Actor's Blog

Nashville Children's Theatre is excited to share with our audiences what it is like to be an actor at NCT. Each show of NCT's 75th Birthday Season will offer a different actor's perspective on being in a show and the work and fun that goes into the preparation and performance.

The Shakespeare Stealer
Blog by Peter Vann

Posted on Friday, October 20, 2006

The Rehearsal Process

Well, you may or may have not noticed the time lapse between this post and the last, but it has been three busy weeks, proving, once again, that I am a far more disciplined actor than I am a blogger. Never the less, just when you thought I had been totally consumed by The Shakespeare Stealer, with no hope of returning to the universe of blog, I return.

So, there’s a lot to catch up on. When last we met, I was carrying around a head full of information accumulated from a mish-mash of books, plays, and experiences in the hopes that this knowledge, and the effort taken to acquire it, might serve as a foundation on which to build the character of Widge. I was primed and ready to slide into, what I consider to be, the most challenging aspect of what we do as theatre professionals: the rehearsal process.

Now, to talk about the rehearsal process for theatre is to talk about many, many, many things, all happening at once. At NCT, we have about two weeks to transform the words of a script into a living and breathing organism, so, these many, many, many simultaneous occurrences must occur in a short amount of time. But, as always with Scot Copeland, his brilliant creative team, and especially with this cast, time was no barrier to this groups’ ability to bring forth exciting and inspired theatre.

“But what exactly do you, as an actor, do in those two weeks of rehearsal,” some of you may be asking. This is a question that has mystified me in the last few weeks. It is one that I looked forward to answering in this space, yet every time I would sit down to address it, my perspective on the issue would evaporate like so much ether. Over and over I would get about two paragraphs typed and then freeze, ponder, delete and begin again.

Finally, the answer came to me in the form of a fable. I was reminded of the story where three blindfolded men come across an elephant in their travels. For those who may not be familiar with the story, let me sum up: Each man lays his hands on a different part of the elephant and assumes that the elephant is comprised of whatever they happen to touch. The man holding the tail says the elephant must be like a rope, while the man holding the tusk says it must be like a spear. Still the third man who is against the elephant’s side says that it must be like a wall.

So then, how does this relate to the actor in rehearsal? Well, without stretching the analogy too thin, I’ll say that the play is like the elephant. The different aspects of the play (characters, context, and conflict) are like the elephant’s many parts; and the actors, designers, directors, etc, are like the blindfolded men who engage, interpret, and portray the beast. Rehearsal, then, is the act of these searchers discovering the best way to articulate their part of the puzzle so that, when taken in as a whole, what emerges from the interlocked pieces is an accurate image of the elephant. Ha! The rehearsal process condensed into two paragraphs! (Cut to: Stanislavski rolling in his grave)

Anyway, my particular “leg” of this particular “elephant” is the character of Widge. Bringing this character to life turned out to be one of the more difficult challenges I have faced as an actor, both physically and mentally. Since the start of rehearsals I have lost seven pounds, increased my water intake from eight glasses to three liters a day, and, during the last few days of rehearsal, experienced my first known case of sleepwalking that included me pulling bed sheets off of my sleeping wife’s feet as I explained to her, “This is the scene where you yell and throw things.” Fortunately, she is accustomed to my strangeness.

To boot, during the show, I am on stage for seventy-three of the seventy-five minute run time, and I spend a good bit of that time getting pushed, kicked, and shoved about. Along with the hand-to-hand combat (and cannon fire and huge axes and leaping from eight foot platforms…) there is also a good bit of swordplay. As you might suspect, all of this action required meticulous attention and hours of rehearsal time to ensure the prolonged safety of everyone involved.

Another thing that I found particularly challenging in developing Widge was the dialect. Widge is from Yorkshire, which is a region of England that I had never been exposed to before The Shakespeare Stealer. It took me the entire first week to purge myself of the Cockney accent I had been using for Widge in my head before rehearsals began. Then it took me the second week to fuse the dialect and the dialog into something that approached what might be a natural cadence for someone from that region.

Another, maybe the biggest, challenge was uncovering a through-line, for Widge that would tie his dialog, emotionally and logically, to the action of the play. A through-line, to me, is like a series of markers along the trail of a character’s journey that helps keep the actor on the right track as he travels toward his destination. When these markers are not clear, or are missing all together, then what you end up doing as an actor, or as a company of actors, is taking as many different paths toward that destination as possible within the context of the play. The director, who is the leading force in establishing said context, then lends an outside perspective on which paths are dead-ends and which ones lead to gold.

