Rehearsal Blog #2
We must work! [at the table]

Well yesterday’s blog took more of an abstract turn, so today I’ll stick to the literal. As in many rehearsal processes, we begin with table work. For any of you non-practitioners out there who might be reading this here rehearsal blog, table work means we sit at the table together and read the play and talk about anything we want to talk about.

Table work, I think, is especially important with Chekhov. You need the time at the table to get on the same page. What period are we in? What does it mean to be Russian? What do we do with these constant ellipses in the dialogue? With the right group of people, table work can feel like what we dreamt college might be: long, stimulating conversations around a conference table. [Unfortunately I spent most of college staying up all night rehearsing performance art in dark basements and sleeping in the daytimes, so if that's what it was like, I missed it.] Needless to say, this group is the right group. It was a good day!

At the top of the read, Gordon announced that anyone can stop the read to ask a question. So we read through the play and stopped whenever we needed to - the feeling in the room was relaxed but engaged. We talked about boredom, and how it’s really a form of rage. We talked about beauty: Gordon mentioned that beauty is a theme that runs throughout the play. Beauty and its effects on others; how the presence of beauty makes us feel about ourselves, how it can make you sad in a way. Beauty can be a reminder of all that we don’t have. I found myself thinking about what a remarkable character Yelena is (by the way, a lot of this blog will probably turn out to be, “and then I realized, Chekhov is sooouououooo good!” I apologize for that in advance, but there’s just no avoiding it.) Here is this gorgeous woman, and her beauty literally casts a spell on everyone around her, but when she opens her mouth to defend herself or to speak at all, she is complex and profound and unhappy and tormented and often kind. We’re forced to see beauty from its other side. I guess I always expect the pretty girl characters to either be boring ingenues or evil witches. Yelena, of course, is anything but. As mentioned above, Chekhov is soouououooooo good…

Today rehearsal was filled with laughter. We are getting to know each other, getting comfortable, becoming a company.

Tomorrow we read the play again…

To start a rehearsal blog for Uncle Vanya…you just can’t help but wonder what Vanya might put in his blog…or Sonya… “Dr. Astrov came by today and I’m in love. Woke up early to cut the hay. Nana made the most delicious dumplings. yum yum.”…

Hello Long Wharf Rehearsal Blog!
I’m Shira Milikowsky, I’m assisting Gordon Edelstein on Uncle Vanya, and that makes me the blogger of the month, too. I will be your direct line into the intricacies and adventures of Uncle Vanya. I’m so pleased to be here —–

About me: I’m a theater director, currently finishing my MFA at Columbia University, where I’ve been for the past 3 years. Before that I was an undergrad at Yale, and I’m almost-weirdly happy to be back in New Haven again. There’s something about this town that I just love. (Maybe it’s the burrito cart on Elm & York…) To learn a little more about me, or see pictures of some of my work, go to www.myspace.com/smilikowsky

Even more than cheap burritos, though, I love wrestling with the genius and mystery of Chekhov. And to do it with a group of smart, talented, impressive artists? So far it’s a dream.

Here are some of my impressions from day 1:

There’s something about that first day of rehearsal.
It smells of adrenaline - like a weird foreshadow of opening night –
And you can detect it more when you’re an outsider.

My first day at Uncle Vanya was really my first day at Long Wharf at all, so I spent a lot of time hugging the wall, or hovering behind Gordon or Eric, trying to overhear as many conversations as I could at one time. Taking it all in. (eavesdropping? no!) You know that feeling when you’re in a new place and you obsessively observe every element of it, every character? The simple act of watching and listening becomes a full body experience: incredibly intense, and literally absorbing.

Gordon started the morning off when he talked to everyone at the Meet & Greet* about what it is to embark upon a great play. It’s a different experience when the play you’re about to start is one of the GREATS. It’s daunting, and that’s the point of it. Maybe that’s its purpose in the world. Hours later when he was on an entirely different subject, he said that the best performance feels like a rehearsal. It feels like a rehearsal because you’re going for something, striving, rather than simply doing. I think these two ideas go together: that is, the best way to tackle a great play is to be fully conscious that you’ll constantly be going for something - going and going and going - which is a different experience than constantly achieving something. We won’t be setting goals and conquering them. We will, together, run this crazy marathon towards the ever-elusive deepest meaning of Uncle Vanya…

A little heady for a blog…and when Gordon said it, it sounded less abstract and more just plain wise. And enthusiastic. Like so much of what Gordon says - I’m starting to learn - it spilled over with infecting enthusiasm.

it’s a big rehearsal room, and it’s filled with people that I’m already in great awe of.
this will be a real adventure…

*In case you don’t know - how could you possibly not know? - a “Meet & Greet” is the social event at the start of the first rehearsal where everyone from the theater meets everyone in the production. Here at Long Wharf it comes with bagels. Which I appreciate.

