So how does this work?

                After the casting process is complete, all of the casts, playwrights, directors and technical staff are gathered together for a table read. Since we don’t have scripts during the audition process, this is the first time we get to see what we’ll be playing. This is also the first time that we get to meet the rest of the casts and hear what they’ll be working on, meet the playwrights and the support staff at the Playhouse. For me, this being my third time in the NVF, a lot of that night felt a bit like Homecoming. There were about 6 of us that have been doing the Festival each of its three editions, and it was great to see some familiar faces in this crowd of strangers. It was also nice to see an entire room well-stocked with tables full of goodies for us to nosh on while we’re listening to the other plays.

                Once plates and cups are filled, new people are met and old relationships are rekindled, we go to our seats and open up the binder that holds all of the scripts.  Some are comedies, some are fairly Avant garde, some serious. The play I worked on was called “Stalling” by Katherine Prybish. It’s a two character play about a brother and sister who are trying to decide whether or not to take their mother off of life support. It was probably the most serious work performed in the Festival. Katherine is in her 20’s, and it was ironic that we had works by older playwrights about millennials who never get their heads out of their phones, and she comes up with this very deep piece of work that sounds like it could’ve come from someone much older. I settled into my seat, next to my scene mate Sue Murphy and across from the playwright and our director, Jean Brenner, who I’d worked with in my very first show in the first NVF (I was playing an angry Latino, and Jean said to me “I want them to hate you.” Well, whatever I did worked, because they sure hated my ass by the end of the night!).

                Now, my attitude towards table reads is to give as much of a performance as I can when we’re reading, even if I’ve never seen the script before, and so it was that night (I’d also heard stories about how Jack Nicholson scared the cast of “A Few Good Men” by really bringing  his character to life at their table read, and I like the idea of bringing the cat amongst the pigeons, almost daring the other casts to top what we’re bringing to ours). I also find that my performance in a first read tends to be the least guarded and most honest, occasionally surprising me with a “Where did THAT come from?” moment. I didn’t have any surprises, but I thought we gave a good read. Jean taped our part of the read, which was a nice template for what we were to build on through rehearsals.

                The rehearsal schedule was fairly brief: only five rehearsals over a few weeks to get ten pages under our belts. In previous years I wouldn’t worry about it, as we were doing staged readings, i.e. with scripts in our hands. This year, everyone was to memorize their parts, no paper crutches to lean on. Because I’ve got two jobs, I had to wedge in time to memorize this stuff, so I wound up working on the script during lunch breaks, before bed, over my breakfast, etc. Sue Murphy got a lot more done than I did, or so it seemed to me, so I pushed myself harder.

                All that being said, rehearsals went pretty well. All four of us worked very well together. Jean directed us as needed, allowing us fairly free reign as far as blocking was concerned. Katherine liked what Sue & I were doing, tweaking the script only in a couple of spots (the characters were originally conceived as being in their late 20’s, and Sue and I could generously be considered as being in our EXTREMELY late 20’s!). Sue came in with such good stuff to play off of, and it was a lot of fun to work on the brother/sister shorthand way of communicating with her. As for me, I went from having the script in my hand to seeing it on the table if I’d needed it, to keeping it in my bag in fairly short order. All in all, a fairly fuss free creative process.

                OK, OK, there was one Sunday rehearsal that I wasn’t quite up to snuff. It was a long week for me at my Hideous Survival Job, and Sundays are usually when I repay my sleep debt. I didn’t get a chance to do that, so my performance was a bit on the flat side. So much so that our director, in an attempt to get more life out of me, had me at one point sing my lines, using a different note for each word. Consequently, I sounded like I was doing an overlong melisma that had no real tonal center. I did, however, have a bit of fun with that process, using Elvis Costello’s “Allison” every time I had to say my sister’s name, but I did resent having to do it at the time. Once I’d gotten home and gotten a nap, I’d felt a lot better, but that was the only real rough patch.

                One of the best compliments we’d gotten as a cast happened during the first rehearsal. Jean, as I’d said earlier, had taped the table read, and we spent part of the first rehearsal listening to what we’d done. John Augustine happened to drift through our rehearsal room at that moment, and he thought that Jean was playing for us some other cast doing our show, hinting that we should be doing it their way. He seemed a bit put out for us, until he’d realized that it was US we were listening to. Made me smile when I figured out what was going on.

               All that's left to talk about now is Tech Week, which I'll do next time.

In praise of the New Voices Festival, Part 1

             

Branch Rickey, the man who successfully integrated major league baseball by bringing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, also has another, earlier innovation to his credit. When he was president of the Saint Louis Cardinals, he discovered that the club didn’t have the funds to compete for talent against richer ball clubs like the New York Yankees. Rather than trying to vie for talent with money that they didn’t have, he decided to grow his own talent, and thus was born the farm system, which every single major league team uses to this day. How appropriate is it then, especially in a county that has a viable farming community, that the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, PA has, in effect, developed its own farm system for nurturing talent? The revitalized theatre has made it part of his mission to feature new works during its season, and has also, through its Education programs, given exposure to playwrights through their New Voices Festival.

                This year (2016) was the third one for the NVF, my third year participating in it, and I’ve loved dong it each time. Why? Well, they actually hired me for one, which earns them some Brownie points right off the bat, but I can tell you that every year has been one of the best experiences I’ve ever had on stage, certainly the most varied. In three years I’ve played an angry Latino, a frustrated, silent waiter, a surgeon operating on a cat’s paw in the middle of the night, a theatre maintenance man, a college professor, one of a pair of siblings deciding on the fate of their mother, and done the background bit in a couple of plays that needed bodies. What’s more, there are no egos on display when we’re putting this on. The spirit of cooperation and fun permeates even the most serious work, and the audiences, which have grown from a hardy bunch of theatre fans to near sellout crowds, are finding the NVF to be a night of rich and varied stage experiences.

                So what accounts for the success, camaraderie and good times that the NVF has given me? It all starts and ends with the two people primarily responsible for bringing the festival to life: Hester Kamin and John Augustine.

                Hester and John. John and Hester. I can’t imagine, after this many years, one without the other, as both are essential to the equation that is New Voices. I met them both at that first casting call in 2014, braving a dark, rainy night on my way to NY to stop off in Lambertville to show them what I had. Together they find the right actors for the right roles and the right mix of plays that will work together for that night, with results that have been pitch perfect each season.

                While they work together very well, separately each brings a distinct set of skills to the project that complement and enhance one another. John, who is listed in the program as Playwriting Mentor and Instructor, takes the ten scripts that wind up getting chosen for the Fest and, with the authors, works them into shape so that when the actors sit down at the table read to give voice to these works for the first time, they are as close to complete as possible. He knows that a good show starts with a good script, and he makes sure that what we have in front of us is as good as it can be.

                Hester is New Voices’ Mother Superior. It’s Hester who coordinates the schedules of ten small productions, with some nights seeing six shows drift through the three rehearsal rooms in Lambertville. She’s the one who deals with each of the show’s technical issues (props, lighting, sound effects, costumes, etc.), getting the program together, having food in the green room, planning the cast party…there’s nothing that escapes her attention, and all of the shows are better for it. She, John and our stage manager Ellen Gallos also drift in and out of rehearsals to see how the plays are shaping up, ready to offer encouragement and advice when necessary and needed.