Serving the Audience

One of the Barter Player's mottos is to "Serve the Audience," meaning, because we are now professional actors, the work we do is to serve the paying customers.  It is no longer for our benefit as it was in college.  We cater to the folks shelling out money for a night of entertainment.  A way us Players do it is through run crew.

For those of you who don't know what run crew is (Grandma), they are the invisible performers who make all of the scene shift magic happen.  It's intense.  We had our first scene shift rehearsal tonight, 4 hours long and we didn't get to Act II.  Despite the amount of time it took, it actually went really well.

It's not as if I didn't have respect for the people involved with technical theatre, I just never had a chance to experience it.  When we were getting oriented with the space, I was terrified.  So many integral parts that so many people would get mad at me for screwing up.  I remember running sound for our school play my sophomore year in high school; it was a lot of responsibility to take on and a lot of pressure.  Now, while pushing on Belle's room or setting props for Gaston's tavern, I feel the same pressing weight of responsibility.

Despite being anxious about it, I'm excited to take all of this on.  It's another way we can serve the audience, another way I'm learning about the theatre.

As far as rehearsals for "Pigs", we have no more until tech next Tuesday.  We had our final run through today.  I'm trying to not "act," but it's hard.  There are these blocks getting in my way of totally giving myself up to the world of the play.  In the week I have before tech, my goal is to practice facing the unknown and using my imagination to keep Cami out of the character.

One of the members of the company watched our run through today.  On our way home, the company member said they had learned a lot.  We asked what it was and they said "No matter how absurd the circumstances of the play, you can still make it believable."  That was encouraging; we've done our job.   Yes, it's ridiculous to play a role in which you are eating whole pigs and you have the ability to blow down houses, but if you wholeheartedly commit in the world of the play, anything is possible.

I better get to bed, we have full on Beauty and the Beast 10 of 12 (more for us on crew) for the next 3 days.  And then we open with 2 shows on Saturday.  It's going to be the longest week of my life.

For Grandma: Tech is when you run the show from scene change to scene change, run light cues, focus lights, work spacing etc.  Usually grueling work where you are at the theater all day and everyone gets really frustrated with each other.  Hope that helps!

Teamwork

Before starting this job, I knew some about the inner workings of a theater, but coming here, it boggles my mind.  I am in awe of everyone who works here.  Each and every person has a specific job and they do it well.  I was talking to one of the wardrobe people at a grill out the other night, and she was like, "I could never do what you actors do" and I was like, "I could never do what you guys do!"  

I'm learning more and more about the behind the stage magic and it fascinates me.  Thankfully, I didn't drop a light or fall through the ceiling tonight at the changeover.  Instead, I learned the lingo of the electricians and got really brave carrying heavy lights on ladders.  

So many jobs contributing to one thing, creating art.  So many jobs contributing to one goal, putting on a great show.  So many jobs contributing to serving and entertaining and reaching an audience.  How cool is that?

"Which one of these auditioners look deluded enough to be a Player? Which ones look like they want to be put through hell?"

This was said by one of our playwrights in residence here at the Barter.  We had a picnic and were all sitting around discussing how we came about getting the Player job, and she said she was really good at picking out people who had Player material, then said the quote mentioned above.

All of the new girl Players auditioned at UPTAs.  One of the boys auditioned at "locals" (auditions held in Abingdon in December), another is a Player from last year (you can do the program for 2 years), and the third auditioned to be in Beauty and the Beast and was offered a Player contract.  

It's so interesting to hear where everyone comes from.  Most of the Players are from around Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina.  Others are from Pennsylvania, Alabama, Louisiana, and, of course, Nebraska/Iowa.  :)  There are so many different accents, and I've already started saying "Y'all" like, all the time.  

A lot of them went to private schools and a lot smaller programs than the ones at UNL.  We are actually quite lucky.  To have an Opera program that does 2 mainstage and, usually, a couple readings of a new work and a Theatre program that puts on 4 mainstage and 4 Theatrix shows each year, we are blessed to have the opportunities most others do not.  Most of the Players do only 3 shows a year.  One of them said their college doesn't even offer a Shakespeare class.  People often brush off UNL's performing arts programs, but they shouldn't.  We are getting opportunities most other college students don't.  Remember that.

Today in rehearsal (now only about 3 hours left of rehearsing before tech) our coach looked at me and said, "There was no acting going on in that entire scene."  I felt such a feeling of accomplishment.  

