I went into this week with trepidation and determination. Last week was hard; not without results, but hard, nonetheless. We needed something to happen, to spark, and to engage. If we could succeed in scaling the brick wall that was last week, then perhaps the other side would be more conducive to the work. Nothing is easy these days but we must get used to working despite the rigor of the world. 

Monday. I walked into this rehearsal ready to make it happen when, lo and behold, it already had. We achieved our first meeting with everyone present, live, and in-person. It put an immediate smile on my face and steeled me for the work ahead. This will be a rarity, but it could not have come at a more opportune time. Our first task for the evening was to finally finish tabling All My Sons. I have purposely tabled the show slowly, so that the research portion could happen alongside it. This enabled the two discussions to be in conversation with each other, which was essential. The drawback is never gaining any momentum with the tabling and never experiencing the true journey of the play. The latter I could sacrifice since rehearsing the play isn’t the goal of our project, but the former was rough. Usually, at the outset everyone at the table is a bit timid in their contribution to the discussion, but with some coaxing and questions, the conversation starts and tends to build throughout. Not only did we take four weeks to table the play, but the strategy of mixing up the casting with every scene, and the disconnect of the Zoom room for half of it led to a difficult, choppy, and oft times lackadaisical tabling. Not that there wasn’t discovery and inspiration, but like everything else these days, there was a layer of toil to it. When I went back to the script to see how much text we had left, I knew it was all of Act three; what I didn’t know is that Act 3 is all of ten pages. I was shocked at how short it is and yet that’s part of what makes it so gut wrenching. So, I backed us up a few pages to give us a running start and decided to keep the casting consistent through to the end. To focus the energy, I then placed our actors in the middle of the room in a circle, safely facing each other. I still didn’t “cast” them; I just put five chairs up, asked five to fill them, and randomly assigned characters based on order. I didn’t stop them once they began; not only is there nowhere to naturally stop but gaining that storytelling momentum was crucial as that ending is just as brutal as ever. Funny thing though: I always forget what happens. I’ve read this play countless times and I still wonder what Keller will do. Bizarre. That Arthur Miller really had something. Beyond the climax, Jim’s words about Chris at the top of the Act with Mother struck a chord, “Oh, no, he’ll come back. We all come back, Kate. These private little revolutions always die. The compromise is always made. In a peculiar way. Frank is right— every man does have a star. The star of one’s honesty. And you spend your life groping for it, but once it’s out it never lights again. I don’t think he went very far. He probably just wanted to be alone to watch his star go out.” The false myth of the American Dream is that star for so many and so many see it die out. Keller and Mother’s argument hits hard and seemed to reverberate with much of the room. Keller argues that family is all that matters, full stop, and Mother tries to tell him that his son thinks there is more to it. Mother says, “Joe, Joe…it don’t excuse it that you did it for the family,” to which he replies, “It’s got to excuse it!” Many shared an experience with people who would excuse anything because of family, which led to a discussion I live with every day. What do we excuse and what do we shun and does it have to be so either/or. Can we call out our family while still loving them? Is there a point of no return? Can you believe they should be in jail and still visit them? Can you believe they are somehow morally wrong and still hold them in our heart? I’ll just leave that there. Here’s a couple more pieces of dialogue that left me stunned in their reflection of American today: 

Chris: “What? Do I raise the dead when I put him behind bars? Then what’ll I do it for? We used to shoot a man who acted like a dog, but honor was real there, you were protecting something. But here? This is the land of the great big dogs, you don’t love a man here, you eat him! That’s the principle; the only one we live be—it just happened to ill a few people this time, that’s all. The world’s that way, how can I take it out on him? What sense does that make? This is a zoo, a zoo!” 

Keller: “What should I want to do? Jail? You want me to go to jail? If you want me to go, say so! Is that where I belong?—then tell me so! What’s the matter, why can’t you tell me? You say everything else to me, say that! I’ll tell you why you can’t say it. Because you know I don’t belong there. Because you know! Who worked for nothing in that war? When they work for nothin’, I’ll work for nothin’. Did they ship a gun or a truck outa Detroit before they got their price? Is that clean? It’s dollars and cents, nickels and dimes; war and peace, it’s nickels and dimes, what’s clean? Half the Goddamn country is gotta go if I go! That’s why you can’t tell me.” 

Finally, we come to the end and Keller says those words that I hear every time I think about this play, “Sure, he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were.” I’ve said it to my group and I believe I’ve written it here, but when our audience hears those words, “Black Lives Matter” should be echoing in their ears. Chris’s plea at the end could be from the protest line: “You can be better! Once and for all you can know there’s a universe of people outside and you’re responsible to it…” But Mother’s last line shows that the American we know and struggle with still stands, “Don’t, dear. Don’t take it on yourself. Forget now. Live.” American will always give the white man an out. 

Pivoting to our other track, Rae played Mother in this final act and an ensemble member commented on how grounded it was, which brings back the conversation of different styles or even actors for different moments in character. Her performance was beautiful and the contrast to what had preceded elevated that ending in way I’m not sure possible if played consistent all the way through. Mother is a character that is called on to perform for the entire play until she doesn’t have the strength to anymore. Can this device be used with other characters? All but Anne? 

To end this portion of rehearsal I lobbed a conversation bomb into the center of the room: what is your experience of the American Dream? I won’t go into a lot of detail here because the discussion moved into personal territory and will stay in the room. I really wanted to know their point of view because I have to keep reminding myself that their experience is so different than mine. I’d like to think I’m not much older, but I realized the other day that they are closer in age to my six-year-old than to me; this was more than a little shocking. In any case, there is still a strong understanding of both this myth and its falsity. Sure, it can happen, you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you can achieve the family, house, and all your dreams. But nothing is guaranteed for anyone and if you aren’t white, the probabilities fall drastically. I curated this conversation to lead us into creating the stock characters of the American Dream, which I have since simplified to the American Stock Characters. This is a living document that we will continue to address and define, so I won’t put it down here just yet, but I will give you the characters: The Business Man, The Mother, The Golden Boy, The Youngest Son, The Girl Next Door, The Advisor, The Nosey Neighbor, The Sweethearts, The Indoctrinated Youth, The Factory Man, and The Disrupter. That last one is the wild card in our American tarot deck and the reason for our drama. 

