A Question of Numbers
Posted by Gabriel Greene on 12/11/2006
Playwrights occasionally ask us how many characters their play should have – i.e., at what point does a theatre say, “We can’t afford that many actors”? While there are always certain economic constraints when producing a play, we generally feel this isn’t the best way of approaching one’s work. If a script ignites our passions, the number of characters isn’t necessarily a deterrent.
One way in which playwrights try to lessen the cast size is to “double” roles – that is, have an actor play more than one character. In the best cases, these decisions are not solely economic (”oh, hey, the woman playing the police chief can also play the surgeon, since they’re never on stage at the same time”), but also inform and are informed by the tone, style and major themes of the play.
Sonia Flew is a fine example. The six actors play two characters apiece, one in the first act, set in 2001 Minneapolis, and another in Act II, which takes place in Cuba in 1961. Because the play deals with the way in which Sonia reacts to two perceived betrayals by her family – first as an adult, and then, forty years earlier, as a child – having the same faces orbit her on stage reinforces the cyclical nature of the story. (Also, although it was perhaps unintentional, there is something neat about seeing Melinda Lopez assign larger roles in the second act to those actors who had smaller roles in the first act; it’s a vaguely Communistic ideal in an act set in newly-Communist Cuba.)