In a case like this, an actor’s greatest assets are patience and perseverance. And from my vantage point on The Shakespeare Stealer specifically, the real secret weapon in plotting a road map for Widge was collaboration. Artistic collaboration and uninhibited exploration is one of the real strong suits at NCT and good chemistry in these departments often makes for great theatre. Scot’s direction through key points in the process was, for me, like a GPS tracking system in the wilderness, and the opportunity to blaze new trails with this talented, generous, jubilant cast has been a privilege and an honor.

That about wraps it up for my backstage reflections on the rehearsal process. There are still two weekends left to see The Shakespeare Stealer, so if you haven’t seen the show, it’s not too late but it will be soon. Get your tickets now and I’ll see you this weekend. Thanks for reading. Cheers!

Posted Monday, October 2, 2006

How I Spent my Summer Vacation

Hello and welcome to this first installment of a long-awaited series of musings, which I shall refer to, until I'm told otherwise, as “Backstage with The Shakespeare Stealer.” My name is Peter Vann and, over the next five weeks, it will be my attempt to pass on some of my experiences and observations as a professional actor working with Nashville Children’s Theatre. For those of you who have not been keeping up with my career to this point (that is, everyone but me Mum) I’ll tell you that this is my eighth time to work with NCT as an actor, and it is my honor and a privilege to be returning for such a great production.

The Shakespeare Stealer started for me this past May when I was called back to read for the part of Widge. Now, for those of you just getting into theatre, a “Callback” occurs when a producer or director has seen your work (either in another production or in what is called an “Open Call” audition) and then calls you in to read for a specific role or roles in an upcoming production. For those of you very familiar with theatre and its goings on, thank you for bearing with me.

Personally, I love callbacks. I get to see friends that I haven’t seen in a while and, usually, I get to meet new people that I may get to work with in the future. A callback gives me a chance to show off my talents (which is the name of the game) and to check out the other talent in the room. It also gives me a chance to utilize skills that I don’t get to exercise in the bulk of my theatre life, such as improvisation, cold reading, and the occasional opportunity to stand on my head or tear a shoe off of my partner with my teeth as if I were a dog. I am particularly adept at the latter two, and lament the infrequency of their usefulness.

What I don’t love about the callback is that I have to wait to find out whether or not I get the job. If I’m not careful, I can work myself into quite a tizzy worrying about whether or not I get a part and what it all means if I do or if I don’t. If I am careful, I can usually wait it out cool as a cucumber. A lot of that being careful, for me, is preparation. I always try to do at least three things before going into a callback to help assure my sanity afterward.

First, I read the script. If a script is not available, I read whatever the theatre will give me and I read it as soon as is humanly possible. This gives me a chance to let things marinate for a while, and, like my Dad always says, “If it’s good enough for steak, it’s good enough for me.” I’m sure he said something like that. Second, I find something about the script or the character that I can hook into. Sometimes a personal connection from my past will clue me in to aspects of the character; sometimes it’s a few key lines from the script. Third, I remind myself to listen. It seems simple, but in the heat of the moment it is an easy thing to forget. Yet, it may be the most important thing you can do. Any actor will tell you that most of acting is reacting, so listening to the actors you’re reading with is a given. But you also want to pay close attention to what the director or the creative team has to say about the show or the character at hand. They are a treasure trove of information and processing what they share usually makes or breaks my audition. Ultimately, my goal is to always present a reading that I am confident in and that is, as much as I can control, in tune with the directors vision of the play.

Fortunately, with The Shakespeare Stealer, it all worked out, and I got to hear the magic words, “We would like to offer you the role of…” a phrase that is the cause of much rejoicing, which, for me, includes standing on my head and nipping at the closest pair of shoes. Now, if you have been reading closely, you’ll have noted that three months have past between the call back and the beginning of rehearsal. I have been able to stay busy with the jobs that supplement my off-stage time and with pet projects around the house. I find, too, that when I have time away, I get a lot of reading done.

Over the last few months I have read a handful of plays, a couple of novels (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a must-read, by the way) and a couple of biographies. Specifically for the show, I tried to read the script once a week to spend some time with my lines. I also read the book by Gary Blackwood, from which the play was adapted, and I read a biography of Shakespeare titled Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. Both books were wonderfully illuminating and provided me with way more information than I could ever incorporate into the performance. And that’s how I like it. I feel like what you see on stage is like the tip of an iceberg in that there is always much more underneath a show or a character than what surfaces for an audience.

So that’s how I spent my summer vacation. I loaded my brain with information and opinions that will now have to be sifted through in order to find the real gems. Or, to look at it another way, I piled plenty of clay onto the pottery wheel just in time to get things spinning. That’s all for now. Tune in next time to read about the joys of blocking and between now and then, go ahead and reserve your tickets for opening weekend.
Until then, Cheers!

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