I made it through two shows, understudying Speed in THE ODD COUPLE. The first time (Saturday night) was for a sold-out house. We had over 210 people, which was a record (to have this many people come to a single night for a five-month run in a town of 788 people is pretty remarkable). The theatre is a small thrust space and gets around 100 or so, depending on the show and the night, of course.
I ended up slipping on some water that spilled on the stage. It received some laughs--all due to the fact that all of the characters are nearly hysterical. The poker players are all trying to help Felix who claims to have taken a whole bottle of pills. We're all trying to cure him, which includes spinning him around and rubbing his wrists to keep his circulation going. Prior to that, Oscar splashes a glass of water on Felix's face, and it gets all over the stage--usually on the actor playing Felix and the rug. Well, it went a little too far downstage. And I slipped. People laughed. I wasn't injured or hurt in any way, thank goodness.
The next day, a woman stopped me and wanted to know if I had meant to trip on purpose. If only....
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ON THE RAINMAKER FRONT
We've reached the halfway point of the run. The artistic director observed a number of performances and sat us down before our matinee on Saturday to give some notes. For whatever reason, I was apprehensive about the whole thing. But I had to keep telling myself that if there were major issues with anything I was doing, I'd get some kind of note immediately. By the time the meeting began, my paranoia was put at ease.
I've always felt a bit "eh" about the first scene of the show, but I could never pinpoint why. It took an outside eye to say that we've been missing the whole point of the play (which sounds more harsh than it was, honestly).
The brothers and father of Lizzie need to hear Lizzie's news from when she visited Three Point. We attempted to set her up with a cousin so that she could get married. So when she comes downstairs for breakfast, we have to know whether or not she's going to get married--if not, we have to resort to an agreed-upon plan B (inviting the deputy sheriff for dinner). Everything else that happens in the scene (and there's a lot of other conversations) is cover for the fact that we're really anxious for Lizzie. Needless to say, the first scene plays much better now and has real urgency.
I got some notes about volume at the beginning, which really befuddled me. This is when I wish I had more technical vocabulary about the voice. I have a feeling that the accent I use (which is this western/southern twang, I don't know the official dialect) may not be sitting in the right places so that I'm not quite on voice. What's odd is that I feel like I'm shouting and overpowering anyone else who's on stage--especially the more reserved qualities of H.C. and Noah. Jimmy (my character) bursts on stage with a bang. I sometimes worry that things are TOO exuberant or loud, but that may not be the case at all. The artistic director saw the show again last night and said a general "good work" to us. I'll have to ask him if volume was an issue or not.
Other notes were more about specific moments that just needed to be tightened. But a caveat was that speed for speed's sake is no good. So it's a tricky balance. Intent and meaning always have to be at the foreground--the speed of a scene or act or play will fall into place after intentions are established.
All of the reminders were great. It wasn't as if these notes were revolutionary (although the opening scene bit was significant), but it was good to hear from an "outsider" in a sense.
We've done one show with a new Starbuck. He'll be a permanent change in a couple weeks and stay with us for the rest of the run. The original Starbuck has to return to the Cities for work and such. This is a different situation than understudying. It's my understanding that an understudy must do everything as close as he/she can for the originally cast actor. But in this case, we've got an arrangement for a whole new actor to do, essentially, what he would do with a role. Does that make sense? In this role shift, the new actor has much more time and space to play with since he is owning the role in a way that an understudy wouldn't. Apologies if this is confusing. I also realize that no actor can completely mimic another actor's performance--understudy or not.
Needless to say, this run of the Rainmaker has been one of constant adjustments on small and large scales. It's rewarding, gratifying work.
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