POSTS FROM OUR PROCESS

As you may have seen, Seat of the Pants has finally been able to announce the sale of tickets for our year long project, Our Country’s Good. These past few weeks, we have officially began our rehearsals and production meetings in full and proper swing. I am so excited to finally be in what feels like the final phase of this adventure as we are just a few more steps away from being able to show you all what a year of hard work and dedication to honing our art can bring. Getting to work with such talented and dedicated people has always been rewarding to me but the level of collaboration I have experienced since the fall of last year has been on another level entirely.

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For this blog entry, I had plans to explain my process of selecting music and creating and finding sound effects, but I’m not yet able to put it into words that would make sense to most people, especially since I’m trying something very new this time around, soliciting input from the actors about what type of music elicits what emotions from them as I attempt to create the “soundscape” of this world.

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For a number months, we have been building. We have been flying and diving into our work, forcing our way through the mud with passionate fiery hope: each step, making invisible discoveries, transient by nature, evolving with time, to the point of seeking balance. Where are the traditions and approaches that I have clung to for so long, do I even have this, am I doing the work right? I want to feel the work beneath my feet; I want to find my repetition; I want to feel the whole. It’s been a long process. Something I have always wanted: an opportunity for the new, the ideal, for something different. But like most things that we want, when we get there we cannot see it or appreciate it, because there is always more. I was starting to seek the comfortable. I was starting to fear what came next. But life has a way of showing you what you need as long as you are open to it.

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What is theatre without an audience? Frankly, it’s nothing. The audience is always the last piece of the puzzle.

The Our Country’s Good family has been working on and off now for about eight months. We met twice a month and worked on technique, creating a common vocabulary, and earning each other’s trust. But we haven’t had an audience.

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This is a modification of an exercise I was introduced to in undergrad. Basically, you ask yourself “What’s the best/worst outcome?” before each action taken by either your character or any other characters in a scene. These two outcomes are ever present in the character’s mind. The idea is to establish point of view and behavior around the actions taken in each scene. It can create a sense of authentic immediacy.

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One of the characters I play in Our Country’s Good is Mary Brenham, a convict who historically was arrested for stealing clothing from her employers. (In my mind, she has a soft spot for silk.) On first read of the play there was a timidity to Mary. In the stage directions she ‘shrinks away’ multiple times and her belief in love can come off as naïve. Dabby and her husband sell Mary to a sailor on the journey from England to the penal colony in Australia.

One of my favourite facts/(mysteries?) about Mary is her tattoo: ‘A.H. I love thee to the heart’ on her upper inner thigh. She exclaims that whoever and whatever A. H. was, was indeed love.

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As I’m packing to go to GLMCC (which my husband and I affectionately call “Chekhov Camp”), I’m reflecting on my past experiences there and absorbing my excitement about getting there this time. Why do I look forward to it so much? Submersion in a technique I love is part of it. Artistic freedom and a safe space to create, fail, explore. Rigor. Being challenged and supported. All of those are true. But what I love most is the community and connection. The community lifts me. Embraces me. Sees me. I feel so connected, trusted, and trustful. When I left my final year (of 3) of training, I cried most of my way home. I thought I was leaving my new artistic self (an actor after years of directing and teaching) behind. Here I am, three years later (on the other side of a pandemic), going back again as an actor with a new ensemble, working on a new project. Joy isn’t expansive enough of a word.

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I’ve never really had the opportunity to portray multiple characters in a play, or at least not two characters as complex as Major Robbie Ross and James ‘Ketch’ Freeman. Throughout the rehearsal process thus far, I’ve found it challenging to switch between the two characters. They are obviously totally different people, with completely different objectives and perspectives that encapsulate the world of Our Country’s Good.

As we share some of our work this week at GLMCC (Greater Cleveland Michael Chekhov Consortium) the scenes that our ensemble will be presenting all feature Ross as the main antagonist of the play. I will be forthright that when I was first offered the role(s) of Ross and Ketch, I initially had some trepidation about playing Ross. In the second act, we see Ross’s desperation that veers on sadism to re-acquire his grip on power amongst the officers and prisoners. I’ve never really played a character like this and I’m anxious when we enter the final months of rehearsals to see how we plan on staging this brutality and mockery displayed in this scene.

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If I could go back and speak to my younger actor self, one of the things I would try to impart is the high level of trust that directors are placing in you when you are cast in a project. As a young actor, with selfish blinders on, I remember feeling intense imposter syndrome and such insecurity in my own value to the process. Through the years I’d like to think I’ve become more aware of the unique and delicate relationship that is built on trust between an ensemble, directors and designers. We have all been asked to paint with our brightest and deepest color, and we trust that the person(s) watching are discerning enough to see what needs to be adjusted to improve the whole picture.

The exercise we’ve been developing recently is a perfect balance of this type of trust-building. Our director and consulting artists have done a wonderful job in scoring out the climaxes and auxiliary climaxes that make up the story we want to tell. We’ve been building a visual overture of sorts as we explore these three main climactic points of the play. Utilizing tableaux, and exploring with transitions, quality of movement, and various other Michael Chekhov approaches, we are attempting to give the audience a visual preview of the story before the play begins. Much like a musical overture will give you an aural preview of the score before the audience has any context.

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