Nice Enough to Pretend They Listen
Posted by Sean Graney on 10/05/2007
Hello Everyone,
How are you? I am going to write a little, teeny blog entry about working on The Elephant Man. I hope you find it interesting.
Do you read many blogs? I don’t. So bear with me.
We are at the end of the second week of rehearsal. And it is going great, except that a few days ago, one of our actors accidentally set herself on fire.
That’s not true.
I am really enjoying working with everyone. They are all really dreamy! We all seem to be speaking the same language and have a strong desire to make this play work. Next week we go into tech. And all of us will probably start to hate each other.
Speaking of tech, Steppenwolf has some pretty neat moving lights (even though we don’t get enough tech time to actually use them.)
Hmmmm, what else… Some of the syntax of the play is really awkward. One actress has to say the word “surely” an awful lot. I hate that word, but she does a good job with it.
And I am probably driving the nice people in the prop department crazy. I keep asking for different things, and then the next day, it’s there. But I think I ran the bank dry at this point. I did ask for live-trained, juggling lemurs, but the prop department didn’t get back to me about that one.
I guess that’s it for now. I have to start telling the actors what to do (and they are nice enough to pretend they listen to me.)
Thanks for reading this blog. If you have any questions please feel free to write back.
Respectfully yours,
Sean Graney
October 28th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Hi,
Just saw the play, today’s matinee. One question the cast responded to was why John Merrick wasn’t made up to look disfigured. The answer was that the playwrite suggested that he not be made up like that, possibly because it would get in the way of the audience gleaning some of the higher messages the play dealt with, like acceptance, what’s normal, the need to conform, Merrick’s keen insight into human nature–which transcended his disability. Even so, I still feel I would have enjoyed the play more if he had been made up to look disfigured because his disigurement is such an essential factor that goes into the examination of his life. I think it would have been more challenging for the audience to grapse some of the higher messages when viewing a disfigured Merrick. But the play seems to attract an intelligent audiene, so I think they would have been up to the challenge and would have appreciated it. From what I understand about staging (I’m a novice in this area, so I’m not sure I’m using “staging” correctly.) a play, the call as to how the characters are portrayed is more a director’s call than the playwrite’s. I understand the playwrite expressing his preference, but the final call is the director’s. As a writer, I can relate to that personally from having artists design my book covers in a way different than what I would do. I don’t always agree with them, but that’s their domain, so it’s their call. I just provide the written text. I’m thinking it’s the same with playwrites and directors.
Overall, I enjoyed the play and intrigued by some of the higher issues it dealt with. Some subtle humor was in it, and that was a nice touch. I’m glad the charaters were racially diverse yet race was not an overt issue dealt with.
Keep up the good work.