Understudying and Food Acting

Understudying is something else. Acting on stage with an understudy is a whole other ballgame. I’ve experienced both in less than a month. I went on for an actor in The Odd Couple about a month ago. I survived. By the second performance, I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of things. The first performance was insanely nerve-wracking. But I had four, sometimes five other actors helping me out. There was only one moment of panic. I had the cue and KNEW it was my turn to speak, but I couldn’t figure out what the heck the line was. I panicked (this feels like ten minutes), and then remembered the gist of the line. That was that! The other actor was able to understand and kept the scene flowing along nicely. Crisis averted.

When stuff like that happens, you can’t run off stage. There’s no where to hide. You just maintain an understanding of trust—that’s especially heightened when the understudies are around.

Then the tables turned and the actor playing H.C. was on vacation (which is allowed at this company because our runs are very long and the actors also have administrative duties on top of the artistic assignments). So we had a put-in rehearsal and then two performances with a new “Pop.” The actor does different things and the ensemble had to be more malleable with blocking and cues. Nothing major happened. There were some dropped lines here and there, but I think we all carried the story along quite well.

Of course other strange things still happen. The first scene centers around H.C. and his grown men having some eggs for breakfast. My character devours a plate of scrambled eggs (“I guess five or six’ll do,” says Jim). They’re not actually eggs—just dyed mashed potatoes (cold mashed potatoes). The latest night they were particularly cold and crumbly, more like eggs actually. At times, I spit out lines with bits of food in my mouth. I don’t have a set schedule of when I take bites and how large the portions are. I probably take more than I should, but it’s a lot of fun to act with food. It heightens the believability for me and makes every scene that much more spontaneous.

Anyway, I became a little overzealous and bits of mashed potato went flying over to the actor playing Noah. He saw it and so did half the audience. We’re not talking projectile vomit kind of stuff, but little morsels of yellow mashed potatoes did manage to catapult across the table. It was pretty obvious.

No matter the situation—understudies or not—things remain interesting and fresh. I’m delving into an interesting period of acting with the same show for an extended time. I believe I’ve done over 20 performances of one show. Prior to this, the most performances of any one show had been around 12. There’s no rut forming (granted, this isn’t a Broadway type run where I’m doing 8 shows a week) and it’s very energizing.

I just wonder what will change once the run treks along. I’ll be living with this show until the end of October. We’ve still got a ways to go.