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

Well, here we are in the middle of the second week of rehearsal for Sonia Flew. I am writing from the rehearsal room on a lunch break–this morning we’ve been going over the staging in act one, trying to solve problems, looking at the actor’s traffic patterns as they move around the stage, defining the timing of action and words: does he say, “I love you” before or after he puts the silverware down, and does she look at her watch first, or reach for the phone? How did we do it last time? Very unromantic work sometimes, and it can start to feel like a huge SAT logic problem with 5 actors, a christmas tree, a roast, 3 wine glasses, several coats, a trivet and a driedel. If the driedel’s on the coffee table when we start, which wine glass will move to the desk when the yellow scarf is put on the hat rack? Everyone is tired and retreats to seperate corners to chill out on the break, instead of chatting. The actors are taking notes in their scripts and trying to remember these dances with objects they have to learn, and then learn to do lightning fast.

It’s funny for me to be embroiled in this kind of work now, because the last week has been emotional for all of us. We have had two different guests come to speak with us who left Cuba for the United States when they were children, without their parents. The stories are different, but the tellings are very emotional. And it is the little details that we remember about the past that carry the emotional weight. What it felt like to quickly take family photographs before leaving your home forever at the age of 13. Did you think you would never see your parents again? What was the final good bye like in the airport? These stories are full of tears, and strange moments, and funny things also, of course. It felt like we were painting out the emotional world of the second act, where the events of one day in Havana in 1961 result in a young girl being put on a plane and sent away from her home forever.

As we spoke with our guests who had actually lived a version of this story, Vilma (who plays the mother, Pilar) finally asked, “But what would make a mother do that? What on earth could make a mother put her child on a plane when she had no one to receive her or keep her safe in America?” And Maria de Los Angeles Torres, who had writen a book about the Pedro Pan flights, paused and said, “I don’t know. In the end, I just don’t know.”

It feels like this is the immensely painful question we are all circling around as we journey through the process of creating what will be Sonia Flew.

And now, we keep that question with us as we wander through the first act, 2001 Minneapolis, a dance of silverware and gloves and bagels. And I’m thinking as I write this that actually, the physical mathematical work of creating act one is interesting in realtion to act two’s central question. Glass by glass, furniture by candle, we are making a home. We are bringing the set to life, the house to life, we are knitting a family together through problem solving, discussion, repetition, frustration. We’re making the blood and bones, the love and hate of a family, a stage family who really will live in this home through the course of the production.

And in act two, we will take a family apart. Piece by piece.

So, the weight of the painful question doesn’t leave us entirely, even among act one’s coffee cups. That is maybe why the actors are so quiet in the corners of the room. We start again in 10 minutes.

This entry was posted by Jessica Thebus on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Sonia Flew. 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.