Day Twenty-Three: Socks

The costume and make-up managers (a tag team of older women) also do our laundry every day. If you want clothing washed , you just put it in a basket in each dressing room, and they take care of it before rehearsal. They've tagged some of the clothes as our own, and each person has a list of their costume pieces separated into those own by the theater and what we brought from home. When I arrive, I go to the laundry machines to get my socks and shirt. One of the ladies hands them to me, and I take them back to the dressing room and sit them down at my stations.

We each staked out our regular seats in there as soon as we started wearing costumes for rehearsals. If you start from the left side of the room, we're in this order: the two Gooper sons, the reverend, Brick, Big Daddy, me and the doctor. Because we're in such a confined space, we have to be extra polite. As Heinlein wrote, "moving parts in contact contact need lubrication," and while he was indeed a dirty old man, he also regarded courtesy as a social foundation. Courtesy is that lubricant. So we're polite. But as I start to dress and put on my make-up and put in my contacts, I return to my station to find the socks gone. They were laying on top of my t-shirt.

Now, I'm not a paranoid guy. I used to be. Used to scream "theft" whenever something went missing, and because those occasions usually ended with the object found under something or where I had forgotten it, I stopped the paranoia. And as the socks were gone, I bite my tongue and search the place. I go all through the dressing room, the stage, the backstage, the laundry room, the green room, the bathroom. Everywhere. I ask the crew if they had seen them and apologize to the costume ladies for losing theatre socks. It becomes a joke that Gooper can't keep his socks. And after a while I know, despite my hesitation to say so, that someone took them, and the first suspects were the Gooper kids. But the last thing a theatre needs is drama, so I decide to just wear my day socks and bring in another pair tomorrow. As I go back to the green room, one of the costume ladies asks if I had checked the feet of the other actors and I say I hadn't. She promptly did. And there they are on the preacher's feet.

He claims they are his and points out that these dark socks go with his black suit. As a dilettante artist, I have some notion of color. I know the difference between brown and black. Those are mine. He's convinced they're his. We talk to the costume lady from whom I got the socks earlier, and we all recite how the evening began regarding piecing our costumes together. I ask where he got them, and he says simply "off your t-shirt." I coulda screamed. This I expect from the kids, but not an adult whose been a regular actor. He obviously waited until I was gone to take them, and he didn't speak up when everyone knew I was looking for them. He took them off and handed them to me and I promptly put them on. Fuck athlete's foot.

This is a tiny thing. Tiny tiny tiny. But the reverend is not hitting home runs with me lately, and this doesn't help. We now have a precedent of backstage items walking away, and I hate that kind of atmosphere. I don't need that distraction on top of everything else.

Before the rehearsal, Mae leads us in warm-ups. We stretch a bit, and jump a bit and do basic theatre mouth exercises. "The black bug bled black blood." "She sells seashells by the sea shore." "Red leather, yellow leather." "Unique New York." And we open up the lungs and breathing muscles. Then we practice our curtain calls and go backstage. The eyeliner pencil is really handy as it draws easily. Usually one has to hold the pencil to a light bulb to melt the wax and get a good flow. But it doesn't wash off well. And last night I forgot to use the pencil on my eyebrows over the base make-up. Again, I don't know how much this makes a difference for the audience, but if Mae and Big Daddy and Big Mama are slapping it on, so shall I.

While I'm waiting for my cues, I read Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff with one ear cocked to the stage. I can't read but a few pages at a time out of eagerness to get going, and I close the book and wander off and recite my lines. I try not to put any inflection on them because I want the night's performance to have the fresh delivery. While there are snacks backstage (despite warning of eating in costume), I constrain myself to bites of leftover candy canes. My coat pockets are full of them. Before I go onstage in Act III, Victoria says I'm developing a fan club, and I attribute this to two possibilities:

1. I look a lot different than I did for read-throughs, and
2. Gooper's a damn fun role to play. I think he gives the show a sympathetic burst of energy in contrast to Big Daddy's bluster and anger.

But I do feel good about where I am with the role and confident about getting our first audience Wednesday night. The director even tells me before I leave that I can slow down Gooper's big speech. Wait, I can milk the big monologue and own the stage a little longer? Don't have to tell me twice.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical
Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are

Picture of the Day
The dressing room. My stuff is right of center. The clothes rack is on the left. See the brown liquid on the right? That's what drips from the ceiling.

Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are

Holy shit, I'm tired. That tech rehearsal plum wore me out.

Monday, before I work a half day, I run out to buy the theatre goods. Good Lord, buying make-up has gotten tricky. wanna buy a brown eyeliner pencil. Forget it. They have Onyx, Sage, Olive, Espresso, and a variety of other colors but no Brown. I settle for Espresso and buy Buff Beige base. It's not too much darker than my skin tone, and I hope the backstage crew OKs my color choice. It takes a while to find a color that's not too red or white. The theatre will allegedly provide rouge and powder.

I arrive a little earlier than normal. The director is concerned about getting kids out of there before their bedtimes. The theater's shoes are killing my feet, and I try to sit as much as I can. Everyone is dragging after Sunday. We're warned not to bump into the set columns as they might topple. I also am reminded which way to run behind the gallery windows with the kids. The two daughters and I ran in different directions, and the oldest girl won't let me live down that she was right. I bring a belt and tie tack to complete my costume and make a note on the costume sheet of which items belong to me. We're two nights way from a friends and family audience. This is the last dress rehearsal before an official crowd made up of sponsor company employees. We're also to begin communal warm-up exercises Tuesday night. Mae will lead those. The green room is a madhouse with kids and adults and costumers. This is usually more distracting than any audience, you should know. Kids are playing board games, dancing, imitating the adult actors, etc.

I've before expressed my concern about the reverend and doctor getting their lines down, and they seem to be getting better. Still a little halting in delivery. But tonight, the reverend missed his cue to walk onstage. Act II begins with him and Gooper talking on the balcony. When the stage-right manager called "places," I told her the preacher wasn't there. I don't think that registered. The curtain opened, I walked out, and there was not a reverend to be found. I said my line to the empty seats, and the cast on the other side of the balcony wall stood silent, waiting for the reverend discussion. About 15 seconds later, I hear the hurried footsteps. He takes his place, I give him a comforting smile and repeat my line. And we were off.

The stage-right manager said later that when she watches Gooper, she doesn't see me, and I appreciate that. I'm feeling really good about my part and my acting right now. I'm past anxiety and am enjoying the work. This is when the "play" of the play procedure kicks in. Everything before was work. But now, we're dressing up, we're spitting out Williams' profanity, we're talking like Foghorn Leghorn. This is the goods. I even improved a dramatic door closure that the director liked. But, fuck, those shoes hurt.

