The second week is done and while that may not have seemed like a big deal when the world was right side up, it feels like a huge accomplishment now. The ensemble is growing together while still being held apart by the pandemic. We are confronting technical issues in collaborating while in person and on zoom, but with diligence and not frustration. What would normally take an hour takes three, but we get done what we can and will tackle the rest next time. We work in the now and pivot when we must. 

Monday. We began our time dividing into our documentarian groups, which was a purely logistical exercise. What social media will we use? What types of content do we want to create? I’m encouraging creativity and non-traditional ideas as much as possible. First, they are artists and there is little reason to be straight forward about any of this. Second, they are individuals and their point of view, however expressed, will always be strongest. Finally, these tasks must be fun or they’re not worth doing. I told the journaling team that I would cover the more rigid definition of their task, freeing them up to do what felt right. I look forward to reading what they come up with. The videography team is working on a group of interviews of people outside of our project, asking them the same questions we’re asking ourselves. It will be interesting to hear from those that don’t work in the same headspace as we do. The photography team has already been amassing content of rehearsals and the social media team is live on Instagram, Facebook, and will be on twitter by the time I submit this. Finally, Mikayla has already began building the website, which will be our information hub. The funny feeling about working on this foundation is that we don’t know exactly what will be built on top of it. I’ve often said about my own theatre company that when I finally let go of leading it and let it lead me, I began to see what it is more clearly. It took me a few years to learn that lesson in a world right side up. Now, it takes just a couple of rehearsals. 

Next we divided into our research times to touch base with an eye towards presenting on Thursday. These first four forms—Greek, Kabuki, Roman, & Noh—were chosen simply because they are the four that were mentioned as interests by individual ensemble members. That said, if you’re going to start somewhere, these are ideal footers. As I hopped around and visited each group, there were already some common threads arising. The masks run through three of the four (with Kabuki’s use of makeup being awfully similar as well), while the scenic elements are already providing inspiration. These first presentations will undoubtedly be rough around the edges, given my minimal instruction for them, but we have to start somewhere and so we shall. 

Finally, we returned to All My Sons, tabling the play along our parallel paths and switching up roles without regard to age, gender, or any other constraint. We spoke about the character, Mother, who has a name, but Miller doesn’t use it as her character name. This speaks loudly. We also conversed around the fallen tree, its significance, and how it might be represented. These two conversations together led to an idea. I’m big on opening gestures to plays. It gives us an opportunity to establish our theatrical language with the audience; it’s sort of a key for the audience to take into the storytelling. As we are considering large shifts in how we tell stories, this will be essential to our potential production. The idea would be to tell the story of the storm in which Mother watched the tree fall the night before. This would provide ample opportunity to establish character, costume, movement, sound, and light. The challenge would be doing this in daylight, but we’ll figure that out later. We moved onto a scene between Chris and Ann where two things occur that perfectly encapsulate our parallel context. First, they kiss and it’s not just a stage direction. Christ says, “Give me a kiss, Ann. Give me a… (They kiss.) God, I kissed you, Annie, I kissed Annie!” So, yeah, there’s no getting around this one. That said, Miller has done us a favor. We can do whatever we decide to do for a kiss and then name it extremely clearly. While we aren’t making any decisions just yet, we talked about a wide array of possibilities from touching toes to kissing puppets to using light to have shadows kiss. What was exciting about all of this was that we were asking how our other tools might be of use with solving a simple gesture. It might well be that touching toes is the solution in the end, but it’s important that we approach each challenge with our entire toolbox. Within this same scene is Chris’ speech that tackles the dichotomy between real human loss and perspective: 

They didn’t die; they killed themselves for each other. I mean that exactly; a little more selfish and they’d ‘ve been here today. And I got an idea—watching them go down. Everything was being destroyed, see, but it seemed to me that one new thing was made. A kind of…responsibility. Man for man. You understand me? –To show that, to bring that on to the earth again like some kind of a monument and everyone would feel it standing there, behind him, and it would make a difference to him. (Pause) And then I came home and it was incredible. I…there was no meaning in it here; the whole thing to them was a kind of a—bus accident… 

I can’t help but think of the way certain politicians talk about the pandemic, reducing human lives to numbers and percentages. I also think about the terminology we use like frontline workers and the stories that have come out of NYC hospitals. Then there are those that haven’t been personally affected, that live in a protected bubble of privilege, and refuse to alter their daily lives for the good of people they don’t know. It’s all there. The question will be how to connect the dots for our audience. More and more, I believe the time of gentle metaphors is past and our now calls for loud, blunt, truth. Finally, as we left rehearsal, an ensemble member asked me if I was averse to projections. I lied and said, “no” but quickly course corrected. Instinctually and personally, I do have an aversion, but that is mainly based on poor use of projections as a theatrical tool. This was a reminder that I need to stay open to all of our tools; I have to practice what I preach. It also led me on a brainstorm on the drive home. When I think of projections, it’s usually a screen onstage, but what if it was the screen in our pockets? What if we used that screen for our storytelling? We could use it for projected images or stage directions or even a group thread commenting on the play. The possibilities… 

Thursday

When I got home Thursday evening my wife asked me how rehearsal went. I replied quickly, “It was a hot mess, but went really well.” Let me back up. On the way to rehearsal, I smiled as I thought to myself this might just be the first rehearsal where we have everyone in the same space together. By the time I arrived at rehearsal, almost half of our group was in the Zoom room. There’s a bevy of reasons, which are all relatively unimportant because we provide that space for anyone and any reason. In a right side up world, if I arrived at rehearsal and found out we were missing ensemble members without notice, I’d need more than a few deep breaths. And I won’t lie, I had that feeling flash through me. But quickly I knew that this is exactly the world we’re working in and we just have to pivot as best we can. Which we did, albeit with different attempts at location, a trip for an extension cord, various configurations of computers muted and unmuted, troubleshooting power points, and ensemble members valiantly filling in where needed. But we did it and in the end, we moved forward as a group. 

