{"id":9047,"date":"2021-06-15T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9047"},"modified":"2021-06-14T17:03:26","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T21:03:26","slug":"from-page-to-stage-the-deep-dive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9047","title":{"rendered":"From Page to Stage: The Deep Dive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Once the preliminaries are over\u2014the table read<\/a>, the initial preparation<\/a>–it\u2019s time for actors and director to buckle down to the real work of rehearsing a new production. Just as authors, once they have a sense of their book\u2014on paper, in their heads, or on innumerable post-its\u2014have to buckle down and dig into the specifics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leader of my Zoom course on the play rehearsal process, Adam Immerwahr, artistic director of Washington DC\u2019s Theatre J<\/a>, let us see how the he and the actors dissect every line. As an avid listener to audiobooks, I\u2019m well aware of how a talented narrator wrings so much more juice (and often humor) out of a text than I\u2019d get from scanning words-on-a-page. They have a way of making it sounds like there\u2019s a perfect way to read each line; this experience with actors and their director showed how not true that is!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Kate Eastwood Norris and Cody Nickell, the actors helping with the course, were quite comfortable with this iterative process. Immerwahr pointed out that the scant stage directions Shakespeare provides force director and players alike to figure everything out. It\u2019s fantastic training for interpretation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immerwahr, Norris, and Nickell began with the set-up for our \u201ctest-case\u201d play, Neil Simon\u2019s comedy, Last of the Red Hot Lovers<\/em>. As the play opens, middle-aged restaurateur Barney peeks into the door of his mother\u2019s apartment. He believes she\u2019s away for a few hours, and he\u2019s arranged an assignation for the afternoon\u2014a first for him. He calls out, \u201cHello? . . . Mom? . . . .\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t get any farther before Immerwahr asks, what would Barney have done if his mother had answered him? Nickell\u2019s reflection on that possibility suggests a number of ways to approach those two-words. Is Barney hesitant? Apprehensive? Confident?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In posing such questions, Immerwahr is trying to nudge the actors in a particular direction, toward a common understanding of what\u2019s really going on. Text and subtext. It\u2019s painstakingly slow, and even actors who are not in the scene benefit, Nickell said, because \u201cthey have to get on that train.\u201d In writing, we don\u2019t have the benefit of the actor\u2019s intonation, raised eyebrows, chair-flop. We have to clarify what we\u2019re trying to convey as precisely as possible, especially in key scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neil Simon\u2019s long stage direction describes how Barney fusses around the apartment, checking his watch, trying not to leave evidence he\u2019s been there, shutting the blinds. These simple actions show the audience how nervous and indecisive he is. He makes a chatty, unnecessary phone call to his restaurant and in the middle buries his real questions: \u201cDid my wife call? . . . And you told her I\u2019m at Bloomingdale\u2019s?\u201d Ah, his alibi is intact, and we see he\u2019s a clumsy liar. You can see this kind of action and phone call easily adapting to a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bringing out a multitude of revelations from such seemingly commonplace actions and dialog demonstrates how much art is involved. As an audience-member, you get the \u201cright\u201d impression of Barney seemingly effortlessly. But, as Immerwahr emphasized in a class last fall on how to watch a play, \u201cIn theater, everything\u2019s a choice.\u201d In novels too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is just one of many entertaining Theatre J classes<\/a> expressly designed for people who love (and miss) live theater. Check it out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once the preliminaries are over\u2014the table read, the initial preparation–it\u2019s time for actors and director to buckle down to the real work of rehearsing a new production. Just as authors, once they have a sense of their book\u2014on paper, in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"From Page to Stage: The Deep Dive digging into the words is as much an early step for authors as for actors.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[269,61,174,147,29],"tags":[747],"class_list":["post-9047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-character","category-first-draft-blog","category-theater","category-writing","tag-adam-immerwahr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2lV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9049,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9047\/revisions\/9049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}