Plan of Attack

We’d finally come to the third part of Robert Blacker’s class: the “rehearsed reading.” I had finished a draft about mid-week the week before the deadline and a rehearsal was set for a Saturday afternoon.

Thankfully, we were able to get back three of the actors in the main roles from the last reading: Couturier, Mary, and Devemy. Having this consistency would help us track if things have been changed for the better. It also allows for these actors to have a better perspective on the changes and the characters themselves. What has been gained? What may have been lost?

Rachel took total control of the rehearsal and I became an observer. It was important that I step back and let Rachel do her job, so that I could see how well our ideas of the play meshed. She created a specific structure for the rehearsal, which was very simple: The actors would read through the script and would stop after each scene for notes. If questions came up in the middle of the scene, the actors were free to ask them.

Rachel was quite comfortable in this setting, pointing out to the actors what moments the scenes were building to, what was the Main Event or most important moment of the scene. She clarified the actors’ action for the characters in the scene. This put to ease one of the greatest fears I have for this play; was the play active? Is the action merely being “narrated?”

I took very few notes as I listened to the play. One reason for my limited notes was a sense of confidence in the play’s plot, story, and structure. I felt that whatever issues would arise from the reading wouldn’t be “overhaul” issues; the play had found its form for the most part. The second reason I took very few notes was because of the stopping and starting after every scene. This isolated the action and kept me from looking at the play’s transitions and movment. It was a highly effective way for the actors to breakdown the play and see the characters on a more microscopic plane. As Rachel explained things to the actors and answered their questions by pointing out moments in the script, I felt more and more confident. Usually in a “reading” session of new play development, directors, dramaturges, and playwrights come to the play with the assumption that there is something “unfinished” or “wrong” with it. Rachel came to the play thinking that all the answers were in the play already and focused the rehearsal as such.

Jessica, Rachel, and I met on the Monday before the reading in order to discuss how to lead the conversation with the class about the newest draft of All Grace. Our plan of attack was simple: We would limit comments and contain them under specific headlines, we would steer clear of questions of structure, and would keep out a watchful eye for unhelpful comments such as “judgments” that were placed on the play or comments about scenes that people felt “should” be added. The conversation would lead from the main issues that I had with the play, the questions that I had from the reading.

First, we would have a small amount of time getting comments from the actors, especially those who had participated in the earlier reading. Second, Rachel would turn to me and ask what things I noticed from the reading so that there were no overlaps in the conversation. If I’d seen something for myself, there was no need for others to say something about it.

Then, the conversation would flow to discussing the three main characters’ journeys or “arcs.” This was the vein of the conversation that I was most interested in, were the three separate journeys clear and were they coming together in an effective way?

After this, the plan was to dig deeper into the “spiritual world” and discuss the characters of Mary, the prophet Elijah, and the angel Gabriel. Many of the “spiritual” characters’ lines from previous drafts have been given to “real world” characters in this draft. Does this deflate the presence of the spiritual in the play? According to the first “map” I made of All Grace, there was a spiritual influence in almost every scene. This is no longer the case. At the moment, the spiritual world rests almost wholly on the character of Mary. Having fleshed her out as a “human” character, my hope was that she had become a character that could handle such a duty.

There were also three new women characters in the play, all added in order to ground the play in a real world, give the characters a human foundation. I added Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, who is the mother of John the Baptist. In earlier drafts, Mary’s only interactions were with spirits or as a spirit, this scene was the first instance that allowed her a real human interaction. We get to see who Mary is when she is apart from Gabriel.

For Lipchitz, his two wives have been added: Berthe and Yulla. The challenge was to show a full marriage economically, then show a divorce, then show a new relationship, and a new marriage without creating a play that was solely a biography about Lipchitz. My solution was to show pivotal scenes, yet scenes based firmly into the framework of the creation of Lipchitz’ sculpture. For example, there is now a scene with Berthe in which Lipchitz offers her a packet of poison to help escape the Nazis, we see snippets of Berthe and Lipchitz’ life in New York City, and we see Yulla during pivotal scenes of Couturier commissioning the Virgin and moments of Lipchitz crafting the sculpture. The question of these scenes is: Does the economy work? Do the relationship feel full and real?

The final topics for the discussion center around the ending of the play and the representation of World War II. Does the play lead directly to the ending? Does the play feel like a prayer for peace? This peace isn’t only peace from war, but a more spiritual peace, peace with oneself. Is the war fully present in the play? I never wanted to show WWII onstage, I wanted it to be hinted at. I only used the word “Hitler” once in the script and there are only “shadows” of Hitler that appear in a scene as Lipchitz creates sculptures showing his hatred of the man and his anger at his own personal complacency to the war.