Performance Diary: 'Follies,' Part 2

by Kirk Woodward

[In his account of the work on the Gas Lamp Players’ production of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies, Kirk picks up where he left off in Part 1 of his “Performance Diary”: in the middle of the rehearsal period.  Kirk will take us through the final dress rehearsal to opening night and the short performance run.

[If you haven’t read Part 1, posted on 15 December, I suggest readers go back and pick that up before reading Part 2, below.  Kirk has been presenting a day-by-day chronicle of the progress of the show and without his commentary from the beginning, you will have missed the build-up.]

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – There are some rehearsals you just have to have, whether you want to or not. What I am going to write here should not be taken in the slightest as a criticism of the creative team of our Follies production. I think they’re splendid and doing a fine job. But a production has to work with what it has – including its schedule.

Tonight was a “stumble-through” of Act 1, which is basically a series of vignettes at a party, meaning that its focus frequently changes, while movements occur around the main events that seem to be random (they are not). It was the first time we’d tried to play the act from beginning to end.

The central story, about four characters, is played by eight actors, and that fact in itself demonstrates the complexities of the script (the additional four actors are younger versions of the “present day” characters). 

I have written before in this blog about my conviction that any part of the rehearsal process should have a single focus [see, for example, “Performance Diary, Part 2,” 28 August 2024: “I still feel that a director should define for the cast a single, definite purpose for each rehearsal, or for each run through . . . .”] – in particular, when something new like, say, stage lighting is introduced at a particular rehearsal, that should be the focus, and the actors should be told to concentrate on that and not worry much about acting (which nevertheless will happen, usually effectively, because the pressure is off).

[In “A Directing Experience, Part 1” (13 October 2023), in which Kirk explains this principle as applied by the director he was assisting: “One important directing technique, which I have come to strongly endorse, is that he tried to give goals for each rehearsal. This communication practice frees actors to concentrate on a few specific things, and in the process, everything else is likely to improve as well.”  ~Rick]

Tonight, though, was full of new items, and the result was predictable. Among tonight’s major “firsts” were:

We had a pianist for the first time – previously we had been moving and singing to recordings of previous productions. As far as I could tell, the pianist, who I have the impression will eventually be quite good, was unfamiliar with the score, which, being a Sondheim score, has plenty of complexities. He made his way through the score, but often what he played was unrecognizable.

We also had a musical director present for the first time, but since none of us had worked with him before, he had no idea of what the actors might want in the way of accompaniment, and he spent most of his time either indicating a tempo that might or might not work with the song, or turning pages.

We were in a new space – the cafeteria of the high school. The stage was marked out by tape on the floor, so we could tell how small the playing area is, but being in a big room gave the feeling of spaciousness. Next week the small size of the performance space will be a shock, even if intellectually we know the dimensions of the set.

The act was being put together for the second time, so many were unsure of their cues for entrances and exits (including me). Not everyone was completely “off book” with their lines entirely memorized (I was, but I have very few lines), and, again, the singers in particular were suddenly singing against musical backgrounds that were entirely new to them.

So we worked our way through the act, and it was necessary and useful to see how all the separately rehearsed pieces fit together, but there was a lot of confusion and little sense of performance – how could there be? As an example, Janet Aldrich, a powerhouse singer, made a huge impression singing “I’m Still Here,” but she had to call for lyrics twice and was being coached on movement while she sang, a reflection of how muddled things were.

At this point it doesn’t seem to me that the central story of the musical is clearly told – not that the authors have helped much with that problem. A friend told me that she had talked to a film director recently who said, “I tell the actors, you can do this or you can do that, but you have to do this, because if you don’t, the story doesn’t get across.”

That, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter – a director is always trying to answer the question, “How can the story best be told?” I don’t doubt that Kristy and Susan are aware of this.

And it’s foolish to judge a production based on rehearsals. We have almost two weeks until opening, nine full rehearsals, and as my friend also pointed out, we don’t have any of the “wizardry” in place yet – lights, amplification, orchestra, costumes, and so on.

At this point there’s also no coherent sense of style about the production, but the same point applies – there’s a long way to go, and we have good people in charge of the process. So, onward! Act II tomorrow night!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – Act II is less complicated than Act I as far as staging goes. Basically, after a brief argument among the leading couples, a kind of “Follies” called “Loveland” begins, and a series of brilliant songs takes ironic looks at the couples’ troubles.

I wrote last night about difficulties in telling the story of the show, but tonight the principals seemed to have that under control, so that’s good. We worked our way through the act; two of the male principals, for various reasons, are still using their scripts, but I doubt that anyone is worried about either of them. The teen company of dancers and actors is terrific, and so were several of the numbers tonight.

We eight men did our dance to baffled applause. Deshja Driggs, an extraordinarily talented performer who sings the lead in the song, eyed the solid floor of the cafeteria warily as she considered how safe our lifting her into the air could possibly be (I’m not one of the lifters, thank heaven), but her life was spared, at least for tonight.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – I arrived a little early (always a good idea – maybe even an imperative) while some scene work was going on, and Susan, the director, came over and told me that her husband, who has been playing the second male lead, has got a role in another major show.

He’ll be “swing,” a form of understudy, for a production that starts rehearsals next Tuesday. Obviously he can’t be in our show, and Susan and Kristy were interviewing a replacement when I arrived. Susan asked me not to tell anyone else, and I said, “Tell them what?”

I was complimented twice tonight on my opening speech. Of course that was before rehearsal; I hope they feel the same about it now.

When our rehearsal began, Kristy fine-tuned parts of the opening scene, and it’s now clearer and more fun. She really is a very good director. Then the cast separated for detailed work on three smaller scenes, and finally we eight male “dancers” worked out the glitches in our number until I thought my feet would fall off, especially my right one.

A note to directors: actors are not pleased if a director, having looked elsewhere, tells them that they ought to do something they just did. Much better to ask “Did you . . ." or “Were you able to . . .? I couldn’t see.”

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – In our performance space (the Glen Ridge, NJ Women’s Club) for the first time as a cast. It’s a lovely auditorium; the stage is definitely smaller than one would imagine (I think that was true for all of us), and tonight’s rehearsal was basically dedicated to adjusting our movements to the new conditions.

The set is basically in place. There are three stage curtains at the back of the stage (“upstage”), each gathered together in the middle so the back of the wall – a theater wall, appropriate for the show! – is visible. There’s a three-level staircase, not walled in but “skeletal,” a smaller platform on the other side of the stage, and that’s it. Properly lit (we had a few stage lights already), it’s lovely.

We needed to make many adjustments to the staging in the new space, there were basically four people making the changes (two directors, the choreographer, and the musical director), and both time and patience ran short as the evening went on. (Talent is important, but patience is one of the greatest theatrical virtues.)

Our dance comes toward the end of the show, and therefore of the rehearsal as well. There were questions about its ending, lots of conversation, no decision yet . . . .

That’s when I left, because my right foot, never sturdy because of two falls on ice over the years, pretty much gave way when I twice stepped clumsily on stairs. I was limping, it’s really sore, and I need to do my best to get it in shape for the rehearsal tomorrow night.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – Although I hadn’t broadcast my hurt foot, I hadn’t kept it a secret either, and when I arrived early for rehearsal tonight Susan was solicitous, asking if I wanted to stay in the number (I did) or if I’d rather get out (I wouldn’t), although she said it would be a loss because I’m so adorable in the dance, which I’m afraid means . . . well, you can figure it out.

The actor replacing Tony in the role of Buddy was working with Kristy, Susan, and the pianist when I arrived. He looks and sounds great but doesn’t read music, so I know what he’ll be doing this weekend, or at least I expect so – listening to performances of the show over and over.