Thursday. Back into the Zoom Room we went as we reached a critical number of ensemble members requesting admittance. This was our last day of research proposals, which I could honestly do forever as I keep thinking of more and more artists, eras, and forms to bring in the room. That said, I feel certain this is the right time to end this step of the process and move into the next. Any more of these nights and it would feel too much like a class and not enough like a laboratory. I shared the game plan of the next step with the group, which is dividing into three teams aimed at pitching experiments. Scenic/Audience will develop three pitches on what the space could look like for our Pandemic Theatre and how we will curate the audience in that space. Character Design will develop three pitches on how we use design to create character, using masks as a jumping off point into costume and props. Finally, Stagecraft will look at how we will treat the acting style and directing strategy in the PTP. Eventually these will all have to work together, but my hope is we’ll find our foundational ideas within the teams and build from there. After they come up with their pitches on Monday, the will develop them with a mentor from the faculty Thursday and then we shall see what we have. I still have a bit of work to do myself in developing their prompts so that I can better define their box for them. But that can wait; onto the presentations. 

First up was the puppet team with a focus on Bunraku from China, Wayang from Indonesia, and Kathputhi from India. Puppetry had come in and out of the conversation, so I figured we might as well be direct about it, though I admit I wasn’t sure how to approach it myself. Once you go down the rabbit hole, it can be quite overwhelming, so I opted for three of the oldest forms that have influenced so much of what we see today. The other route, which I admit may have been more fertile, would be to focus on forms that are doable for us, or those that exist now. Bunraku takes years of training to achieve anything near effective storytelling and the marionettes of Kathputhi are just difficult puppets (I know from making one of my own that I employ in my Christmas show). That said, how do you introduce puppetry and not touch on these highly influential forms? In making these decisions, I continue to try and balance the PTP’s goal, reverence to the forms, and pedagogy in a university setting. All that said, the shadow puppetry of the Wayang struck a chord with the group. The potential in storytelling through silhouette had arisen in our discussion around performing intimacy with social distancing. I’m immediately brought back to one of the best theatrical experiences I had in Chicago with Pig Pen Co’s The Old Man and the Moon, which used a combination of live actors and shadow puppetry. Interestingly, they used the shadows to tell the epic parts of their tales instead of the intimate ones. I have to remember to share them with the group. 

Next up was the Wooster Group, which got complicated quickly. They’ve done some of the most successful experimenting with technology in theatre, but this very white theatre also has a history of using blackface as a storytelling device. I explained that this is one of those instances where I can be intrigued and inspired on the one hand while being disgusted and disheartened on the other; that this paradox can exist simultaneously. That said, the interesting parts were lost to the group pretty quickly and I totally understand. That said, the presenting group responded to the idea that the ensemble in the rehearsal room throughout the process is comprised of the usual team plus all of the designers. They all create constantly together. It reminded them of the process we’re in now and I personally hold it up as an idea I crave. In all honestly, I don’t like our “traditional” set up, where the designers come in at the beginning with work based on meetings with only the director and then don’t set foot in the rehearsal room again until a designer run at best and often times not until tech. Now, this personal utopian model would require the designers to be paid much more so that they can devote themselves to one process at a time instead. We’d have to blow everything up in order to achieve this. Of course, that’s kind of where we are now, isn’t it? It’s been blown up for us. I really hope we, as theatre makers, use this opportunity to build our industry back in a way that works for us, instead of against us. I know this is a conversation that is out there, but I hope we can rise from the ashes healthy, equitable, and sustainable. We haven’t been any of those things for a very, very long time. 

Next up was Julie Taymor and more complexity. Arden, an ensemble member, had emailed me with how much she was inspired by Taymor’s staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in relation to PTP’s mission. I thought she would be a great addition to the room, given that she has been taking old forms and making them new for her entire career. I also added that she’s seen plenty of controversy surrounding that messy conversation of appropriation. The conversation quickly went away from the art and towards the controversy, which is too bad. While I think her idea of intercultural theatre is problematic, I also acknowledge that she has lived and learned globally, studyied the techniques she uses from the masters of those forms and brought them to an entirely new audience. Was it done exactly the right way? Definitely not. But I’ll never forget the first procession in through the audience and to the stage in her Lion King—it’s a moment that shattered what I thought theatre could be. It is absolutely important that we continue this messy conversation of appropriation, but I’m beginning to feel the group closing off to possibilities out of fear of falling into this trap. It’s something that I really want to keep an eye on. 

There was a final presenting assignment, but so little came out of it, I won’t waste the time on it here. What I do want to speak on was Mikayla’s voluntary presentation around the theatre of Jim Henson’s Muppets. It was the perfect ending to our research journey. She spoke of how hard it was for Henson to bring his vision to life and even when he had success with Sesame Street, his inventions were written off as “kid’s stuff,” and the Muppet Show wasn’t taken seriously. He had to find a producing company in London to give it a chance and only when it was a success there did doors open over here. Mikayla weaved all of this into what we are trying to do with the Pandemic Theatre Project. It’s going to take persistence, dedication, and a little bit of luck to achieve live, communal storytelling under our current constraints, but the toil, the dead ends, and the missteps will all be worth it in the end. Now, I’m going to go and watch the Muppets for a bit. Until next week.