I'm taking a book to rehearsal tomorrow night to kill the boredom and block out encouraging eye contact with the kids. I have plenty of time to get into character while backstage in Act II. I'm jazzed about this. I'm ready for an audience.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical

Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical

Tech Rehearsal is always exhausting and takes all day, but this one seemed to fly by. We're all in costume for the first time as a group, even the kids. They are appropriately adorable. I am not. Big Mama has to wear a ton of makeup to age her, and that brings me to the first surprise of the day. Almost everyone arrives with a make-up kit. Everyone but me. The last theatre I worked with didn't require make-up. I've used make-up before. I know what layers to buy. Because of the bright stage lights, skin washes out, so we have to paint ourselves like Roman whores. Once the audience sees us in that light at a distance, they can't notice the make-up. Hopefully. We don't wear any tonight, but we will need it for the next three rehearsals.

The stage looks fantastic. There wasn't much they could add to it, but the new touches -- paintings, wall patterns, columns, etc. -- make the set look like a real 1950s plantation bedroom. And the yellow-toned stage lights help too. It's a warm set. The immediate backstage area is now a maze of black curtains to baffle offstage noises and hide our movements. Dark lights illuminate the back of the set and the two stations for the people talking to the sound booth and helping with sound cues. Behind all that, however, we are beset by a leaky air system, and nasty brown water plops down throughout the green room. This ready room has a siting table and chairs, a full kitchen, a sofa, and access to both dressing rooms. It's a zoo there. Kids, parents, crew, cast. Above us wafts the stage sounds over the speaker system (the stage is microphoned, not us), and we know we will be here the majority of the time for this day. We arrive at 12:30, and I bet we won't leave before 9. Before we start, Mae, who works at another theatre, informs us that she spotted actor harry Anderson ("Night Court," "Dave's World") and invited him to opening night. I have his autograph when I wrote to him during the "Night Court" heyday, but I'm not going to worry about any star audience members. I gotta a show to hold together.

I didn't bring make-up but I did bring contact lenses, hair gel, shoe polish, t-shirts, and my first wedding ring. My current one doesn't fit the time period, and I have a ring I'm no longer wearing. I asked Your Sis and she had no problem with it and even chastised me a smidge for thinking it would be a problem. I also bring sweet potato pie for tonight's potluck dinner. We'll do the entire show twice, but the first run will be for sound and light cues. We'll stop to adjust volume and let the director pick from among some possible sounds for fireworks, thunder, and dogs.

We do the show once, and it requires an extra hour to fix the effects. The kids don't arrive until the beginning of Act III as the full day might drive them stir crazy. Then we eat, dress, and get to work on the show again.

I get dressed up, and one of Gooper's kids says "you look 20 years weirder." He can't elaborate, but it is a big change, with gelled hair, no glasses, shaven face, and fancy duds. I try later to help him gel his hair, but it's already gooped for a modern style, and all I can do is laminate it with hair gel. My shoes are very tight, and I think this might help Gooper appear unsettled onstage. Or it might distract me to the point where I deliver a line from a completely different show. That's the mystery of live theatre, folks. Even we don't know what we're gonna say. We have to determine when and who will close the bedroom door and how to navigate the backstage curtains to move behind the set. But if we're dealing with those small details, we're obviously getting closer to the end.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words

Picture of the Day
Set's almost finished.

Day Twenty: Back To Words

The crew is polishing up the set, and we are back in the lobby to run lines. And this time we really run lines. We have our approximation of set pieces but we are instructed to dispense with acting and just say the lines, quickly and correctly. And we do, and it is a trick.

After weeks of delivering dialogue, one tends to memorize the cadence of it more than the words. It all becomes a giant song, and you walk in, hit your notes, and walk off. You might have Big Daddy operatic notes or a small solo like Gooper. Either way, the words start to vanish for you, and you're left making certain sounds at certain times. An exercise like this reminds you that the words have meaning, and that you can't ignore or forget what those meanings are. This is why some plays feel hollow. The actors have drifted away from the significance of the words. Of course they might be bad actors or they're directed badly or it could be an off night. But let's stick to my point which is this: You have to get back to the words.

Because we're speaking them tonight at Mach 3, we don't get the usual time between our lines to excavate our next lines from our memory. We're moving in a sort of cruise control, and this tells us and each other how well we have individually reconstructed the scripts in our heads. Unfortunately we only tackle Acts I and II, and much of Gooper's material goes unspoken.

When I'm in the wings in Acts I and II, I have plenty of time to ready my next lines. I envision the script pages in my head with my lines in highlighter. I know that Gooper has three lines on the right-hand side of the book when he's offstage in Act II. A little later, his lines start on the left-hand side, and he has four of them in one batch alternating with Brick's. It's a visual memory of what I have to do for that moment, but the words are memorized as audio not video. I hear them in my head or I remember the flow of the sentences. But the majority of my lines are not remembered as ink on the page. There are a few lines that emerge in my head during the play as printed words, and I've purposefully rigged them that way to help me through trouble spots.

Tonight, the older girls practice their big moment in Act I when Gooper's daughter mocks Maggie. They are alternating the role each night. It doesn't matter who has the lines as the child isn't identified by any character. A girl runs in, mocks, runs out. It shows Gooper and Mae talk aloud at home about their notions of Maggie and Brick. The kids are aping their parents. We still have no servants for the offstage lines, and we are exactly one week from our first audience.

I feel pretty OK with this small amount of time left. I have about five more rehearsals to get my Gooper settled, and I think that's plenty of chances.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House

Picture of the Day
A recent 3D NASA map of the dark matter theory of space. Scientists suspect dark matter might make up 99% of space, but it exists outside our perception. It's all theoretical, but dark matter provides a solution to some of the weaknesses of Einstein's theories. Gravity doesn't work the way it should, and dark matter helps explain that. But to those wary of such ideas, this has to sound like magic and no more advanced than any religious theory of Creation. That's a tiny Hubble on the left.

Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In the House

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing has 80 callbacks. EIGHTY! That's a South Asian army. All these hopeful kiddies present means parents are bogarting our parking spaces, and it takes a while for everyone to arrive at the stage. The costumer has outfits for various folks like the reverend and Maggie and Mama. Mae tries on another dress, and it's brilliant scarlet. It might be too much strong for anyone other than Maggie, the lead. Doc is out of town until Sunday, and the director tells us to make the play march tonight. Curtail the dramatic pauses and finish quickly.