Appologies for the lapse in updates, technical difficulties! Some highlights from this week…..

-Last Saturday the team took a field trip to the paint shop to check out the set. Actors found it incredibly helpful, since until then they had been trying to visualize the model on the rehearsal room floor.

-Hollis, the actor playing Escalante/Aldonza arrived Tuesday, ready to work, had some of us in tears the very first hour of rehearsal. She also played the part in the Chicago production.

-Thursday we slowly worked through blocking two of the major fight scenes in the play. These are rough scetches of the fight until the choreographer comes into rehearsal later in the process. These scenes are two of the most challenging aspects to the piece.

-Generally, we’ve been working the play through. Wednesday we did a run of pg1-56. As the week continues we will be trying to get through to the end.

-Charlie very much welcomes visitors into the rehearsal space and thanks all who stopped in to view the partial run on Wednesday!

Charlies likes to meet with actors on an individual basis to do private table work to discuss character motives, moments, and events thoughtout the play. After yesterday’s run though, the actor’s had experience they could draw from while discussing their character and character arch in the piece.

Today the actors did the first run through of the play on their feet. Charles enphasized to the actors that they should feel free to play, improvise, and make things “messy”, to give them a feel for the show. The performance was already incredibly powerful and this is just the first rehearsal week.

It was a truly magical moment when Don Quijote & Sancho first began to sing together today. Sparks flew between characters and actors a like.

Our first two days of rehearsal, and we are off and running!

Early on in the day Charles Newell, the director, brings up that this is the second production of the show, though he doesn’t want to present our work as the typical “revival”. This work should be a jumping off point from what he refers to as the previous “workshop” of the show. The actors (old and new alike) voiced that they are willing and eagar to bring new light to the show, but all would also like to benefit from the knowledge gained by those who participated in the workshop. Most poingant question: As we change and grow as people and encounter new projects, how do we continue our process of growth as artists?

After two days of no rehearsal the company reassembled again today for a run-through. Despite concerns that things would be forgotten or lost during those two days, the run though seemed new and fresh. Each character had their moment of absoulte desperation, where they find themselves naked, with nothing left, and all they can do is grasp agessivly for happiness in the direction of the first person they see. David C. is begining to earn the title “protagonist” of this play, by which I mean he really occupied the stage from begining to end, serving as a red thread, weaving the rest of the characters togther. Cleo serves this function also, and is making good steps in accomplishing that as well.

After the run through the company discussed what tommorow’s schedule would be like:

David M: What are we doing tommorow, an 8 hour day or a straight six?
Daniel: I don’t know. Would anyone like to ofer their input for that?
David M: I would like to do a four out of tweleve.

Tommorow we do another run through and work on selected scenes.

Fight choreography in rehearsal on Wednesday. Peter (fight choreographer) helped work out the moments of physical contact, including Belle slapping Stark in the face. To learn it, Peter first has Christina slap him in the face, which she does fine, and then practice it on David several times. Questions come up of precisely where to hit David on the face so it doesn’t hit his eye and also looks believable. Peter begins to slap himself on the face repeatedly to confirm the best way. At the same time, Alison, the stage manager wants to learn to choreography as well so she begins to slap herself in the face repeatedly. Daniel is interested as well and he slaps himself too. Pretty soon there are four people slapping themselves repeatedly in the face.

Funny moments aside, the slapping moment is one of my favorites thus far. Christina plays it completely dead pan–no expression of emotion at all, a perfectly relaxed face and body, but an explosion of anger through this one gesture. Its that highly contrasted mixture of hot and cold, rough and smooth, light and dark, that makes drama so compelling.

Rehearsal continues slowly but surly, as we broke ground on Act III yesterday. David Chandler continues to invent other characters in the world of the play not written by Odets, including Mrs. Grunwald, the old secretary before Cleo, who was probably in the office longer than Stark. It is so fun to watch them play and make up things, which sometimes help inform the character but sometimes are just for fun.

Henry Stram has run into a common snag, which I encounter often myself: the long speech. It is Frency’s speech about “love and the grace to use it” speech in Act III. I watch him struggle with it yesterday for the first time. “Its just such a SPEECH” he replies with some understandable frustration and his argument is valid, how does one communicate Odets’ ideas actively, to make them sound more than a newspaper editorial? Daniel encourages him to deliver the text very simply, not trying to force something just for the sake of entertainment. This seems to help; though time and hard work will make the scene really shine (which I know will happen)