A funny thing that I haven't mentioned earlier, our coach doesn't believe in Talent.  He says it like its a bad word.  He constantly says he's a "scientist of the theatre" and he doesn't know what exactly Talent is.  Putting Talent into the equation means that some people without this "Talent" can't get better with their craft.  

I tell you what, it was so relieving knowing he wasn't constantly thinking "that girl is soooo unTalented" in our first couple of rehearsals.  Not using the word Talent puts everyone on the same playing field.  It lessons the need/want to size yourself up against other actors.  Just something to ponder.

I have to leave for electric changeover.  The next three hours I'll learn all about lights in a dark, haunted theater.  

I miss and love you all.

Nerve

The demands put on us Players is incredible.  Not physically, or schedule-wise, but mentally and emotionally.  We are required to bring so much more of ourselves to rehearsal than I've ever been asked to, and we can.  It's amazing.  The leaps and bounds I've taken as an "actor" have been huge.

I've put actor in quotes because most of our rehearsal is getting rid of the actor.  Crazy right?  The "actor" consciously makes choices whereas a character simply lives in the world of the play.  Our coach stops rehearsal, even run throughs if he sees even a bit of acting take place.  I have been acting a whole heck of a lot my entire life.  Very few people have called me out on my stuff so I've fallen into these patterns and ways to go about a character.  This does not fly here.


You know those moments in performance, where everything just clicks and you're totally in character and you are reacting and responding and you don't know what part of you is emerging from your body and doing all of these things?  That is what made me fall in love with acting.  Here, we get to that point the second rehearsal.  


Today we had a full run through.   It's our 5th rehearsal and everyone was near memorized.  Not because we have spent countless hours working on memorization, or as our coach says "picturing yourself in your character," but because we have learned to trust what is happening from moment to moment.  The character knows the lines.  That is the only way anybody knows a character, by what they say in the play.  I had a hard time to not decide beforehand how a line should be said.  Neither the actor or the character knows what needs to be emphasized; it just happens.  The line is not the only thing that shouldn't be predetermined.  You can never put a label on a character.  When deciding what a character is like before exploring and experiencing what they're like, you are constricted to make the character a certain way.  By doing this, you can't fully emerse yourself in a play.  


People have told me I'm a brave actress.  Two weeks ago, I was a pansy compared to where I am now.  During shows, I would have spent so much time in a practice room rolling on the floor, emphasizing lines, so I could effortlessly say them with no pre-determined emphasis.  Now, I'm getting close to the point where I can do that the first time I read the lines aloud.  I'm learning to trust the unknown and to totally lose myself into an imaginary world.  It's incredible knowing I'm capable of that!


As far as life here in Abingdon, it's great.  We get discounts to almost every restaurant in town, a free pass to the Rec Center at any time, and everyone here looks upon you with awe because you work at the Barter.  We're basically the bread and butter of the town.  


The days are getting longer.  This week I've spent hours in the costume shop, hours in "Three Little Pigs" rehearsal,  and hours watching the Mainstage rehearsals to prepare for understudy work.  We just got our "Beauty and the Beast" tech assignments (what we will be helping out with backstage), and tech rehearsals for the show begin Tuesday for the opening of the show next Saturday.  Tomorrow night, I'll be in the main theater, which is haunted by civil war ghosts (no joke, actually a lot of places around here are haunted), doing changeover (rehanging lights between the different rep seasons) from 11-2.  I'm glad I got the early shift, some have to work starting at 4:30...


I'm off to bed.  Our coach said we may have only 5 more rehearsals left of "Pigs" before tech on the 31st and tomorrow is one of the rehearsals.  Here's to show biz!

Run to the Fear

"Run to the Fear" is a common saying around the Barter Players.  One way we run to our fears is through Player projects.  Our player project is a homework assignment of sorts that we work on throughout the entire summer.  This past week, we had a meeting with the Artistic Director and discussed the things we are terrified to do in front of people.  Most of the Players are doing projects involving singing and dancing (lucky!), but mine is going to be a whole different beast, dialects.

I am awful at dialects.  I actually tried all last semester, when driving by myself, to read street signs in different dialects.  Not to offend anyone, but I sounded like a mentally challenged deaf person.  Some have a gift of picking up people's speech patterns, not me.  This fear of having to speak in dialects was revealed to me in our first rehearsal Wednesday, when our acting coach asked a few of the characters to speak in a German and Spanish accent.  Luckily, I wasn't one of those characters; I would have no clue on where to even start.  

