David L. Gorsline: Rehearsal Diary

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:51:51 GMT

Well, there's still a lot of stuff in boxes to be unpacked, and not all the curtains have been hung, but I think that we can declare A Honey of an Anklet officially open.

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 01:16:21 GMT

I just kissed off a short theater project, one that was scribbled all over by misunderstandings and wrong expectations (some of them mine). Once again, I am so glad that I don't have to make a living at this.

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 01:45:29 GMT

This past weekend I spent nearly all of my time either in a motel room studying for a certifcation exam or in the Smith Opera House in Geneva, New York, home of ESTA Fest 2006. The festival brought together community theater productions from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland (a production from Delaware was a late scratch). Leta directed Perfectly Good Airplanes, a yet-unpubished work by Steve LaRocque, and performed by the very talented Maura and Ted.

I had stage-managed a production of this for Leta last year, but this time my only contribution was as non-union driver. Ira and RJ loaded in our very simple set pieces for the production, a trash can and a park bench (at the moment in Alberta's cargo area).

The Opera House, which opened in 1894 with a production of The Count of Monte Cristo starring Eugene O'Neill's father, is typical of the older buildings to be found in Geneva: masonry-framed, three stories, bay windows on the upper stories with a circular-arched entrance.

Fitting to its role as a place for theater, the building's entrance features high-relief sculptured busts of William Shakespeare and Edwin Booth.

Inside, the auditorium can seat 1400 but is usually configured for many fewer people. A 7-year restoration program commenced at the building's centennial has restored the grandeur of its late Victorian rococo.

Downstairs, some of the space originally dedicated to rest rooms and "lounge" has been converted into a low-ceilinged cocktail bar. But the men's room retains an old-time favorite of mine: tulip-shaped urinals. I've seen this style of porcelain convenience in only two places in D.C.: the Takoma Theater and Silver Spring Stage.

Maura and Ted took home honorable mentions for their acting work, while a fine production by Pennsylvania's Gaslight Theatre Company of Act III of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten won top honors.

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:19:03 GMT

If I had the time and money to devote, here are the classes I would take to help me become a better actor:

Voice and breath support: I still need help developing power and volume, though I think I'm getting better at it. My voice sometimes gets lost in the CenterStage theater, especially when I'm positioned upstage.
At the Studio Theatre's school, there is a class called Character and Emotion, known more informally as Crying on Cue.
Working with a mask: how can you convey character without words, without your eyes?
Shakespeare, a lifelong study.
Anything that improves my awareness of what I'm doing with my body, and that opens up new possibilities. I'm tall, and naturally head-centered, so I have an unfortunate tendency to hunch over on stage, like Snoopy's vulture persona.

Dialects and vocal qualities I do okay with: I have a couple passable American Southerns, a Cockney, and a British RP (BBC English). What I don't do well are Celtics and Brooklyn.

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 12:30:51 GMT

Leta received word yesterday that Perfectly Good Airplanes has been selected to represent Maryland community theater at the Eastern States Theatre Association festival in Geneva, New York, in April—along with Montgomery Playhouse's The Way to Miami. Good work, Maura and Ted, and good tooting, Ira!

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 16:34:22 GMT

Things that I can do now that the show is closed:

Watch the 1996 movie version of The Crucible to see how much better Paul Scofield understands the role of Danforth than I do.
Properly clean the brushes and sponges in my makeup kit.
See my friends do some theater. This week, Sally is in The Invention of Love for Elden Street Players; Michael S. directs The Shape of Things for Silver Spring Stage; and Maura, Ted, Leta, and Ira take Perfectly Good Airplanes to the Maryland Community Theatre Festival.
Get my dang hair cut!

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:01:36 GMT

The makeup for Deputy Governor Danforth (designed by MaryAnne) is more extreme than I usually have to deal with, even in the 300-seat CenterStage theater.

The wig and the red robe come off for the gaol scene; there isn't time to redo my hair then, so it has this nice mussed matted-down quality, which works well for the agitated state that Danforth is in.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 04:01:22 GMT

We're halfway through the run, and I feel pretty darn good about this evening's performance. Not technically flawless yet, but I'm getting there. A few fumble-tongue lapses of concentration, and I'm anticipating a couple of things that I shouldn't.

I'm a little surprised by some audience reactions, but not much. In the meetinghouse scene, when Mary Warren turns on John Proctor (a situation that Randall McMurphy might call a "pecking party") and Danforth (me) charges downstage to get between the two of them, saying "He bid you do the Devil's work?" there is sometimes a scattering of giggles. I think some of our (more liberal?) patrons can't quite handle the high sanctimony that's going on, or the irony of Proctor's reversal of fortune.

