Lab - Week 1 Recap

I'm exhausted and I'm lovin' it. The Lab is an all consuming event. I eat, sleep and, as of this evening, literally breathe it. The best I can do at the moment is go far, schedule-wise, what we've done thus far. I don't think I'll be able to actually talk about my experience until after it's over. I won't have the time to process any of it until then.

After our orientation on June 4, we had a panel discussion with Blair Brown, Michael Krass, Seret Scott, Alex Timbers, Lois Smith, Bruce Norris, Colman Domingo and Pam MacKinnon with the title, Playwrights and Actors: What is their relationship today and where do directors fit in? The next morning, we began our three day Collaboration Principles workshop with Ben Krywosz. Ben is the Artistic Director of Nautilus Music-Theater in St. Paul. He looks like Santa Claus and made me believe in the Spirit of Christmas again.

In the afternoons last week, we attended 'presentations' of four new plays and one new musical. In order of performance: Maestro's Garden by Bathsheba Doran, Only Children by Rachel Peters and Michael R. Jackson, This Bloody Mess by Zohar Tirosh, The Green Zone by Rob Handel, and (Friday morning) Minor Gods by Charles Forbes. The experiment of the 'presentations' was a three week pre-lab rehearsal period in which the playwright was put in charge of the room. (I'll talk more later about why, though the shows were great, the stated mission wasn't even given a chance to fail.)

In the evenings, we broke up into groups of eight (one designer, one playwright, two actors and four directors). The first night, we discussed 1. What happens in your head when you read a play? 2. Please tell us about the best rehearsal collaboration experience you ever had. Why specifically was it good? What techniques made it that way? Who was it with? 3. Please tell us about the worst rehearsal collaboration experience you ever had. What specifically made it bad? The following two nights were spent working on John Guare's Woman at a Threshold, Beckoning. The experiment was to swish up our roles in the lab (i.e. the directors and designer became actors, the playwright became the designer, one actress was the director and one actress was the playwright.) Our assignment was to answer these two questions: 1. What is the action of the play? 2. What is the play about? (We answered: 1. To spin 2. In searching for the answer, the answer is the searching.) Of all the amazing things we've done this week, this has been my favorite. If the adage is true, that it's all about relationships and how you get on with people, then I count myself lucky to have been paired with my group. It's the most fun I've had in a rehearsal room in quite a while.

Saturday afternoon was spent with all the directors, actors, playwrights, designers and stage managers sharing Reflections On What We've Learned So Far. As we bid farewell to our collaborators, the directors gather that evening to say Who We Are. Luckily it was just a one minute biography circle. (I was having a serious existential crisis at dinner thinking about it. The best I could up with the either a. just stand there or b. sing the chorus from Steve Miller's The Joker.)

Sunday was the 'Clambake' (no actual clams), where we got to see portfolios from all the designers we'd worked with. In between talking with them and admiring their work, we had a discussion with Michael Krass and Bob Crowley (who was celebrating his birthday and went on to win two Tonys that evening).

We had Monday off & I tried to catch up on sleep. Not much luck.