October 9, 2006
We begin, I think, with You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two. It's a little hazy. I could go back and look at the rehearsal schedule, which includes decoding the director's somewhat baffling scene breakdown, but I don't want to take the twenty minutes to do that when I could be writing and getting funny looks from the maintenance staff here in the lobby. Besides, I left my Rosetta Stone in California. So just imagine a play broken down into 32 bite-sized scenes so that we never rehearse a scene straight through as written, but rather bounce around the play like a rusty pinball trapped between sagging Tetons.
Which might explain why nobody knows their lines. I'm the only one with a script in my hand. The kids are all unfocused and confused: none of them know their music, none of them know their lines, none of them really seem to know that we're in a play. Oliver doesn't even seem to want to be there. Nancy paraphrases everything, drops operative words, adds commentary and, "Something like that," to everything she's doing. So for example if she's crossing down left she says, "And this is where I cross over here and I say ..." Someone has coached everyone on their dialects. They're all using the same dialect. It's not a dialect I've heard terribly often. For a sample, see Corky's dialect from the end of Waiting for Guffman. His Henry Higgins / Eliza Doolittle bit.
The choreographer is showing me where I am and what I'm doing in the pickpocket number. The kids are pushing me down and stealing my stuff. One of the kids says, "You don't know I'm here."
I say, "Of course I do: this is my little pyramid scheme. I'm a master thief and pickpocket and you're my students. I've taught you everything you know." As I finish, I'm looking at the choreographer with that gleam we professionals reserve for other professionals when we all know we're on the same page. I'm smiling a little. She's looking at me. There's a placid complacency to her little smile. The dark circles under the eyes, belying the calm surface and hinting at spiritual exhaustion beneath. I know these signs.
She says, "Well, not exactly."
I can't help it. I say, "Ha! Really."
"We're thinking that these kids are getting the better of you. They're tricking Ol' Mister Fagin."
"I see."
The disorganized rehearsal was bad enough, my friends. I was willing to overlook it. Organization can be made to happen. But this was the moment, as I said 'I see,' when my guard went up completely. Shields were raised, the Polite Mask fell firmly into place and my heart sank below my stomach, down beneath my shoes into the deep soil of this high desert plain and I wanted to cry. I realized that I had driven 945 miles to work with a company not much more theatrically savvy than the one I had been teaching and directing at in Dublin, CA for most of 2004 - 2005.
I looked around. Everyone was talking. Even the director. She glanced over occasionally. I looked back at the choreographer. She said, "I mean, you can play it whatever way you want. They'll just play that they're tricking you."
I smile, polite and professional: "Of course."
We get through the number and it's a shambles. None of the kids know anything in the number except one girl and Dodger, who stop to tell other kids and me what to do at various points in the process. The choreographer does not seem to remember some of the number. She did not in fact know we were doing this tonight. She happened by when she dropped her son off. It wasn't on the schedule. I understand. I'm weighing my options. Guarding my expression. Placid. Trying to blend.
We run the scenes, starting with Oliver's arrival at Fagin's lair. Technically, this is known as the Thieves' Kitchen. It's all pretty traditional. There's a kid who's been given the line, "Password!" whenever someone is going to enter my lair. He never remembers it. There's a pause. It kills momentum. Wait, momentum? Silly Edward.
An assistant gets up to show me the blocking. "I was you," she says. She's got blocking written in a script. People sort of say their lines. I'm looking at her script, looking at the people, looking at my script. Polite and attentive. Valeen, the director, tells the assistant to sit down. I think she can see that an Edward left to his own devices in this situation will perhaps be the better Fagin than one chained to an assistant's scrawled blocking notes. I begin to love Valeen a little, in spite of the disorganization.
Oliver's resentful and noncommittal in everything he does. I say a line and he just sort of stares at me. When he doesn't react, I begin making up responses for him:
"Oh, sorry, Mr. Fagin, Widow Corney upped my meds and I'm just a little confused right now."
"Are you, my dear? Well that's nothing that a little re-casting couldn't help." And I smile at him.
He blinks, says, "Wait. What?"
Valeen says, "Nathan, honey, where's your script?"
"Over there."
"Well go get it, honey, you're holding things up."
Script in hand he's not much better. We go through the scenes, basically giving me the blocking. Could have saved time meeting with someone earlier today and copying it down.
We move on to the next morning when Oliver sees me counting my treasure. When it comes to the threatening with the sausage fork, I step right into directorial mode and show him how I'm going to grab his shirt and he should grab my wrists and hold on and do all the shaking himself. Basic stage combat.
He seems a little more awake. I have hope.
We do the scene and I grab him and he's dead weight. I stop. "You've got to do the shaking for me," I say. "Here, make it look like I'm shaking you to death." He wiggles. "Bigger," I say. He wiggles a little bigger.
Valeen says, "Nathan, come on, you've got to react."
I shake him again and he wiggles a little bigger. I take it from the moment I see him awake. I leap across the stage, grab him by the shirt and practically throw him into the air. Direct eye contact. Complete commitment from me. He's terrified. Deer-in-the-headlights. And suddenly there's something going on in the scene.
After I shout at him to wash, Valeen says, "Good. That was good. Nathan, those reactions were really nice."
His hands are in his pockets and his face is dull again. He's staring at the floor. I begin to wonder what goes on at home. He says, "Okay." Not sad. Just doesn't seem to care.
Originally, I wrote something here comparing the boy unfavorably to poo-poo. I have decided that my words were too harsh. He's a good kid. He may just be horribly miscast. He's certainly got his work cut out for him.
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