Joshua is a class act. He is still tinkering with some of his readings of Proctor, and this is to the good. (Remember that a typical community theater complete run of seven or ten shows is about the same number of performances that a larger-scale professional production will devote just to previews.) He's taking notes from Andy. He told me today that he likes working with me in our scenes, that he feels connected to me. And he's organizing cast gifts to the production staff, an obligation that I always try to divert to someone else.

And we have the obligatory production romance brewing...

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 19:54:13 GMT

We have a preview piece in one of the local newspapers. There's a copy-editing blunder in the lede sentence, but it's publicity nonetheless.

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 15:54:47 GMT

Douglas Woody Woodsum's "Fourteener 279" feels right for Salem.

My plan, God, was food
For family and fold, the head and feet for the poor. But Satan,
It seems, is breathing hot stink at me.

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 13:22:56 GMT

Bob and I are on the same page.

We blocked the curtain call last night. Now, Andy is doing what he can to expedite the calls by bringing us out in groups, but there are still nineteen actors to get through (as many people as were hanged in Salem... hmmm). Bob (Parris) and I are coming out as a pair of major supporting actors, and Andy said that it was okay for these pairs to do the bow-together-then-acknowledge-the-other-actor thing. I asked Bob if he wanted to do that and he said, "No, God hates a long curtain call." Good man.

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 12:51:24 GMT

Just a note to check posting through Comcast's web e-mail app, and to acknowledge more crew members on the deck: Bruce, Greg from the cast, Heather, and Susan-not-Suzie.

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 18:08:39 GMT

Actors moved into the theater on Wednesday night, for opening night a week from tonight. This is not a complicated show as far as lights and sound go, nor are the costume changes complex or numerous—in these respects The Crucible is exactly opposite The Laramie Project, the last show I did at RCP.

But the scene shifts are complicated. In the first act, we transition from a dumbshow prolog in the woods (not part of Miller's text) into Rev. Parris's house, and from there into John Proctor's house. These are done with lights dimmed and the big purple curtain (the grand drape) out. At intermission (behind the grand drape) we go into another forest scene (the short scene between John and Abigail Williams that Miller cut from the original production). Then two more changes within the second act: into the meetinghouse/courthouse and then into the jail.

We have a crew of about six on the deck: Rini, Bob, David H., Suzie, Rick, and Laura (ASM). The crew will handle most of the chores that involve swinging platforms into place and flying things—the forest is suggested by nifty hanging fabric panels, and the back walls by window units. So, even with this rather impressionistic set, there are still a lot of smaller pieces to bring on (chairs, benches, hand props), and that will be the job of the cast. I have an easy workload: a bench to bring into Parris's house, a table into Proctor's, and another bench to reposition as we go from meetinghouse to jail. So we've spent Wednesday and Thursday rehearsing the scene shifts with work lights. Tonight we do it again with the theatrical lighting (and sound, I hope?). Then tomorrow we get our first complete technical run, start to finish.

We've run bits and pieces of scenes, so we can begin making blocking adjustments. The area between the two ranks of benches in the meetinghouse, where I more or less live for the duration of the scene, is a lot narrower side to side than it was when we worked in the rehearsal hall. I also need to work on sensing how much of the downstage area is lit: I move too far right and I'm standing in the dark.

We have a lot of cast members who are new to RCP, so I'm a resource for how we do things here—what's expected of actors when we strike the show, that sort of thing.

Justin (Rev. Hale) is probably the bigest cut-up in the cast. Definitely more so than June and Emily, our pre-teens. He's also very easy to tease—most gratifying. He's got something of the personality of a golden retriever. He's a good actor; he's young and tall and good-looking and (he claims) he was gawky and unpopular as a kid. Not the sort of guy you'd figure was expecting his first child, but there he was with the hard copy of the sonogram, interpreting those blurry features. We were hanging out stage left, waiting for something to happen, and David B. piped up. Now David B. is a study in contrasts: he's a soft-spoken transportation lawyer who looks more like a barista in Arlington somewhere. Anyway, in a sidearmed compliment, David B. said to Justin, "It's probably good that you're having a baby. That way you'll always have an audience." I high-fived David B.

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:07:17 GMT

Bob turned up an entire trove of Puritan and Reformed writings, including Michael Wigglesworth's 224-stanza verse sermon, "The Day of Doom" (1662), a New England best-seller. For shorter takes, check out the Puritan Quote of the Week. Past citations include Richard Baxter's "Screw the truth into men's minds" and John Flavel's "A hot iron, though blunt, will pierce sooner than a cold one, though sharper."