So, when in my Player project meeting, I mentioned my fears.  Improv, raw acting, being vulnerable, and dialects.  The Artistic Director said,  "don't you know a lot about dialects from studying opera?"  My answer was, "nope."  I mean, I've had to sing in many languages, but applying the rules to English is hard.  She said, "that's your project right there."

I guess one of the roles I'm understudying has a German accent.  This is terrifying.  I'm awful at German.  Never have I ever thought German was a beautiful language and I hated singing in it.  Also, it was my last semester of Diction and it was real early in the morning....  However, the past three days I've been watching countless YouTube videos about a German dialect and trying to rack my brain of all of the rules of German diction.  

I'm hoping, by August 14th, when we have our Player project performance, I'll be able to comfortably speak in at least 5 different dialects.  We were to send a project proposal to the Artistic Director and I proposed this: to learn 5 different dialects and 2 monologues and have a roulette-type performance where I didn't know which dialect goes with which monologue.  Throughout the summer, it'll be my responsibility to contact the diction coach they have on staff and get the materials I need to not look like a total idiot at the end of the summer.  

On another note, our acting coach is out of town doing a one man show, so our sole responsibility has been understudy work.  I'm understudying the Wardrobe in "Beauty and the Beast" (I have to wear 3+ inch heels to be able to see over the pvc-piped costume) and Trudy, a German secretary, in "Elvis has Left the Building."  The latter is a play that was read at last year's Appalachian Play Festival that is held here every summer.  It's fricken hilarious.  

The two women I'm understudying are Marnee Hollis, an actress who was in Broadway's "My Fair Lady" in the early 90's, and Mary Lucy Bivins, a resident actress of the Barter who's probably pushing 70.  It's so cool to have these women to look up to.

The past 4 days since I've blogged, I've been watching rehearsals and run-throughs, diligently taking notes and trying to learn words and music, just in case I have to fill in at some point during this rep (ahh!).  We were informed that usually, there comes a point in the summer where everyone has to understudy...

As far as my Player duties, I've been in the Player shop (conveniently located in the basement of the Inn) sewing.  I've learned how to hem, tack, and reminded how to use a machine.  Also, on Friday, I did rep for the first time.  For those of you who don't know, that means switching the set over from one show to the next.  Here, learning something new everyday is an understatement.  

Theatre is such a small world.  Our Technical Director, Mitch Critel, went to UNL for his undergrad and has worked for the Nebraska Rep.  He hired Byron Hunt, who also went to UNL.  One of the dancers for Beauty and the Beast, Abbey Elliott, is from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and was in Follies and choreographed for Theatre Cedar Rapids.  She also went to Milikin with soo many people I know.  Audrey, another year round Player, worked at Big Fork, Montana with Zac Parker.  It's kind of 

ridiculous.  

I got really homesick for the first time Friday night.  I was grocery shopping at Krogers, and got this sick feeling.  All I wanted was to be shopping at the 50th and 'O' HyVee.  Of course I miss all of y'all back home, but I know we'll always be there for each other.  Our relationships will not suffer because I'm far away, but only get so much stronger.  Long phone calls also help :)  

Well, that's all there is here.  Today's plans are going to the Rec Center (which is free to all Barter employees), then sewing and watching a "Beauty and the Beast" run-through, and ending the day with a monster birthday bash in the Shakespeare Garden (the area behind the Inn where someone keeps trees and bushes nice for us).  

I love you all. 

Humility

Today was tough.  Not that we had much to do, but because we had our first rehearsal.

We are doing a version of the Three Little Pigs.  I was cast as Sam, the smart pig who decides to build the house of bricks.  Now, usually, the rehearsal process begins with a "read through," but we begin with a "sit-down rehearsal."  We didn't get past 2 pages without stopping and working on things.  Our acting coach, a passionate middle-aged man from Jersey who ends every sentence with "that's some fucking true shit," is super supportive and encouraging, and also has this way of picking a person out and using them as an example throughout a rehearsal.  I was the example today.

It was tough.  At school, very rarely in a play rehearsal process do we have so much individual attention within the entire group.  I froze.  Became defensive; why wasn't everyone else getting notes like I was?  Why was he picking on me?  Then I came to the realization that his goal was not to scare me or to put me down, but to make me a better actor.  Not only just me a better actor, but through my bad habits, he explained to everyone why they don't work.

