The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

I've got to remember to bring a camera to rehearsal so I can post some pictures on this blog. Right now, imagine a photograph that is so cool it makes you want to see Everywhere Signs Fall at Gremlin Theatre. I don't care what you picture as long as you trust your imagination and call 651-228-7008 for reservations.

Saturday's rehearsal felt like a breakthrough of sorts. From what I witnessed on Saturday everyone seemed to be channeling a better sense of the electricity and odd subtext throughout the play. Both scenes that we worked on Saturday were charged with an increasing tense energy. A gun. A hotel room. It's hot. These three people are damaged. . . It seems to be coming along in a heart-stoppingly good way. Which makes me think of three things:

1. Theater can be hard to do. You try to invent an entirely new and believable person/world/story one day. It has its challenges. In some ways, we're stabbing in the dark and hoping that when we stab ourselves it doesn't bleed too much. I've worked a lot of jobs in my short adult life -- from construction to technical writer to goatherd to bartender -- and I find theater harder. More fun but also harder.
2. In my plays, the scenes that appear to be the most confused and hopeless when you read the script, often hold the keys to the success of the play. Though this makes it hard for me to send my plays out to theaters outside the Twin Cities, it also makes me happy. If anyone reading this also saw my play How to Cheat in the 2006 Fringe Festival, you may enjoy knowing that the sex/card game that the audience liked so much is also the scene that made the actors want to scream at me. Saturday, for this show, they seemed to solve one of the most difficult scenes to the point where it was the best rehearsal I'd watched so far.
3. Without great actors, I'm sunk. Thankfully, we have three great actors in this play. Again, though it makes my scripts a little hard to read, it also makes me happy. One of the reasons I stayed in Minnesota after I moved here in 2003 is that I very quickly met a lot of actors who made me look really really good. I was going to include a story about D.H. Laurence here, but I couldn't phrase it in such a way that wouldn't make me look bad. As I write this blog, it occurs to me that I've grown accustomed to actors making me look good. I'm going to have to consider that for a while. For the moment, though, I'll just enjoy it and be grateful.

A short contribution today. . . Tomorrow will be longer. Pictures. Must have pictures.