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 15:55:13 GMT

Fear doesn't travel well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory's truth. What terrifies one generation is likely to bring only a puzzled smile to the next.

Arthur Miller's "Why I Wrote The Crucible," from 1996.

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 13:42:03 GMT

Another source I'm using in Crucible research is The Salem Witch Trials Reader, edited by Frances Hill. In the first half of the book, she tells the story of the unpleasantness in 17th-century Puritan Essex County solely with excerpts from primary sources. These include books and broadsides, letters, and court records—though not of the actual Court of Oyer and Terminer. Those papers have been lost.

Thomas Brattle wrote the following letter in October, 1692, (as Hill puts it), to an unknown correspondent, "probably with a view to its being circulated in manuscript and influencing" Governor Phipps and the General Court (the colonial governing body). Brattle was a businessman, mathematician, and astronomer, and his letter was a plea for rationalistic interpretation of the strange phenomena in Salem. One hard-nosed point of his nearly touches sarcasm, concerning the examination of an accused witch's body for a "witches' teat":

[The accused] are searched by a jury; and as to some of them, the jury brought in, that on such or such a place there was a preternatural excrescence. And I wonder what person there is, whether man or woman, of whom it cannot be said but that, in some part of their body or other, there is a preternatural excrescence. The term is a very general and inclusive term. (Hill, p. 90)

Or, as I explained to Leta, if you're going into court to be tried as a witch, pop your pimples first.

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 16:23:30 GMT

We did a full rehearsal run of the show yesterday, and I got through it for the first time without picking up a book. If I have to stuff one more thing in my head, I'm sure that something else will leak out. I'm still frustrated at this point: I'm spending most of my energy retrieving words and little of it acting: executing tactics, reacting to what's going on, monitoring and editing what I'm doing. I'm also struggling with Danforth's physicality: he is rigid (put aside all that recent t'ai chi training) but not inert. Lee (assistant director) said that she wanted him to be more flamboyant. What the heck does that mean? Andy is opening the show with the villagers processing through the house as if returning from church, singing William Billings' canon "When Jesus Wept." Elisa note-bashed us through it yesterday, and it's going to sound otherworldly and beautiful. Fortunately each of the three groups for the canon is anchored by a strong singer: Bob, Josh, and Justin.

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:02:59 GMT

I'm starting to chip away at learning my words for The Crucible. I'm doing the same thing that I did for Book of Days, working from a spiral-bound book with pages pasted into it. I used Andy's Word-format version of the script, in which he puts each speech (cue) into its own row in a table, with the original stage directions stripped out. So by that formatting, I've learned 10 of 38 pages, which includes a couple of the longer monologues. "Learned," for these purposes, means I can put my book down to do the scene and I won't call for a line too much, but I will be early and late with my cues all over the place. It's a failing of mine that I really don't learn cues by myself very well: I learn them by running the scene with other people.

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:45:57 GMT

We've blocked the meetinghouse scene, and we're going to block the jail/gaol scene this evening.

I'm reading Peter Charles Hoffer's The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History as part of my preparation. Miller's Danforth is a composite of many of the colony officials that were involved with the trials. I think that Miller sees Danforth as a moderate figure who is easily swayed by the more radical factions in the community, and once Danforth has chosen a course he sticks with it to the point of calamity. Hoffer's book is helpful for making it clear exactly how high the stakes are for these Puritan colonists. They are clinging to a state of social order, just barely.

The settlement is under pressure from the Catholic French and their Indian allies in the north. Miller's Abigail Williams says, "I saw Indians smash my dear parents' heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night...."

Just four years before, the Catholic James II is deposed by the English, to be replaced by the Protestant William of Orange and his wife Mary, James's daughter. Massachusetts's charter is revoked in 1684 and the colony is merged with the other New England settlements. A new charter is granted, but some political leaders hope to reestablish the old charter, on the strength of William and Mary's coronation. Hoffer writes, "the politics of the colony [pass] from uncertainty to uproar."

As the investigations in Salem threatened to spiral out of control, Governor William Phips established a special court of oyer and terminer to hear the cases. The court was established under English and colonial law without any means to reconcile their differences. Rules of evidence in these courts were not the hard-and-fast rules we think of today. Hoffer:

Judges usually instructed seventeenth-century jurors to look to their consciences, for conscience was not only a moral faculty but also a way of sifting truth from falsehood.

