Rehearsal #10: The Office by Beckett

We ran another entire show last night in rehearsal. This time I played instead of watching. We even had a little audience composed of the half of the cast that played last Wednesday, Shaun Landry (who was just visiting) and an extra musician. Actually we had Joshua play music for the first half of rehearsal, and new musician Kevin play for the second half.

Our playwright, suggested by Joshua, was Beckett. Fortunately I’ve just read a lot of Beckett and even recently posted my synopsis of his elements. I was all set. Susan was terrified, but she still dived in head first.

I can’t even begin to describe how much fun it was. I hope we get Beckett again on a night I’m performing so I can explore some other aspects of him. The show itself took place in an office conference room. Susan’s character was obviously lowest on the totem poll, somewhat rebellious, and had a fascination with her hand. I played Sebastian, who was onstage for the entire show! He was the next man up on the chain of command and spent most of the show deliberately moving two chairs into place in the center of the conference room. Christian played middle-management-man who did nothing but spout corporate buzz words. Laurie played the gender ambiguous boss. Debrah played a customer. We sold vacuums. The play ended when I choked Christian to death.

All that makes it sound way more normal than it actually was. Again, words fail me at Beckett’s brilliance and how much fun it was to improvise in his style. I understand why 90% of people think Beckett is rubbish, but there’s a reason he’s famous. The other 10% of us think he’s ripping brilliant (and soooo funny).