We eight male “dancers” got together to find that Emily didn’t plan to work with us, which caused some grumbling, since the very end of the routine hadn’t been staged. However, we did get her for about 20 minutes; she didn’t have anything planned but by the time she went in to work with the new Buddy there was an ending in place.

I made it clear at the start of our work that my foot was in bad shape, but I was able to do the whole rehearsal, although I didn’t push it. Our next rehearsal will be Monday night in the performance space; it’ll be a technical rehearsal, settling light cues, microphones and sound cues, costumes, and so on, and considering the size and shape of the show it’s likely to be a long and grueling evening. We shall see.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – Not a rehearsal, but a performance of the musical “Singin’ in the Rain Jr.” by Gas Lamp’s junior high school cast. (The original movie was released in 1952, the adaptation for the stage first opened in London in 1983.) It was quite impressive – close to 90 children, every one aware of what they had to do, and several exceptional voices. A good omen, I hope!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18 – All right, class, write one hundred times, “I will not judge the show by a rehearsal.” Tonight was a technical rehearsal and those can be expected to be rough. Lights, sound, a full set, costumes . . . all new. I had managed to pull together a full tuxedo, which I’ll wear through the whole show.

The night was extremely ragged, and when we had to stop at 10 PM we weren’t quite finished with the first act. That in itself isn’t a problem; the second act, which we’ll tackle in the same way tomorrow night, is shorter and less fragmented.

My foot behaved itself, and Susan told me I was “a breath of fresh air” because “you’re so confident.” She may say the same thing to everyone for all I know, but many if not all actors thrive on praise. The music is still under-rehearsed, with some not at all helpful tempos. There was no way to evaluate the acting, which has little chance in a technical rehearsal.

There was a nice feeling of camaraderie among the cast, I thought. People seem to be having fun for the most part. “It’s such a big show,” Susan said tonight.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19 – I told you they were smart! We left rehearsal last night planning for a 6:30 arrival time tonight for rehearsal. Today we got an email giving specific times for groups of people between 6:30 and 7:30, with the rest of the cast arriving at 7:30.

Deduction: as I wrote yesterday, the music still needs to be settled down, and the orchestra (14 altogether!) will be there tonight, so the first rehearsal hour will be spent getting the singing and the accompaniment together. Once again, the creative team is looking at what’s most important to accomplish, and putting that first. Good for them!

I was wrong, or at least I think I was. When I arrived there were a few musicians tootling (actually only half the orchestra, the students; the rest arrive tomorrow night), actors hanging around, not much sign that anything important was happening.

Eventually we got started, picking up where we left off last night. Basically the two nights went the same: with numerous stops to set or fix things, a few actors holding scripts (including our Buddy, who of course is new) or unsure of lines . . . I kept thinking of the theatrical proverb “No matter how long you rehearse, you always need two more weeks.”

In particular I’m not sure about the musical part of the show. Some of the tempos strike me as off, usually too slow; there are clunker notes, and for several songs in this particular show, the orchestra needs to accompany the singer as they sing, not lead them – no matter how difficult this may be. It can be done, but so far, in our production, it only happens sporadically.

I added to the fun by stepping badly again in the same spot I did the other night, a setback to my ability to move. Susan was solicitous, had me put my foot up, gave me some Advil, and I was able to dance in our number, probably making no more than five major mistakes.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – The first of two full run-throughs in costume, with orchestra (complete and playing together for the first time), lights, sound, and no stops – except during “Who’s That Woman,” the most complex number in the show, where the orchestra lost track of the sudden tempo shifts.

I thought the evening as a whole did what it needed to do. Tomorrow night the transitions between scenes should be tighter, Buddy should be more secure on his song lyrics, and the cast’s main focus should be able to be on the show rather than on the technical elements.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – Final dress rehearsal, better than yesterday, the orchestra much improved. The run through wasn’t perfect, but the glitches were either song lyrics or the occasional transition. I also understand that ticket sales are good so far. I wasn’t good, particularly in the dance, but it wasn’t entirely my fault, I beefed to Emily about the spacing at the start of our number, and she said she’ll work with the dance tomorrow at 7.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, OPENING NIGHT! – I was irritated about how I was handling the short scenes where I have lines. My daughter Heather said something I agree with: she said that a monolog is easier to handle on stage than a short scene with only a line or two in it, because a monolog has a context, while a short scene can seem to pop up out of nowhere, and in Follies that’s the way they seem to me.

So I rewrote my cheat sheet of cues and lines to clarify the sequences, and spent time reviewing it, and that helped. On to the opening performance! The house was full, maybe a hundred or so people. The orchestra regressed a bit from last night, I thought; I suppose musicians get nervous like anyone else.

The audience was enthusiastic and the show can be declared a success. The people I know who saw it felt that the story was clear, and they were impressed with various things including the general talent level, the scale of the production, and of course the score of the show.

Several people I know felt that the book of the musical was problematic. I agree – it’s really an avant-garde musical masquerading as a typical Broadway show, and it seems determined to make the audience’s experience a difficult one.

My choreographer friend Colleen liked the choreography; the general feeling seems to be that the problems with the production were largely technical (some sound glitches) and orchestral.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 – A two show day, one at 2 PM and one at 8 PM. Feeling that my scenes were finally under control, I spent time on two parts of the dance number that I never seemed to get right, and ended up fairly confident about them.

The afternoon show, the matinee, was splendid, with the orchestra far more together again and the performances filled with an energy that had not been there before.

Our dance, I am happy to report, was quite good, and I basically did well. A friend said to me last night, “You don’t have to worry about how the men look anyway; Deshja is so good that no one’s paying any attention to you anyway.” She really is wonderful in her role; all the principal actors are excellent, and the singing is on a high level throughout the show.

There was one incident in our dance number: one of the dancers dropped his cane, stooped to retrieve it, and missed the second “lift” of the number, when Deshja is carried from the front to the rear of the stage. However, another member of the group, seeing the problem, immediately stepped in and helped carry her, so the number proceeded safely.

The evening show wasn’t as good, for two reasons that I can identify: everyone was tired (two big shows in a day is a lot), and we probably tried to repeat the good points of the afternoon show. Trying to recreate what happened last time almost never works. The audience was pleasant but not boisterous. However, I think they still got a good show.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 – Another big crowd for our final performance of Follies, a performance that may not have matched the spirit of yesterday’s matinee but was nevertheless fine, and our dance number finally worked the way we wanted it to.

I was so tired that I actually felt myself momentarily fall asleep at one moment in the first act while I was sitting backstage. As a result I didn’t go to the cast party that followed a brief “strike” where everything was put away; wherever I tried to help, someone beat me to it, so I finally just went home.

A few observations:

This diary illustrates something that beginning directors need to know: directing a play is not the same activity as directing a musical. A play is an artistic activity of which you are the leader. A musical is less like a play than a military operation, with intensive strategic planning, a staff, orders, placement of troops, discipline, and so on. Musicals take extensive planning. Someone must do it.

In this case the creative staff (I’m told they called themselves the “Dream Team,” and they’ve worked together on several shows) simply are first rate. They seemed to work together seamlessly, they at least visibly stay calm, and they know their stuff.

The football coach Lou Holtz (b. 1937) used to tell his teams to expect at least three times in a season when things would look bad for them. They shouldn’t be alarmed, he said; these things happen.

This production of Follies was a succession of difficulties and successes. This, it seems to me, is true of theater in general, and in life too, I suppose. Patience, as I said above, is an important theatrical virtue.

Theater has the advantage of aiming for a specific goal: the production will open on this date, regardless of how rehearsals are going. If the date has to be changed, it’s still a date, and if the production has to fold without opening, well, at least it was aiming for a date until it didn’t have one.

So in theater, which is more important, what the show is like when it opens, or how it gets to that point? There are arguments for both “process” and “product,” and they don’t necessarily conflict with each other.

