Plays That Teach and Players That Dazzle: Anatomy of My Acting Class

New York

Last night I drank a little champagne in a room that looked a little like the one above at the Producer's Club on 44th and 9th, after performing a scene from "Dinner With Friends", Donald Margulies' Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

Let me start out by saying that I love theater because it is a chance to examine life--the good and bad--and put some fundamental themes in place--like loss, for example, and betrayal. And, of course, love. They're all there in the great plays, the ones that entertain us and still teach us something universal. That's what's been taking place for the last several weeks for me.

My scene is about loss and the inevitability of change. It takes place in my character, Karen's home where she is entertaining a good friend who is facing divorce and all of its ramifications. In this particular exchange, I am trying to dissuade her from getting involved with some roller-blading, also newly-divorced lawyer, before the ink is even dry on her divorce papers. My scene partner and I have been rehearsing for 4 weeks, a couple of times per week. We meet at my apartment sometimes. Occasionally we go to Marseilles, across from the Producer's Club and have dinner before class--furiously running our lines over tuna nicoise.

The scene went well, even my phone monologue that finishes off the scene, as I tell my husband, Gabe, about how hard my lunch with my friend was on me; and how afraid I am that our marriage is on the rocks as well. ( His reply to every attempt to communicate my fears? " I can't talk...I'm at work." See why Margulies won the Pulitzer? )

The monologue was challenging since, obviously, I'm supposed to be talking to someone, making the exchange believable. Laurence Gewirtz, the director of the project, wrote the monologue especially for me--so I'd have a chance to have more "face time" in the scene. In order to make the words work, I wrote the response I thought Gabe would make to the words Laurence had crafted. Timing matters in this case. And it was tough to pause just long enough. Think about it next time you see someone on Law and Order or Without a Trace in the middle of a phone call. They all make it look effortless. But it feels pretty silly initially to be talking into a dead phone!

The experience was rewarding on many levels. But probably the most important for me was the chance to perform again, to read and interpret the lines of really good playwrights like Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot or August Wilson's work.

The most interesting part of the class was the other actors--all people like me, most of whom haven't given up their day jobs so to speak.
Kathi moved to New York with her husband ( not without reservation ) and has given up her job selling insurance to study acting--complete with the glossy photos, a listing in Actor Access, and her own webpage. AJ, a new graduate, was, well, a little overconfident perhaps which maybe got in the way of his occasional moments of lovely acting. Natasha, an MBA born in Russia, analyzes data all day, and had, it seemed, the most difficult time shedding her reserve to become her character( which she accomplished last night for the first time )--an artist ready to deface a sculpture to make a point. Caroline, who looked for all the world like the woman who fed the pigeons in "Home Alone" carried her age well, and brought intelligence and spirit to her very complex Godot character.

Joshua, retired now, taught drama in Harlem for years. He and an HBO exec, Jamaal, performed a scene from August Wilson's play about a father and son reunion. But the reunion was bittersweet as the scene unfolds to the pain of prison for the son, the pain of the father in losing his wife, and the deep chasm between the two men after 20 years of estrangement.
It was a moving performance by these two very talented men. During their performance, you could hear a pin drop.

But the evening's reviews go to Eunice. Laurence, the director, asked us all if we would stay a bit after our performance. He said he had asked Eunice, also retired, to perform an original monologue that she had written. We slid into the black chairs with our plastic champagne glasses in hand, a little giddy I suppose.

Eunice was on stage with a garland of flowers, her one knee on the ground. She began speaking to a gravestone, that of the character's son. She blamed him for leaving her, for dying so young, just 18. And then she turned her head skyword, tears streaming down her cheeks, as she pointed her finger at God. "Why'd you let this happen? It's not like your Son. You knew your Son would die. But I didn't expect this. This is Your fault," The scene ended with her head in her hands, weeping for what might have been, mourning her loss.

It was a show stopper. I'm pretty sure Eunice actually did lose a son to violence. And somehow is able to get up each morning and make sense of it all. And somehow had the courage last night to show us how its done.

So, today, if I were writing a review of my class, I'd say that all 8 of us learned some things--from the playwright, from the director. But the players were the best teachers because it took courage to show up week after week, trying to make the words live, transform ourselves into that character, forget the problems of the day, of the past--and create something out of nothing.

And we did. Last night in that little stage off Broadway.

Look out, Nathan Lane. Look out Meryl Streep...here we come.

M.C.

M.C.