« Taking the Minutes | Main | I Know You Already »

Community Performance Inc.

May 13, 2008

Last night at the all cast call about 40% of the cast showed up. We circled, and the circle wasn't very large, maybe 35 people. Bees I said, seem to be individuals, but they have another identity in which they are cells in the organism, the hive. You and I are both as well. We're awaking a new intelligence, the one we'll need to do this play, the intelligence of the hive. It's much wiser than any one of us individually. Even though we're only half our numbers, we're still the whole as well. We are the hive. And what we need to do is to teach ourselves the patterns that make the hive function best, like coming on time, coming to rehearsals as called, supporting one another. So tonight, this smaller version of the whole hive will, perhaps, go out and help to teach the rest about attendance.

We've been doing other hive activities as we work. There are a group of folks who regularly attend most of the rehearsals, including Jerry (a Philosopharmer) and Henry (several smaller roles). In most every scene there are charcters who are unnamed for whom we develop business. In the scene tonight there were several because "Put It In a Letter" is a sprawling scene about the coming of telephones to Franklin County. The joke of the scene the varieties of telephone gossip that happened in the earlier days. At one time, there were very few phones and the town operator new everyone's business--who went to coffee, who was seeing his girlfriend, whose child was sick and with what, who drove recklessly, and even which fires were real and which were just Dink Meritt making his siREEN sound.

At the start of the big rehearsal tonight I assigned a number of these small roles. I'm not so concerned that I cast the perfect person in every case, because the roles tend to migrate to the right people. Stephen couldn't take the fast walking crazy driving role so we changed the gender of the driver and gave it to Moriah, who had a lark with it. Jerry may stay the mailman, but he knows to give away the role if it interferes with what else he has to do.

Having folks stand in, like place markers, means we can immediately see the scene with the addition of the parts, and then it sets up a means by which the eventual shape of the scene is sculpted by many people, each of whom finds a person to do the small role and trains him or her, and sees she does it right. This builds redundancy into the system at the same time it builds in efficiency. The knowledge of what is needed to complete an action is held at a variety of points in the organism.

Here's a little tag on aesthetics, specifically the richness which results when expectations are met differently or even in contradiction. I've mentioned "Write to Me, I'm Lonesome," before. Tonight both Jordan and Lynetta were there for rehearsal. Since Jordan had done it before, we began with her so that Lynetta could learn the staging. A young girl stands in a shower fo papers as the scene begins. She tells us that when troop trains pass the soldiers toss these little missles entreating the reader to correspond. The substance of the piece is the girl's reflection on the circumstances of the soldiers when they receive her letters, her contribution to the war effort, her duty.

The scene doesn't require any action other than the girl unwrapping at least one of these little notes. But I had the idea to give it a background in the following way. The previous scene, the one above about telephones, concludes with people scattered all about the stage. When Lonesome begins, all the men in the play pick up US 48 star flags of varying sizes and converge on the base of the bowzag. Then, in a cluster, not in ranks, just bunched together with flags bristling up and out in all directions, they begin to move up the ramp. The girl finishes her speech and the group continues through General Phillips reflections on the nobility of duty. I'll probably say more about that in subsequent pieces. But the girls says at the beginning that teenage boys, 18, 19, 20 would be going by. But the men who form the phalanx are all ages from boys to old men, and the flags are of all sizes.

What do the ages of the men signify? Why the different size flags? Why flags at all? Why no uniforms, just a press of men with bristlin flags who at the end of her speech toss another rain of supplications.

I'd thought that I'd only use men of draft age, but found I loved the people who were too old, they asked me to think about patriotism, time, and duty.

   

« Taking the Minutes | Main | I Know You Already »