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. 

Being in a Play

I know that some people are absolutely terrified of the stage. I was staggered to find out that there are some people who act IN SPITE of this crippling fear, to the degree that they may vomit before going on stage. I knew that fear existed. I had no idea there were actors who embraced it and triumphed over it.

So that got me thinking, because I'm always a bit narrow in my perceptions. For some reason I always assume that everyone has the same experience as me, or that no one could possibly understand my experience, there's never a middle ground. I have to keep reminding myself to look for one.

So pretty clear, not everyone has the same experience of being in a play, or involved in a play, as I do. I asked some of my very talented friends to share what their experience of being on stage is like.

For me, as a director, it's like building a temporary family. Even when people get along in different ways or on different levels, you're still a unit. Sometimes it's just like being the engineer on a runaway locomotive, you just hope to stay on the tracks and arrive at the right place intact.

As an actor, I'll use a really big metaphor. Preparing for a show is like spending months doing breathing exercises to try to break a world record where you hold your breath longer than anyone else. You try new things, you expand your lung's capacity, maybe you hurt yourself, maybe you learn better how your body works, other people tell you how THEY breathe, and so on. But it's not till opening night that you really get to do what you've been practicing for. The lights go down, and you realize that you've been holding your breath by accident, and you don't know for how long. Then the lights start to come up, you take a deep breath, there's a head rush and then... you see what happens....

Scott C. Brown most recently played Michael in our production of Two Rooms and will be seen this fall in Someone Who'll Watch Over Me. He has also been seen as Salieri in Amadeus, McMurphy in Cuckoo's Nest, and Flynn the Bard/Leo in Gamers films. He handles IT and does a lot of support work for Confrontational Theater Project. 

Being in a play is, for me, a chance to tell a story. I am not much of a writer of my own words, but to take the words of a playwright, and to perform those for an audience, to give them life, is a great honor and responsibility. It is getting to crawl into the skin of another person, or as I like to believe, it is letting "that" part of me out for a short time to live. It allows me to experience, in some small degree, a life I could have lived, might have lived. It allows me to communicate to the audience a story that someone has written to tell. And there is a great sense of responsibility in that, to do justice to the words, the story. I hope that my performances are true to the playwright's intent and vision, and most times, I don't know if that's true because they aren't there. But I try to give to each role a sense of honesty and truth that I can only hope rings faithful to the intent of the author. It is the job of the actors and director to bring that out, to the best of our ability. It is a privilege to be able to do that.

Thomas Brophy runs the Seattle Theatre Readers (theatrereaders.com) and was a featured performer in Confrontational's Veteran's Day Project. His next project is The Purification Process. 

Being in a play is like planting a garden; it starts out with seeds going in the ground. Rehearsal is the care of the new crop and then opening night is the harvest. It's a gentle but amazing process to be in a play. There's no feeling quite like working on a project with your little microcosm of a community, comprised of actors, producers, director, and the playwright and building something from scratch. Seeing it all unfold and laughing, crying and working your ass off and then it always amazes me to see it all come together. And then I get to work off my partners on stage in real time. It's a mash up of joy, fear, elation, terror and love all under one giant umbrella. It's a beautiful thing. 

Megan Jackson played Beatrice in Paper Bullets in the spring for Ghost Light Theatricals, and she was just seen in a short piece by Pony World at Northwest New Works at On The Boards. She is one of the founders and directors of Blood Ensemble, who are developing a contribution to a piece this winter for STAGERight.

Performing a play feels a lot like a game of Tetris. You're constantly assessing a slightly different version of something you think you know coming at you and deciding what to do with it. You take the briefest moment to live with what is either flush or decidedly not (which can be interesting, too) and then look to what's headed your way next.

Dayo Anderson recently played Hamlet at Ghost Light Theatricals, and is one of the founders and directors of Blood Ensemble.