The stage manager tells us that we will take photos right after the first Sunday show, a move that I disagree with. It's better to take pictures before a performance when we're not drenched with sweat, make-up running down our cheeks. We're also having an opening night dinner after the show and the cast receives one free drink each. I will have to pass as no one I know will be there opening night, and I have to drive home. We're to arrive this Sunday at 12:30 for the tech rehearsal, and we'll stop at 5 for dinner before running through the entire show.

She also has a prop table for us. Butcher paper covers a long table, and the outline of each item is penciled in and labeled. I have two props so far, a briefcase and a birthday cake. It's just a block of bluefoam tonight, but we're trying the stage candles tonight to see how well they burn.

The stage has even more new items, including a chandelier, faux wallpaper, and bar items. As Reverend Tooker walks center stage in his outfit, a piece of the chandelier falls onto the bar, and now we think it's possessed by demons. Or maybe he muttered "Macbeth" under his voice. I dunno.

Because we're trying to hurry along, our rhythm is shot to hell, and we make mistakes. Doc's absence doesn't help, especially in the third act, when so many of us talk to him. The reverend still has line trouble, and because the majority of his stage lines are to Gooper, it throws me off as well. We're gonna have to sit down together so he can get them straight.

I leave the stage in Act 2 to get and light the cake, but the candles go out as soon as I re-enter. Later, I get to hand a lit sparkler to the youngest Gooper child for her crazy-brat screaming scene. She runs back to me and hands me the sparkler, and I try to find a place to extinguish it, surrounded as I am by lumber, sawdust, old paint, old curtains, and probably Warner Brother Acme bombs painted to look like Christmas ornaments. Big Daddy compliments me, saying it sounded like Gooper has some Big Daddy in him, and I assume that comes from my frustration seeping out during my big monologue.

After the play, we're told to move back in the wings to make our offstage lines sound further away from the audience. The director has some moments during his notes where he doesn't know what he was trying to tell himself. I see that happen every play. Thursday's run will be only for Acts I and II, and hopefully will be short. I will be there despite my minuscule stage time.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse

Picture of the Day
Maggie prepares to go onstage in Act 2. You can see Brick to the right, his left foot encased in fake plaster.

I Had the Night Off

It snowed all day here in Asheville but it only started to pile up around 4 p.m. Mayberry, of course, got the barest trace, but enough for Your Sis to get a 2-hour delay at work Wednesday morning. We met up for steaks last night, and returned home to watch TiFauxed shows.

"Simply Ming" featured recipes with mole sauce and a cooking segment with Queer Eye's Ted Allen. Now there's a guy who needs his own Food Network show. He's smart, funny, accustomed to a camera, and he's gay. The latter is just about the only untapped demographic the show left for a new host (the loud cajun, the large Italian, the dainty caterer, the tomboy chef, the Southern aunt, the hyperintelligent house husband, the japanese expert, the British partyboy).

We also caught a "Colbert Report" rerun, and Your Sis has become quite the fan. This from a woman who prides herself on a lack of funny bone.

I then read my monthly haul of comics and drifted off to sleep. This morning I awoke and ran my lines in the shower. Thankfully, Your Sis had already gone to work so she couldn't hear my Southern gargle.

I also determined what my first mini-comic will be, and it's a story I've had percolating for a few years now. I'm still waiting to hear back about Greenville activities for you.


Moving Picture of the Day
Bruce Campbell's Old Spice TV ad. I had no idea this existed until it ran during the Patriots-Jets game Sunday. And as it continued, the laughter built up in my belly until the ad ended, and I could bray like a mule. He's a geek god.

In the News
Bush unveils his not-so-secret Iraq plan tonight. Essentially, he's fighting bigger, not smarter. And then there's still the problem of making religion factions get along.

+ + +

Apple's new gadget is a mobile communications hub, providing phone, browsing and music. They also allegedly played Beatles music on it during the grand announcement which suggests iTunes can finally can distribute their music.

Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse

I arrive 20 minutes early to run lines with Mae. We're both playing with pauses and inflection, and that leads to mutual confusion about each other's next line. We sit on the stage couch and quickly hit our moments of quick dialogue. We're to interrupt the other a lot, and we want to appear to be literally thick as thieves. Mae and Gooper are another example of a bad marriage, but they have the same goal, unlike the relationships of Daddy/Mama and Brick/Maggie.

Before we rehearse, the director says he indeed wants Gooper to bring out the birthday cake in Act II. We had talked about this before. I'm handed a square of foam padding for now, and I walk in as the kids gather to sing to Daddy and put the cake on the coffee table in front of everyone. It leaves me with little time to get out of the audience's way, and we'll clean that movement up later. During rehearsal, I notice other actors walk behind the gallery windows, so it's not just Gooper, and it will appear intentional to the audience. The costume director shows me the shoes she found for me; they fit, and I volunteer to bring in brown shoe polish for them. There are more auditions tonight, and a stream of people runs past the stage-right wings and out to the lobby. The kids are a little energetic tonight too, and things get distracting. There are some problems with lines with all the movement and noise.

The reverend and I try some stage business, and we both miss our cues as we navigate the new stage-right wall edge. I have my worst night so far, and blank utterly on a line in Act III. I even say the same line twice because I assume someone else made a mistake. The stage manager shouts out what I'm supposed to say, and I pick it up, a little shocked. I now have a sense of distrust in my lines, and that anxiety helps the performance, I think. Gooper feels edgy for the rest of the show. In fact, the doctor compliments me after the run-through, and it's all I can do to deflect it by saying I bumbled my way to the end. Big Mama, however, EMERGES tonight, and she hits her Act III moments dead on. She even backs me up when she confronts Gooper. She's never bowed up to him before, and because this is her moment, I go with it, stepping back and giving her as much unease as I can, and after the line screw-up, it's considerable. So now I'll run my lines mentally every night just to ensure I have them comfortably accessible before I go onstage.

Mae comes around after rehearsal to mention an Act II line she's stretching out for effect and asks if I can give her that moment before cutting in. It's something I've done every night, assuming she's forgotten something. But I know now to wait until she's through. The post-show notes are short tonight. The director says I'm to really yell for Mama as Act III begins, and I'm to learn a fieldhand song to join an offstage chorus at the end of Act II. Tuesday is scheduled now to be for certain scenes, and I learn I have the night off. I also see my costume hanging in the dressing room, and it has no bowtie. Just a regular tie. Good, I won't have to relearn how to tie it again.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper

Picture of the Day
Before we leave, we're shown the cards and posters for the show. The theatre website also has a write-up about the show.

Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper

We're two weeks from opening night, and this is my first Sunday rehearsal. The stage has an expanded set (see below).

You might not be able to see it but the back of the set is not a full wall. The big windows will float in place. The same trick was used in Greenville's Glass Menagerie set to suggest the play is set in abstracted reality. So far, Gooper is the only one who walks behind those windows (as he searches for Big Mama), and I wonder if the audience will see just one actor move there the entire play and think it was a mistake.

We start at 6:30 instead of the usual seven. The theatre is holding auditions for Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing backstage, and we're to use the lobby bathrooms. I remember that book fondly from my elementary school days. While Act I commences, I ask the theatre office manager (with whom I share a high school) about the show and whether certain scenes from the book make it into the play. Big Mama wonders if her son will get a chance to try out; he's currently playing Gooper's eldest son.

I mentally run through my lines as the play continues. Tonight I try some new acting touches in hopes of fleshing out the role a bit. Now that the lines are solid, I got to get to acting. There are two considerations at work:

1) This is Tennessee Williams. It's not naturalism. People say and do things in stylized manners. Yet Gooper is straight-forward. He has no wasted lines, no heavy repetition, no space-staring monologues. So should I keep him a grounded, focused guy, or does he require some arched style to keep him in the same play as the other roles?

2) Whatever I discover works for Gooper has to be set quickly to maintain consistency. We're within 2 weeks of the first show. I can't throw off the actors, and I'd like to have Gooper fully realized by next Sunday's tech rehearsal.

The show goes by pretty well, and the growing set helps. Grabbing a prop or leaning on furniture allows for body expression to work with the lines. Unfortunately, Gooper does little more than pace and stand. And that leaves me with idle hands, and I worry I'll repeat my gestures too much. Hands on hips, fingers kneading the forehead, arms crossed, hands wringing. Except for a moment I improvised early on, Gooper doesn't touch anyone. He is physically isolated. There is a moment at the end where he stands at the bar, and I hope to dramatically slam down a glass to show he's barely holding back his frustration.

Big Mama has stapled two script pages to the wall so she can read her offstage phone calls. I've seen this twice before in my other two county theatres, and it's something I can't do. But then again, I'm not a mother with a full-time job. Whatever gets her through the night, it's alright. There are some calls for line tonight, but we've been away from the stage for two days. This is the time to do request help. Next week, when we're a few days from the opening curtain, we'll work on improvising our way around mind blanks.

We finish about 9:15, and the director gives us notes. We're all seated onstage, and he has detailed instructions for everyone. I'm to slow down my offstage lines, and I can easily do that by getting prepared earlier. We're all told how to pronounce "reverend Tooker" -- it's "took her," not "TWO-ker" -- and Mae and Gooper are complimented on their moment of mocking Brick in Act III (one of Gooper's most dickish, older brother moments).

I make notes about how to move differently in the next rehearsal, hoping it will underscore his frustration with the proceedings. I want him to leave the stage defeated. The play has no concrete conclusion. It ends, yes, but the story is not definitively over. I want Gooper to sell the probable post-curtain story.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right

I spent the weekend hanging out with some Bervard College buddies. One drove into town to meet a date, and the other is a beaming mom of a two-year-old. Much food was eaten.

The NFL
Eight teams remain, and Your Sis and I have chosen two of the survivors: New England and Philadelphia.

Picture of the Day
The set, it grows.

Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right

We're back in the lobby tonight as stage construction continues. I haven't looked at my script at all since Wednesday, and I'm feeling wholly confident about my lines. And that usually means trouble. A small flutter of nervousness is required for stage work, else you get complacent and over-confident and your lines scamper off into oblivion. My worst stage work has resulted from a lack of anxiety. Not gut-crushing anxiety (although I used to take Immodium before every performance back in South Carolina), but just enough to make your ears stand up. I run my lines once after work and again stumble over the "poisoning of the system" line. I repeat it five times to get it right.

At the theatre, the director tells Big Daddy and me that he has trick cigars for us to use. I'm already thinking for dickish ways for Gooper to light it, maybe lighting a match on the doorframe. We all sit on the improvised furniture to take notes from last night. Act III is so new to folks that we don't have many notes for it, but there are detailed enunciation notes for Acts I and II. I am again reminded to say all my Act I lines offstage left. I glance through the script as notes are given, and I discover that my memory is so active that I'm memorizing random lines as I read. So I stop. I don't need confusing bits of dialogue orbiting my lines. The director suggests we start "imaging" our lines, meaning we're to visualize what our character wants in each bit of dialogue. I think I'm OK on this. I know what kind of guy Gooper is and how he might behave, but I won't cement his reactions to others until we're closer to performance. I believe in consistency onstage; I don't want to throw off the other actors with inc front of an audience. They;ll do enough to distract us on their own.

As we run Act II, there are still planty of problems with lines. Some of us grab scripts midway. The assistant stage manager is offering lines when prompted and sometimes when she's not. In one moment, Gooper starts his sales pitch and corrects himself to find the right angle. I do this and sell the correction with a hard stop, a chuckle, and the next words. Victoria thinks this is real, that I'm really confused, and she says "no, you're OK." I'm now really confused. I knew that was right, but did it not come out right? I stare blankly at her, and she again assures me I had it right. Then I realize what happened, but I don't want to point it out. She bought my gesture as real, but there's no need to delineate that. Let her think I slipped up. Let's keep the scene moving. But now I'm lost. I can't remember where to pick up from. Or rather, I know where I am, but I can't find the words to start again. I take a second, find the place mentally, and start just as Maggie, trying to spark my memory, starts her line before mine. We're talking all over each other. We both realize it, crack up, apologize, and pause. She says her line, and I get back into the sales pitch. I have prop paperwork to show Big mama tonight, and it helps the acting. I'm already using it in gestures. It feels natural.

Unfortunately, I do miss a line tonight as Doc Baugh has trouble with his. Now, I'm starting to worry about him and the Reverend. They have the fewest lines of any adults in the play, and they are among the oldest. I've had my moments onstage with older men who have line trouble. They've blanked. Horribly. And I'm beginning to wonder abut these two. Nice guys. Chatty. Happy. But if I can sit myself down and get Gooper's lines, they can get theirs. They have maybe thirty lines between them the whole play. When Doc has his trouble in this scene, it throws me off. So I'm going to have to prepare for this kind of moment in front of an audience. I'll need emergency cue lines in my head for them and may have to adjust my lines to pick up where they dropped off.

