Public Solitude
Posted by Martin McClendon on 7/31/2009
Martin McClendon, who plays Martin in Ensemble member Eric Simonson’s First Look play, Honest, is a professor of Theatre at College Carthage where Honest was first commissioned.
The role of Martin was written for him.
Honest was performed in an early student production up there with an all student cast, and Martin’s students were all invited to audition for this First Look Production.
Martin is blogging regularly to his students about his experiences here at Steppenwolf, and we thought we’d share them with you (you can find his previous entries here and here).
Blog #8 (July 23)
Opening night: sort of.
Yesterday was our first public performance of Honest. The day started for actors at 1pm with fight call. At 1:30pm, we ran the show for an invited audience of Steppenwolf staff members. There’s just something about performing for a group of seasoned theatre professionals working at the highest levels of American theatre: it can have an effect on your work. I felt nervous but also very excited and eager to do justice to Eric’s play for his peers. The run went well from my standpoint in technical terms, but I felt a little self conscious and Eric later gave us the note that Eric Hellman and I were a little too “in our heads,” wrapped up in our story but not as effective at getting it across to our audience. He exhorted us to remember the basics: “Remember who you are, what happened just before your scene, and what you are going for. Listen honestly to each other and make it seem like the first time these words have been said.” These are the basic skills we try to instill in acting students but they are ones that must be honed for a lifetime.
After the run, we worked scenes from the show until 6pm. Dinner break: 6pm-7:30pm. Equity call for actors is a half-hour before curtain. At 8pm, we started our second run of the day, this time for a full house of paying audience members! I felt very comfortable onstage and Eric’s adjustments helped a lot. I listened to scenes two and three (that I’m not in) and they sounded really good. Kelly, Katie, Lucas and Eric are a great cast, and there is a lot of acting power on the stage for this show. It’s a treat to work with these young whippersnappers.
After the show, actors were released but the tech and production staff stayed longer for a meeting. We will get our notes today at 5pm and go back into rehearsal for the next two days. First Look is different from most shows because it lets playwrights adjust their plays after seeing them before an audience. So while we did open for the public yesterday, we are going back to work today.
Blog #9 (July 27)
Well, we’ve got three shows under our belts now. Saturday’s 4:30pm show was attended by six Carthage students, three of whom were involved in the original production at Carthage. They were a great audience and I was a little nervous about performing for my students, especially those who were part of the original process. Erik Hellman (who plays Guy) described our first scene as “radioactive,” meaning we had an overabundance of energy that made us kind of buzz. Some lines got stepped on, and the pace was a tiny bit frantic. But this is splitting hairs; the show went very well.
Sunday’s 8pm show took another step forward. Plays don’t stop growing once the rehearsals end: indeed, opening night is just the beginning. There comes a point in the process where the text and the work you’ve done starts to support you, to hold you up. You don’t have to “work” as hard at making the connections onstage and figuring out your goals. It starts to flow of its own accord, and really resemble the progression of natural life. You get more comfortable onstage and experience what Robert Benedetti calls “public solitude,” the feeling that you really are in another place, not under observation by 90 people, not on a stage in front of an audience. That’s where the show started to go tonight. Actors who do regular runs of eight shows a week for four to six weeks or more get to really relish this feeling (the First Look series doesn’t have as many performances as Steppenwolf’s mainstage shows). This play is so complex that we could easily do eight shows a week and still be exploring, making new discoveries.