the old-familiar

I am currently rehearsing a show I did about 120 times (!) all over America between last winter and this spring. Over the summer I planned a wedding, got married, was in a different show, went abroad, and now here I am for the second mounting of this show, which hits the road on Sunday.

About half of the small cast has returned, and half of the cast is new. It is so lovely to work with some of the same delightful people again, but it is also helpful to have new energy and new impulses to work with, especially since I was nervous about, well...going stale! My character is 120 shows old, after all. Theatre-centenarian!

This is my first time reprising a role. And it's not even just that -- the whole production is the same (same company, same costumes, same set, same choreography...etc etc etc). The only difference is the new actors. This presents a two-fold challenge <pushing glasses up nose>: a) Remember the old, and b) Find the new within the old.

So, yes, I lived with this character for quite a while the first time 'round. But with all that major stuff packed into the summer months, I thought for sure that she had left my body.  I remembered all my lines (which, though not many, are essentially in another language), and I remembered my song. I even remembered most of my blocking (for you non-theatre-folk: my path of movement in each scene). But I thought for sure that I would get up to do my first scene, and her walk--did I mention she is a toddler?--would just be GONE. And my attempt to waddle like a toddler would FAIL and I'd be a FOOL and they'd laugh me out of the room scornfully. 'Cuz theatre people are HARD-CORE!

Yeeaaahh, you can probably guess that that did not happen. Instead, I got up and BAM!, there she was! My brain was astounded, but my body knew exactly what it was doing. I was thrilled. My bosses threw roses. They gave me a raise. They chanted my name with a growing crowd of eventual millions.  Muscle-memory can be absolutely heroic.

It can also be a real &^*%#.

There are things about the show that I remember based on a former scene partner (be they human or puppet). I pretty much had to re-train myself for certain moments, so I wouldn't respond bizarrely or not at all, since my body was waiting for a certain feeling (a tug, a hand on my back, the weight of a puppet in my arms) that was suddenly different or absent. The good thing about this challenge? It has helped me stay awake! I don't mean rehearsals are a snooze. I mean to say that our HUGE (I am all about capitalization today, huh? I HAVE IMPORTANT THINGS TO SAY, APPARENTLY!) charge as actors is to find a way to keep not just every play or every scene but every *moment* of the play we will do for a weekend, a few weeks, a few months, whole yeeeaaars FRESH. This can absolutely be accomplished with good, thoughtful actors who have worked with each other for months. I know that my last cast could have done this. But it can happen quite easily with people who are new to each other, literally giving each other unexpected reactions.

Now the great challenge will be to keep ourselves and each other awake after we have done the show many times together. And again: we have circumstantial help. Audiences of hundreds of squealing children!! If their reactions don't keep things lively, nothing will. (Kid-audience-quotes to come. You'll thank me.)

So really, my job is pretty easy.
Just. Stay. Awake.