Tuesday 2 – June 5th – Day Two

Wake up early ( 6 am) and work on my play and answer e-mail. It never stops but I actually like hearing from you.

Get to Lincoln Center at 9 am – an hour early and a third of the group is already there.

They told us that this was not a training program but we sit through three hours of Collaboration building – you know “Collaboration is made up of “co” which means together and “labor” which means working – working together!!! Get it? Three hours of this today and three more Wednesday and three more Thursday.

Anyway, I get to meet several other attendees including a guy who has been commissioned by Seattle’s Theater Off Jackson to write a hip-hop opera. He said that there was a lot more money in opera than musical theater. Investors put money in musical theater and big donors put money into opera.

For those who I’ve talked to before I left, I told you that LCT was rehearsing five plays for three weeks before we got here. Actually four plays and a musical. None of the five has ever been produced. These plays were cast by the Director and playwright from lists of actors provided by LCT.

The big deal is that the plays are being directed by the playwright who wrote them with a professional set designer and Stage manager and director in case there are any questions.

Today’s play was The Maestro’s Garden. It was REALLY good. Subject matter not suitable for Orcas plus it needs one African American. Two things knocked my socks off. One was the quality of the acting – really there – 99% off book. The other thing was the actors. Six in the cast an one only had a dozen lines but the other five were really top drawer. Roy Thinnes and Richard Masur were two of them. Both of whom I’ve seen a lot on TV and the movies.

As I sat there, I wondered if our actors on Orcas could do as well. The answer I came up with was pretty much. Our people would be 90% as good. But this was in three weeks, we would take eight weeks. But then I got to think: These actors rehearsed three weeks at five hours a day six days a week for a total of 90 hours. For Enchanted April we had 35 rehearsals before opening or 32 before tech. At three hours each that makes 96 hours total rehearsal – about the same time as the professionals – plus we would have had the blocking down too.

Not too bad for Orcas.

The last session for the day ( 7 to 10 pm) was a small group program. We had seven in our group – 3 directors, 2 playwrights and 1 set designer plus Roy Thinnes. We were given an outline of what to talk about but that quickly went out the window. Everyone talked about problems and successes they have had – directors, playwrights and the set designer. Roy threw his thoughts in and was a real participant but didn’t try to control the flow of the discussion.

I was really put off by one young director who challenged and argued everything that Thinnes said. He is due more than a little respect for what he has accomplished. After a while every one pretty much tried to ignore her. For example, we were talking about playwrights (I knew very few of the names) and if Thinnes said he liked one she said he was no good. That kind of thing.

I didn’t have a lot to offer because all the discussion was about professional theater and I didn’t have much to add.

One time a playwright was talking about attending rehearsals but not wanting to interrupt. She used as an example a line that was supposed to be a joke. She wanted to say something but she thought that maybe the director was aware of it but wasn’t ready. I echoed that statement, saying that the director needed to know each actor and push them at a pace that worked for them. Thinnes said Bullshit. Rehearsal time is too precious and it takes more time not to tell the actor the line is a joke than to do it later when it is harder for the actor to change the delivery of the line.

Thinnes told us of the best notes he ever got from a director were from Garland Wright (I have no idea who he is/was). Wright gave notes that always started with “Wouldn’t it be nice if . . . .”

We were told to finish up any time after 9:30 and be out of the building by ten. They finally came and kicked us out at 10:15.

A good day but I am really tired – even more so than AIRE.