FOCUS, CONNECTION, & TRUTH, BY MICHAEL J. MONTANUS

The first time I worked with Seat of the Pants was when I moved here almost 3 years ago. I was cast in their 2023 production of Trouble in Mind, written by Alice Childress, and directed by fellow ensemble member, Jeannine Gaskin. My role was Eddie, the earnest and trepidatious stage manager of a 1950s Broadway rehearsal room. It was a small role, but I was still emotionally and personally occupied with settling in to Cleveland, so the lack of lines to memorize was perfectly fine with me. 

While the effort spent in getting off book was fairly easy, especially with the lengthened rehearsal process, I found the rest of the work deceptively challenging. Only having a limited number of lines, my job as an actor was to support and connect with my cast mates through listening and reacting, making my contribution as truthful and as vulnerable as I could every night. Because no matter how insignificant it might seem, the beauty and truthfulness of everyone’s work shines the brightest when we’re all equally invested in our circumstances together onstage. 

And I’ll be honest, it sounds kind of silly, but if any of you reading are actors, or work with especially chatty coworkers, you know that sometimes truly and actively listening to someone can be a lot harder than it sounds. Especially if you’ve been listening to the same dialogue night after night. Reacting truthfully every night required a level of focus that up until Trouble in Mind, I hadn’t exercised as an actor, and this show was honestly the perfect opportunity to really push that focus, and hone in on my active listening and reacting skills. 

Since Trouble in Mind, I’ve made a point to continue pursuing an incremental improvement in focus and active listening in all the projects I’ve been a part of. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work with Jeannine again on Convergence-Continuum’s production of We are Continuous, written by Harrison David Rivers. Now, tonally and structurally, the two shows are vastly different, but they both boast quite an extensive array of monologues. And unlike Eddie, my character in We are Continuous, Abe, had a four-page monologue, rich with conflict about his husband’s parents and their tumultuous thoughts about their relationship. It was an opportunity to really put into practice what I had started working on during Trouble in Mind.

During the rehearsal process, Jeannine and Lauren Lash, the co-directors, really worked with me on this monologue to strip away any elements of theatricality until I was left with just Abe’s raw and vulnerable truth. And once I was finally faced with an audience, I was taken aback by how difficult I found some of that vulnerability. Firstly, I was thankful for all the focusing work I had put in since Trouble in Mind because I would not have been able to sustain a four-page monologue a couple years ago. Secondly, I’ve taken direct addresses to an audience before, but for We are Continuous I was alone onstage, so this was the first time I wasn’t able to turn to my cast for support. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little bit of stage fright from it. The truth and support I had gotten used to providing and receiving was now in the hands of a group of strangers. And all I could do was focus, and listen, and try to connect with them. 

Thankfully, the audiences for We are Continuous were more than gracious with their support.  Outside of whatever source material we’re working with, acting is vulnerable because it’s replicating truth. And the truth is that connecting with people, really listening to them, requires a level of empathy that can occasionally be really vulnerable and scary. Onstage and offstage. But I’ve found in my experience on Trouble in Mind, We are Continuous, and just everyday life in general, that actively listening to another person, focusing on them, and making that extra effort of vulnerable connection, that’s where the truth lives. And the pursuit of that truth is what makes our work truly shine the brightest.