What I Learned from Week 4

(Former Let It Snow director Tara McDonough at Kellyville, OK)

I was in one show last weekend, but I learned a lot from that one show.

One thing I learned is that running the opening is hard for this show. I have new found respect for Tara doing it alone all those years. This year the host isn’t even alone onstage and it’s still difficult. I’ve run it three times and messed it up in three different ways. I should get one more crack at it in the matinee this Saturday. Wish me luck.

I also learned that I’ve come a long way in my protagonist work. I’ve traditionally been the master of avoiding the protagonist role. Even when I actively sought it out, I would unconsciously shed it. This run, I’ve been one of the main protagonists three times. Thursday night I went out on stage with a character fool-proof for not being the protagonist. He was bigger than the other characters on stage. He was broader. He wasn’t “normal”, and he didn’t care about anything. And yet somehow it ended up me.

Why?

Let me set the scene: to start the show Merrill and Karen went out on stage as high school students. They began talking about college and Merrill very quickly became the protagonist, at least in my mind off stage. So, in order to raise the stakes for her as a high school student who wanted to go to college, I came in as the world’s worst Geometry teacher. I told them they’d never need Geometry. I told them I didn’t care, that I was a borderline alcoholic, and I put on a movie for them to watch. Then I left.

However… Merrill a week before had played a protagonist high-school-student who wanted to go to college. In her mind, she could not do that again, and eliminated any possibility that it was her. Unfortunately the audience didn’t know that, nor did the show. The show wanted her to be the protagonist, but she didn’t, so she threw it on me. Why? Because she felt that my character had more going on in his life.

Ruminating on this opinion for a while brought me to this theory: It’s not what you say that makes you the protagonist, it’s how you act. Yes, on the surface, my character had a lot going on, but because I didn’t care about any of it and wasn’t being affected by it, I was not the protagonist.

Except of course I was because the story quickly began revolving around me. This left me in the strange position of being a protagonist who didn’t really care. My want became caring, which worked out, but isn’t exactly the most dynamic.

The show also took rather a dark turn through the second part of the first half. Why? Because people were taking my joking “borderline alcoholism” too seriously and making it a big deal. Suddenly it wasn’t a joke but tragic. Had people taken it lightly, it would have played lightly. By taking it seriously, it played darkly. Fortunately Bryce found a way to end the half on an up note even after Merrill had just sung a sad, depressing song about my alcoholism.

But back to the opening scene. It’s sparked another theory: If you’re going to go out on stage with someone to open a show, and your intent is for neither character to be the protagonist, then you either need to character-match and have both characters feel the exact same way about things, or you need to start talking about a character who hasn’t entered yet and begin endowing them as the protagonist before they even get on stage.

But if you go on stage as distinct characters and start having a status interaction, one of you will become the protagonist of the moment, and in the first scene of the show that will target you as the protagonist of the story.