11:11 Theatre

Last week after going through Act II Brian asked us how we felt. After having gone on an argumentative rant as my character, I had to admit, I felt drained. You don’t realize how putting so much focus and strong will into an argument can really take a lot out of you; especially when you normally try to avoid conflict and confrontation at all costs. But unlike me, my character is not just a passive voice—she is outspoken, determined and not afraid to say anything to anyone; qualities that I really admire and, in fact, always wished that I could possess.

I think it’s funny that both my character in the last 11:11 play, The Seagull, and my character in Syllabus of Errors exhibit sort of angsty, adolescent behavior. Perhaps those adolescent years aren’t all that far away from me and can be easily called on. While I wasn’t as vocal about my frustrations as my characters are, I did certainly feel and experience them. Mainly I scribbled thoughts in a journal like a crazy woman to vent my emotions. But another very powerful tool was music. Yes it’s sad but true, Fiona Apple in all her sullenness helped me through my own! So, in the Stanislavski way, when I think about my character and how to prepare I turn on some Fiona in hopes that I’ll be able to journey back to that time and place as a teenager; a time when all my tensions used to build up inside of me in a lump—I still remember the exact spot right in my chest directly between my heart and my throat.

But, a couple of months ago I took a Meisner class and prior to I read his book on acting. Meisner says to forget the emotional recall of memories from your own sordid past and to instead draw from the past (and present) situations of your character. Empathize, like any normal human being should, with the character’s history and all the emotions they are currently feeling and have felt. This is something I think is fascinating and works more efficiently than Stanislavski IF you can get it right. It’s no easy task for some, including me. I always thought of myself as someone in touch with the human condition—intuitive and sensitive to others’ feelings, and vulnerable in the sense of being able to be deeply affected by these feelings. On stage, however, I tend to feel inhibited for some reason. There seems to be some kind of invisible barrier that prohibits me from breaching that emotional storeroom, if you will. In working with 11:11 thus far, however I feel I’m beginning to overcome this.

One of the reasons I love working with 11:11 is because they seem to really embrace the idea of referring back to your character in order to grasp the importance of building emotional connections on stage. I’m learning more and more how to let myself go and really get into my character’s head by becoming completely in tune with my character and the ones I intimately interact with. One of the things Brian has us do is work intensely with our scene partners to establish close relationships with them both on and off the stage. You begin to learn how to detect and predict their every thought and move. In doing such you are learning how to react and not act. There is a point where you stop thinking about yourself completely and all you can see is what exists in the world of the play as your character sees and experiences it. It’s truly an amazing thing that I am hoping I will get more and more proficient at. Meisner says it takes 20 years for a person to become a good actor. Lord help me. But I’ll keep on trucking at it anyhow.

Jenn Dubois is the author of 11:11 Theatre’s May 2008 production, Syllabus of Errors.

So what’s the play about?

The play is about a father, David, and a daughter, Claire, grappling with the death of David’s brother, Alan. After Alan dies in prison, Claire and David are left to deal with their competing understandings of who Alan was, and what his death meant. Ultimately, the play is a meditation on what we choose to believe - and why those choices are more important to our lives, often, than what is actually true.

Which was harder to write, your first play or this your second play, and why?

The second play was much harder to write, because the first was fueled by pure cluelessness. With this one, I had a slightly better sense of what I wanted to do, so I have a slightly better understanding of the play’s limitations.

Since your last play, you began attending the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop. How has grad school affected your writing?

My fiction, I hope, has gotten less conventional and more ambitious. Also, hopefully I catch certain cliches and gimmicks before I even think of them. The best thing I’ve learned at Iowa is not to try to be clever or cute.

You also write fiction, what do you find to be the differences in approach and mindset between fiction and the stage?

I find fiction to be much easier, since there’s more latitude in terms of perspective. With a play, you’re forced to write in a sort of third person — which isn’t my strength as a fiction writer — and you’re also dealing with the opportunities and limitations of writing something that is necessarily visual. Writing a play means your characters have to interact with each other, and they have to be dragged outside their own heads.

You write a lot about professors and students in college…where does that come from?

Being a child of professors and a perpetual student, probably.

