Week 4: Beckett Finally

Last Thursday was my last show and we got Beckett as the playwright! I was so happy. Read more about it on experimentfarm. There’s one more weekend of shows left. I won’t be there, but that’s no reason not to go.

Here’s the summaries of last week’s shows.
Thursday: Upstairs Upstairs – in the style of Samuel Beckett
Colfax (Laurie) and Mingo (Alan) wonder if anyone lives upstairs from them, while Elizabeth (Mandy) and Charles (Christian) wonder if anyone lives below them. When Mingo’s twin brother Milo (Christian) goes upstairs, he gets trapped as Elizabeth and Charles’s servant. Then the worms move in, and everything changes.

Friday: The Teacher’s Lounge – in the style of Lillian Hellman
Miss Prescott (Susan) gets hired by Dean Nickelson (Laurie) and Miss Leone (Mandy) to fill the post vacated after the suicide of Miss Annabelle Lee (Tara). When her teaching style clashes with the school’s traditions, and Miss Leone’s machinations, Miss Prescott soon worries she’s on the same path as Annabelle. Can the Dean convince her to stay, or will she jump out her own window?

Saturday: Gwen’s Men – in the style of Oscar Wilde
Gwendolyn (Mandy) would prefer to live out her days on the estate of her best friend Cecile (Tara) and her husband Edmund (Christian), but the Lord and Lady Trenton (Christian and Karen) are determined to find her a husband. Charles Maquire (Debra) would gladly oblige, but his poetry turns Gwendolyn’s stomach. Until some mistaken identity at the cross-dressers ball and a duel gone wrong cause her to change her mind.

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).

Rehearsal #6: Common Language

Wednesday night at rehearsal we had David Norfleet there to play piano and did two first halves of shows complete with singing. For the first one we did Chekov and the second we did Ibsen. I was in the Chekov. Both went quite well, I thought.

We’re starting to develop a common language for discussing playwrights, which I think will be essential for this show’s success. Perhaps the most useful thing we’ve discovered is how to describe one playwright in terms of another. For instance, Chekov is Ibsen with hope. Neil Simon is the comedic Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller is the Neil Simon of tragedy. Beth Henley is Tennessee Williams only upbeat and quirky.

Here’s my analysis of Becket based on the general categories of information we hope to get from the audience:

BECKETT

Theme: Beckett explores the nature of existence by striping life down to its basic elements and expanding or contracting time, often through repetition of similar events.

General Outlook: Beckett is very fatalistic (i.e. life is a terminal condition), but his plays are definitely tragicomic. They can be very funny, but don’t generally have happy endings. In fact, they tend to end without any resolution at all.

Setting: Beckett’s settings aren’t “real” but they are constructed out of recognizable elements. The entire play is a metaphor and not rooted in any specific place or time.

Chracters/Relationships: Beckett explores status relationships. As a result you have characters of varying social status such as servants, parents, lower class, upper class. Often these status relationships are tilted by giving a high status character socially some sort of physical or mental impairment to lower their status. Conversely, the characters on the low end of the totem pole are usually the smartest. Low status characters socially are always extremely low status to the environment, but in a very stylized way.

The verbal pacing is slow. People speak in short sentences punctuated by long pauses. Phrases and exchanges are often repeated. Movements are often repeated as well.