Here goes. When I was asked if I would contribute to the artist's blog while working on Carol Churchill's A Number I said yes with some trepidation. I've never blogged before. What in hell would I say about what we do in rehearsal that might be of interest to anyone. And what would I want to keep private and what might I want to share? Trying to unveil the act of creation and describe it, to break it down, is a bit like trying to describe what makes a joke funny; nothing could be less funny or spoil a joke more. There is so much of acting that is instinctual, and in that sense rather mysterious. And the rest of it is often routine plodding work. Of course there is a continual dialectic between yourself and the director, and the give and take with your fellow actors - in this case just one, the wonderful Barry MacGregor. I think there are few things more dull in the Theatre than watching an actor on stage in his/her own little bubble, offering a performance so consciously prefigured that nothing anyone else does will alter it. I'm never certain if this phenomenon is the result of a lack of confidence or, more likely, a rampant ego crying out "look at meeee!" But I digress.

I find this play fascinating. When I first read it I certainly didn't really understand it, but knew at once I wanted to do it. The challenge seemed terrific fun. I mean, to play 3 sons, two of them clones of the other, what a treat for an actor. And, of course, this play "about cloning" is really less about cloning and more about the relationship between father and son - always rich emotional territory to explore. When Charles (McFarland, the director) and I first spoke about it he explained that we would be doing it, as written, with an English accent, which for me meant 3 of them, and we discussed what accents I should consider for each character. Fortunately I was working at the NAC with Peter Hinton on the Ark project before Christmas and one of the participants, Simon Cox, was an actor/director from England, and he generously offered his time to speak the text into a tape recorder and generally babble on for me so that I might get a jump on the dialects before rehearsals began. I am also fortunate in that both Barry and Charles speak with an English accent so keeping my ears open to their speech is a help. Because the thing about playing a character with a dialect is that you have to internalize it enough that you are not on stage in front of the audience "playing the dialect." You need to be playing the text, the situation, your character's objective in the scene. If you are thinking about the accent or thinking about your lines you can't act. In fact, this is a tricky play to memorize because of the brilliance of the writing; the characters speak so often in fractured syntax, unable or unwilling to complete their thoughts. They are often on their own tack and not listening to the other. So you work with a sort of cleave in the brain: one character is not listening to the other character, he's thinking his own logical(at least to him) tragectory, but the actor must have an ear open for the cue to know when to speak.

Barry and I are at this stage now (as we leave the church basement rehearsal space and move onto the set in the theatre tomorrow and prepare for the tech week and the addition of sound, lights and costumes). We are at the stage where we are "off book" meaning we no longer carry the scripts with us as we rehearse. At first it is clumsy and clunky and, I'm sure, painful for the director and stage management to have to sit through, but in the sections that we know well we are beginning to play together, and the glimmers of where we are headed are quite exciting.

I suppose that is enough for now.
Til next time, cheers,
Todd