Or, as I told Lee as we chatted yesterday, "they were making it up as they went along." Is it any wonder that Miller's Danforth says in the gaol scene, "I will not receive a single plea for pardon or postponement.... Postponement now speaks a floundering on my part...."

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 03:34:25 GMT

Well, I have some work ahead of me. I will play Deputy-Governor Danforth in The Crucible for RCP next January-February. Danforth is the presiding judge in the trial and jail scenes in the second half of the play. So we don't see him at all in the first half, but once he's on, he never seems to stop talking.

Andy (The Laramie Project) is directing with the assistance of Lee. Eileen and Laura B. are producing and stage-managing. We've got a lot of strong people in the cast, among them Josh (John Proctor), Vivien (Elizabeth Proctor), Heather (Abigail) (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead), Justin (Hale), Bob (Parris), Pam (Mary Warren) and David B., Jim, Robin, Earle, Steve, Sarah, Linda, Greg, Emily, Chris (whom I haven't seen since Beyond Therapy in 1990!), Malka, June, and MaryAnne. I think we're still looking for a Hathorne.

Andy's design concept for the show is spookily reminiscent of Book of Days. There's a prologue that emphasizes the theme of "everybody knows everybody's business," in Salem, Mass. as in Dublin., Mo. And Laura B. brought in her copy of the Norton Critical Edition of the text. In a section on parallels to other plays is an entry for Saint Joan. Coincidence?

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 23:38:25 GMT

When is a permalink not perma? When you've exhausted your 25MB allocation on your server. I'm moving the rehearsal diary and reviews specialized blogs into new locations at Comcast. Excuse our dust.

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 16:56:13 GMT

We close the show this afternoon, on a matinee. Three matinees in a run of nine shows is too many, but it seems to be a cost of doing business at Asbury. Friday I avoided the rainy rush hour traffic by taking the Red Line and a Ride On bus to the theater, which left me a bit soggier than the drive would have, but a lot less stressed. And I could review my lines on the subway, since we didn't do a line drill during the week.

At Friday's final blackout, I heard an sigh of exasperation or resignation from an audience member, an acknowledgment that the bastards had won out after all. We live for those little moments of reaction.

As long as it is (i.e., as long as it seems to everyone else), I really enjoy my scene with Casey (Rev. Groves); it has a nice natural flow to it. Mostly I'm just flipping cues to him while I'm towelling off after our basketball game (Rev. Groves has almost all the beat changes in the scene). But I have a couple of nice explosions of my own; I get to show some different colors. And I like the audition scene with Ruth, which starts Boyd out in the back of the house, brings him up to the stage and back to the rear of the audience again. I've never asked Andrea whether she can see the change in my body language out in the black of the theater as she grows into the Juliet monologue, as Boyd realizes he's dealing with a natural talent and not a little-theater wannabe.

I'm less satisfied with the scene of Sharon's breakdown. Tiffany (as Ginger as Sharon) is marvelous in it, transitioning from rage to piteous sorrow and back again, and into steely determination. But the setup for it, the breaking of illusionistic theater. has never quite felt right to me.

I like all of my chorus reaction scenes, and I like to think that I've found a range of subtly distinct postures for each. Some of them are a long time standing in one place, and I've found my new tai chi training to be helpful for keeping my knees relaxed and my back straight.

Strike should be easy work. I've got two costumes to carry back to the car, and an airline carry-on bag with an old routing tag left on it. This might be the first time that all of my costumes have come out of my own closet, if you count the gym shorts and headband (bright yellow, 'cause Boyd is a Lakers fan) that I bought at Sports Authority. Say "so long" to Boyd's pretentious goatee.

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 22:44:56 GMT

Michael Toscano found our Book of Days production "credible." I'll take that.

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 03:40:53 GMT

Tonight we turned in a pretty clean final tech rehearsal for an audience of about 16: residents of Asbury, a couple of Playhouse board members. Each act is running about 65 minutes, so we were done and getting out of costume by 10:30.

We open tomorrow, which means that I have only four more rush hour commutes to Gaithersburg to finish the run. Of course, three of those are Fridays.

I didn't realize that the rest of the cast shared my opinion of my second act scene with Rev. Groves (Casey). It is—how did Robin put it?—long. Last Sunday afternoon we sat in a circle and just drilled lines while we waited for tech. When we got to my scene with the Rev, everybody else got up to get some water, take a pee break, or just stretch legs. Well, almost everybody.

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 15:19:15 GMT

Longish appraisal of George Bernard Shaw by Ben Brantley, on the centenary of his first New York production. Mrs. Warren's Profession was raided by the police and its cast charged with disorderly conduct.

(Thanks to ArtsJournal.)