week’s Entertainer. I won’t give it all away but the characters wear clothes, jewels and colors that speak to both worlds with fewer pearls and none of the 12 pounds of underwear typically worn at that time. 

Fun bit of trivia, did you ever wonder why women’s shirts have buttons on the left hand side and men’s shirts have buttons on the right? Way back in the day, buttons were bling. Wealthy women of history needed servants to help them dress. The buttons were put on the left side of the garment so the right-handed maid could do them up more easily. See you on opening night, Dec 2^nd.

Power, Fear and $600,000

I’m pondering again… Thomas More spends much of the play denying his own importance, literally. “I’m not as important as you think I am…” he says after a visit from King Henry. Dude, the king came to you! You are important. Suck it up. People who get regular visits from royalty are not only important but they have an influence on the events around them--whether they want it or not. Thomas More definitely does not want it. He’s not dumb. The man knows he’s influential but he refuses to be influential. The guy’s got juice but says ‘I cannot and will not rule my king.’ Recently I heard a wonderful service from Vicar Robert Morrison. He said that most people are afraid of their own power. They are reluctant to embrace their abilities and talents. Is More afraid of his own power? If yes, Why??? He’s wealthy (approximately $600,000 a year take home in today’s money), intelligent, happily married, and well-respected. I know what you’re thinking; give me that kind of terror. I suppose the obvious answer is that he doesn’t want to make psycho Henry mad and get his head chopped off. Vicar Morrison encouraged his listeners to imagine a world where people were unafraid of their own power, a world where people embraced it and allowed it to flourish. What if Thomas More had been unafraid? He might have prevented his own downfall and denied the world a Catholic Saint and the Anglican Church. That’s an interesting idea to ponder-see how this all started? In stage life… we wouldn’t have a wonderful play opening on December 2^nd.

Captain Kirk in the Cortex

Man for All Seasons has its own facebook page! You’ll see entries from this blog, cast list, and information on all of our performance dates. Check it out: http://on.fb.me/vfnFIA

It’s easy to get caught up the accent. The play takes place in medieval England after all. The characters cannot sound like extras from the Jersey Shore. Even so, you can go too far in the other direction. Entranced with how you are saying something, you can lose sight of the message itself. At rehearsal, I am trying to deliver a line. It’s a moment of dramatic tension toward the end of Act 1. In my head, I’m aiming for Gandalf in LOTR but what came out was a little bit more like this.  Needless to say, LOTR had to go. 

What else is rattling around in our heads and how much of it is evenly uniquely our own? Having grown up a Southern California Valley girl, I’ve been mystified when others have asked me, more than once, “Are you from the Chicago area?” Something in the way I talk, they’ve said sounds a little Chicago-ish.  I’ll take their word for it. I’ve never set foot in the city, but my father grew up just outside of Chicago. I’ve picked up souvenirs from a city I’ve never been to, and didn’t even know it! Chicago has sort of occupied my inner Wall Street. What else is squatting on my cerebral cortex? Don’t know, but it’s going to be fun finding out.

Winning Jeopardy Answers... and other things you learn on a show

Performance is study. It's an incredible thing. You spend time pondering and learning about some interesting and far-flung bits of knowledge. Example- We were rehearsing a scene last week.  Thomas More  and his wife Alice (your friendly neighborhood blogger) are having a conversation. We are interrupted by  the Common Man and told that our time is running out. We have only two minutes left. This lead to several questions and an interesting discussion. How would they have known that? Were there clocks in the 1530's? There were, but they did not have a minute or second hand.

Can you imagine? We take much for granted in every day life-at least I do. As much as I berate technology for the years its taken off of my life in frustration, it is an amazing thing to know the time down to the minute. It's almost a cliche really. There's a bomb on the bus, school, and/or train and you've got only 10 seconds to cut the red wire. --If we didn't have the time measuring technology we do, the Lethal Weapon movies wouldn't have gotten past the first one. They would have spent their time arguing about how much time they had left and blown up before they could cut the blue wire. There would have been no 24. Keifer Sutherland's career might have stalled at Young Guns.

I ponder currency. Just how much is 30 shillings anyway? Is this a large sum of money to be betting on a sporting event. While I have no idea what it may have meant to the characters of our play, you could find out what it means to a Londoner today with the currency converter on this site. 

Getting into Character

There is a lot of study that goes into the creation of a character. It's almost like being back in school. Early rehearsals are spent analyzing every word on the page. You've got to understand what you're saying before you figure out how to say it. Since I don't have HBO and can't watch the Tudors, that meant hitting the public library to brush up on my English history. First, I had to find my library card. Turns out it had been sitting in the Albany library lost and found for over a month--oops. I'm now surrounded by a little mountain of books, but you dear reader do not have to suffer so. Thank God for youtube!

The Reformation in a minute and a half --with puppets
Homer, I mean Henry the Eighth
And don't forget Henry the 8th I Am by Herman's Hermits.

Enjoy,

Alice
Corvallis Community Theater's A Man for All Seasons opens December 2nd.

Cast of Man for All Seasons

the Common Man: Calvin
Sir Thomas More: John C.
Master Richard Rich: Adam R.
The Duke of Norfolk: Charles I.
Lady Alice More: Nancy H.
Margaret More: Jessica G.
Cromwell: Charles S.
Signor Chapuys: Dean K.
Chapuys Attendant: Koji Y.
William Roper:  Michael B.
King Henry the Eighth: Peter F.
Woman: Erica J.
Thomas Cranmer: Pat P.
Cardinal Wolsey: Kevin