Seeing and Being Seen

I’m not particularly smart.
I’m not particularly beautiful.
But I suffer so well, and when
a stranger sees me cry-
they see a river they haven’t
swum in-
a river in a foreign country-
so they take off their trousers
and they jump in the water.
And they take pictures
with a water-proof camera
and then they dry themselves in the sun
but I’m still wet.

-Tilly’s Aria, Sarah Ruhl, Melancholy Play: A Chamber Musical

There is so much to say about Sarah Ruhl. So much, in fact, that the prospect of writing anything about her, or her work, is extremely daunting. But on the eve of the first day of load-in for Theatre KAPOW’s production of Melancholy Play: A Chamber Musical, I find myself thinking about what Ms. Ruhl has to say about seeing and being seen. Perception is integral to her work, both in terms of staging, and story.

On its surface, Melancholy Play pokes fun at human fascination with the tragic feminine. Its protagonist, Tilly, is so beautifully melancholic that everyone she meets falls in love with her. Chaos ensues when Tilly becomes happy and, far less alluring as a result. Melancholy Play mischievously confronts us with our societal fascination with, and objectification of, the melancholic female. But it also challenges us to ask why we are drawn to this trope. What is it about melancholy and sadness that we find attractive, and what happens when our expectations of melancholy do not line up with the far less romantic reality of sadness and depression? Tilly says it best when she asks, “Have you ever seen what sadness looks like on a person, once they take off their grey shoes and gloves? It looks different. Not like a movie. People wear sweatpants when they are sad in private. Not pearls.”

I do not think it is melancholy that makes Tilly attractive. Every character in Melancholy Play projects what he or she wants onto Tilly, because she sees them. Tilly looks carefully at each person she encounters; she strives to make connections. She feels things deeply. Tilly’s tragedy is that she knows she will never live up to the dream people impose on her. Dream Tilly wears pearls. Perhaps this is why she becomes melancholic and has to “lie down on the couch.” True connection is difficult when you feel people are looking at a version of you that doesn’t exist, when your name sounds wrong on their lips.

When Tilly becomes happy, when her focus is directed inward on her own sense of joy, she becomes less attractive. Frank, the man Tilly falls in love with and the catalyst for her happiness, tells her, “Your eyes aren’t looking at me. They’re looking at a great big storm of happiness. On the horizon. Can you see me?” It isn’t until one of Tilly’s friends becomes so depressed she essentially disappears into a shell, that everyone realizes how important it is to look at the people you care about and see them for who they truly are, not who you want them to be. When you see someone and they see you, it is easy to fall in love.

Z
~ Emily Karel

Photos by Matthew Lomannp

Through with Read-throughs

"Usually, a first day of rehearsal goes something more like this. The actors arrive. The entire theater staff arrives, occasionally along with some board members. We eat stale donuts and mill around nervously. The artistic director says a few words. The director does a presentation. The designers do a presentation. The playwright says some awkward heartfelt things. It’s something like an ad campaign, but for who? We’re still trying to convince the theater to do our play, but they’re already doing it! We tell the actors how the play will look and sound, proud of our work, but because we’ve done the work already, the actors’ very particular imaginations won’t influence any of our big plans!

Then we sit down nervously, surrounded by a ring of about fifty people (depending on how big the theater is), and we read the play out loud at a table. The pencils are sharp, and the actors do a strange dance of auditioning for each other. The day ends, we are all relieved, and the next day we actually begin rehearsal. What if the first day of rehearsal could contain more joy? More costumes and fewer packets of information? What if it were as secretive and intimate as children building a fort, covering themselves with blankets, sitting in the dark, saying to the outside world: keep out, keep out, for now…"

Sarah Ruhl, “On the First Day of Rehearsal,” 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write on Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I love Sarah Ruhl. Her plays are genius, but this little book of 100 essays has become my guidebook for theatre and life. I’m sure many of us have, on a number of occasions, experienced a read through just like what Sarah Ruhl describes above. It feels much more like ritual than rehearsal and without question there is a sense in the room that it is just something we need to do before we can start actually rehearsing. Lost in the ritual is any sense of purpose. Why do we do this? What is the point?

On Saturday morning, we had our first rehearsal for Stupid Fucking Bird. Before heading to the theatre, I re-read Sarah’s essay and was determined to avoid the typical read-through. We only allowed ourselves a 2 hour block for our first meeting because we were also scheduled to rehearse The Burial at Thebes that day. This is a cast in which some people have worked together a number of times and some people are completely new to tKAPOW so, yes, we spent a few minutes on introductions. And, yes, we spent just a few minutes explaining what we had in mind for the physical playing area. But, when it came time to dive into the script, I wanted to approach things a little differently. Stupid Fucking Bird is an amazing script and one of the things that makes it so great is that it very deliberately blurs the line between actor and audience. So, for the first rehearsal I set up 8 chairs in two rows of four. The two rows faced each other with about 15’ between them. Then we read the script, but rather than remaining seated, the actors moved into the open space between the chairs and walked through the whole show.

It was fascinating to watch the cast make decisions about where and how to enter, where to play the scene, and how to exit. If they felt chairs were needed they would drag them into the space and then take them with them when they exited. I was fortunate that so many of the cast members were off or almost off book so there wasn’t much of the awkwardness of having to balance your script while moving through space.

In this way, the first rehearsal was just that. A rehearsal. But, a rehearsal virtually free of rules. The actors went where they wanted to go and got to be in complete control. And, you know what? There were some moments, some real moments, created during that two hour rehearsal. Moments that I can guarantee we would not have found sitting around a table. Is it performance ready? No, but I truly believe that the cast learned more about the show, their characters, and their ensemble than they would have in a typical read through. Most importantly, I think this rehearsal set a tone for the rest of our work. It will be a process where the actors will be empowered to take risks, to explore, to play. I’m not trying to claim that there is anything really revolutionary here. I know that many theatres have long since abandoned the read through, but for us it was a new approach and I am really encouraged by the results. I’ll be very curious to see how many of the little discoveries from the first rehearsal end up in the finished product. Until then, we’ll have a lot of fun building blanket forts.

~ Matt Cahoon