After running Act III, the stage manager hands out scraps of paper noting where we deviated from the script. I don't have many citations, and I can correct myself over the weekend. The rest of us are dismissed as Maggie, Brick, and Big Daddy work on scenes from the first two acts. It's an early night. We pick up again Sunday night, my first Sunday night rehearsal of the play.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety

+ + +

The NFL playoffs start tomorrow, so let's take a look back at the picks Your Sis and I made:

The NFL
Her Teams
New England (12-4), NY Jets (10-6), Oakland (2-14)
Philly (10-6), Detroit (3-13)

Oakland's coach quit after one season, Detroit's offensive coordinator (a former head coach in St. Louis) is rumored to be a frontrunner for the now-vacant Miami Atlanta and Miami jobs. New England and the Jets play each other this weekend. Philly plays the New York Giants this weekend. The playoffs are on, and if you lose, you go home.
Number of her teams that could win the Super Bowl: 3

My Teams
Miami (6-10), Pittsburgh (8-8)
Philly (10-6), Carolina (8-8)

The coaches of both Miami and Pittsburgh left this week, and Carolina stumbled to a .500 record to end the season.
Number of her teams that could win the Super Bowl: 1 (and it's one that she picked also)

Picture of the Day
The 300 posters are out in Great Britain. This is the best one.

Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety

I spent more than an hour between work and rehearsal going over my Act III lines to the point that my head was aching and I was mixing up their order. I had to stop. I worried that I had jumbled myself up beyond repair for the night with only a half hour before I was to show up at the theatre.

I arrive to find some construction progress. This is the set with a tad more decor. We have the shell of a stereo and a newer coffee table and a few props including those for the bar.

I was growing more and more impatient and anxious to get Act III rolling and see how well I knew the lines. The reverend and doctor were going over their scripts in the wings as we readied our entrances. And then the announcement came that we were to start from the top, meaning the beginning of the play. Act III would not start for another 2 hours.

I had the Act I and II lines cold, but discovered that the director had decided to Gooper would say all his Act I lines from stage left, not stage right as I had delivered them before. Big Mama heard my first line to her and asked where I would be. When I heard the director tell her, I jogged to the other side for the rest of the act's lines. I'm not standing in place the whole time. I recognize when my lines are coming due and can wander backstage to view the set pieces or chat with actors or sit and sketch. But I don't look at the script. Not at this stage of the play. I would only do that if I badly fumbled a line or a cue. I spy a box of old telephones, a fleet of hanging chandeliers, a 1965 Americana annual (with articles about the proposed Gemini space flights), and the gobos used to create shapes on the spotlights.

When Act III does roll around, it goes badly for the cast. They simply haven't studied the material to the degree I have, and again, it's because they have more lines to cover throughout the play. But also, Act III is the busiest for the actors. Everyone is onstage, milling around and turning to address each other. So when I have my minor slips, I don't feel so bad. I'm the only one pf the major characters not calling for a line. At one point, I don't shout a line during an argument. It's not necessary, but it is there, and I catch eye contact with the director to let him know I realize the error. I also had trouble with the line "It's the poisoning of the whole system due to the failure of the body to eliminate it's poisons." I'm not worried about acting tonight, just getting the right lines out loud.

When we're through, the director says he'll give notes to us before Thursday's rehearsal to draw tonight's work to a close. It's 10 p.m., and the play is running right at 2 hours and 40 minutes. With one planned intermission, we have to trim that down.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines

Picture of the Day
The set so far. That's Doc Baugh on the left, looking at his script.


In the News
The new Congress is sworn in today with a "100 hours" plan for pushing new legislation. This is a bold move, but foolhardy. They Dems haven't enjoyed this kind of power in 12 years, and they're rushing to get all their platform items addressed before the inevitable scandal derails their momentum. It's been two months since the election, and while they may still be flush with excitement and ceremony, we the people have considered them the majority since the results were announced. The party loyalists may have great expectations about progress and reform, but that's a minority within one party. Inevitably we will hear soon about how the New Boss is bullying the Old Boss by skirting house tradition and courtesy, and that's just the schoolyard bickering that creates constituent apathy. Also, Bush seems intent on doing what he planned all along in Iraq, regardless of a perceived Democrat mandate.

The crucial matter for the Dems is to scotch the long-held stereotype of their party as free spenders and pro-bureaucracy. The GOP has inflated the budget deficit to finance a larger government. The Dems have to trim spending to finance their core programs without raising taxes. They do that, and they take away the accusatory GOP cliches. The GOP has to decide which philosophy segment to pursue: Log Cabin, neo-con, moderate, etc. and gel around that in preparation for the 2008 election. But it's much more likely the party will move centrist to separate itself from the administration.

Day Fourteen: The Lines

First of all, I had to shave for Gooper, and now my face is freezing cold. I feel every stir of the air upon my chin.

Because the stage crew is assembling the set, we're rehearsing in the lobby tonight. We move around some benches and tables to make a small recreation of the stage. Maggie isn't feeling well. We get the new schedules, and it starts to dawn on everyone that we open in about two weeks. This means we'll rehearse or perform 13 days out of a 15-day stretch starting Sunday, Jan. 7 and ending on the 21st. The 14th will be a tech rehearsal so the lights and sounds can be set. That's always a long day for everyone.

Tonight we try Acts I and II without scripts. The stage managers will prompt us if we need it. I have this set of lines down cold. Gooper has maybe 20 lines total for these acts. The principals however have a shitload. Maggie and Big Daddy ARE Acts I and II, respectively, and the very least I can do in this production is to have my lines down so the director and managers only have to worry about the main characters. They do call for lines a lot tonight, including an unfortunate moment in Act II when Big Daddy is flummoxed by real, mysterious people outside the lobby using their outdoor voices. It knocks him of the rails for a while. There are many calls of "line" from the actors as they try to move forward.

I am starving as my body adjusts from two weeks of holiday eating. I ration myself a candy cane throughout the night as I'm offstage for most of the play here. I sketch an awful lot. There's no way of knowing how well the play is shaping tonight, nor well we know Wednesday, as this is the first time we're really forgoing the scripts. I already feel unshackled and can give Gooper some small moments of eye contact and significant posturing.

The kids, who have the fewest lines, aren't very sure of what they're doing, and I wonder how much time they are practicing with their parents. The director treats them like any other member of the cast, which I endorse. When they screw up (as we all will) we stop to get their material right before they can commit it wrongly to memory. But I wonder how much the nightly notes will adhere to their brains. I also wonder how much all this business around the rehearsals distracts them.