After three hours of our "sit-down rehearsal," we began staging (not blocking because our coach never wants us to be blocked from anything).  In an hour and a half, we got to the second page.  By this time, we had to call it quits.

It's amazing to watch the old Players (the ones who are finishing up their 3 months) read at the sit-down rehearsal.  It was like they have been rehearsing the play for weeks the very first time they said the words aloud.  Yesterday, we got to watch their show and the passion and commitment they put into everything they did and said on stage was remarkable.  Sometimes, actors look like they would rather being doing anything else than be in Children's Theatre, but not these guys.  It's like they wouldn't even entertain the idea of doing anything else.

We watched a rehearsal today for one of the mainstage shows, and it was instantly clear which actors were former Players.  Their focus and energy and the graciousness in which they received notes were like nothing I've ever seen before.  They are definitely something to aspire to.  I can't wait to see how much I will learn and grow in the next year.

Needless to say, I'm exhausted.  The focus I had to bring to that 4 1/2 rehearsal was grueling.  Until the next time...

So many of you have told me to keep in touch.  As much as I would love to call each and everyone of you every single day...with a typical 12 hour day schedule, that seems far from possible.  So, I decided to start a blog.

As most of you should know, I am officially a Barter Player at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia  (http://www.bartertheatre.com/index.php).  I am one of the lucky few who have a job out of college (in my case RIGHT out of college) and will be here for a very fun, but grueling, 15 months.

After performing Ordinary Days with my very bestest friends on Friday night, partaking in a very fun party that lasted way too late in the night for me to drive 12 hours the next day, and tearfully pulling away from my three best friends, I was off to make the 17+ hour trek to the Appalachians.

The drive wasn't all that bad, actually.  I had goodies from Grandma and NPR to keep me company the whole way.  And, once you hit Tennessee, the view is GORGEOUS!  I mean, where were the unending fields?  What are these things called trees?  After a terrific stay with my cousin, Ashley, I had only 5 more hours to get to my new home, Abingdon, VA.

The view?  It didn't get any less gorgeous than before.  The outskirts of town are commercialized, a Kmart, a Krogers (HyVee, but worse produce), and fast food chains.  But when traveling into town, it's like I stepped into 1857.  All of the sidewalks here are brick.  In the 15 minutes it takes to walk to the theater, I don't think there's a single concrete sidewalk.  All of the buildings are brick.  All of the houses are brick.  The buildings have kept their charm and are so well kept that, aside from the cars, it's like I took a jump to the left and a step to the right and did the time warp again.  :)

The Barter Inn, where all of the Barter Players and most of the younger or not-as-permanent Barter employees stay (40 people!),  is a huge, again, brick building that used to be a dormitory for a former woman's college.  My room is at least 12 ft tall with a probably 7 ft tall window.  Our rooms are connected with bathrooms, which I share with 2 of the summer Players.  Across the all is my kitchen that I share with about 6 people, all of whom say are clean, we'll wait and see about that...  Within the Inn, there is laundry, a TV room, and the Player costume and prop shop where we work on all of the stuff for our shows.

Around the Barter Inn, which is on top of a tree covered hill (soo many of those here), is the rest of the former college which the Barter has turned into their various shops and rehearsal spaces.  Next door is the former theater (where Gregory Peck made his debut) turned rehearsal space/costume shop/prop shop/accessories shop.  Behind the Inn, is the scene shop and storage space.  We each get a parking space with our name on it which is both cute and very convenient.

As far as my Playerdom goes (what they call our time here as a Barter Player), we had auditions yesterday and then a 6 hour lecture about the theatre's acting philosophy.  Wasn't as dry as one might think.  Within our orientation, I found out all about what our responsibilities are.  We have children's shows throughout the entire year that usually go up in 3 weeks and are performed for around a month.  We have understudy assignments that, when we have no rehearsal, we go to the mainstage rehearsals and take notes.  We run crew for all of the rep shows.  And we have player projects where we put together a performance of our most terrifying fears.

There are 2 theaters here.  The Mainstage, a 506 seat proscenium theater where the big shows happen, and Stage II, a 100 and something blackbox-like theater where most of the Player shows and the smaller mainstage shows happen.

I have call in a bit for a Rep. safety training, but I'll write so much more later!