The Joy in Huck Finn
Posted by Jürgen Hooper on 2/23/2007Well, I’ve found the joy again! I think I lost some of it in the post-tech jitters, but putting Huck up in front of an audience has really brought it back to an infectious degree. I didn’t stop smiling for quite a few hours after we came down today. Performing for high schoolers is such a welcome challenge, because in many ways they seem to be your most honest critics. They know when you’re bluffing and won’t ever let you get away with a rather half-assed performance, and I love it. It just brings up your consciousness of those not only on stage with you, but also watching you from the seats. But the show is just such a joy to perform and the three audiences who’ve seen it so far have been really taken with it…fantastic questions in the talk-backs and hopefully that’ll continue.
This has been such an amazing process and I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by such talented and friendly folk. It’s been different from any production I’ve worked on in awhile in its sense of collaboration, almost. Having the adapter, Laura Eason, there in the room with us for a good chunk of the process and back in the workshop was new. Seeing our choices and delivery directly influence a change here and there was as exciting as watching the musicians (and sweet lord are these guys too talented for their own good) building upon the groundwork laid out by Rick Sims. The music created for the show in that it doesn’t so much comment on but rather set the mood/scene and inform the action of the play just gives that much more life to the production – pretty darn infectious songs too. It’s turned me on to bluegrass more, I’ll say that much.
The play is well chosen for the audience too, in my opinion. When I told my mother I’d been offered the part of Huck, she was excited and asked, “Oh, the one where they paint the fence, right?” I had to tell her she was thinking of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and that Huck Finn was a bit more of an adult story. Unlike Tom Sawyer, which I read in middle school, Huck Finn was given to me in my sophomore year of high school, and appropriately I think. The angle Laura’s gone with her adaptation is one of the strongest themes in the book in the building and forming of a young man’s system of morals and ethics. Huck looks at the world around him - both his Pap’s view and the Widow Douglas’ – and the things that his society is telling him are morally right and acceptable and weighing it against these new experiences with Jim and these feelings of friendship for a person his society views as property. It’s a much darker and more serious work of satire than Tom Sawyer and wisely directed towards high schoolers. High school is right around that age where we start to question and build a system of morals and ethics for ourselves through which we will view and find our place in the world around us.
The process of putting Huck up is now complete and it’s been a challenge and a joy to rehearse. So far the audiences seem to be enjoying it as much as we are, and hopefully that will continue. Next time I’ll focus more on the performance angle. S’all from me for now.