We’ve just completed our third day of rehearsal for Don DeLillo’s new play, Love-Lies-Bleeding. Don is here in town with us for these first days of rehearsal. Amy Morton is directing, with John Heard, Louis Cancelmi, Penelope Walker, Larry Kucharik, and myself in the cast.
For the first two days, we read through the script at the table. On the first day, as is customary, we read the play straight through. After the first read-through, again, as customary, we begin reading through the play, stopping and starting to ask questions, clarify intentions, query meaning. With a new play, if one is lucky as we are, to have the writer present, we can go directly to the source. The trick for the actors is not to feel inhibited – not to worry that one’s questions are stupid or obvious or totally off the point. (the trick for the writer, (my guess), is to neither despair at the learning curve required nor feel marginalized by this group who suddenly seem to feel an ownership over what had felt to be one’s own work). Don is modest and generous in the task – and also clear and strong in his point of view.
The great gift for me, in walking into a rehearsal room at Steppenwolf, is feeling like I am at home. I’ve never been directed by Amy but I have acted in plays with her numerous times (the first time, in a Remains Theatre production of Keith Reddin’s Big Time, in 1986. So, Amy and I have known one another as actors, for 20 years). Don and I met originally when he visited Steppenwolf for our production of Libra which John Malkovich adapted and directed for the stage. I came to know him better when I acted in his play Valparaiso, which Frank Galati directed on the Steppenwolf stage in 2000. So I feel a comfort in communicating with him.
Louis went through the School at Steppenwolf and then acted in our Garage production of Until We Find Each Other. Penelope, I had met before but not worked with. I’d not met John Heard before but I’d seen him act – most memorably, for me, in the movie After Hours. So in that weird (and wonderful) way that the acting community provides, we had a language, right at the jump.
Today, Amy began staging. This is always a woozy moment. Somehow, the move from the table to the rehearsal floor (on which the stage managers tape out the dimensions of the stage) feels huge. (”ooooow, What do I do with my body?”) I’m sure that anybody watching would think, “what’s the problem? Just move around, do the play.” But the inhabitation of the play, in body and voice and amid the real objects of a world, changes everything. Where one stands while saying line X utterly colors the nature of an exchange. (If I’m looking at my scene partner, I feel one thing. If I’m avoiding looking at him, I feel another). I feel incredibly lucky to have Amy as our guide. She is unerring in her nose for how to make the work active. Underlying all of her direction is the query, “what do you want?” What do you want and what are you willing to do to get it? That’s the drama.
Well, the cast, crew, and creative team are approaching the first public preview of John Kolvenbach’s Love Song tonight. A week and a half ago, the cast, director, and stage managers moved from the rehearsal hall, located down the street, into the theatre where they were joined by the designers and production crew. After an intensive period called “technical rehearsals” or “tech” which included a number of twelve hour work days, they arrived at the final dress rehearsal last night. It has been a longstanding tradition at Steppenwolf to invite veterans of former wars to the final dress rehearsal and it is always an honor to have them in the theatre. They tend to be a very lively and responsive audience and they are a tremendous presence as the actors begin bridging rehearsal and performance. Dennis Zacek, Artistic Director of Victory Gardens Theatre, refers to the audience, the final element to be added to the production process, as “the great teacher.”