Old-timers – I mean through around the nineteenth century – might have firmly said, “Theater is about what the audience gets, and that’s that.” On the other hand, many directors today, including me, would say that the nature of the rehearsal process is crucial to the success of a play. (A few directors don’t even aim to present their productions, only to work on the material. To each their own, but I don’t feel that way.)

An example of process: as I reported, as far as I know we plunged right into staging numbers at the beginning of rehearsals. Looking back, I think it would have been valuable to have had a sit-down readthrough of the show, maybe just talking through the songs, so the director could frame how the story was to be told, suggest some atmosphere, talk about the theme of the show and how it would affect the staging, and so on.

Like any work of art, a production of a musical is really a projection of the imagination, and early group work would help to have the cast sensing and feeling the same things.

On the other hand, most of my evaluations of how things were going turned out to be wrong, so maybe the lesson is that people in a show are poor judges of how things are going – or at least that I am.

The creative team demonstrated that they could be trusted. I will miss being around that skilled, stimulating group of people. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if I weren’t the only person to be inspired by their highly professional work ethic to do a little better myself next time I’m working on a show. I hope so.

[Just a reminder for readers who are just finding Rick On Theater and have enjoyed Kirk’s account if his work in this production: Kirk has written two previous pieces based on his journal entries about working in theater, “Performance Diary, Part 1” (25 August 2024) and “Performance Diary, Part 2” (28 August 2024).  I recommend giving them a read.]

Performance Diary: 'Follies,' Part 1

by Kirk Woodward 

[In a continuation of his August posts on Rick On Theater, “Performance Diary, Part 1” (25 August 2024) and “Performance Diary, Part 2” (28 August 2024), Kirk Woodward, a prolific contributor to this blog (133 posts and counting), returns with a two-part contribution on his participation as a cast member of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies. This production was mounted by the Gas Lamp Players of Glen Ridge, New Jersey, a non-profit community theater founded in 2007.

[Follies ran on Broadway from 1971 to 1972, after which there were many regional and international premières and revivals.  Because the musical’s book was problematic, there were many efforts to revise it for several of the post-Broadway stagings.  Even though the score was praised and even beloved, Sondheim wrote new numbers and revised some of the original ones. 

[The script that Gas Lamp used, rented from Music Theatre International, the rights-holder, was the one developed for the London première, which ran 21 July 1987-4 February 1989 (644 performances) at the Shaftesbury Theatre in the West End, London’s theater district.

[Goldman rewrote his Broadway libretto extensively for producer Cameron Mackintosh (b. 1946), and Sondheim also wrote some new numbers and rewrote some others.  The London production was directed by Mike Ockrent (1946-99) and choreographed by Bob Avian (1937-2021).

[According to Wikipedia, “‘. . . The (London) Times described the evening as “a wonderful idea for a show which has failed to grow into a story.”’  The Times critic Irving Wardle stated ‘It is not much of a story, and whatever possibilities it may have had in theory are scuppered by James Goldman’s book . . . a blend of lifeless small-talk, bitching and dreadful gags.’” (‘Scupper’ is a mostly British synonym for ‘thwart,’ ‘destroy,’ or ‘scuttle.’)

[Glen Ridge, a bedroom community of New York City, is in New Jersey’s Essex County, about 60 miles and an hour-and-a-quarter drive or train ride—west of the city.  From my experience and observation, Essex County has an exceptional number of performance venues and theater companies, both professional and community-oriented.  One might even say that it’s a little theater-mad, so there’s a lot of theater activity and interest thereabouts.  In addition to the adult shows it produces, Gas Lamp also has many other programs and activities for its supporters. 

[The troupe’s Follies was presented at the Women’s Club of Glen Ridge on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 22, 23, and 24 November (with two shows on Saturday).  Auditions for the production, as you’ll read, were held at the auditorium of Glen Ridge’s Ridgewood Avenue School on the evening of Monday, 23 September, with callbacks for teens on the 27th and adults on the 25th and 27th. 

[The company rehearsed on Monday through Thursday evenings, starting with the first meeting of the cast on Monday, 30 September.  The final dress rehearsal was on Thursday, 21 November, with the opening performance on the 22nd.  Kirk takes us through the whole proceedings, from audition to rehearsals to performance, making observations along the way, all drawn from his years of experience as an actor, director, composer-lyricist, dramatist, and teacher.]

Recently on this blog I posted an account of several events in the arts in which I participated (see “Performance Diary, Part 1” and “Performance Diary, Part 2”). My hope is that readers not in the arts might find an inside look into theater work to be interesting, and that those in the arts – well, we love telling each other what we’ve been through. In that spirit, here’s an account of an event that followed those in the previous articles.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – Walking through an arts exhibit with two friends, one of them, Susan Knight Carlin, mentioned that she was about to direct a production of the musical Follies for a local theater group, the Gas Lamp Players of Glen Ridge, New Jersey. She asked if I might be interested in auditioning for a small role, and I said I was.

Follies, for those not familiar with it, is a 1971 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021) and a book by James Goldman (1927-1998) about a reunion of former members of a series of revues like the famous Ziegfeld Follies of the first part of the Twentieth Century.

The theater building that housed the show’s Follies in the years between World Wars One and Two is about to be torn down, and the reunion brings together many of the stars of those years. In the course of the musical we learn what has happened to those stars since the Follies ended, and see them face revelations about themselves.

Follies first opened on Broadway on April 4, 1971 (the year in which the show is set), and ran until July 1,1972 for a total of 12 previews and 522 performances, a significant number, but its enormous expenses meant it wound up losing all its investment. Its score is generally considered a treasure, with Sondheim capturing the flavor of many styles of songs from the Twenties and Thirties in brilliant fashion. (Among other awards and nominations, the premiere won the Tony for Best Original Score in 1972 and the 1971 Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics.)

The “book” or script of the musical, on the other hand, has frequently been considered problematic, and Goldman tinkered with it for several revivals of the show. Its central concept, regardless, is remarkable: each of the “original” Follies characters is shadowed by a version of their younger selves, who contrast and eventually interact with them. The show has been revived in major productions several times, often with rewrites to the book. (Despite the book’s problems, Goldman was nominated for 1972’s Tony for Best Book of a Musical.)

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – As it turned out, the audition Susan described was the following night, and I couldn’t go, so using my phone I taped a video of myself singing the Gershwin song “Love Is Here To Stay” to my own piano accompaniment, and emailed it to the theater, attaching my acting resume, which I hadn’t looked at in a while and which was much shorter than I’d remembered.

I was invited to a callback night, and I was available for it, so I went to the school auditorium where the company customarily works. I knew a few people there; most were strangers. Susan spoke briefly, but the evening was primarily led by the pianist for the evening, a woman named Kristy Graves, and I wondered if there was some kind of competition between the two, since Susan had told me she was the director.

I read for two characters, in very short scenes – the musical is mostly music, with relatively few extended spoken sections. I was pleased not to be too anxious about the audition – “audition nerves” are common – and I actually got a laugh on one line reading, which pleased me no end.

A day or so later I was offered the role of Dimitri Weismann, the producer of the long-gone Follies and organizer of the reunion that makes up the show. It’s a small part and a well-written one. I accepted the offer by email and was impressed by the efficiency and organization shown by Gas Lamp’s communications. They left few questions to ask; mailings included a contract and a first week rehearsal schedule, all professionally presented. A good sign.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – First rehearsal. Some productions of musicals begin with a read-through of the script, but the script of Follies is hardly the focus of the show, so we didn’t. The school auditorium where we’ll usually be rehearsing is enormous, something like 800 seats, and I felt intimidated as I entered. Once more I knew only a few people in the room, and I got the feeling that others were in the same shape.