Being in a play is like having the most fun ever at a masquerade ball. You are someone else for a few hours... and in that time, you are free to do what someone totally unlike you might do. It's your one chance to literally wear someone else's shoes... but they happen to fit your feet quite nicely. Being in a play is also a lot of moments where you're not actually on stage and your main prerogative is to maintain a high energy level for when you ARE on stage. It's waiting in the wings, listening to your friends say their lines. It's doing a 20 minute scene you've practiced every day for a few months, and then it's over. Being in a play is like a sport where you are either on the field acting, or on the bench waiting to act. Except you know exactly where you're supposed to move, what you're supposed to say, and exactly what your opponent is going to do. Most of the time. :)



So there you go, five different perspectives on exactly what it's like. If we get a bunch more from other actors, we'll do a second edition, I'm sure. 

Two Rooms Wrapup

Well, it's not actually over, of course, we are fortunate enough to have added one more show down at the Lakewood Playhouse. We have a lot of friends in the South Sound area, and had quite a few folks make the trip up for Two Rooms over the weekend, so we're looking forward to getting to share the show with lots more folks. Visit tworoomslakewood.brownpapertickets.com for more details.

Our audiences this weekend were very responsive, enthusiastic, and clearly made a great effort to show up on time. Ideally, starting shows at 8 p.m. helps with that, but when we started on time more than once, and never started particularly late, that's really super encouraging!

Speaking of encouraging, we're getting to the point where we are now considering adding more performances for our shows next year. This will get us more reviews, more word of mouth, and ideally, get us eligible for the Gregory Awards. At least, that's what we're talking about. But it'll also be more expensive, of course. How well our fall show, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me (which is a companion piece to Two Rooms) goes, will affect that decision, as well.

Some of these were posted to Facebook, but I made a list on the blackboard in the lobby at Eclectic of some of the great complimentary adjectives that we got. I'm sure I'll forget someone, but these came from Trin, Dayo, Brett, Helen, Karen, Amberlee, Ashley, and Alec.

Electric
Fascinating
Elegant and Relevant
Heart-breaking in the best way
Awesome show
Magnificent
Perfect casting
Fantastic
I've seen a lot of shows...And this is the best show I've ever seen.

One of my best friends, who is politically conservative, had an amazing takeaway from the show, which let me know we're doing good work. He said that the play made him think of the women in Iraq whose husbands' whereabouts are unknown, because of the actions of Americans. The hostages that we presently hold. All through the process of putting this play together, such a thing never occurred to me, and it was a very sobering realization. And a very true one.

We were also INCREDIBLY fortunate enough to be joined by Terry Edward Moore, one of the two actors who originated the role of Michael when the play was brand new. He stayed for the Q&A session we had that night, asked some intelligent questions, and had some really kind things to say. It was also beyond humbling for all involved.

At the end of the day (or the week as in this case), there's often some post-partum depression after putting on a show, especially for me. When you operate at the scale that we do, which is to say, not quite a one-man band, but with minimal staff, sometimes as the director you don't even realize how much of your emotional energy you sank into a show until you're hiding backstage weeping. Somehow I always forget that going into performance week, and it always sneaks up on me. This time, I could track part of my emotional overload to one very specific thing, however: We worked hard. We got reactions, really powerful ones, as noted above. And that makes me wish that a lot more people had seen the show. Seats were empty, which means there were lives we could have touched, but didn't get to.

Two Rooms

The Lebanon Hostage Crisis lasted from 1982 to 1992. During that time almost 100 individuals, including many American citizens, were kidnapped and held as a human shield against Western retaliation for terrorist violence. Eight hostages died in captivity.

Lee Blessing, already a recognized playwright for his Pulitzer-nominated A Walk in the Woods, went from tackling nuclear disarmament to tackling the hostage crisis. The play debuted in 1988, where it received universal acclaim, both for its importance and its artistry. It was noted as Play of the Year by Time magazine. The play was published in 1990.

