The Trojan Women - missives and mayhem
⊆ July 23rd, 2007 by gwen | ˜T-minus four days…
Well, we’ve managed to drag ourselves through the first hectic weekend of the Fringe. Many shows were seen, many drinks were had. Three of the four Trojan Two-Timers’ shows have closed: Cordelia’s Fool, The Farthest Earth From Thee, and Low Tide Hotel. All three were delightful performances that unfortunately are now only a memory. The last performance of Nutshell is on Tuesday night, 9:45 at Woolly Mammoth - it’s a great silly jungle-y time and I hope that some of you can make it!
Meanwhile, we are gearing up for tech, and have just received communication from our long lost director, on her way back from the untamed hills and valleys of distant Canada! Read more about that under the cut, as well as the unexpected hilarity of rehearsing a tragedy.
Our director Rachel prepares to return from Canada — where she was at the Stratford Festival this year (not Shaw as previously posted). While there, the group she was leading met one of the three incoming artistic directors to the festival starting next season — Marti Maradan — whom they had just announced would be directing The Trojan Women. That peaked Rachel’s interest, but it was her group members that outted our director’s project. So Rachel and Marti ended up talking shop a few days later about translations and adaptations, how the story relates to contemporary audiences, the pluses and minuses of grounding the production in a specific time period. Quite thrilling.
Meanwhile, back in reality, we have a brush-up run on Tuesday night (Talthybius will finally get a costume! and Hector’s shield, not a garbage can lid, will appear!) There is a full run for tech on Wednesday night, Tech in the late afternoon on Thurs and we open at 7pm.
The Trojan Women is not a happy play. It may be hopeful and wistful and powerful and strong, but sunshine and bluebirds it is not. The events of the play are earth-shaking and cruel, leaving the characters in various states of emotional distress — but you’d never know it from our rehearsals. We may all be crying as Andromache pleads to the gods, but as soon as we go on break it’s all inside jokes, fart noises, and booty-shaking. You would not believe how silly we all get.
Since we started in March we’ve had a lot to celebrate; two of our group have gotten married during the rehearsal process, two others have gotten engaged (not to each other) and one is expecting a baby in the fall! Those few of us left who’ve avoided the Marital Bliss are quite relieved that it’s not actually contagious.
We’ve developed our own fake acting technique that we call the Parkenburger method, (based loosely on Rachel Miller’s operatic past), and any time that you flub a line, fall down, forget where you are or in any way #%$@ up, you can just attribute it to one of the 26 columns of the Parkenburger technique. It is very important, however, to acknowledge whether your enormous screw up was on purpose, or was “not a choice”. There is also a Parkenburger directing method, which I believe has 9 visible and 2 invisible columns, to which our director can add or subtract at any time. Alternatively, there is the Darkenburger technique, by which you can improve the quality of the acting by merely turning off about half of the lights in the room. Dim light = tragedic genius.
Of course, with a fake baby as a prop we’ve had a lot of inappropriate dead baby jokes and throwing around of the baby-bundle. Sabrina (Andromache) spiked the baby on the floor volleyball-style after a lengthy rehearsal and almost gave us all a heart attack. It’s amazing what suspending your disbelief will do. Various angry feelings can be taken out on the baby, although it can more happily be used to develop maternal instincts.
Although our own Elaine Qualter is happily pregnant, the character of Helen is not. We tried to come up with a series of reasons why she might have that belly. The women of Troy think she might just be fat. The woman who’s face launched a thousand ships probably wouldn’t have a beer gut, but it’s possible. Our director toyed with the idea of having Helen hold a carefully placed basket in front of her midsection, but working in a thrust makes this idea null and void.
Okay, that’s all for today.
In our next update: more pictures and adapting to the space.