We began with an introductory talk, mostly details about organization. I realized the answer to my curiosity about direction – Kristy introduced herself and Susan as co-directors, because Kristy was also going to play an important role in the show, and it’s difficult (and usually not a good idea) to direct oneself. Susan, a professional actor herself (as was Kristy), would work mostly on acting issues. (Kristy was not the musical director for the show, despite her playing piano for the auditions, and very well too.)

As we got started, I thought to myself, “I haven’t done a big musical like this for a long time.” (That was in fact a major reason I’d been interested in auditioning for the show.) Then I realized that I had never been in a big musical like this before! All my experience in musicals had been on small stages with minimal sets and small cast sizes, none of it recent.

I couldn’t help laughing at myself. I also began to realize how out of practice I was as an actor. For example, most musicals, and certainly one on this scale, rent scripts and scores (sometimes contained in one book) from a publishing company, in this case Music Theatre International, which understandably doesn’t want to get its scripts back with writings in pen all over them. Actors learn to bring pencils. I had forgotten.

I decided I had better pay increased attention to what was going on. (A good thing too, because before I was supposed to enter a scene I found my zipper was down.)  

After the opening talk, the group divided in two, with dancers on the stage and singers in a music room, where we began to learn the parts the chorus would sing. (Unlike many musicals, this one doesn’t have a separate singing-and-dancing chorus; the whole company sings the group music, and there isn’t much of it – most of the songs are for small groups.) Another “big musical” feeling – I had flashbacks to Army training, where a number of us would sit in a classroom while a colonel lectured to us.

Actually it wasn’t really much like that – the choral teacher was quiet and very nice. She familiarized us with some of the tricky bits of the vocal lines – since Sondheim wrote the songs, it makes sense that there’d be tricky bits, because his melodies and harmonies are often complex, but as I said the chorus parts are mostly unison, so we’re all in it together.

At exactly the scheduled time, we reassembled on stage to begin work on the opening scene, the most complicated in the show, in which most of the characters come onstage in small groups and have a moment to identify themselves, both in the scene and for the audience’s benefit. Kristy staged this scene; she talked it through, arranged the actors in their opening places, walked them through the music slowly, repeated the process until it was secure, and by the end of the rehearsal the scene was staged. Presto!

I watched this from behind the upstage curtain (at the back of the stage) – my character comes on late in the opening, and we didn’t quite get there. No problem, I’m sure.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1 – The stage manager sent me an email in the morning that refined the time I’d be expected for rehearsal – another sign of efficiency. I have been trying to figure out what time to leave for rehearsal. Last night I barely got there on time; tonight I was half an hour early.

Susan directed the two short opening scenes in which I have lines and did fine; she has a good eye for staging details. I got almost no direction, but then my two speeches have a total of nine words in them. One actor asked Susan a lot of questions about costumes, on the “Have you considered this?” angle. Susan was polite, but I had the impression she was thinking, “My friend, you have no idea how competent this group is.” Of course it will have considered the costumes, and will have a plan for them too.

Susan had originally said the show might be double-cast, with two actors for each role, but as it turns out only one role has two actors, and they both worked with me on the scene with Solange, so when we were finished I asked, just making small talk, “Is it weird to have a double?” One of the performers said, very frankly, “I have epilepsy and it makes me feel much better to know that someone else can do the role.” So interesting – we often don’t know what someone’s story is.

One more sign of the group’s organization: the stage manager, in the auditorium, sat at a table with someone next to him. I don’t know what his function is, but I’ll bet he has one. That theater means business.

Besides my two short lines, I have one longish opening speech. It’s lovely, and I’m working on memorizing it by reading it aloud over and over, relishing every word.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 7 – I was unsure whether I was called for rehearsal tonight – the schedule said “Adult Male Ensemble,” and I didn’t know whether I was included in that group, and couldn’t get clarification. However, I showed up, and it was my worst nightmare – a two-hour dance rehearsal for a big dance number!

I don’t know that I’ve ever done any extended show dancing. I’m certainly not a dancer – very much the opposite. I’m also anything but young and anything but limber, and I have a weak right ankle. No matter. Nothing ventured, nothing gained . . . it’s always darkest just before the dawn . . . to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield . . . Insert your favorite motivational saying here.

Actually I could have used a motivational saying or two – my main difficulty was the voice in my head saying, “You can’t dance worth anything,” followed immediately by my brain, my legs, and my arms shouting, “You’re right!”

There were six of us (there will be eight in the number altogether), none of us young and no more than one or two of us in good shape, but I felt that everyone picked up the steps faster than I did – there are a couple of sequences I never did correctly all night. I have none of what dancers call “muscle memory,” when the body makes the correct moves automatically, and I didn’t demonstrate for certain that I have memory of any kind, actually.

Emily, the choreographer, was cheerful, positive, and has the gift of paying no attention to anything people say along the lines of, “I’m awful with this.” She occasionally corrected but never criticized. She had worked out choreography in advance, but she said to us, “If you don’t like it or it looks silly, we’ll change it,” and I’d say she made up between twenty and thirty percent of the dance (as far as we got tonight) on the fly.

The saving grace is that at the end of the rehearsal she led us in making a video recording so we can work on the steps for next time, which will be next week. No more rehearsals for me this week, but plenty of work to do.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15 – We got the following email today:

We are writing to let you know about some changes made to our Follies production team effective Monday, October 14^th.

Susan Knight has agreed to become sole Director, and Kristy Graves has agreed to step down as co-Director. Kristy will continue to be a member of the cast and the costumer of the show. This change was made to address logistical concerns and potential conflicts of interest.

We expect that these changes will not cause any disruptions to production, but we wanted you all to be aware.

I’ll probably never know what this is all about, but it doesn’t seem to me to have been written in a spirit of joy. A friend of mine ribbed me, “They were doing fine until you got there!”

I’ve since heard that the email was the result of conflict in the theater group’s board. Not surprising, but not great either. NOTE: As things turned out, Kristy and Susan, who had worked on shows together successfully for years, pretty much worked on Follies the way they’d planned to, despite the ultimately meaningless change in titles.

Meanwhile my friend Annie wrote me:

DANCE REHEARSAL!  Still laughing at the panic emanating from those typed words.   It makes me think of something an acting teacher said when assigning some seemingly impossible scene work . . . . you know, one of those things that you think you could NEVER pull off . . way beyond your capability. The student says, “I can’t.” The teacher respectfully accepts that and asks, “Can you try?”

I didn’t like that teacher, but that teaching has stuck with me all these years and it’s gotten me through so many times when I thought I could never do something.  Because it gives me something beside “can I or can’t I.” It gives me “I can try.” Heck, I can always try - that much I can commit to.

And then, of course, the shock is finding out I can do so much more than I thought. Even if not perfectly so . . . . the main key to even a dance performance is the feelings and energy you bring to it. So try to conjure fun and joy and that will translate accordingly.  It’s called a play for a reason . . . . so give yourself permission to play!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18 – Second dance rehearsal, quite different this time: we were in a cafeteria rather than on stage; most of the rehearsal was spent on cleaning up what we’d learned last time; and the atmosphere was more informal than previously.

I had always thought that basically a choreographer was an unchallenged leader, at least when choreographing. At this rehearsal there was a great deal of back and forth (not with me!), even at moments when Emily was actually working out choreography (she revised some steps when necessary).

I had worked literally for hours on the dance as seen in the video of it, and although I doubt if I looked much like a dancer tonight, at least I looked like I’d been to the previous rehearsal. A couple of the men in our group told me they didn’t watch the video at all during the week; I can’t imagine that, but I never looked, or tried to look, at how anyone else was doing – I had my own problems.

By the end of the rehearsal we had at least seen all the steps that will make up the routine, and we’ll have new videos, or I hope so. All in all, I didn’t have too much of that going-down-with-the-ship feeling I had last week. A great relief.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 21 – After Susan made a speech telling us it was all right that Kristy was still doing the staging, Kristy dictated to us the remaining moves we made in Act 1. It turned out that I have more lines in the act than I had realized – good grief!

