The Onion Game

Starting on Wednesday, I started working on this new play by an Irishman named Bryan Delaney called The Onion Game. I was really excited to do this because, well, first of all, this guy is a professional playwright, and second of all, he's Irish, and third: his play is friggin hilarious. In my mind, it's kind of an Irish version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (by Edward Albee), although it makes a little more sense and doesn't take as many artistic jumps as Albee's piece, which is totally OK by me because I wasn't a huge fan of Virginia Woolf when I first read it. The Onion Game is about this man, Onion, who's writing a novel and thinks he's the greatest novelist of his generation (although he's clearly not). The novel he's writing discusses how shitty his marriage with his wife, Pearl, is, but Onion doesn't want her to see the book because she'll "chop me lad off!", in the words of the play. So Onion pays his son, Ogie, an aspiring pimp, to fake leukemia to distract Pearl for a few months while Onion writes his novel, and meanwhile, the unnoticed other child, Millie, is deathly ill but nobody cares. It's really quite funny.

The play was a part of a reading festival that took place this weekend in one of the theaters on the Vassar campus. In case you guys aren't aware, pretty much the entire point of the Powerhouse Theater is to showcase new works, so stage readings are put on at the beginning and end of the program to give the playwright a chance to see his work performed in front of an audience. It's a really good idea, because you really don't know how an audience will react to something until you see it done, which I'll go into more in a second. So, as a Directing Apprentice, I shadowed the director of the reading, Will Frears. Now, you may not know who Will Frears is, but he's kind of a big deal. You know the movie The Queen? Yeah, well, his dad was nominated for an Oscar for directing it. His dad is Stephen Frears, and he's a pretty big guy in Hollywood. I wasn't really sure how good the relations were between Will and his dad, though, because Will told us that he ran away from home (in England) and came to the United States when he was 16 and lived and went to school in New York. But it was still kinda funny when, sitting right next to Will Frears, I picked up the New York Times and saw an ad for the newest film by Stephen Frears (Cheri). Will was a good director too, though, and I thought he did a really good job with the script. The rehearsals were basically just me, Will, Bryan Delaney, and the five actors sitting around a table and reading and discussing the script. What was really interesting was how Bryan would take notes and come in the next day and be like, "You know, I was thinking about this scene, and I think I want to change this," so he would just cut or add things to the script as he saw fit and, because it wasn't a published work yet, he had the total freedom to do that. It was a pretty awesome experience, to be honest - although there were several times when I became the "Hey, apprentice, why don't you go get me an iced coffee and bagel from the cafeteria" guy, but I was happy to do so.

So after workshopping the show for about 20 hours this week, the play was put on yesterday in the Shiva theater, a small black box on campus. The audience loved it. They thought it was hilarious, and apparently (I didn't see the other three readings) it was the best reading of the weekend, so I felt really lucky to be able to work on the best one. The actors were perfect - if you didn't know they were American, you would have thought they were Irish, that's how good their accents were. I was very impressed. And what was really interesting was how much the audience reaction differed from what I expected. Like this one line, where Onion says, "He's so unlucky, he would fall into a barrel of nipples and come up suckin his thumb!" had people almost rolling in the aisles! The actors had to pause for a good ten seconds. So I guess I've just learned that you never know how an audience is going to react until they react, and that's why the Powerhouse Theater is so important.

Spontaneous Productions!

For pretty much the last two years, I've been complaining to Rob whenever he asks me what play we should be doing as the spring production - in short, "WHY DON'T WE DO THE 24-HOUR PLAYS??? I am the only Pettitt-Schieber that hasn't taken part in a 24-hour play and it's depressing!" He stopped doing them after Lucy's 24-hour plays, so I guess I know who to blame now.... jk. But seriously, my point is, it is only fitting that this incredibly crazy theatre experience started with a 24-hour play. The rumor was spreading on the first day that the playwright apprentices were going to have to stay up all night the very first night and write plays, and sure enough, after our very first meeting, Tom (the director of the program) announced that we would be performing "Spontaneous Productions" the next night at 8 o'clock for an outside audience (called thus because apparently "24-hour plays" is copyrighted...) Cue the insanity.

So the playwrights, on the very first night of the program, stayed up until about 3 o'clock writing their plays. As a director, I came into the picture at about 10 AM (thankfully!) and received my script, "A Pleasant Day for Happiness," to look over and work on until 2 PM when I started with the actors. Now, to be honest, I had no idea what to do with the script. It was a decent play about this couple who get kidnapped by this butcher who tells them that he's going to kill them if they don't fall in love (kind of like that one scene from I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, with David Martinez, remember?) So in terms of workability, I could have gotten worse - it wasn't like I got paired with a teenage Samuel Beckett or anything! But my limited director experience hadn't really prepared me for something like this, so I was a little freaked out, which is possibly my favorite feeling in the world - the feeling of a good old-fashioned challenge. I worked with the actors straight from 2 PM until 5 PM, when we had a dinner break, and then we had a tech rehearsal at 6 PM, a dress rehearsal at 7 PM, and the real shebang, with outside audiences and all, at 8 PM. The whole experience was just badass. I can't really imagine a better start to the program, to be honest. The first day, I was doing pretty well in terms of meeting people (like I hadn't made any serious faux pas or created any awkwardness) but after the Spontaneous Productions I felt like I had known some of these people my entire life. It was really cool. The best, though, was after the show: the playwright came up and shook my hand. I don't even think I did that great of a job with his show, looking back on it now, but he got to see what he wrote being brought literally to life within a span of a day and I can only imagine how cool that must have felt. His name's Jake, and he's actually one of my better friends now, and I think he's got a lot of potential as a playwright - but that moment when he came up and said good job was really special.

Arrival

It is 4:31 pm on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009, and despite getting here FOUR days ago, this is the first time I've had a chance to actually sit down and tell you guys what I've been doing. It doesn't feel like four days because I've been doingso much - it's actually kind of ridiculous how much I've been doing here right off the bat. And by ridiculous... I mean awesome. I'm not even sure where to start, but a few English teachers have told me that the beginning is a good place to start, so here goes:

I got here on Friday and I was pretty nervous. I mean, being away for six weeks in a place I've never been before with no one I know? Thailand was easy because I was with my best friends and it was half as long - but this summer I just really wanted to meet new people (partially because I like meeting new people, and partially because I'm just getting tired of the ones I know...) So I would say excited is a better word than nervous, but it's all the same thing. My room is a dorm room - nothing special, except I have the bathroom right across the hall which is awesome because I don't have to walk all the way down the hall in bare feet or anything like that. It's a double room, but I've put the beds together. Now that my box arrived (one day late, but I'll forgive USPS this time) I've got my room all set up, here's how it looks:

Pretty tight, right? It's a linoleum floor and kinda dirty so, as you can see, I bought a carpet; and it just wouldn't be theatre camp if the carpet wasn't red!

My wonderful closet below...

I have to go now, but I will definitely post later tonight about everything that I did this weekend - no joke, I've already had one of the most intense theatre experiences of my life. This summer is going to be incredible!

By the way, current favorite song: "Sleeping Lessons" by the Shins - check it out.