New Challenges and Art Creating Moral Panic

I got cast in an original play that opens in Brooklyn in early April. The character is a charismatic religious figure, but while a bit heavy-handed, he's quite benevolent. It should be fun to do because he's someone I'm normally not like, i.e., he's highly confident, self-assured, but grounded and genuinely warm and caring (though most people would find his means heavy-handed and his motives suspect).

His monologues are not standard monologues (i.e., they wouldn't be good choices for audition monologues), but they do offer a terrific opportunity to master a type of text that we've been working with in Deborah Carlson's Word Of Mouth Studios. The text piece we've been working with have been highly expressive, almost poetic, pieces.

We've been working on them for several reasons:

First, it's been further opportunity to apply staying on the line by paying attention, and adhering, to the writer's natural rhythms (this goes right back to how one speaks Shakespeare).

Second has to do with what Patsy Rodenburg calls "The Second Circle:" the character I play preaches, allot. Durning the audition for this character, and I think a lot of actors (including myself before I learned all this) probably slipped into what Patsy Rodenburg calls "3rd circle," i.e., "telling" or talking "at" a group. Instead, I tried to simply see what the character was seeing and tried to describe and share that, as if I was talking to just one person (even though the character is addressing many people), and I also looked for places where he was thinking his way through what he was preaching, discovering things in the moment.

This is exactly the type of work and exercises I've been doing in class, and that work is going to be the basis for my technique for this role during his monologues (which are really sermons to a group), Also, he's quite different from me (or I'm different from him -- in fact, I kind of secretly wish, in a way, that I was more like him), and now I get a chance to be like him, in a small and limited way, but -- that's exciting, and scary (i.e., can I pull it off?). Anyway, I guess it all comes down to, somehow, getting the opportunities we need! :)

(Patsy Rodenburg, incidentally, as written a new book that takes this idea of "second circle" off the stage and into life: The Second Circle: How to Use Positive Energy for Success in Every Situation).

The Controversy and hurt feelings Over the Last Jew In Europe continues . . .

The LJIE has been extended again (For the 5th Time!) into April and May (in fact, this new play that I'm in will run concurrently with LJIE during the first two weeks of April).

The LJIE (OSTATNI ŻYD W EUROPIE, in Polish) also opens today, March 15th, 2008, in Poland, playing in Warsaw at the prestigious Teatr Na Woli.

Controversy followed the show right up to the start, so much so that Tuvia Tenenbom flew over to help defend the play against negative Polish government reaction, e.g., the Polish producers could not advertise the play on city buses because the play's title contained the word Zyd ("Jew"), and city officials would not allow it because the word "Zyd" would offend and hurt the feelings of too many people.

(Tuvia also took a trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for research for a new upcoming play. Saudi Arabia is a U.S. Ally. Israel is a U.S. Ally. Tuvia is Jewish. You think it would all fit together so nicely . . . it's . . . well, just read the shocking account. Thinking of visiting? Don't bother).

It all has a certain unreality to me -- all this real world drama & controversy while my only real concerns during rehearsals and performance were with breathing deep, connecting with my partner, and staying on and in my lines!

Who knew just doing those 3 simple things would engender such moral and geopolitical panic!

(P.S. We're getting paid, starting in April, just a little bit, but I don't care about the amount -- whoo hoo! My first paid work in theatre!)