Also I did a spectacularly poor job of writing down the blocking as she gave it, because I found it hard to locate myself in the script, which of course alternates between dialogue and song lyrics (with the music in a separate section at the back of the book). I got some of it clearer in my mind when we walked the scenes, although I had to be coached a great deal; I asked a question afterwards, to clarify one bit; and my next job at home is to work it all out in a form that makes sense for me. Busy busy busy!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24 – As I was cramming for tonight’s dance rehearsal, my son Craig said to me, “Each time you do it, it’ll be better.” That was exactly what I needed to hear, and it’s true, although I forget it when trying desperately to keep up.

Actually I’m hardly alone in this – none of us in the number are trained dancers as far as I know or can see. I know I look like a guy trying to dance. But it’ll get better, and it did tonight, too.

Emily had to leave for a while in the middle of the rehearsal for a family errand, and while we waited for her to get back, the eight of us worked on the number very slowly, and when she got back she seemed to be pleased with what she saw.

Susan, our director, watched the last run-through of the number and seemed delighted, but when I talked to her I was surprised to learn why. “Usually you’d expect this number to be performed by young professional dancers. It’s so much fun to see a group of older men doing it!”

Not exactly high praise, and I wouldn’t want to use her comment as an excuse not to at least try to do a good job . . . but she’s got a point. My friend Colleen, a choreographer, has also pointed out that an audience almost always cheers a group of men trying to dance, pretty much no matter how they do.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30 – I wasn’t sure why I was at tonight’s rehearsal, and neither was anyone else. Susan staged a scene in which I had one line, at the end of the scene, and then everybody decided I could go home.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31 – Halloween, and driving to the theater in the dark was a perilous adventure, with children all over the place. This was a dance rehearsal, and my advice to myself for the evening was to think, not about what I knew at the start of the rehearsal, but of how much more I’d know at the end.

As it turned out, we started with four of the eight men in the dance, a number that later swelled to six. Emily wasn’t there, and Kristy led the rehearsal, moving slowly through the sections of the dance and “cleaning up” bit after bit. It was two hours of steady work. At first I was mildly irritated that Kristy was working the number instead of Emily – what if she told us things Emily didn’t want? – but she did an excellent job. Is there anything she can’t do?

Midway through the rehearsal I decided to imagine that I was Mikhail Baryshnikov (b. 1948), the great dancer. I have no idea if I moved any better as a result, but I felt more comfortable and had more fun.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – The best laid plans . . . tonight’s rehearsal was supposed to start at 6:30, but a school age production by the same company rehearses in the same space and ran late, so we didn’t get all the way through Act 1 tonight. The creative staff didn’t seem stressed, though.

The movement in Act 1 is complex, lots of people on stage for substantial parts of it, and although I had notes on my movements, tonight was the first time I’d actually done them. The directors, again, were patient. I’d been told that I enter with my (character’s) granddaughter; I met her tonight, a lovely, personable woman. Weismann (my character) must have been quite a charmer in his youth.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6 – The day after the election, and Kristy brought in about six different chocolate desserts, which went fast. Yesterday the non-musical scenes with the eight principals rehearsed; tonight was for big group numbers, and for those of us who haven’t seen them practicing, the effect was like a magic act – suddenly there are all these people on the stage doing intricate dance steps and singing like crazy.

Eventually we men (we call ourselves the “Poor Lost Souls” after a line in our song) got to do our dance number – not that we’d expected to – and then we went into the hall, worked our way through it bit by bit, and I’d say got pretty sharp with it. Emily, when she came out to watch, seemed pleased. A relief – I no longer feel I’m hopeless.

My discovery tonight was what a difference a wig makes. The two women in the “Buddy’s Blues” number wore wigs with long curly brown hair tonight, and both seemed utterly transformed. Ah, theater!

The junior show (“Singing in the Rain,” it turns out) has the auditorium tomorrow night, so we were going to meet at Kristy’s house, but at the end of tonight’s rehearsal Kevin, the stage manager, announced we’d be off until Monday. Okay! More time to get things solid. I almost have the group songs memorized, and I noticed that a number of people were still reading them from the script, so that felt good.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – Kevin, the stage manager, sent out a request for hands to help move pieces of the set into the theater (the Glen Ridge Women’s Club) where we’ll be performing, so I went over to help. Most of the dozen or so people there are old hands with the theater – a real ”community” theater. It was fun to hang out with the “in group.”

A note on my character in the show and how I approached it: the script suggests that Dimitri Weismann is 80, and I’m close to that age. I started with an image of him – authoritarian, maybe with an accent acquired from his immigrant family, a real boss.

Eventually I remembered that beginning an acting role with an image is a terrible idea; it channels you into working for effects rather than working from the inside of a character. I couldn’t think of any reason Weismann shouldn’t be like me – I’ve led theater companies, I’ve put on numerous productions over the years, I’ve directed.

So I allowed Dimitri to behave as I’d naturally behave, rather than the reverse, and apparently that’s fine. I did buy black-rimmed glasses (with clear glass lenses); letting my hair go grey, I looked a bit like a Cary Grant (1904-1986) imitator. Nothing wrong with that.

[Since it covers the entire preparation and performance period of Gas Lamp’s Follies, Kirk Woodward’s “Performance Diary” is too detailed and comprehensive to be accommodated in a single post.  Therefore, Kirk and I have agreed to split it into two installments for publication on Rick On Theater.  “Performance Diary: Follies, Part 2” will be published on Wednesday, 18 December 2024.  Please return then for the account of the final days of the Gas Lamp Players’ Follies.]

Acting Class (On-Line Edition)

by Kirk Woodward

[The coronavirus and COVID-19 have changed almost everything about our lives.  In addition to their effect on our health and livelihoods, it has invaded the arts as well.  Just about every aspect of the arts, from both the perspective of consumers and the artists, has been affected.

[Perhaps one of the least known facets of art, particularly the performing arts, that has been disrupted are classes for the artists.  Since this is an ostensibly theater blog, I’m thinking specifically of acting classes. 

[Since actors and other performers no longer have productions on which they can work, and acting, in particular, is hard to do on your own—however unsatisfying, a writer can work at his craft by him- or herself and a musician can play at home, socially isolated from others—actors need some way to keep the instrument tuned, the skills from atrophying, the “art in yourself,” as Konstantin Stanislavsky put it, from drying up.

[So it’s no wonder that actors have turned to the Internet to seek out ways to test themselves and get feedback on their skills—to exercise the disused muscles.  So along came online acting classes.  I think they started, or at least they proliferated, pretty quickly after theaters, studios, and conservatories shut down.

[My friend Kirk Woodward, who I’d say is mostly a playwright and director, is also an occasional actor.  Susan Knight Carlin, an acquaintance of his who’s an actress and acting teacher sent out a notice that she was starting an online class, and Kirk signed up.  In “Acting Class (On-Line Edition),” he gives a day-by-day account of his participation in and preparation for the class, conducted on Zoom.  I’ll let Kirk tell the rest; he does an excellent job of it.

[One last word: I’ve chosen to post Kirk’s report now, following the profile of his former acting teacher, Elizabeth Dillon, posted last Sunday, because he talks about working with her below and it seemed appropriate that this article come right after the one on Elizabeth.  (As it happens, Kirk also mentions my acting teacher, Carol Rosenfeld.  I’ll have some things to say about Carol and the work I did with her at the end of this post.)]

The computer application Zoom, originally designed primarily as a platform for virtual business meetings, continues to be used extensively by performers and performing groups during the time of social isolation required for fighting the COVID-19 virus. [See Rick On Theater posts “Theater Online – A Preliminary Report,” 19 May, and “The Diary of Anne Frank Online,” 29 May.]

