The Roar of the Greasepaint!
I auditioned for a community theatre presentation last week. It's reader's theatre because it was planned on short notice (the first show date is exactly a month after the first rehearsal), and due to short notice, I was told to come back as a member of the cast. It's a staged reading of a couple of Twilight Zone scripts, plus an episode of Boris Karloff's Thriller.
I've been pretty game for it -- not for the production itself, but seed-planting; this is the same community theatre that didn't cast me in their British farce last year because at the age of 30, I was too young to be reliable. I figure that this is a foot in the door for later productions that won't suck.
Well, I was given my parts tonight, and now I'm having those dread second thoughts. Up until tonight, I've been hesitant but willing, but that was before I really sunk my teeth into what they're doing here.
First, both TZ episodes will be bookended by part of the Thriller script. Thriller has a very different tone from TZ; it's more of a horror show than a suspenseful morality play. Not a very good horror show by today's standards; the script in question is from a story called "The Cheaters," about a pair of antique glasses that allow anyone who wears them to see (and hear) the truth behind things. People kill one another, themselves, and so on, as opposed to Rod Serling's preference of Edgar Allen Poe-style tension.
I have a few problems with this, and that it isn't scary isn't one of them; first, the show's going to be called The Twilight Zone. Since "The Cheaters" has the preponderance of stage time and one of the two episodes isn't actually a TZ episode -- just something in the Serling style -- the purist in me cringes at this; it's not even The Twilight Zone if you round up. Further, this particular script is very heavily dependent on the narrator. It's left to long blocks of narrated text to explain to the audience what the characters are doing as the actors sit on the stage with scripts in hand, making only casual gestures to indicate certain actions. That is to say, this script is terrible for readers theatre.
Second, the roles were all cast tonight, and it's clear the director did so on the fly. He cast me as a man who wears the glasses, and apparently I'm supposed to put on and remove the glasses as the character puts them on and removes them. This wouldn't be a problem in a regular theatrical production, but in readers theatre, I need to be able to fucking see. It's strange to me that the director would cast me in that role without checking how vital to my vision the glasses I wore all night are, but would ask me to stand up to determine whether I'm the right build to provide the voice and gestures for a character of indeterminate height, weight and age.
polymorphism joined me last Thursday because they were under-cast, but begged off for reasons I consider increasingly solid the more involvement I have with this production. The bit with the glasses doesn't really bug me, but it's a niggling detail after "we" read through the first of the TZ scripts (the one that isn't actually an episode) (by "we" I mean the three people in it, while the rest of the group sat and listened) and the guy cast in the actual decent role with lots of dialogue and almost no narration just read his damn lines. His wife was cast as the character's wife, and she performed admirably; putting thought and emotion into every line as her bozo husband flatly regurgitated all of his.
Look; it's not a matter of ego that makes me say I'm actually good at this; if the person cast had actually performed the scene, I'd have sat there and enjoyed it, even wishing I'd gotten a better part. That was completely impossible here. He's supposed to be a man whose ethics are the only thing between him and obscene wealth, and he's giving voice to the words on the page with all the passion of a gramophone.
That's the thing giving me second thoughts; it's one thing that I haven't impressed this director with a few impassioned line reads, but it's quite another that this person, solely on some merits I have yet to witness, has been given the meatiest role with the most opportunity to engage the audience.
I'm bothered. I'm not dropping out yet, but I'm giving it some serious thought.
I've been pretty game for it -- not for the production itself, but seed-planting; this is the same community theatre that didn't cast me in their British farce last year because at the age of 30, I was too young to be reliable. I figure that this is a foot in the door for later productions that won't suck.
Well, I was given my parts tonight, and now I'm having those dread second thoughts. Up until tonight, I've been hesitant but willing, but that was before I really sunk my teeth into what they're doing here.
First, both TZ episodes will be bookended by part of the Thriller script. Thriller has a very different tone from TZ; it's more of a horror show than a suspenseful morality play. Not a very good horror show by today's standards; the script in question is from a story called "The Cheaters," about a pair of antique glasses that allow anyone who wears them to see (and hear) the truth behind things. People kill one another, themselves, and so on, as opposed to Rod Serling's preference of Edgar Allen Poe-style tension.
I have a few problems with this, and that it isn't scary isn't one of them; first, the show's going to be called The Twilight Zone. Since "The Cheaters" has the preponderance of stage time and one of the two episodes isn't actually a TZ episode -- just something in the Serling style -- the purist in me cringes at this; it's not even The Twilight Zone if you round up. Further, this particular script is very heavily dependent on the narrator. It's left to long blocks of narrated text to explain to the audience what the characters are doing as the actors sit on the stage with scripts in hand, making only casual gestures to indicate certain actions. That is to say, this script is terrible for readers theatre.
Second, the roles were all cast tonight, and it's clear the director did so on the fly. He cast me as a man who wears the glasses, and apparently I'm supposed to put on and remove the glasses as the character puts them on and removes them. This wouldn't be a problem in a regular theatrical production, but in readers theatre, I need to be able to fucking see. It's strange to me that the director would cast me in that role without checking how vital to my vision the glasses I wore all night are, but would ask me to stand up to determine whether I'm the right build to provide the voice and gestures for a character of indeterminate height, weight and age.
polymorphism joined me last Thursday because they were under-cast, but begged off for reasons I consider increasingly solid the more involvement I have with this production. The bit with the glasses doesn't really bug me, but it's a niggling detail after "we" read through the first of the TZ scripts (the one that isn't actually an episode) (by "we" I mean the three people in it, while the rest of the group sat and listened) and the guy cast in the actual decent role with lots of dialogue and almost no narration just read his damn lines. His wife was cast as the character's wife, and she performed admirably; putting thought and emotion into every line as her bozo husband flatly regurgitated all of his.
Look; it's not a matter of ego that makes me say I'm actually good at this; if the person cast had actually performed the scene, I'd have sat there and enjoyed it, even wishing I'd gotten a better part. That was completely impossible here. He's supposed to be a man whose ethics are the only thing between him and obscene wealth, and he's giving voice to the words on the page with all the passion of a gramophone.
That's the thing giving me second thoughts; it's one thing that I haven't impressed this director with a few impassioned line reads, but it's quite another that this person, solely on some merits I have yet to witness, has been given the meatiest role with the most opportunity to engage the audience.
I'm bothered. I'm not dropping out yet, but I'm giving it some serious thought.