In Syllabus of Errors, there is a great pondering of faith, truth and perception…sorry to be nosy, but any reflections here on the author or your own childhood?

I wasn’t raised in any particular faith, so I’m very interested in the psychology of religious believers. I usually write about things as a way to try to understand them. I also was a philosophy major in college, so I’m still recovering from that.

Being off in Iowa, you’ll be seeing Syllabus for the first time on opening night, any particular anxieties you have about the show or elements you are most looking forward to seeing?

It’s really interesting getting to walk into the show with no sense of what it will look like. I’m excited for everything - especially seeing the choices and interpretations of the actors and the director. At this point, it belongs to them as much as it does to me, so I approach it as a spectator.

What is next for you after Syllabus?

Finishing up at Iowa, then probably living under a bridge.

Jen Dubois is simply a phenomonal writer. It reminds me of finding that perfectly awesome indie band that no one else knows about, except you and your friends. For me, that was Chamberlain, a band out of Indiana that made three tremendous albums that almost no one outside of random European hotspots and rural indiana had ever heard, and then they broke up and are parents and probably professors now. Jen is like that. She is so talented it boggles your mind that she isn’t already an established writer with books published and plays done everywhere. Jen was a random craigslisted roommate I had when she was still at Tufts. I told her I wrote plays. She seemed surprisingly interested for a poli sci major. Turns out she secretly was an amazing fiction writer, which I feel like not many people in her life knew too much about. Talking to her, you could tell she was very quick and people-savvy, and very well read. She introduced me to Nabakov and made me wish I knew more authors so I could dish some cool writers back to her. She showed me one of her fiction stories. It was about a father and a daughter and eggs or something. I forget what, but it floored me. Some art just makes sense. When you read it or hear it, you feel like it must have been there all along and it was just your job to find it. She showed me two stories and then I bugged her to write a play. A couple years later her playwrighting skills put mine to shame. When we are in rehearsal, I can’t help but constantly think, wow, this is a real talent. She writes with precision and clarity. Her characters are eloquently indirect. This is the least amount of work I’ve ever done as a director, because the writing is so strong, the actors immediately can pick up what’s going on. There’s no need to really put my heavy hands on the thing. I’m just making sure the audience can see and hear them. I feel like it’s harder in theater than in music to find that neat underground artist that speaks to you in a powerful way. I couldn’t be prouder that we have Jen’s play in our season and that hopefully, this being the second play of hers that we’ve done, that she can be a continuing part of our writing community at 11:11 and that we see a play of hers on our stage every couple of years. We’ve found our secret band! The marketing team and i have been wondering how to get this coolness out to people and for it to be more accessible. Something like having the liner notes and the mixtapes of a musician. So we’ve thought hard on ways to give people a heads up about Jen. So we’re doing some interviews with her that we’ll send out links to and we’re also doing an audience talk back with her on opening night so you can get a glimpse. I think sometimes its hard to realize whats right in front of you with an emerging artist or a new band. Sometimes we wait til we read it in Rolling Stone or The Times or whatever, to know there’s a good writer or an artist doing something. I’m telling you, don’t wait for her to be huge to check her out. Don’t wait unitl tickets are $65 (currently they’re not). Check her out now. It’s worth it.