For example, during the month of July I took an acting class on Zoom. It was organized and led by Susan Knight Carlin, a professional actor and teacher. I have mentioned Susan in this blog before, in connection with a production I directed (Spoon River in early 2020) [see “Presbyterian Avant Garde,” posted on ROT on 19 March 2020]. Susan, appropriately enough, announced the class by email, and eight of us eventually signed up for it.

This posting will be as much about the acting work as it will be about the medium (Zoom) used for the class, but I will draw a few conclusions on virtual acting classes at the end.

Susan told us that the class would consist of five sessions, the first one introductory, and would be based on the book Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen (1919-2004). This plan reassured me right away. I was familiar with the book, which was first published in 1973 by Macmillan Publishing Co. and is widely admired and used. (The book was reissued in 2008 by Wiley Publishing and is still in print; Wiley released an e-book version in 2009.)

Hagen was greatly respected as an actor. She won two Tony Awards for originating the roles of Georgie in The Country Girl (1950) by Clifford Odets (1906-1963) in 1951 and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962) by Edward Albee (1928-2016) in 1963, and a Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1999.

A casualty of the “Hollywood Blacklist” because of her close association with the actor Paul Robeson (1898-1976), she and her second husband Herbert Berghof (1909-1990) co-founded the HB Studio in New York City, where she taught a remarkable number of well-known performers, as well as my own transformational acting teacher, Elizabeth Dillon [see “‘Portrait of a Mentor’” by Alan Geller, reposted on ROT on 30 July].

I bought Respect for Acting when it was first published, read it, and have referred to it often since. The book contains ten activities often referred to collectively as “the object exercises,” the title of the chapter that describes them. They are designed so the actor can perform them either privately or with others watching. The word “object” points out that none of these are mime exercises; they call for using actual material items.

Although not all the names of the object exercises are self-explanatory, it still may be useful to list them, using Hagen’s names for them:

The Basic Object Exercise

Three Entrances

Immediacy

The Fourth Wall

Endowment

Talking to Yourself

Outdoors

Conditioning Forces

History

Character Action

The names of the exercises indicate that as a group they cover many of the things an actor does on stage. (I should note that Uta Hagen wrote another book, A Challenge for the Actor, published in 1991 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, also very fine, in which she provides a related but different group of ten exercises with the same purposes.)

Many acting teachers have organized classes based on these exercises, and Susan proposed to do the same. She suggested a five-session class. The first would be introductory; the second through fourth would use the first three of Hagen’s object exercises; and the last would be devoted to monologs

I said above that Susan’s plan for the class reassured me. Actually this is only partially true. For two years in the 1970’s I studied and applied the principles of the object exercises in technique classes at the HB Studio (not led by Elizabeth, whose classes were entirely scene study), and was an abject failure at them. Carol Rosenfeld, the instructor and a fine one, still teaching and well regarded in the profession, must have wondered what in the world I was doing there.

[The New York Times ran an article by Elisabeth Vincentelli called “Time for Your Close-Up” in the “Arts & Leisure” section on Sunday, 3 May.  It’s about online acting classes and one of the teachers who conducts such a class is Carol Rosenfeld of HB Studio.  The article is available on the Times website as “‘The World Goes Away’ and Other Lessons From Online Acting Class” at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/theater/acting-class-online-coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=1.]

How did I manage to fail so badly? Some of it was due to simple lack of preparation; the object exercises aren’t improvisations. They require preparation and practice (like being in a play!), neither of which are my natural strong points.

Much of my procrastination was due to a feeling that I simply wasn’t very creative about the exercises. As well as I can remember, my ideas for what to do in the exercises (we had to come up with those ideas; Carol didn’t assign them) didn’t excite me, which meant they certainly wouldn’t have excited anybody else. Carol remained patient . . . .

So when I accepted Susan’s offer of a class, I also wrote her that object exercises were “the bane of my existence.” She refused to accept my statement, which I appreciate. I mailed her my check and the classes began on the last Tuesday night in June 2020, continuing through the following four Tuesday nights in July.

CLASS ONE – Our introductory first session began with Susan’s review of the first part of Respect for Acting, which she had asked us to read in advance, and quickly developed into a discussion of the mechanics of Zoom and the possible problems we would face.

I had wondered in particular what anyone would be able to see of an object exercise, considering the small size of a laptop camera. Susan pointed out, and Jennie Cherry, a class member, demonstrated, that with proper placement such a camera could show most of a good sized room, although of course it couldn’t do a variety of angles and distances without a second person moving it around.

In the course of this introductory session, I found insights into two things people often say about acting, both of which have always bothered me. The first goes something like this (I am not quoting anyone in particular): “We think we’re one person, but we’re really many different people. I’m one person when I’m with my spouse, another when I’m with my boss. I contain many different people.”

This kind of thinking seems to me simply not true. At its best it suggests that we can understand or perhaps put ourselves in the place of another person. At its worst, as a friend of mine has pointed out, it can be dangerous for an actor who is deeply neurotic (it can happen!) to think they have “no real self.” According to many accounts the actor Peter Sellers (1925-1980) was a classic example of this condition, and not a happy one.

The situation, at least for relatively healthy people, it seems to me, is, instead, that we respond in varying degrees to all sorts of conditions. An actor should be able to take in many kinds of circumstances, including – to name three obvious ones – the circumstances detailed by the script; those provided by the director; and those that arise from interaction with other actors in the scene or play.

In theory, at least, the better “receiver” should be the better “reactor” or responder, and many acting exercises, including Uta Hagen’s, are designed to make actors better “receivers” for that very reason.

This leads to a second insight concerning the well-known phrase “Acting is reacting,” which seems to me to be exactly half right. Acting is receiving and reacting. One can’t “react” in a vacuum. One needs to take in the stimuli first. Individuals differ in how and how much they do “receive.”

                                                                                         

A personal application: I am not a particularly good “receiver.” I have often said that I would make a poor witness in a court trial; I’m simply not a great observer. I’ve worked on this limitation over the years, with some improvement, I hope. I suspect the deficiency is a reason I never tried to act fulltime.

All the more reason to take another acting class! Here is Uta Hagen’s list of what “I have to know if I want to re-create . . . two minutes of experience:”

Who am I?

What time is it?

Where am I?

What surrounds me?

What are the given circumstances? (past, present, future, and the events)

What is my relationship (to events, characters, and things)

What do I want?

What’s in my way?

What do I do to get what I want?

And since I’ve made an issue of my preparation, here is a day-by-day account of my preparation for the first exercise (second class session), the “basic object exercise.”

The assignment of the first object exercise is to prepare a two minute slice of life in which you do something you do or might do in your regular life – not perform it, but simply do it. (I thought a requirement was that the exercise involve at least three objects, but I don’t see that Hagen mandates that, and Susan didn’t either.)

DAY ONE – found a monolog, Henry Drummond’s speech about the rocking horse he coveted as a child, from the play Inherit the Wind (1955) by Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert E. Lee (1918-1994). Emailed Susan and told her what I’d selected, typed it out, and read it through once out loud.

Thought about what I might use for an object exercise. Tried to think what I do in my home office, where I usually work. Remembered the photo albums on one of the book shelves, thought that might fit the bill.

Experimented with the laptop to see if it could show the book shelves, my desk, and most of the room at once. Found that it could. Came up with a rough beginning outline of the exercise – take a photo album, find something and look at it, decide not to dwell on it, get another album, start sorting photos. Watched myself on the camera, which seemed to cover the space.

DAY TWO – Susan approved the monolog. Read it out loud again, trying to read it “neutrally” – to not force “line readings.” Decided that I’d use two photo albums, one that didn’t contain the pictures I thought it did (with pictures of my late wife Pat in various acting roles), and one family album. Tentative “want” or objective: to find a picture that a family member asked me for, of him in a play with Pat. Decided to let my subconscious work overnight.

