The Rehearsal Process

Fun on the front lines of creativity!

I snapped my wig at rehearsal on Saturday - behaving in a truly ghastly fashion in front the director and stage manager.

It was a backwards glimpse into the behavior I used to exhibit on almost a daily basis during the many inevitable rough patches that generally occurred when putting up a new play.

Back then I had no reins on myself. Buoyed by an endless supply of weed and vodka, I felt no compunction making unreasonable demands on the good will and patience of all involved.

And being in a position of some power, I’d eagerly throw my considerable weight around; the threat of excommunication was always on the back burner - perhaps not overtly spoken but most assuredly implied.

Any time I think of those days, my shame is overwhelming.

Which makes the rehearsal of this current play all the more excruciating because in the second act I’m enacting a version of myself from twenty years ago, with all my narcissistic, self-aggrandizing belligerence on full display.

Reliving former trauma for laughs and entertainment is a way of exorcising the past. But my body still feels the mortification of the things I’ve done (and, in some cases, that were done to me).

Which is a long way of saying that this explosion of mine was perhaps inevitable.

I had heretofore been a model actor/playwright. Doing absolutely everything my director asked with total willingness, whether that meant skipping across the stage like a little girl, rolling on the ground, banging into furniture, learning to juggle, screaming, singing, flailing, dashing about in mad circles until I collapsed in a breathless pile: I haven’t crawled around on all fours so much since infancy.

And as a writer I’ve agreed to every single cut, some of them HUGE - and, to be fair, some that I’ve suggested myself.

So what happened?

We were in the middle of rehearsal, and the director was making suggestions, as she usually did, when something in my body said: “oh, hell no!” - and I completely shut down. And though I continued running the scene, I had mentally left my body and was simply marking time like a broken robot. Meanwhile, the coming explosion percolated inside my skull.

When it finally came, I stopped everything, and standing rigidly in the middle of the stage, made a loud, furious speech full of petulant grievances, before declaring (like my character in the play) that I wished I was dead and then finally fleeing the scene of the crime.

And then I stood in the wings, feeling like a complete idiot, not sure what came next. I had said hurtful things and the only way forward was to go back and apologize. But I was fighting with a sense of misplaced righteousness: Hadn’t I been easy and amenable? Going above and beyond? Facing my demons with a smile and allowing every past humiliation back into the realm of my bruised psyche without question?

I know this is long winded - so I’ll cut to the end.

I did apologize and we moved on. And the run of the second act that followed my explosion was pretty phenomenal (if I say so myself), though I don’t mean to imply that acting like an ass is necessary to the artistic process: That way of thinking led me to justify hundreds of eruptions in the past.

But, I guess, when excavating the grim quarry of one’s own reprehensible conduct, and then acting it out as potential entertainment, it’s important to allow for the possibility of genuine hurt and pain to manifest and the subsequent likelihood of some of that poison leaking out, perhaps stinging those nearby.

God, I’m being verbose this morning. Forgive me. I’m in a state.

Having said that: get your tickets now! (link to show in comments)