The Lovely Crutch of Words

Rehearsals for The Rogue Theatre’s production of The Good Woman of Setzuan have begun. Our first two meetings were devoted to “getting to know you,” where the ‘you’ was the text of the play, the music we’d be singing, and our fellow actors.

There are 18 performers in the ensemble but there are 24 parts, which means that some of us will be ‘doubling.’ It also turns out that some of our characters have almost nothing to say, which is not as easy as you might suppose.

It’s the nature of the Rogue to put its actors on stage at the beginning of the evening’s performance and then leave them there…thank you very much. No ducking off to the Green Room when you’ve done your bit because in a very real sense you’re never “done’ with your ‘bit.’

The problem: How to stay in character, be that character, stay focused and “alive behind your eyes” as Joe McGrath says, without the lovely crutch of words. It’s to the end of responding to that problem that director Cynthia Meier put us through a series of improvisation exercises that I for one found exhausting.

I went home last night feeling as if I had been beaten with sticks.