Running lines at home and among the cast are distinct; even I (a seasoned pro in comparison) get nervous as I prepare for my cues. I know what they are, and I know what I'm to say, but the actor before me may have memorized the line differently, and I have to be ready for that. The process for the play began with a rough notion of Gooper throughout the play which helped me memorize lines, leading to a broadened idea of how to perform Gooper. What I'm doing know is vastly different that how I started, and this new incarnation will sharpen greatly in these next few weeks.

Act Three is Wednesday night, and I spent the weekend cementing the lines of memory. I've run in them literally in my sleep, and correctly, I might add. And I find myself reciting them mentally before I doze off at night and right after I wake up. It's memory boot camp fueled by panic that I won't be prepared. Frankly, there's ego involved. I want to be the first of the six major character actors to have my stuff ready. And as the one with the least lines, I should. As nice a role as this is on its own, it's also an investment role for future shows. I want to show them I'm a good, reliable actor to have around.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie

Picture of the Day
This is the stage-left side of the set. The bed headboard will fill the large, open space.

Day Thirteen: The Quickie

It's been a week since my last rehearsal, and this week is shortened because of Christmas. Tuesday was for Act One (I'm offstage). Wednesday was for Act Two (I'm onstage for about ten minutes). Thursday was for Act Three. But we knew that Big Mama would not be there as she was driving back from Texas. I've spent this holiday break going over my lines, and Act Three is a mess for Gooper. His lines are arbitrary and repetitive. It's been a struggle, and Thursday provides my last runthrough before we move offbook next week.

I luckily survived two hours of ice skating at the civic center and will not have to act with a real broken leg to match Brick's fake one.

Big Mama is indeed not there. But neither are the kids. And neither is Mae. She, I learn, has a death in the family. But she didn't leave a message about her absence. And the kids are definitely scheduled to arrive. We sit for a while, and Les the director says we'll salvage the night by doing a simple run through Act Three. No movement and without scripts if we can manage. I can do some of Act Three off-book, but I was planning on the stage movement to cement lines in my head. Big Daddy asks for lines a few times as does Maggie. But Brick, I think, has his lines down. Doc Baugh has some trouble but not much, and Reverend Tooker is reading for himself and Big Mama. The Director reads for Mae.

We finish and chat for a bit. Mostly we share theatre horror stories. Like how, for Student Prince, the Spartanburg Repertory Company decided to use a real dead chicken instead of a plastic one for a minuscule punchline. My character (one of two I had for the show because Spartanburg men refuse to work musicals) carries in the chicken to prove the Prince's valet could hunt. It doesn't serve the plot at all, but they decide to worry about this detail. So they buy a frozen chicken and hand it to me. And the show ran three weekends. With one thawing chicken in a cooler with no ice. And I got to carry it. Big Daddy mentions that he had to wear a foam fat suit in Atlanta during an outdoor summer theatre show. And they only washed it once. The director says that he was cast as the cook for Mother Courage and Her Daughters, and he was required to pluck a real chicken onstage.

The production meetings held before rehearsals allows the crew to hammer out details, and discussions apparently moved back to the language. The director says we might cut "fucking" out and tells the true story he heard from the new managing director:

A box-office employee answers the phone to hear an old lady.

Her: Does your current play have bad language?
Him: Yes, it does.
Her: Is the f-word used?
Him: Yes, it is.
Her: How many times?
Him: I don't know.
Her: (pause) Seven times is acceptable.

We then talk about theatre prudes, like the old people who walked out of one of my Barefoot in the Park shows because the young wife walks around in her slip for ten minutes. This was also the young, local all-girls-college actress I got to kiss every night for two months. God bless theatre. Big Daddy says he advised a local Baptist group to see Ah, Wilderness! at his theatre only to see them walk out, hold a prayer meeting on the theatre steps and demand their money back. All over one line: "They're making a preacher out of you." Victoria the Assistant Stage Manager says a group of home-schoolers left a recent Once Upon A Mattress show when it became obvious a pregnant character wasn't married.

The director then says we're to go home and come back Tuesday to run through Acts I and II. We're to be off-book. I call Heidi and meet up with her family on the corner and tell them they didn't miss anything, just a bunch of actors sitting around. I've got six days to nail down my Act Three lines, and I can do it. I just have to sit down and do so.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory

Moving Picture of the Day
While we were away for the holidays, the new Fantastic Four sequel teaser was released. All us geeks are aflutter over the inclusion of Silver Surfer, for not is he a cool '60s bit of design, but he almost guarantees the inclusion of Galactus, the World Eater.


Galactus remains Marvel's signature cosmic entity after his introduction more than 40 years ago. But will we see the classic Space Pope Kirby design or a new modern version?

Day Twelve: Memory

Big Daddy, Brick, and Maggie are there early to take promo pictures for the local press. They are in costume. Brick has a SWANK purple robe and his cast. Big Daddy has a white suit, and Maggie has a thin violet dress. We start right around seven and run through the play. I have spent a few hours memorizing and running my lines. Tonight, I look at the script very little as I wait offstage for my cue lines.

It's nerve-wracking because the lines haven't truly taken root in my brain, and I don't quite trust they'll be ripe when the time comes. And as I'm saying the lines, they feel weird. But as soon as they are out in the air, I know that I have them. In fact, my only memory snafu happens in Act Two, when I change "we gave them that thing for a third anniversary present" into "we gave them that thing three years ago for an anniversary present." No one notices. It's not important; the next line has nothing to do with what Gooper says. I learn my lines based on who speaks last, not what they say. That way I can get my line right even if they mess up.

After a quick break in the middle of Act Two, we finish the play eight minutes faster than we did Wednesday. As that time will shrink even more once we abandon the scripts. I have just one more rehearsal next week before we convene in the new year. I'll memorize Act Three lines in the next few days to try those out. This is the chore of acting. There's no mnemonic device to get around sitting and learning.

I think I did OK for acting. I'm still not vocally hitting all my lines as I'd like. But sometimes, my breath flow will make a line's cadence change in a way that I think works better. I note in the script how to vocalize that line the same way by either underline words to peak with or drawing lines curving up or down to suggest how I'll push them out of my mouth. We perform.

Looking at the calendar, I note that we open the curtain in less than a month: January 19.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage

Picture Link of the Day
Here's what it looks like inside a small comics convention. This is a page for the Greenville show where I picked up my recent anthology goodies.

Day Eleven: Onstage

We arrive to discover we are now working on the stage. It's my first time seeing the space, and it's right nice. The decor is yellow, and it seats about 450 in a wide arc. The stage has a good width and depth, and it has a flat wall backing. I help move our practice chairs and bed upstairs, and after a while we get to work.

