In the River
Posted by Deanna Dunagan on 6/13/2007
I am a Tracy Letts fan. I saw Killer Joe at the Next Theatre Lab in 1993 and was blown away by his poetic use of the vernacular and the profane. I saw Bug three times (four counting the movie) and Man From Nebraska twice. Never once did I envy the actors who were inhabiting the complex and/or tortured souls he had created. In fact, I was immensely grateful that I was able to visit these fascinating worlds without having to live there. And now I do. Have to live there.
I was so intimidated by the prospect of approaching this huge mountain of a play that in December I began physical therapy for my ailing knees and chronic back problems, I joined a gym and started working out EVERY DAY. I had a long way to go and I’ve had to cut back on the every day thing, so I’m still no athlete, but, after two weeks of rehearsal, I’m hanging in there. (Note to self: Don’t get too cocky; we still haven’t begun staging the fight in which Amy Morton, as my daughter, is supposed to pull out a hunk of my hair as we “crash through the French doors, tumble to the den floor.”)
And after two weeks I have found that I was using the wrong metaphor. This play is best approached (at least by me at this point) not as a mountain, but as a river. Each time I enter I try to shed my fear of the water and my expectations of exactly how to navigate the rapids and just plunge in, believing that we (fellow actors, director, playwright and technical artists) will arrive safely at our destination. (And here I am reminded of a line in a current commercial: Old Smokey’s never been too good at metaphors.)
It is a luxury to have the playwright in on the rehearsal process. Our director, Anna Shapiro, has spent over a year with this play and can answer most of our questions, but if she has any doubts, she can simply turn to him and ask, “Trace, what did you mean when you say…?” or “How is she feeling here?” One of my favorite moments early on was when Tracy came into rehearsals, asked us to find a page, and said, “I’d like to add a comma here.” Since then there have been other changes - two of my paragraphs have been flipped, a scene has been moved. There will be other changes. It’s all part of that moving current.