Opening Weekend
Opening weekend for All in the Timing went off fairly well. We only 
had about 40 people in the audience on opening night and probably 50 last night, but they were a good audience, laughing at all the right bits. Opening night wasn't entirely smooth, as far as the plays themselves went. It seems that each of the 6 short plays had at least some minor bit of flubbing and neither of the ones I'm in was immune.
In my role of the title character in Variations on the Death of Trotsky I managed to leave out a critical word from one of my lines that fed the meaning of another actor's next line. We rolled with it okay, but it was irritating to have screwed up like that. Other plays during the night suffered far more distressing errors, at least according to the actors in them. The complicated dialogue and structure of these plays lends itself to error, but sometimes that very complicated nature helps cover up errors. Not so much with prop errors, though...
As we're doing six of Ives 14 plays under the AITT banner, we have to have six different (or, at least, slightly altered) sets. In order to do this most efficiently, we are using a revolving platform and have split it up into three pie pieces in which we can have three of the six sets at any one time, rotating the revolve to reveal the next one and then changing them out at intermission for the second act's sets. Our set for Trotsky is pretty slim, with a writing desk covered in books, a chair, a calendar, a mirror and a little shelf full of tschochkes. (Get it? Tschochkes for the Trotskys?) Anyway, I'm supposed to open our play sitting at my writing desk scribbling away some revolutionary theories in a journal which I then read aloud. Only when I went to sit in my place at the desk just prior to the revolve into place, my pencil slipped off the table and fell to the floor. Being as it was pretty much pitch black, I had no way of locating it and didn't relish the thought of feeling around on the floor for it to suddenly have the lights come up on me. So instead of writing as the lights came up, I just read aloud from my journal. Within a few lines, my character has to stand and move away from the desk, so I noted where the pencil was on the floor and retrieved it during the next blackout. Other than that, our set went off nearly without a hitch, and if that's the worst that happens to us, I'll take it.
So far, my initial concerns about playing Leon Trotsky with an axe through his head have proven to be non-issues. My biggest fear was that the prop axe that appears to protrude from my head would go flying off into the audience during one of the character's many stage-deaths, leaving me in a bad position for the rest of the play. However, due to the way the rig was built, that sucker ain't going anywhere—at least not so long as I have it bobby-pinned right. I do have to watch out that I don't strike the foam axe on bits of the set, or the back of the chair I sit in, but so far that hasn't been a problem.
As you might expect, I'm having SO MUCH FUN playing this role! It's absolutely one of the best roles I've ever had and has been something of a dream of mine to get to play for a while now. I first saw mention of this play sometime in the mid-90s while reading reviews of plays in a magazine. There was a picture of the actor playing Trotsky, mountaineer's axe jutting from his head at an odd angle, and I was just in awe of it. I said to myself then, I would LOVE to play that 
role. I don't think I even realized that VOTDOT was part of an overall arc of the AITT plays by David Ives, nor did I recall the playwright's name for more than a few minutes. So when I was asked to try out for AITT, I went into it blind as to what it was I was even going to read for. It wasn't until they handed me the Trotsky script that I recalled wanting to play that role and became very excited at the prospect. That excitement is still strong, particularly when the lights come up on me and I hear the audience's reaction to seeing this axe jutting out of my head as our play opens. Just fantastic fun to do!
had about 40 people in the audience on opening night and probably 50 last night, but they were a good audience, laughing at all the right bits. Opening night wasn't entirely smooth, as far as the plays themselves went. It seems that each of the 6 short plays had at least some minor bit of flubbing and neither of the ones I'm in was immune.In my role of the title character in Variations on the Death of Trotsky I managed to leave out a critical word from one of my lines that fed the meaning of another actor's next line. We rolled with it okay, but it was irritating to have screwed up like that. Other plays during the night suffered far more distressing errors, at least according to the actors in them. The complicated dialogue and structure of these plays lends itself to error, but sometimes that very complicated nature helps cover up errors. Not so much with prop errors, though...
As we're doing six of Ives 14 plays under the AITT banner, we have to have six different (or, at least, slightly altered) sets. In order to do this most efficiently, we are using a revolving platform and have split it up into three pie pieces in which we can have three of the six sets at any one time, rotating the revolve to reveal the next one and then changing them out at intermission for the second act's sets. Our set for Trotsky is pretty slim, with a writing desk covered in books, a chair, a calendar, a mirror and a little shelf full of tschochkes. (Get it? Tschochkes for the Trotskys?) Anyway, I'm supposed to open our play sitting at my writing desk scribbling away some revolutionary theories in a journal which I then read aloud. Only when I went to sit in my place at the desk just prior to the revolve into place, my pencil slipped off the table and fell to the floor. Being as it was pretty much pitch black, I had no way of locating it and didn't relish the thought of feeling around on the floor for it to suddenly have the lights come up on me. So instead of writing as the lights came up, I just read aloud from my journal. Within a few lines, my character has to stand and move away from the desk, so I noted where the pencil was on the floor and retrieved it during the next blackout. Other than that, our set went off nearly without a hitch, and if that's the worst that happens to us, I'll take it.
So far, my initial concerns about playing Leon Trotsky with an axe through his head have proven to be non-issues. My biggest fear was that the prop axe that appears to protrude from my head would go flying off into the audience during one of the character's many stage-deaths, leaving me in a bad position for the rest of the play. However, due to the way the rig was built, that sucker ain't going anywhere—at least not so long as I have it bobby-pinned right. I do have to watch out that I don't strike the foam axe on bits of the set, or the back of the chair I sit in, but so far that hasn't been a problem.
As you might expect, I'm having SO MUCH FUN playing this role! It's absolutely one of the best roles I've ever had and has been something of a dream of mine to get to play for a while now. I first saw mention of this play sometime in the mid-90s while reading reviews of plays in a magazine. There was a picture of the actor playing Trotsky, mountaineer's axe jutting from his head at an odd angle, and I was just in awe of it. I said to myself then, I would LOVE to play that 
role. I don't think I even realized that VOTDOT was part of an overall arc of the AITT plays by David Ives, nor did I recall the playwright's name for more than a few minutes. So when I was asked to try out for AITT, I went into it blind as to what it was I was even going to read for. It wasn't until they handed me the Trotsky script that I recalled wanting to play that role and became very excited at the prospect. That excitement is still strong, particularly when the lights come up on me and I hear the audience's reaction to seeing this axe jutting out of my head as our play opens. Just fantastic fun to do!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home