The director and stage managers sit at tables on the edge of the stage watching us move through the play. And we are doing the whole play tonight. Gooper's fairly inactive for the first chunk of play, and I have plenty of time to try to memorize my lines.

There's two ways to do this that work for me, and they work in conjunction. First, I memorize all my lines as a long list of script. I'll learn each line and add it to the list and then recite the list. If I screw up a line (and I check the script occasionally), I have to start over and recite the list from the beginning. This is my brain's way of using slight negative reinforcement.

The second method to memorize is the cue lines, the dialogue that leads into my lines. And I can't do this in an arbitrary way. I can't just know the lines; I have to know where in the play they are and what the actors are doing. So, yeah, I have to learn the flow of the play -- how each scene plays out and why Gooper talks when he does. Again, I have the much easier part among the principals: Daddy, mama, Brick, Maggie, Mae and Gooper. That leaves only the doctor, the reverend, and the kids. Oh, and the servants. Those parts we have yet to cast, but then again, they don't appear onstage at all. Anyone can do them. If I were a director, I would raffle off the roles as a fund-raiser. (Want a stupendously easy part in a play? Just read these five lines out of the book when cued. Must speak loud, must not be late. All money raised goes to Krispy Kreme and a case of Sprite.)

I can't just read the script and memorize it. Well, I can, but the job is made much easier if I have stage movement to help cue me. But I only have two more rehearsal days before we are to return to work off-book. So I can't just rely on movement memorization. I will have to sit by myself with the script and train my brain. Mae confides to me that she can manage Act One but hasn't tried to memorize Act Three yet. If forced at gunpoint, I can do Act One and Two offbook right now (quick check ... yeah, I can do that), but Three is Gooper's biggest scene, and I'll say I have about 40% of that set to memory.

When I'm not mentally screaming at my stupid sieve of a brain, I look at the backstage area and the prop room. There's a jukebox devoid of records, a row of 1950s salon hairdryers (has to be for Steel Magnolias), a couple of thrones, a styrofoam barbell, and a couple of suits of armor. And I'm a contented geek. I love being in a theatre, and while I'm not backstage, I walk the aisles to see the stage and seats and check out the large production posters in the lobby.

I sing onstage for the first time in years. Gooper and Mae lead the kids in singing Happy Birthday. Susan the stage manger tells me later that I have a great singing voice, but I don't have to work a big range with that song. But it does give me a little encouragement to at least consider trying out for a musical later. Probably chorus, though.

The stage does make for a slightly larger working area but not so drastic that we have to move too awfully quick to get from here to there. The rehearsal runs almost three full hours, but that includes some stopping. Once we get the scripts out of our hands, the play will speed up tremendously, I'm sure.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages

Pictures of the Day

This is the director and managers watching Maggie in Act One.

Day Ten: Pictures and Pages

We arrive early for promotional pictures and program headshots. The theatre office manager takes the pictures which is a much nicer arrangement than that of my last theatre. There, we had to make appointments with a third party and pay $100 a sitting. If you partnered up with someone, you could split the cost, but still.

I'm the first to arrive, and I poke my head into the costume room to say to Linda. She asks me try on two suits for Gooper. Both brownish, but one much too large. There's a screen in the corner to change behind, and while I make conversational noise to ensure everyone knows I'm there, Maggie walks in on me. She was hoping to try on her dress, and I'm covered up enough to avoid embarrassment. Although, once you do theatre, you lose that fear. You have to.

Sometimes you change clothes in the wings of the stage, and expediency trumps humility. Also, this is a bonus. The very best thing about high-school drama was seeing a popular cheerleader girl change clothes backstage. This was a fact I cheerfully unloaded on the bullies who called me gay. If I was gay, I told them, I wouldn't have watched THE WHOLE THING. I think I saw places her boyfriend didn't. And he didn't enjoy that information. But I outran him.

The photo session, happily, is free and quick. I will shave and wear contacts for the role and will look very different from my headshot, which I like. I only have my headshot taken, and the manager photographer tells me she saw my program bio (resplendent in ego) and noticed I was from Spartanburg, as is she. Turns out we went to the same high school four years apart. I'm the older. We traded notes on students and classes and such. It's fun talk, and I chat while she takes the pictures of almost everyone else. It's the most animated conversation I've had among this group. Because she has to run off and let us rehearse we agree to continue the old-home chat later.

Big Daddy is back, and we read the last half of Act Three before blocking it. Big Mama is not here as she drove her mom to the Charlotte airport. She arrives halfway through tonight's rehearsal. Victoria has acted and moved in her stead, and Mama gets her notes from her. She's a little coughy tonight and refrains from hitting the higher notes of the script. I am given a briefcase to maneuver during the act, and it makes for tricky juggling with the script and the pencil.

Big Daddy's performance includes a death stare that makes Gooper's nervousness very easy to portray. I'm also anxious about this take of Gooper with him. I will be the third Gooper actor he's worked with, and I don't know how they worked the role opposite him. Between him and the briefcase, I don't do a very good Gooper tonight. I just don't get into that groove.

The rehearsal flies by, and we leave with new schedules, and notices that we are to be off book by January 2 and possibly start working onstage Wednesday night. I look forward to that. I have two weeks to learn my lines, and I have no excuse not to manage that. I have movement to mark my lines now, and I have the least amount of lines of the six principal parts.

Picture of the Day
Here's an example of a script page as it now exists. You can see where I marked the script's direction for Gooper and wrote my notes. The ones in brackets are new stage directions, and the non-bracketed notes are character developments. You never write in ink because everything can change. We're jettison some directions in favor of our own movements. For instance, Gooper and Mae are now opposite Big Daddy instead of sharing a stage side with him. That physical comedy of them trying to escape isn't so important that we follow the script. It goes away. Instead of Gooper saying "'scuse me" to Daddy, he now says it to Mae as he walks back to the couch to get the open briefcase and estate paperwork. But I say it low and nervous so the moment still has a laugh (hopefully).

My handwriting is not normally this bad, but I'm writing as I'm walking and talking.


Previous entries:
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven
Day Eight
Day Nine

Day Nine: The Laying On Of Hands

The Sunday rehearsal was canceled, and the Monday picture day was pushed back to Tuesday, so last night became the unofficial Sunday of the theatre week. I spent the weekend contemplating the director's suggestion that Gooper be played as a slick lawyer making a sales pitch and not a frantic brat pleading for the estate. I was not a few pages within the script when I realized that this was my chance to play Brick. All the things I had hoped to bring to that character -- a drawling charm, subtle intelligence, fuming temper -- can be used for this Gooper scene. So why not just act it as if I was playing Brick? And that was that. The act does work differently, and even more so once we got to blocking last night.