Tuttle

Sunday night rehearsals are always fun because most of the classrooms are locked so we find ourselves to be somewhat like nomads as we scavenge the building for a home. Usually, on nights like these we end up in the hallway, which always proves interesting. This Sunday was no exception. In a remote, little corner down by the archeology department we set up camp and began to chip away at Act I. We worked steadily, with little interruption other than the occasional student walking by, slowing down to see if we’re anyone important and then speeding by when they realize we’re just a group of theatre lovers rehearsing for a play. Really is it just that though? I’d like to think it’s so much more.
For me, rehearsing, learning new blocking and characterization is always exciting. I love watching our rehearsals and seeing actors come to life on-stage as they discover their characters. Each rehearsal, each person that touches me in some theatrical sense, each glorious (or even not so glorious) play I see is reaffirmation that under the lights, on the stage, in a scene amongst interesting and beautiful people striving to portray life is where I need to be.
You might have noticed the swell of feature films popping up and suddenly filming here in Boston. Sure this is a great thing. But somehow, every time I see those trailers and cameras set up along the garden (there always seems to be a park scene that needs to be filmed in all of these movies), something inside of me feels the slightest tinge of resentment. I suppose the thing that irks me about Hollywood invading my town is the attention it gets. Every night on the news there are more pictures of Kevin James or Sandra Bullock taken by some Bostonian passing by the set with their camera phone ready, eager for any glimpse of a star sighting. And I guess I just wish that the magical connections that we’re building in our own small ways as we rehearse in our remote corner of the archeology department would be able to be recognized and appreciated and warrant respect simply for there own artful sake. Maybe those college kids are passing us by in the hall-way. Heck, we’re no Brad Pitt. But, if they were to come to one of our shows I’m willing to bet they’d be surprised how truly good theatre can be just as, if not more, captivating and enthralling as any old flick! I’m not saying we’re meant to compete with the glamor of Hollywood, but as people get caught up in all of that sometimes us theatre makers must strive to show how our art form can be equally as meaningful and powerful.
Sure we might not attract a nation of viewers, but I know that the ones we do play to will be deeply touched and moved. And that in the long run is justification enough for us to keep coming back to this passion of ours. Yes, even if it means occasionally rehearsing in a hallway.

So we’re back again. Back to the drawing board, which for us isn’t a drawing board at all but a rehearsal space. Back to memorizing lines and creating characters. Long hours and late nights. Working hard to make those honest and electric connections on stage with each other. It never gets old. Not one bit.

This time around–a new play called The Syllabus of Errors. Set in and around the academic world of a physics professor at a Massachusetts college.

Leaving rehearsal the first night I was filled with that tingly sensation that creeps in when you know you’re about to embark on another magical, theatrical journey.

But first, there was the not so magical journey home on the T. Funnily enough, beside me stood and sat a group of professors. They got on around the BU area so I’m guessing they teach there. In a span of not even 10 minutes their conversation moved from Stephen Sondheim, to a student who got into every grad program she has applied to so far, to seventeenth century something or other (I didn’t hear what), to the Welch language and being able to speak it. That’s the thing about professors—they’re so worldly and incredibly bright. They seem to know everything about anything. I always used to think it would be awkward if I were a teacher and a student asked me a question that I couldn’t answer. Thankfully, for the sake of my pride and all students everywhere, I am not a teacher. I could not imagine academia being my world. But, more and more throughout the rehearsal process, I’ve been compelled to think about this academic world. Really being in and around it. Trying to feel like a real contender in it and not just an outside observer looking in.

At the start of every rehearsal Brian has us write words on the black board. They can be anything—objects, feelings, people—anything that will help us transform our classroom space in the Tsai Center into the living, breathing, tangible world of the play.

It’s hard for people who don’t participate in the making of theatre to understand how it works. My parents, for one, never seem to get why we need to rehearse so often, as if the show is going to miraculously come together on its own while we all stay home and watch Lost. Well, as silly as it may sound, writing words on a chalk board, discussing the rules of the world within the play, creating and learning the back-stories of our characters, and really getting down to the nitty gritty of our motivations and objectives are all vital things that need to occur before we can just up and open at the BCA on May 2nd. Did I mention we open at the BCA on May 2nd at 8pm?

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither was the making of any great play as far as I know. Four and a half weeks though, we can work with. And I guarantee you will be impressed. The journey for us is just beginning. We hope you’ll be along for the ride.

Just wanted to let everyone following 11:11 Theatre know how excited we are about our new play, Syllabus of Errors, that we’ll be putting on from May 2-10.  The play is by Jennifer Dubois, a local writer currently attending one of the nation’s most prestigious writing workshops in Iowa.

The play is witty, fast-paced, funny, and moving.  It manages to discover many truths while never missing a beat or an opportunity for a laugh.  We’re all blown away by the quality of the writing, and Brian Tuttle’s intimate directing style will bring an air of reality and human-ness to the performance.  So this is going to be one hell of a show.

Mark your calendars:  May 2 & 3 @ 8pm, May 4 @ 3pm, and May 9 & 10 @ 8pm.

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