DAY THREE – subconscious gave me orders. Situation became a letter from my aunt, asking for a picture of the family together. Made prop envelope and letter “from my aunt,” decided I’ll begin with bringing the mail into the office, read the letter, look in one album, find it interesting, put it back and get another album, start looking for the photo. I did the actions and timed them – took two minutes or so. Fine.

Read the monolog out loud again, as neutrally as possible. Realized it’s not “due” for a month. Wrote the nine “what I need to know” questions (see above) on the monolog, not consciously trying to answer them yet.

DAY FOUR – did the exercise again. It dawned on me that I really don’t have to “show” or “indicate” anything – just do it. Felt good about that. I like this exercise! Realized I need an ending – taking out a photo, putting the album back on the shelf. Planned to add that tomorrow.

Read the monolog out loud, and worked on learning the first section. Just two typed lines. How’s my memory these days? Worked more on answering those nine questions, using the information in the script and the fact that, my father and grandfather were lawyers, like Henry Drummond. 

DAY FIVE – object exercise again, adding the ending. Seemed fine. I love not having to “show” anything, but it’s still a temptation I have to consciously resist.

Worked on the first two sections of the monolog. As I divided it, there are six. Monologs aren’t “uninterrupted speech” – we just don’t hear the interruptions, which often come as thoughts or images. I’m trying to remember to make the images in the speech(es) real to myself.

DAY SIX – I was still finding it difficult to do the “object exercise” without trying to clue in my imaginary audience somehow as to what’s going on, like saying “Hmmm!” when I open the letter from my aunt.

Started memorizing the third section of the monolog. These are all short – not huge chunks of prose.

DAY SEVEN – time to try out the object exercise in the morning, so I set up the computer, started the camera recording, and did the exercise. Aside from my horror at seeing myself on camera (the words “old” and “fat” come to mind), to my amazement it was too short – 1:26 including turning the camera on and going to position, and I need two minutes. Changes: make sure not to rush; end by putting the photo album back, sitting at the desk, taking out paper, and beginning to write a letter to Aunt Emma.

Practicing the monolog, I tried to keep from being inaudible on words that begin or end phrases in the speech, and to make mental connections to help with the words I’m substituting other words for in my head. The originals are better. I realized today that the speech is pivotal for the play, because Drummond recognizes in it that for the sake of fighting for justice, he has abandoned the charm and lightness of his childhood.

CLASS TWO – after some preliminary discussion, we did the object exercises, one by one. Susan was supportive and enthusiastic; she asked two or three of us to repeat a section of the exercise using a “heightened circumstance.” For example, she asked me to become more absorbed in the first photo album I looked at, imagining that it contained, for example, pictures of Pat (which it actually did).

In requesting this, Susan put her finger on the weakest part of my exercise; redoing it strengthened it. It exasperated me not to have “nailed” the entire exercise the first time, but after all, that’s why we’re in class – to improve.

The session concluded with discussion of next week’s “three entrances” exercise, an “object exercise” in which we come into a room three times, each time coming in from a different experience which changes the way in which we enter.

I started immediately thinking about what kind of circumstances I could use for the new exercise. I decided I was returning to my home office after a day’s meeting with a possible publisher for several of my plays. One meeting would have been long and inconclusive, and I’d be exhausted; one would have been a failure, and I’d be furious; one would have been successful, and I’d be thrilled.

(WEEK TWO) DAY ONE – I found a “messenger bag” and put a folder and a script in it. I had decided overnight that I won’t be back from a publisher, but from someone who was interested in producing my play. I did the three entrances – tired, furious, and happy – pausing in the doorway each time before “entering,” and they all were great fun. I like this stuff! 

                                                          

Without trying too hard I was close to having the entire monolog basically memorized. It struck me now that Drummond is recalling his childhood incident for the first time in decades – he thought he’d forgotten it. That’s how it can bring back all the feelings it does. He’s lost something in the struggle, though, and he knows it.

DAY TWO – severe resistance to rehearsing the exercise at all, but I finally did it about 5 PM. To my surprise it was very different this time, and fun. It dawned on me that I might do it differently every time – I don’t have to repeat it. If you had already figured that out, well, I hadn’t, at least not that I’d noticed.

Monolog nearly memorized. If I let myself “remember” the events I’m talking about – let them come to mind as I’m trying to recall them – and visualize the images, it works, or at least it feels right.

DAY THREE – was I becoming too comfortable with the “three entrances?” The monolog was very close to memorized.

DAY FOUR – added a new bit or two to the exercise. I found I could be freer with it. Same for the monolog.

DAY FIVE – freer with the object exercise, somewhat less with the monolog, but I nearly had it memorized.

DAY SIX – changes continue in the “three entrances,” apparently organically. Monolog so-so.

DAY SEVEN – as before, I video-recorded the exercise to see if it fit in the camera, and to sneak a look at how I’m doing. Seemed all right, although I hated the way I look in profile! Monolog steady.

CLASS THREE – the class went well, and I was happy with my “three entrances” – I believe the first time I’ve ever felt good about any of the Uta Hagen exercises. Susan commented that she’d never seen me “mad” like that before. She emphasized how strong “previous circumstances” carry a scene forward, and the actor doesn’t have to worry about the audience “getting it” – the playwright will take care of that. 

At the end of the class, a brief review of the third exercise, hunting for a lost object, which Uta Hagen calls “Immediacy.” Here we go! 

DAY ONE – I decided that for the “Immediacy” exercise I’ll look for a missing check, because it’s something I can do in the office (and therefore in camera range), and because it actually happened. It would be funny if in the course of the exercise I actually found the missing check! I tried out the exercise and liked it.

I did the monolog closer to actual conditions – looking in the direction of the camera, “placing” the listener somewhere specific. (I have to work more on that.) I’ll do it sitting, since my character is exhausted after a brutally long day.

DAY TWO – trying to raise the stakes on trying to find the check. Only one mistake in the monolog.

DAY THREE – after doing the exercise, I wrote Susan to ask how long our segments should be. We could go on looking for the lost object forever (in actuality I never did find the check I was looking for). For the monolog I’m intensifying my character’s frustrations with the court system, which is leading to a more forceful delivery. 

DAY FOUR – Susan wrote the group in an email that we need to be sure we have high-pressure reasons for looking for the lost object in the Immediacy exercise, so I decided I needed to deposit the (lost) check so I can get the money into the bank to pay my city taxes. It seemed to work. Small imprecisions in the monolog, but it’s growing.

DAY FIVE – timed the Immediacy exercise – four minutes. Perfect. Found new significance in a line in the monolog.

DAY SIX – took the day off! Didn’t want to get stale . . . maybe . . . .

DAY SEVEN – did the Immediacy exercise with the computer camera on, to make sure it’s all visible to the class. Doing the monolog, I realized how much I’m thinking during it, on one level of my mind, about what the class, and in particular Susan, will think of it – how they’ll respond. A very bad element, which restricts what I’m doing.

CLASS FOUR – good results from the Immediacy exercise for the whole class, including me, and spectacularly for one member who actually did find her genuinely lost object during the class presentation.

“I wasn’t acting,” she said of that moment, and in a lot of ways that’s what Uta Hagen’s exercises try to accomplish – to bring actors to a point where they can behave on stage in ways that aren’t stagy. Ms. Hagen would endorse the famous advertising slogan “Just do it” as a model for how actors should approach a role. 

Looking ahead to the monologs in next week’s class, Susan advised us to think of the fact that our monologs will be on camera rather than on stage – they don’t have to “reach the rear balcony,” because there isn’t one on Zoom. It’ll be interesting to see how that works.