We began with a conversation around appropriation, what it is and how to check ourselves as we investigate these old forms, looking for inspiration. It was a necessary conversation that needs to continue alongside all others in this project. The ensemble proved to have a good grasp of where the line is, which is encouraging. I’ve always found that it is as messy as it is necessary. I often think of theatre through the lens of the culinary arts. My two favorite cookbooks are Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles and Eddie Hernandez’s Turnip Greens and Tortillas. Both chefs combine their cultural food heritage, Korean and Mexican respectively, with that of the South’s, which has its own complicated history, and come up with peak deliciousness. What prevents either from approaching appropriation is they always give credit to their outside inspirations, their intention is pure, and their curiosity about the culture their collaborating with is deep, honest, and respectful. These are the guidelines we will abide by. 

Next came the presentations. We randomly began with Greek theatre, though in retrospect, of course we did. We learned of the simplicity of their storytelling, which I noted is what we will try and return to after we’ve thrown everything at the wall. Two facets of Greek theatre were earmarked to be primary focuses as we move forward: the chorus and masks. Both will show up in the other forms we are researching, and both are attractive for the Pandemic Theatre. We also became inspired by the idea of stock characters, or archetypes, and decided that after next week’s research into commedia dell ’arte, we will see if we can create stock characters of the American Dream. The Noh theatre of Japan brought us some smaller, but no less important, gifts of inspiration. Scenically, the Noh theatre is rigid in what the architecture is— square with a bridge to the left for entrances and exits (and a link from the real to the spiritual)—but flexible in its location. As long as you can delineate your space, it need not be in a theatre or any other specific location. This would be a great strength of the Pandemic Theatre. For seating, the Noh theatre traditionally supplied mats, which would be a way for us to curate the necessary spacial distancing for our audience. With my own theatre, I have found how hard it is to curate where the audience sits without obvious seating. We once played in an outdoor space that had a low wall that provided a perfect seat for audience; the only trouble was it was too far away from the stage to hear everything and didn’t give a clear view. Even with empty seats right next to the stage, audience would sit on that wall for the entirety of the show. It drove me nuts but taught me how clear and intentional we have to be with non- traditional seating. Back to the Noh, we learned that instead of a character mask for each player (only the main character would be masked), they employ character fans, which is a great example of using a different tool (in this case props) to communicate character to the audience. I also found it interesting that each production piece held the same importance, as opposed to our western hierarchy, and that their players could exchange or share lines. As we continue to open our mind to the possibilities, we are reminded that very little can be assumed. We travelled to Rome next where we were confronted with a blank stage in front of a building that wasn’t used for scenery, but instead for costume changes, storage, and other functional uses. It immediately made me think of us performing on the mini-quad in front of theatre we can’t use as a theatre. There’s something poetic about that. There were a couple of practical ideas we responded to: solid ground for acoustics (which means we must solve the problem of grass) and a levelled playing space for character delineation (which we could also use to distance actors). The masks were exaggerated into the grotesque, which is an aesthetic that reverberates with me these days, and their costumes included a color-coded short cloth that revealed character. Their ensembles were small with two speaking roles and three or four in the chorus, which I highlighted as a way to reduce complications for distancing on stage and in rehearsal. Visually, they told their story through enlarged movements and music. I quietly wonder about the former and vocally earmarked the latter as a question I want on the table. What music is possible and how could we use it? In my own work, I’ve found it to be an incredibly powerful tool that can set mood, while also substituting lighting by focusing the audience’s attention to a certain point on stage. We ended in China with Kabuki theatre and it may have been the most inspiring research from the evening. This form has its own way of communicating character, using make up visually, but more interestingly, using vocal registry as well. For instance, the deeper the voice, the older the woman. In what is a running theme, only men are allowed to perform, but this old, sexist idea created a new thought in me. Theatre has been performed throughout history without regard to the gender of their actors, so why are we as American theatre artists so tied to needing the gender and age of the actor to reflect the character? If we tell the audience from the beginning who the character is, whether that’s through costume, mask, makeup, vocal, prop, or other tools, then anybody can play any character. Ultimately, I would love this freedom as we could end up casting based on other, more intangible qualities. Finally, the scenic aspect of Kabuki provided enormous inspiration. Like the Noh theatre, the have rigid architecture, but within that rigidity there is tremendous potential in the storytelling. It’s a small stage with a thrust on the left that extends to the back of house. On that stage is what was the first turn table of theatre (Lin Manuel thanks you) and two different kinds of trapdoors; one that leads to stairs and one that can rise or descend. These all have specific functions for the Kabuki storytelling, but I respond having simple scenic gestures that can provide great flexibility in staging. Their musicians play from behind a grate through the wall, which is certainly COVID safe, and then there is the Yuka. These are narrators that are silhouetted behind a screen up above the stage. My mind immediately raced to the idea from the end of last rehearsal and these screens in our pockets. Then someone in the ensemble drew a comparison between the Yuka to the two old men in the Muppets. What if you had running commentary from this screen in your pocket about the story you are watching? Then I thought of Boal’s Joker. But that’s in next week’s research, so we’ll leave that there for now. Two weeks down. Onwards.