louder, faster, funnier, deadlier, more, more, choices upon choices...

People often ask me why we repeat shows. We've done it several times in our twenty-one seasons -- Assassins (1994, 1998, 2008); Hair (2000, 2001, 2008); Bat Boy (2003, 2006); and now High Fidelity (2008, 2012). When I get that question, I always respond, "Would you ask the Symphony why they repeat Beethoven's Ninth? Would you ask a classical theatre company why they repeat A Midsummer Night's Dream?"

We repeat shows because we think there's more to discover there. And High Fidelity is proving my point for me yet again.

Initially my plan was to recreate my staging from 2008 with the knowledge that some things would probably change, since we have two-thirds of a new cast this time. But as I blocked the show (stoned) on my living room couch, and also in rehearsal (not stoned), we strayed much further from our original production than I expected. Not only has a lot of the staging changed now (I bet less than a quarter of my 2008 staging remains), but we're also finding so much new depth and nuance in these characters and in this rich dialogue and lyrics.

Monday night, we were staging the first part of Act II and we got to this amazing monologue Rob has listing the Top Five things he loves about Laura (a list that eventually swells to ten). Jeff was so great with that monologue last time we did the show; he totally had the audience eating out of his hands every night. But as we worked on it this time, I suggested a couple things to think about, and Jeff found a whole new level of depth and truthfulness in these words. One thing I suggested was that Rob has not made this list before, that as he moves through the list, he discovers each one of these things as he says them, that they occur to him in real time, rather than reporting back to the audience on something he had already worked through. I thought that was a pretty minor note to give Jeff, but it must have opened a door for him, because instantly the monologue came to life in a way it hadn't before. It became more emotional, funnier, sadder.

It functioned as character development last time, but Jeff's new reading also now allows it to work as plot development. Now, Rob realizes as he talks to us how much he has lost, how deeply he regrets everything, and that propels him forward in the plot. We actually get to see him learn in real time now.

And yet I have to be careful. There are a lot of ways a director can fuck up an actor's performance, and the easiest way is to overwhelm them with fine tuning when they're just trying to get comfortable with the dialogue and staging. Expect too much too early, and the actor will feel either bullied or incompetent. Neither is good. Expect profound depth at this relatively early point, and the actor may just shut down. The kind of emotional and character depth we're dealing with in High Fidelity takes some time to find and figure out, even for those of us who've done the show before...

My job is to make sure we're all on the right road, and heading for the same destination, but then I have to let the actors work. I have to get out of the way as much as I can and let them create their brilliant performances. I've learned over the years how to do what I think of as "minimalist" directing, specifically for this point in the process. When an actor is having a hard time turning the emotional or comic (or both) dial up to eleven, I try to find really evocative words or phrases that will sound like fun to a good actor, that will open a door for them, like joy, adventure, rowdy, shattered...

In a couple weeks, I'll start tweaking and nitpicking, but for now, we just run the show and the actors get to play and experiment. They must have the freedom to fail without consequences. Otherwise, no one will take any risks. And risk-taking is where all the coolest shit comes from...

It's important for all of us who've already done the show to remember that we're creating a new show now. Some of the staging may be the same (although a lot less than I expected), but since two-thirds of the cast is new, that makes almost every scene and every song new in some way. Aaron is finding Ian now and he's so different from our Ian in 2008, that it automatically changes every scene he's in. The same is true of Dowdy playing Dick. Plus we're all four years older and wiser -- that may not sound like much, but you'd be surprised how differently I see this story this time around. It's kinda cool...

This is such fun work we're doing! Partly because the show is AWESOME and the songs are AMAZING. But also partly because we can already see how much our head start (from doing the show before) is paying off. Several of us already did all the heavy lifting four years ago; now we can sort of skip ahead to the more subtle, artistic work that usually isn't happening till later. Jeff and Kimi (as Rob and Laura) are finding very different, very powerful moments in their scenes together. Together Jeff and I are really discovering that "rock bottom" that Rob has to hit before his redemption. His fight with Liz late in Act II is really a fight now -- as in yelling at each other -- and it takes Rob to a much darker rock bottom. More so than we did last time, we are absolutely shattering Rob, and I think that makes him much realer, his story much more emotional, and his redemption that much richer.

All the blocking is done. There's just one piece of choreography left to do on Sunday, and it's really easy. Then we do nothing but run the show. Next week, we'll run the acts separately and do our best to work out the major kinks. Then we move into the theatre and start running the whole show at every rehearsal. That's the most fun part for me...

The adventure continues.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. In case you're wondering... I always title my blog posts with lyrics from whatever show I'm working on. And this post's title comes from the "tone poem" that opens High Fidelity's finale, "Turn the World Off (And Turn You On)."