Two Rooms Highlights

We’ve done a lot of review of Two Rooms since we finished our run in Seattle, especially building up to and after our final performance down in Lakewood. We’re particularly grateful to the Lakewood Playhouse folks for hosting us, and to Alex Smith, Dylan Twiner, John Munn, and Larry Hagerman for putting us up, helping us, and makings things run smoothly. 

Now that we’re all done, I wanted to specifically preserve some of the things from this show that will stick with me. 

I will remember lots of things fondly, like us doing karaoke or Taryn’s propensity to stand on things or “gargoyle”, the red pandas, and everything else, but this post is for reflections are on the show, the process, and the commitment more than anything, I think. 

The actors put up with me throwing empty Gatorade bottles at them, and even embraced it enough that it became a thing, with them returning fire during rehearsals. 

Technically, there were many moments when everything synched up, when Taylor "Swoop" Buhrman drew the lights down at just the right moment, and the performers on stage were framed just so, spectacularly. We had a wonderful window light at Lakewood that cast magnificent shadows. There were moments of kismet when a blackout just PUNCHED a line of dialogue. There were the times when Taylor played prophet and hit the go button on the sound while the actors were still talking, so the instant they were done the music started to come up. It speaks of his familiarity with the show, his comfort with it, but also strongly of the magic of theater, and how being open, willing, and engaged, you can get out of the way and let it take you. 

During the final performance, I helped Scott take his shackles off. He never let me help them put them on, it was part of his process, but every night I helped him clean off his makeup and such for his final appearance, and the first thing we did was take the manacles off. Every night he lost arm hair because of the sticky blood gel, but on Sunday, he had them fastened so tight that I’d unscrewed a bolt about a centimeter before the metal finally let go of his skin. And slowly peeled away. Not from the blood goo, but because of sweat and pressure and what he’d chosen to put himself through for two hours. 

I don’t want you to think that means Scott is method either, he took his hood off backstage to get some fresh air, and so on, but having a concrete reminder, a consciously present thing to remind you of what you’re doing and who you are can be helpful, and his commitment to that really struck me. 

Taryn made some discoveries with Walker that came from the ending scenes. And then all of a sudden who she was starting the show as didn’t work anymore, the progress from where she started and where she ended was disrupted, it wasn’t an arc. She had to remove a brashness that we’d been working with before. Wasn't wrong or right, just had to come from a different place. And she couldn’t figure it out. And we tried some different tricks, pushed things this way and that, and she wasn’t happy because it wasn’t clicking. And she got more and more frustrated. Eventually we stopped, we talked about it, and decided to do something else and come back to it. And when we did it worked out perfectly. 

But my takeaway from that wasn’t just that she was taking it seriously, but that I could see real, visceral frustration, if not outright anguish that things weren't lining up right. The fact that she was so engaged, so committed to this show to find that so difficult really said just how seriously she was taking her role and all its facets.

There’s only one small scene in the script when Ellen and Michael talk. They never meet in real life, so it’s clear that Ellen is imagining Michael. They talk about whether she dreams about the hostages she’s “responsible” for. The script says that Lainie leaves the room, and when Ellen tries to, Michael blocks the door, and they talk.

We’d been playing with dynamics of the show all over already. For example, one of the most intimate scenes, when Lainie and Scott really talk for the first time, we did very antagonistically for the auditions, just to push the range of the actors and to see how far they could go in an opposite direction and so on. I do such things in rehearsals too, play a scene strongly in a non-obvious way, or even the opposite way, to break a pattern or look for something fresh.

So between the three of us, we tried a power exchange, and had Ellen be a “hostage” for a few lines, made Michael her captor. And I kept making sure Julia was comfortable with it, because it was pretty early in the rehearsal process, and all of a sudden we were putting a pillow case over her head, and Scott was tilting her backward, blind, while she hung onto a chair. I’d have been terrified. Every time I checked she said things like, “I trust you,” “It’s okay,” “Let’s do it,” and so on. I expect that of people I’ve worked with before, or late in the rehearsal process when everyone’s comfortable. To be that gutsy in an early rehearsal with people you’re still getting to know...honestly, it kind of took my breath away.

I almost hate to admit it, but a part of me, in the theater context, really likes making, or at least helping, performers cry. Turns out I’m pretty good at it. And some actors don’t need the help, of course, but you never know. There was only one scene where Brittni really needed a push, and when we got there, I asked her if she wanted help and she pretty much gave me carte blanche to get her there. It takes a certain kind of bravery to do that, to want that, to ask for it. I put my forehead against hers and quietly told her how alone she was, how long her husband had been gone, how much she was in limbo, how much she wished her husband was dead just so she knew something for a fact instead of waiting and worrying and not knowing anything. I took one minute and verbally isolated her as much as I could. And it was what she needed and she went right out and rocked that scene. 

I’ve realized in the last couple of weeks that I have a specific pet peeve regarding feeling like people don’t take me seriously. Looking back, it’s clear that at least part of how impressive all these things were to me was just how seriously these actors took the work, the show, the process, and me. The other aspect of this is I’m always struck and impressed by things I don’t or can’t do. I don’t know that I could have or would have wanted to dig as deep as these performers did, as they did consistently even, and kept coming back for more. It was a humbling thing to see, and I’m exceptionally proud of all of them, and very fortunate to have had the privilege of working with them.