When we arrive, Brick is trying on his new fake cast. He shaved for it, and Victoria made the mold last night. She repeatedly makes fun of his skinny legs, and eventually he answers back that they got him through at least one marathon. The cast is made in such a way that he has to bear his weight on his toe, not the heel. His ankle is extended in the cast, and yes, I imagine that will make him hobble credibly.

The problem with Act Three is that it starts with a flood of entrances within five lines, and they all come in through the same door. Big Daddy is walking offstage in his fury, leaving Brick alone. Maggie walks in. Mae walks in. Two kids walk in. Gooper walks in (and walks right out to escort the children out of the play). The Doctor walks in. The Reverend walks in. It's a parade. Because Gooper is searching for mama, he gets two entrances. As soon as he walks out, he circles behind the set and enters on the other side of the stage. And he stays on this new side of the stage for as long as we have blocked this act. Big Daddy's been absent the last few days, so we get within 10 pages of the ending and star over. Tonight, we have everyone back and should be able to block the rest of the scene and thus complete the play blocking. Until we get on the actual stage, of course, and then we make adjustments.

The blocking allows for the flavor of the play to emerge. Gooper stands apart from everyone initially except a few people. He stands, crosses into center to corner and Mama and start his pitch, and then crosses back out to the edge of the stage when denied. This makes him appear to gear up for the right moment and then fume when it doesn't occur. The mae actress and I start to improv some shared looks and nods while we insult Brick and Maggie. Gooper doesn't want to use Mae's strategy of simply insulting those two, and it rattles his preparation to talk up mama. He also has to make small talk with the Reverend and the doctor. The Reverend is purely a comic relief character, but the doctor is the one Gooper has corralled into delivering the bad news. The doc quickly leaves and Gooper feigns indignation at his bad manners. Then he goes for the pitch, and this is where I was surprised.

Gooper moves toward Mama, softly selling the choices available to them and steering her to planning for Daddy's death. He eventually sits down and presents his paperwork for transfer of ownership, softens his tone, and starts the slick pitch. Mama is stunned by his suggestion and timing. And while Gooper says the magic word in his offer -- "plan" -- I found myself putting an arm on Mama's shoulder to punctuate the exact moment Gooper has planned for. And that was nothing I intended. But it felt like solid storytelling. This also gives mama something to flinch away from and begin her outrage at everybody. Gooper cracks his own deal by going that extra step, and I like that he crossed the line that started his failure here. I like that Gooper miscalculated.

As we go through the blocking, we follow stage directions unless they call for us to move inorganically. For instance, Mae and Gooper are told to swat and pick at each other in the background, but our movements have us at opposite sides of Mama most of the time. We can't reach each other. But we can grimace and gesture. Sometimes the director likes our decisions. Sometimes not. And as we establish a movement with him, the stage managers take notes for everyone so they can tell us what we may forget later. We run through this at the speed of dirt on the first try. We deliver a line, move, write our notes, and repeat this step. We don't try for acting too much.

But on the other run-throughs, we know where we're going, and we're starting to give character eye contact and expressions. Big Mama has the highest emotional height to hit in this scene, and she's trying to find where to raise and lower her intensity. when I can, I give her a little bit to work off of when saying her lines. A grimace, a stare, just something she can focus on for a second. And this seems to be what the cast has decided individually at the same time. Mae does it for Gooper. Maggie does it for Mae. Brick does it for Gooper. We're gelling (not gellin', like a felon or Magellan or our eyes are wellin'), and man alive this does seem to be a nice little production we're slapping together. I should say, and I will, that there has to yet to emerge the Jerk or Constant Wiseass or Diva. It's early. That may happen. But so far, we're professionals, and that's refreshing.

This of course is no guarantee that the final product will be any damn good.

Previous entries:
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven
Day Eight

Picture of the Apocalypse
They're updating the art style of Archie Comics. The original art, which served to be immediately recognizable ( a good thing for comics in a competitive market), will now be replaced by a generic and flat look.


While the attention to detail in the clothes and hair are nice, they suggest the publishers are aiming for a young female audience. Archie used to be an all-audiences comic. Well, as long as the readers were white, I suppose. Also, the humor used to be broad; the art style allowed for comic exaggeration. This more realistic style doesn't provide that, and I wonder to what degree Archie now becomes a ho-hum romance comic instead of an ensemble high-school farce. Feels like an end of an era.

Beer Pocket

We had dinner with Kathy and Travis at the pub Friday night. It's the first time we'd gotten together in a while. On Saturday, Your Sis finished wrapping presents while I got in my PS2 time. Oh, how I missed it so. I addressed the majority of the Christmas cards (sent out this morning). That night we went to a local Christmas party and ate platefuls of finger food while I kept my Bass Ales handy inside my jacket. The new local grocery store includes a walk-in beer cooler that features kegs of Gaelic Ale. It's like a buffet of hangovers. We left the party early and staggered home. On Sunday, she made her annual cocoa packets (almost 5), and we split laundry duty. We had leftover party wings for supper and caught up on our TiVo. A quite-ish domestic weekend. I also managed to go over my lines for Gooper, and I'm eager to try the new tact tonight.

Picture of the Day
Gossamer and Bugs bedeck our tree.


In the News
The Time Person of the Year pick (the Interneterati) is weak. There should at least be one person who embodied the access to information and resources online. A YouTube founder, the Google guys, somebody who represents this growing demographic. And I'm not sure this is really a novel development. The '90s tech boom was all about people going online to get whatever they wanted, either from Amazon, eBay, Napster, AOL or online groceries. If anything online altered the culture this year, it was the pajama media, the political blogs that affected the election with their links to information on Foley, Iraq, Katrina, and Delay.

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Iranian moderates are winning their elections today.

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On "Face The Nation" Sunday, Colin Powell said the plan to send more troops to Iraq is flawed.

POWELL: Let’s be clear about something else, Bob, that gets a little confusing. There are really no additional troops. All we would be doing is keeping some of the troops who were there there longer and escalating or accelerating the arrival of other troops.

[Host Bob] SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you about that because… do we have the troops? You seem to be suggesting that we don’t.

POWELL: I’m suggesting that what general Shoemaker said the other day before a committee looking at the reserve and national guard, That the active army is about broken. General Shoemaker is absolutely right. All of my contacts within the army suggest that the army has a serious problem in the active force.