The Laramie Project Diaries: Chapter Three

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on October 11, 2009 - 9:41am

by Seth Rogovoy

(Sunday, October 11, 2009) At the beginning of yesterday's rehearsal of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, around 10 am, the ensemble of professional actors, theater people, and community members was loose and relaxed. I pay close attention to the professionals, looking for cues from them about how to deport ourselves. Given the limited time we have to get this staged reading -- which takes place tomorrow, Monday, at 3 and 7 at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass. -- up and running, there's not a lot of time spent on talking about process. Rather, we are fully thrown into process, like boxers when the bell rings, and we shuffle around and avoid our punches, trying to throw a few when it's our turn and otherwise take the blows when they come our way.

For the first half hour or so, the mood was light and some of the pros were mugging and making jokes. I thought to myself, at the beginning of what was to be an intense seven-hour rehearsal with minimal break time, oh, this is going to be fun. Today's the day when we are loose and get to play. It made me feel better about the unintentional commitment of my entire day to this project, worthy and exciting as it is.

That lasted about 30 minutes, and then it was gone.

For the next six-and-a-half hours, I watched (and tried to equal) actors and directors work with heroic intensity and focus. Sure, this isn't coal mining, but yesterday's rehearsal required deep reserves of mental and physical stamina and focus.

In large part we were still going through the paces of figuring out how and when people would enter, exit, move around, and deal with the minimal but significant staging with props and furniture. Given the enormity of the cast -- I haven't counted, but there's easily over a dozen people in the show -- and the fact that everyone is onstage the entire time -- this presents quite a challenge in terms of staging and in terms of the actors' focus. In the two acts, you are never "off," figuratively or literally.

During the rehearsal process, this means that it's not like a bunch of us are off in the wings sitting around a table playing poker until the stage manager calls us for our scene. It's not like I can sit in the audience while two actors work with a director on a scene reading today's paper or writing this blogpost (or those damn CD reviews I have to get done so that there can be a November-December issue of Berkshire Living).

Rather, for the entire seven hours, minus two quick ten-minute breaks and one 45-minute lunch break that finally occurred at 2pm, we were all "on," every one of us.

And this was only one day.

My thoughts immediately go to Christopher Innvar and Kevin Carolan, who are in the cast and who were in BSC's terrific production of Streetcar this past summer, and I imagine what it must have been like to have seven, ten, fourten, or twenty days in a row like the one we had yesterday, how grueling that process must be, and how, when we as theatergoers take our seats to see the finished work, we really have no idea how much grueling intensity went into creating the magic of what looks like an effortless production unfold.

Of course, we shouldn't have any idea, and we shouldn't be thinking about it at all, other than in the back of our minds to remind ourselves occasionally how hard these people work to, in the end, entertain us.

I also gained even greater respect for the pros over the course of the day. Honestly, I wondered why some of them seemed to be holding back in some of their scenes or, to my mind, playing them wrong (always the critic -- it's an occupational hazard).

By the end of the day, when we were finally able to run through most of Act One with little to no interruption, the thing was magically transformed, as were all the performances. Of course, silly me, these people were working on their performances the entire time, trying different things out, trying to discover a way into their characters (and all of them play multiple roles, in itself a great challenge). It was unfair of me to expect that they would just read the words and know right away who these people were, and anyway I was probably wrong.

I saw the magic transition take place right before my eyes, when suddenly actors began hitting their marks, characters had life and personality breathed into them, and the play's inner rhythms began clicking.

It was a privilege to see this firsthand. I only hope that today, during our five-hour rehearsal from noon to 5, I can figure out in my own small way how to live up to that magic, and make the few lines I have resonate appropriately and help to tell the affecting story of the aftermath of the brutal lynching of Matthew Shepard.

Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living's award-winning editor and cultural critic.

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