Steppenwolf Theatre Company Blog – Chicago Theater, World-Class Ensemble

Let’s have a moment of silence for Mug #1, an irreplaceable 1992 Barcelona Olympics mug. It was given a few solid thwacks on a kitchen chair, and upon the third such thwack, it decided that it did not want to be in my play anymore. I’ll eulogize it by saying it went to coffee-mug heaven in a glorious spray of ceramic shrapnel. Mug #2, an ugly golf mug, died in the line of duty after being dropped one too many times in a climactic moment. Many thanks to the tireless props masters for their patience.

Today is our day of tech rehearsal, which means Dexter and the designers play with lights and sound and the actors play for the first time in the Garage Theatre space. Lots of other stuff goes on, but I’m pretty much done with my work on the script for the First Look production. I gave the last few itty-bitty line cuts yesterday, and we’ll see how it all pulls together. There haven’t been too many major textual changes the past week. The bulk of the fussing this week was about finding and adjusting the tone of the play in the performance. Okay - TONE - one of those literary topics that resulted in a couple C grade essays in high school. The world of Baraboo is slightly skewed, and some of the humor comes from underplayed or inappropriate reactions to extreme situations, flippant cruelty, and flagrant squirrel abuse. That isn’t to say it’s wall-to-wall yuks. There are also quieter, menacing waters to navigate. Finding the right playing of this material is a challenge.

In the talk-back after our open rehearsal with the First Look 101 group, Dexter described the initial work as drawing a detailed picture, playing the gooey subtext and drama to know it’s there, and this most recent work rehearsal has been about erasing those lines of detail. Somebody asked me if I write with this tone in mind, and for this play, I did. I knew I didn’t want to censor anything audacious. Or unlikely. Or whimsical or creepy or violent. One of the reasons it was great working with Dexter on this play was that even as I was rewriting, there was never such a thing as going too far, and the actors were all on board with it, and it was helpful to have their voices when I was writing and re-writing dialogue. So this group of people (and a few broken coffee mugs) are very much in the fabric of this play.

This entry was posted by Marisa Wegrzyn on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 1:32 pm and is filed under First Look Rep (06). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.