DAY ONE – no more exercises, only a monolog now. Nearly word perfect. I tried to let the remembering start much earlier – when I first mention “Golden Dancer,” the rocking horse I had as a child. Recalling is much richer than when just telling.

DAY TWO – monolog a little freer.

DAY THREE – okay, but I held back a little on the climax. Saving it for class?

DAY FOUR – a bit more adventurous. I felt ready to go on and perform it and see how it went. I thought I might even ask someone at home to listen to it – a big deal for me, since I prefer to do my floundering around in private.

DAY FIVE – a little more force to the ending of the monolog.

DAY SIX. I hadn’t found time for my son Craig to listen to the monolog, but today we found time. He liked it and seemed to feel I was communicating what I needed to.

DAY SEVEN – one more runthrough of the monolog. Go for it!

CLASS FIVE – at the beginning Susan mentioned that she usually begins classes and rehearsals with relaxation exercises, and she led a brief set of them, aimed particularly at unclenching the jaw and the vocal apparatus. All the monologs went well.

Jennie Cherry did a piece from the play Wit (by Margaret Edson, first performed in 1995) so well that I felt I didn't need to see the whole play. That’s quite a result. I can’t say I felt the same about mine, but I was happy with it.

                                                                                           

So what conclusions can we draw from doing an acting class on Zoom? Most obviously, we didn’t test working in pairs. In theory there’s no reason a scene with two actors shouldn’t succeed on Zoom, but it wouldn’t be the same as an in-person experience.

One issue would be the sound delay between computers that’s inevitable in Zoom events. Another would be a severe limitation on physical movement, which Zoom doesn’t handle well. Even small gestures on Zoom may create a feeling in the viewer akin to seasickness, and a scene with “blocking” – planned walks and actions – is likely out of the question. A pair of actors in a scene on Zoom, each actor working at a separate computer from a different location, would have to be “talking heads.”

Susan pointed out another aspect of the experience: acting on Zoom is literally “in your face” – a viewer can detect the slightest emotional shift, because the camera’s focus is so close. Typical acting class rooms are small, so actors seldom practice “projection” of voice in them; “projection” on Zoom is unthinkable.

The other side of that coin is that intimacy is part of the experience of acting, and Zoom encourages authenticity. I believe the participants of this class sensed that aspect of the medium, which I would say helped produce a high quality of work. How that result would transfer to the stage is another question, of course, but then we won’t be working on stage for a while.  

[In “Acting Class,” Kirk recounts that he took an acting technique class at HB Studio from Carol Rosenfeld before he connected with Elizabeth Dillon.  In his estimation, his work with Carol wasn’t satisfying, unlike his classes with Elizabeth.

[Acting technique classes are intended to teach the student actor the basics of acting by using exercises as well as scenes from plays, films, TV shows, and even novels and short stories.  The skills the actor learns in technique classes are what I think of as the basic building blocks of performing a scene before an audience.  Each teacher teaches the acting style of a particular system; Carol’s technique classes are focused on the acting skills stressed by Uta Hagen, who’d been her teacher.

[While the result of a technique class isn’t to solve a scene—the actor is learning or honing skills—scene study classes are where those skills are applied to acting problems—that is, scenes.  One, but more likely two actors prepare and present a scene, usually assigned by the teacher (though some teachers allow and even encourage the students to choose their own material), and are then critiqued by the teacher (and sometimes their classmates).  The scenes are reworked several times based on the feedback until the teacher feels the actors have solved the acting problem.

[Kirk also explains that Carol’s technique class made use of Uta Hagen’s Object Exercises as laid out in her book Respect for Acting.  I’m very familiar with the OE’s, mainly because I also took acting technique with Carol—as well as scene study—and stayed with her for several years. 

[I left HB in the fall of 1975 and enrolled in the newly established Master of Fine Arts theater program at Rutgers University’s School of Fine and Performing Arts, now the Mason Gross School of the Arts.  Carol was the head of the acting section in the MFA program.  I was at Rutgers for two years, 1975-77.

[While I was at Rutgers, I was appointed to a Teaching Assistantship, teaching undergraduate acting classes.  I adapted Carol’s technique curriculum, which, as I said, is based on Uta’s object exercises, and made it the foundation of my first-semester acting classes.  In the second semester, I moved onto scene study.

[While I was reading “Acting Class,” I thought of many things I wanted to say about the object exercises and my experiences with them in Carol’s classes, as well as in my own teaching.  I realize now that those remarks would be very extensive, making this a very long afterword.  I’m going to cut my thoughts down to one specific idea.

[Kirk allowed that his experiences with the OE’s hasn’t been good.  It sounded as if he’d changed his mind somewhat after successfully doing a few.  He said he hadn’t “exactly about the OE’s, but about my ability to do them.”  I told him I could tell him some very specific benefits I got from using them, practical lessons I learned.  That was part of why I used them as the basis for my own technique course.  I’ll relate one incident that illustrates what I mean.

[In my first year at Rutgers, I was cast in a university production of Anton Chekhov’s The Wood Demon.  It’s a large cast show, and the first scene is a huge meal served outdoors at one long table arranged near the front edge of the proscenium stage.  The actors were arrayed all around the table, but mostly on the upstage side.  Since this was 19th-century Russia in an upper-class family, the table was set formally; there were a lot of props, in other words, in a somewhat crowded setting.

[There were 11 people around the table, all of us eating and passing bowls, plates, and pitchers back and forth, handling utensils, napkins, and glasses.  As I said, a very proppy scene.  Now, when I did plays as a college student and an amateur in army productions, if anything went wrong with a prop I was supposed to handle—say it wasn’t in the right place on the set or it had tipped over, anything so that it wasn’t the way it was “supposed” to be, as we’d rehearsed it—I’d get nervous and flustered. 

[‘What if I screw up,’ I’d be thinking.  I’d lose focus and concentration for seconds.  I was in danger of dropping a line, maybe, or letting the audience see that I was out of the moment.  Well, you can be sure that in the organized chaos of this luncheon scene, that sort of thing was bound to occur—and it did from time to time during the run.  There was also a fair amount of improvised table conversation under the dialogue, just to add another potential distraction.

[Carol always came to see us in our productions and said a few words to us afterwards—not a critique like in class, as she might do during rehearsal or after the production was over.  The night she came to see Wood Demon, she said two things to me that I’ve never forgotten.  The second thing was that she was pleased to see that I was no longer showing my work on stage. 

[When I asked her why that was, she told me that my technique had now become integrated into my working process and was no longer a separate step on which I had to concentrate.  I couldn’t have been more proud of myself than if someone had just told me I’d become a father!

[The second thing she complimented me on was how engaged in the world of the play I was.  It dawned on me that I was no longer afraid of the props, so I could work in rehearsal on being in the scene with the other actors/characters., to be “receptive,” as Kirk put it.  I mentioned this to Carol—who’d been working with me by that time for about two years—and she pointed out that the work had been paying off.

[It wasn’t until much later, when I started doing Off-Off-Broadway shows with and for people I didn’t already know, that I saw that this confidence, if I can get away with that word, was a direct consequence of the Basic Object Exercise, the first one that Kirk describes above, and the work that led to in Carol’s classes and others I eventually took—not to mention rehearsals for actual productions. 

[The BOE is all about manipulating objects—there’s no more fundamental skill for an actor than handling and maneuvering objects—props.  It used to frighten me, and now it didn’t.  The BOE, the simplest of all acting exercises, showed me that it’s no different to handle objects on stage than it is in my living room, and if something’s out of place or askew—well, so what?  Just get it from where it sits, just like at home.  I do it all the time.  The only difference is, now someone’s watching me do it.  I still do it the same way.

[Earth shattering?  No.  But it had never entered my head—until someone made me see it.  And it made all the difference.  QED.]