How I knew about the Iran mess in 1979 (see Argo) being a historical event, but not about this ongoing situation growing up, I'm not sure. I feel like I was generally aware that this may have been going on, but it was likely just part of a larger awareness that the Middle East was a dicey part of the world.

Regardless, I discovered and read two plays about the same topic in one day, thanks to the Seattle Central Library's play files. The other play is called Someone Who'll Watch Over Me. The two plays told two sides of the same coin, two perspectives on the same story, and I was rapt.

You could say theater is all about relationships, period, I suppose, but even if you were to generalize that way, Two Rooms is one of the best examples I could give you. The characters and the dynamics are the core of it, sometimes it seems like that's all there is to it. How something so simple can be so compelling and, even, complex, is part of the magic of this show, or come to that, Blessing's writing in general.

Those relationships have been at the core of rehearsals, discovering dynamics between individuals, and it's one of the things that the actors have reported as being a very rewarding part of being involved in this show. It's also one of the things that keeps the play interesting, as the relationships and dynamics shift throughout the show.

Without ruining anything, Two Rooms is about a man who was kidnapped, his wife who is waiting for him, the reporter who wants the wife's story, and the State Department rep who wants her to remain quiet. I'll talk more about the show in future posts, but I'll try not to be any more specific. Seriously, come spend two hours with these four people. You won't regret it.

Teaser here: https://vimeo.com/65859781

Trailer here: https://vimeo.com/66049834

Q&A

These are some of the questions you get asked as you build a theater company. And here are Beau's answers.


Seattle is drowning in theater companies, why do we need another one? 

The real answer is "we" as a collective city, art community, whatever, really didn't need another theater company, for sure. Confrontational grew out of a relationship I developed with my producer, Baron Von Oldenburg. We put up Proof together, and by the time it opened, Confrontational existed to reflect the fact that we were going to keep at it. I have great respect for a number of other theater companies in the city, but when I want to do a show, one I'm passionate about, odds are I just wanna do it, not go through the submission process of putting it up via another theater company, more than a year from now.

As a secondary answer, I was thrilled on more than one occasion to have audience members tell folks involved with our shows, "I don't like plays. I liked this play." A theater professional in Seattle told me that it is a shortcoming of Seattle theater that many shows, particularly on the fringe level, are put on by theater people for theater people, which is a pretty narrow target demographic, in my opinion. Plays (more than musicals, for example) have lost the wide appeal they had during the days of Greek Drama and Shakespeare and Vaudeville. While it is not part of Confrontational's mission to directly address these factors, it's something we keep in mind when we put together upcoming shows.

How does one become a director?

Partly, the answer to this is the same as how do you become a novelist or a painter? You just go out and do it, no one is stopping you. On the other hand, unlike writing a novel, where all you need is an imagination and a keyboard, with theater you usually need a place, a cast, and so on.

So, the short answer is: Rik Deskin. I went from not having done theater in several years, to being in two plays to directing before the end of a single year. I did a Shakespeare in the park show for Rik, then his  Eclectic Theater Company started managing the Odd Duck Studio space, and I'd always wanted to direct The Dumb Waiter. He had a slot to fill, so he was willing to let me take a shot at it. After that, I did some more shows for Eclectic, and then went off to find my own way. I've been thrilled to return to the space Rik manages to direct plays I've put on myself.

If you want to direct and don't want to completely start on your own, look to join a short play festival like On The Board's 12 minutes or less, the 14/48 festival, or the catch-all Annex cabaret, Spin the Bottle. Find a short script, or create one, that you want to do and go put it on. Then, seriously, you can call yourself a director. That's it.

What does a director do?

On the "fringe" which means pseudo or borderline professional theater (rather than Seattle Rep, ACT, 5th Ave, etc), generally a director does a lot of his or her own producing. In the truest sense, the director tells the actors what to do along the way to putting on a play. That's it. They tell the actors, or help the actors to figure out, how to say their lines, where to go and what they're doing when they say them. The rest of the time, the production staff, lights, sound, costumes, set, etc, all answer to the director to make sure the show has a cohesive vision.

