Returning from D.C. - June 27
Posted by Martha Lavey on 6/29/2006We completed our run of Love-Lies-Bleeding at the Kennedy Center on Sunday, June the 25th. In total, we did 11 performances – from Saturday, June the 17th through our closing on Sunday, the 25th. We were there at the invitation of the Kennedy Center as the inaugural production in their New Fund for American Plays initiative. We performed in the Terrace Theatre, a 472-seat proscenium on the Rooftop level of the Center.
I had a terrific time doing the Kennedy Center run. For one thing, it’s been awhile since I have had the experience of centering my days around the day’s performance(s). When I am in a play at Steppenwolf, my day is split between life as the artistic director, and my life as an actor. That split life is an enormous privilege – and a deep pleasure – but there is a particular charm in thinking exclusively as an actor. This is especially true when the site of the performance is a city as rich in urban and cultural life as Washington, D.C. We stayed at the George Washington University Inn in Foggy Bottom, close to the Kennedy Center and so strolled by the Watergate Hotel on our walk to the theater every night. Georgetown was a short walk away and it was an easy hop onto the Metro to reach the Mall (with all of its great memorials and museums).
It was great to return to the play after having had a several weeks’ break from it. Something mysterious happens when the play lies nascent in the consciousness of the actors. If it is a play that touches a deep place in the actors – as Love-Lies is, a new well of thought and feeling. Too, the Terrace Theatre is an exquisite space – the acoustics are superb and so the dynamic range of the voice is fully present and available.
Don came for our first weekend of performances, staying through the opening. It was great to see him and I think he was happy with the production in the new space. I called him today (Tuesday), just to report that the run had gone well and to touch base with him. He said, “and now you are free from reciting the lines.” I said, “Don, I enjoy reciting the lines.” (Thinking to myself, “I hope I am not just reciting the lines.” But not quibbling the point with him – he is a writer: of course he thinks of us as reciting the lines). Then he said, “I’m really glad that we did the play in Washington and I’m really glad it’s over.” I said, “Why? Why are you glad it’s over?” And he said, “Because I can stop thinking about it. When it was going on, it occupied my mind. Now I can think of other things.”
I thought that was interesting, It made me wonder – and I’ll have to ask Don – how having a play in performance differs from his experience of releasing a novel into the world. I mean, is the moment of letting go, with a novel, the moment when it appears in print? Is it when the novel receives its critical response? (Or does the self-consciousness even apply in the same way?) I’ll ask him.
I return to Steppenwolf to witness the first day of rehearsals for our three plays in the First Look Repertory of New Work. Tomorrow, I attend the Vets’ Night performance of Bruce Norris‘ The Unmentionables. Incredible: it’s late June and Steppenwolf is in the process (still) of birthing four new plays. (With, meanwhile, another new work, About Face’s production of Mary Zimmerman’s M. Proust in our Upstairs Theatre). I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to have a group of artists, to have a staff, and an audience, dedicated to making Steppenwolf the birth-site for so much new work. We are lucky, all of us, to have each other in our dedication to innovation. Thank you for that.