"THERE IS NO INFORMATION - ONLY ACTION" - BY MICHAEL GLAVAN

There are two conversations happening at every rehearsal for THE BOOK CLUB PLAY: 1. Who are these people (the characters) and, 2. How do we want to build this play (as an ensemble)? And each day at rehearsal, I learn something radically new that no amount of journaling in the margins or solo recitations whilst walking my dog could accomplish. (I LOVE ENSEMBLE COLLABORATION!) At our second rehearsal, Chris (our director) asked the cast what we thought about the space and how we want to function inside of it. After playing around with some scenes and some improvisational foolin’ around, I think it was our intimacy director, Julia, who noted an apropos sense of excitement, closeness, and “on-the-spotness” of being invited to a book club that was resonating with some of our discoveries spatially. Since then, we’ve been flying with the idea and continuing to let it shape more and more discoveries. Given Circumstances that often go unaddressed in a quicker rehearsal process or the Given Circumstances that you hope (*fingers crossed, eyes squinched, butt clenched*) as an actor you retain from doing homework on your scenes are now baked into the onstage action in ways that I think are really fun, illuminating, and a little exploratory in genre (LIKE A BOOK CLUB). 

These opportunities to discover with many people feeding the inspiration machine are such a gift. It feels like playing around. It feels like loafing off at times.  It feels fun and silly and connective.  And for the time spent, as easily as it was spent, there’s this sort of wisdom that the playing has afforded my study of this character: I know some wonderfully intimate and nuanced “isms” of Rob (my character) and the relationships he has with the other characters in ways that I feel like sometimes don’t start to gel until performances kick off.  We’ve done it in 16 hours of rehearsal.  I’m not sure if that should feel long or short, but when I stack it up against regional contracts where we’ll work eight hours a day, or even gigs where we work 3-4 hours a night, to have as many clear, focused, and articulable certainties of who this character is (beyond being a golden retriever of a man) and how he operates with others feels really ahead of the game.  

Another comment that was made in rehearsal that has been so instructive to the work was, “there is no information, only action.” Chris Bohan said it while we were looking at the structure of the play and offering some language and ideas to focus and anchor our work. That sentence - there is no information, only action - blew my mind. It’s something I think I knew and am pretty mindful of (at least subconsciously) in my theatre work, but sometimes I can go on wildly circuitous and unfocused routes in attempts of re-discovering that point. This sentence insists that in plays, there is never a circumstance in which a character just divulges information for the sake of exposition and narrative ease for the audience - rather, the Given Circumstances are such that these characters want something or must do something and that is best accomplished through the sharing of information. Feels like it should probably be obvious, but for whatever reason it hit me with really fresh clarity. Within the play, Rob is a sideline commentator or parrot to the rest of the group for pretty long chunks of time - and aside from the polarity offered by someone who monosyllabically affirms or defuses the passionate tensions of a chaotic book club gathering - it opened up an inspiring new world of possibility to start naming the actions behind each of his less-than-lofty responses.  

This play has six characters, and the majority of them feel like engines or generators of plot - they are very direct and active in their contributions to the story, and it can be tempting to lean back and just sort of fill-in when you find yourself as a less aggressively assertive character. Getting the chance to play and improvise the way we have been has illuminated a path of psychological and physical discovery to the very full active world that Rob leads…it just isn’t really centered around the literary discussions of book club. And it’s been nice to have a solid tool set to explore what that life looks like - i.e., Rob’s quality of movement is highly reactive to the subjective atmospheres of others; that his centers manifest beyond heart only through sheer force of will and ostentatious performativity; and that certain archetypes to Rob’s character keep him rigidly isolated in privilege but empowered through status-based connection and sociability. The sense of play and looseness of these first few rehearsals have created such a rich foundation for the work to come - I’m excited to keep playing.