The further down the budget scale you go, the more the director does, in that you may (these are personal examples): Hang lights, operate the board, design the set, build the set, paint the set, take tickets, sell drinks, design the poster, design the program, buy costumes, buy props, and you get the idea. Also, unlike professional level theater, odds are actors are used to, or are willing to, help out with a lot of this stuff as well.

How do you pick plays?

You discover them, or someone else discovers them. I've had wonderful success asking actors what show they would crawl over a dead relative to get to do. It's a fun question, many actors have an immediate answer, and it means I get to discover what people are really passionate about.

I went to the Seattle central library and went through innumerable scripts. Some of the plays I read were ones I knew I wanted to do, including Two Rooms and Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, which we're doing in 2013.

Other plays, including at least one we're doing in 2014, come as recommendations or passion projects for other people. I read Manuscript while killing time at Elliott Bay Books, and just that fast, I got a feeling in my gut, and I knew I was ready to crawl over a relative to get to do it. Another script we're doing next year not only fits thematically with Manuscript, but also will be fulfilling a dream that an actor has been carrying for the better part of a decade. I love when people are excited, you get much better work out of them, so starting from the point of having a play that someone is really passionate about, and then finding that I can share their passion for it, and we can do something awesome together...that's part of what gets me up in the mornings, now.

Website Launch

Hey, thanks for not only checking out Confrontational's website, but following the link to our new blog! General overview on who we are and what we do is on the site, but here would be the place to get into a bit more detail on the nuts and bolts. So that's what this post will be. Look for another post soon about our upcoming show, the hostage drama by Lee Blessing, Two Rooms.

It is our fervent hope that Confrontational will continue to be a strong contributor to Seattle's wonderful theater scene, and that as our presence expands this blog will be a useful resource.

How It Works

Confrontational exists, on one level, to prove and continue proving that a specific business plan can work in theater, and even more so, that theater can work as a business, rather than as a non-profit. After working in theater for a number of years and seeing what, to me, really didn't work, I had some strong ideas as to what would.

One problem is that traditionally, small theaters operate like big theaters, only...and try to keep up here...smaller. Thinking about it now, I don't think that works or offers best practices for anyone. You can't run a garage startup like Microsoft and vice-versa. I wouldn't run a bar with a twenty-person capacity the same way I would run a bar that could hold more than 100 people. And so on. But that's what small theaters tend to do, try to put on four-week runs of shows, which, especially if you're renting space, means you can be really deep in the hole before you even start.

To me, it just boiled down to the overhead. The hardest part of starting a theater company is building an audience. Unless you make an incredible splash, as New Century did a few years ago with their debut, The Adding Machine, it's going to be a process. That process means you shouldn't assume you can sell out three whole shows, let alone three whole weekends. Instead of doing an extended run, create an event over a single weekend, and really make it an event. Make sure people know that if they miss it, they really missed out. Every performance for Proof cost $200 to turn the lights on and pay for the rights for the script. For one weekend, that wasn't a crippling amount of money. Planning to do that for three or four weeks, before we even open the doors, is a much, MUCH bigger amount of money.

Now, there are strong arguments against this. Plenty of people will definitely miss the show if you have such a small window. Some people just won't be in town that weekend, or what have you. Even if we sell out every show, we're not in a position to spontaneously decide to extend a run. Until we start doing more shows, we'll never be eligible for a Gregory, the Seattle theater awards. You need to run for three weekends or 12 performances to be on their radar and have someone officially attend your show. Unless you can get a critic to come to a rehearsal, you'll never get reviewed, or if you do, who cares, since the review will be for a show that has already closed?

There are a few other specifics, but really, the business plan we work through makes it so that if we sell out just one performance, we're basically in the black. No one's getting rich, maybe no one ever will, but the producer gets his money back, plus his return on investment, and there's some profit to divvy between him, me, and the actors and other helpers.