Out Onto the High Wire
Posted by Jim True-Frost on 7/14/2008
I recently joined the cast of August: Osage County, walking onstage for my first performance (replacing Ian Barford as Little Charles) only two nights after the show garnered its passel of Tony awards. I was nervous — it’s as if I had been asked to walk out onto the high wire with a circus family whose act had been carefully rehearsed and calibrated for a full year. The other replacements and I (including fellow ensemble member Molly Regan) had all seen the play before and we all had the same awed response to the tight ensemble and genuine chemistry; everyone was perfectly cast in their roles, some of them playing characters that were literally written for them. How do you jump into the middle of that?
The award euphoria helped us all overcome the terror of what we were trying to do — changing crews, mid-stream. Plus, looking across the table in the funeral dinner scene, I looked at the faces of my ensemble sisters Amy Morton, whom I first acted with in Road, in 1987; Mariann Mayberry, whom I directed in my first set of late night plays in 1988; Sally Murphy, whom I first acted with in my first play at Steppenwolf, Rondi Reed’s production of The Common Pursuit in 1988. If I couldn’t feel safe (and have a blast) acting without a net with this bunch, why was I in the business at all?
And it has been a blast. Three weeks later, we’re still earning our stripes (I still have colored tape on the piano keys to help me through my song in Act 3, and still wonder how anything I do as Little Charles could ever be as perfectly right as what Ian did.) But we’re finding our stride, and the show is very strong. I stopped worrying when I had dinner with Tracy Letts after our debut and he said, “Watching the replacements tonight I saw just what I hoped I’d see: that I’ve written a pretty darn good play and it’s immune to even a doofus like you.” (Or words to that effect.)