Fun rehearsal last night. Lots of tightening up, but with plenty of short-stream BSing pockets in between.
…As characters were sent to their rooms like children, (to live out our terms until next needed somewhere downstage), we were given open opportunity to bond in small groups.
…And with the first chance to address more than just blocking, Mr. Director was given ample opportunity to pick on us. Openly. With love. Building a natural theme to our interrelationships with him and one another.
…For instance, our Mr. Frank is The Problem Child.
…Apparently he always has been, and always will be. This charismatic individual, undertaking the grounding base of our production and it’s total through-line, is a 35 year-old Amazon employee by day, and occasional Burlesque dancer by night, with the energy of a one-year-old puppy.
…He is actually married (in real life) to our Mrs. Frank: A very centered school teacher, with a most calming essence…whom you can’t for the life of you, wrap your head around as being married to someone of her husband’s energy-content. Until it comes out that she too has a naughty side, also Burlesques upon occasion, and in fact was married on stage, during a show, at a bar, to said Mr. Frank, some years now ago.
…It’s always the quiet ones.
Our Margot (of physical appearance about 16, actual age 26) is a quiet, smiley, helpful Margot-ish being, (minus the doormat inclination), while our Anne goes toe-to-toe with her “father’s” bursts of natural enthusiasm, currently trying to be broken of a natural inclination to goose-step, and whose actual-Anne-age curiosity and innocents provides endless smiles and winks amongst the adults, making every beat of what could be a totally contrived moment of wonder and exuberance, into an actual, real-life, truly honest, first realization.
Our Miep: is a spitfire, currently performing in an all-female “Jesus Christ Superstar,” our Krahler is also our set-designer…which is terribly convenient to have around while performing on another production’s stage when things like,”wait, where the hell is the kitchen sink again, here or here?” comes up…and Dussel is one of the theatre’s Board Members.
My Peter is a quiet young fella, well-studied up on his role and it’s history, and is always exactly where he needs to be at precisely the right time. Freakishly centered for a teenage boy, until you find out he just finished a show up north, started the theater group at his school, and is currently (along with his full class-load), directing “Harry Potter: The Musical,” featuring a shit-ton of his own peers. One HAS to have one’s shit together for that kind of schedule.
…And then we reach the van Daans. Or, as it has been openly implied…in that it is literally our assigned reputation: the van Divas.
This is due in one part, to my fabulous musical-theatre-Director-and-performer-of-Bearish-persuasion, husband. And to another part, my last (and first) collaboration with this company.
… First off, husband and wife have already bonded, are loud and braying, and have had zero need to warm to one another’s ability at fighting openly, with gusto, while randomly swapping bitch-glances, and love-looks, by turn as needed. Second: Hubby has worked there a zillion times, and being of a certain persuasion in lifestyle, shares over-the-Anne-head double entendres with delicious slight-of-hand. Third: Mr. Director and I have an inside joke, that started out not as a joke at all, but now he’s comfortable enough with the circumstance (knowing I am too) to flail it out there without the need of kid-gloves.
…Actually, he still has the “kid-gloves,” only now he makes a point to make fun of the fact that he has them…working the hell out of constantly checking up on me to see that all is well in my proverbial artistic world.
“Are you alright?” “You have a question?” “You like that choice?” “What do you want here?” “Anything you need?” “You look like somethings wrong.”
…I didn’t understand the joke for all of the first week, (or perhaps it still wasn’t a joke at that point it time, I really don’t know.) Why I was always being picked out specifically, I couldn’t really understand, constantly following each question with a look of confusion and, “No, I’m fine.” “It works good for me.” “Sure.” And, “It’s just my face. It’s just how I look.”
…But by last night, it had all sunk in.
…Never having worked with him directly before, it took that long…I think for both of us…to see the humor of it, and corroborate with it, so that by halfway through last night’s scene working: the van Divas were fully acknowledge as a pair-set, and the new kid had made her solid spot within the family.
…Which makes doing what we need to do, so much easier. Because yes, even in the theatre, everyone needs to have their little “boxes” of who is who and what it what. Just like on-stage, we have our little parts to play. We have spent just enough time together to understand what those now are, and can therefore get straight to poking at one another through our cages, to rile one another up in all the best ways and build this suffocating world of life-on-top-of-one-another, that we need to build.
…All part of building a “company.”
And this’ll be a good one.
~D
