Go On and Feel That Life!

One of my favorite books, Training of the American Actor, is a survey of the various American acting methods, in a really clear, accessible form. What I've learned over time as a director is that every actor needs from me something slightly different. Every actor's process is unique. So this book is a valuable tool for me, to be familiar enough with lots of different processes. Kind of like a band teacher who can play lots of different instruments.

My biggest overall takeaway from the book is that much of the "theory" or "philosophy" of acting boils down, more or less, to one concept -- live honestly and spontaneously within the world of the story. That requires a deep understanding of that world, real, fictional, or like most of our shows, a combination of the two -- notably, a deeper understanding than the audience ever needs.

Some actors (and David Mamet) think everything they need is in the text. I couldn't disagree more. To live fully in an imaginary (or even half-imaginary) world demands more than a superficial understanding of how that world operates. And let's face it, even the most factually accurate piece of theatre isn't "real," since storytelling by necessity means selecting and editing from the details of life. Even if the story is entirely true, so much gets left out, which distorts the truth, for better or worse.

When we produced Urinetown, it wasn't too hard for our actors to understand those people and that world, a fractured mix of the near-future and the 1930s, but still recognizably America -- and American musical comedy. When we produced Bat Boy, the characters were exaggerations, but hypocritical, fear-driven Christians aren't entirely foreign to us.

With Jesus Christ Superstar, we followed Tim Rice's original wishes that the story be set Now. So we found the closest contemporary parallels to the characters' actual social and political positions. That's the whole point of the show, after all, comparing Jesus' political activism and the government's response, directly to the activism and government responses of the present. But at the same time, our actors needed to understand the culture and politics of 33 AD, and where it does and doesn't mirror our times. Once we came to understand all of that fully, everything about the show became so obvious, so clear, so organic -- that's what Tim Rice intended, and it works so beautifully.

Where am I going with all this...?

To Yeast Nation, of course. This time, getting the actors comfortable in the world of our story isn't nearly as straight-forward. But everything becomes clearer and clearer at every rehearsal, the flow of the story, all the interior connections and cross-connections, the incredible build of momentum over Act II, the unrelenting intensity of it all. As I like to say about many of my favorite shows, it's a real roller coaster ride.

This world has a slightly different vocabulary from what we're used to, different values, different institutions, different beliefs... and yet, intertwined with all that are unmistakably human emotions like love, lust, jealousy, loss, corruption, ambition. But we can't always make "human" assumptions about the events of our story. As an example, I've asked the actors to always carefully pronounce two words, muck and love, because these are two new things in this world, so they shouldn't be comfortable with those words too quickly.

It reminds me of 1776, in which they all pronounce "Maryland" as Mare-ee-land. It had not yet lost its connection to Queen Mary, the wife of Charles I of England; it was (as place names go) still relatively new.

This show is like we're in a parallel dimension, where yeasts remained the dominant life form all these millennia, and so instead of Antigone and Macbeth, the great Yeast playwrights wrote Yeast Nation. After all, even the Greek Chorus, outside the narrative, are still Yeasts. They are telling us their story.

Which is to say, our story.

You see the challenge. One of our guiding lights is Jan-the-Unnamed and her Yeast Greek Chorus. Her formalized, "tragical" language gives us a strong sense of where Kotis and Hollmann mean us to go. Before we even started rehearsals, I re-watched both Macbeth and Antigone to get into that mindset. Like Macbeth, this show really is a political thriller -- give it a non-ridiculous context and it wouldn't be funny at all.

That's the glory of the madness that is Yeast Nation.

At the same time, we can't get lost in the yeastiness of it all. The old rule still applies, to play the woman, not the prostitute; or to play the man, not the drunk. Here we have to play honestly the human emotions and weaknesses that Kotis and Hollmann have built our story on. But we have a double trap to avoid. We have to play the serious events and emotions, not the wacky premise. And likewise, we have to be careful not to play the political title, in this case, Crown Prince (Jan-the-Second-Oldest), but instead to play the rebellious son; not to play the eventual betrayal, but to play the injustice that leads Sly, and the overwhelming desire that leads Wise, both to their treason.

The trick is to come at all of it from the inside, not from the outside. When the material's this rich, that's not hard. But it's still tricky in Yeast Nation.

It's important to understand all this because the least funny thing is the effort to be funny. I reminded the cast last night of one of the Rules of Great Comedy. If they get an idea that will be really funny, they have to discard it; but if they get an idea that will really reveal character or story (and if it's also funny, that's a bonus), they should try it. We don't have to make the show funny; Kotis and Hollmann did that for us. We have to make it honest.

Because that will be really, really funny.

As we head into the home stretch and polish our crazy creation, I'm watching both Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus. I think both will help me guide this ship of ours toward its hilariously sui generis destination. It is a glorious, audacious piece of the best kind of madness. I can't wait to share this with you.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

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