Six guys playing poker are gonna have fun. They’re also gonna talk about women, have some drinks and get into some drama.
That’s exactly what was happening at one of the rehearsal sessions for The Odd Couple – but with empty bottles and phone calls from worried wives.
Rehearsing for a play is one of the few pastimes that fuse fun and work harmoniously. Work because it takes at least as much time for every actor to prepare as a part-time job, and fun because you’re hanging out with friends, joking and helping one another improve.
“They’re doing great! They’re mostly quite experienced actors. We’ve got one guy [Vern Lovelace] who has never done a show in his life and he’s doing awesome. He’s really good at karaoke, too; I think he’s a born performer,” says the play’s director, Lucas Hill.
Six men acting together may make one think that competitiveness might start to arise, but they say this is not the case. On the other hand, watching them act, one would really believe they’re lifetime friends. They are even sometimes flattering towards each other:
“Robert [Herzog] is particularly brilliant. Jeff [Baer] is fabulous. The rest of us, we gotta kind of come up to their level,” says Ross Waite, one of the actors. “And then there’s Kevin [Crawford]… hahaha!” He says, instead of competing, they inspire each other to do their best.
While rehearsing, the actors read from the script and improvise the movement on stage (“blocking”) and the hands and props (“business”), although some of the movement has to be choreographed for visibility’s sake.
“In traditional theater, like Japanese or Indian theater, every single hand movement or facial expression is planned. Modern, western, realistic theater is not that way. It’s more spontaneous,” says Hill.
“Emotions are indicated by the lines. If someone says ‘It smells like crap,’ I don’t have to tell them to make a disgusted face. It would be artificial to tell someone to frown or smile.”
The stage of The Odd Couple at Pentacle Theatre is also different than the original Broadway stage so many of the stage directions in the script don’t apply.
“According to copyright law, you can’t legally change the lines, but the stage movement is at the discretion of the director,” says Hill. He explained that even if the script says “smile,” actors are not obligated to do that.
Practice usually goes from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, but even after a few weeks, Waite says they’re not even close to perfection. “Hell, no. We’re still very raw,” he says. “It is not until the scripts go away and we start moving freely and making eye contact. We’re taking baby steps, we’re not even crawling yet.”
Another one of the actors, Kevin Crawford, says he is waiting until they’re done learning the blocking to start memorizing lines. “Then I spend a couple nights with family or friends and run through it, and run through it, and run through it,” he says.
Hill says that tying body movements to the lines is a good strategy for memorization. He mostly watches the play and takes notes as the actors rehearse, and at the end of each scene, provides his feedback.
“We had a little rough start in terms of pacing and cues,” he said after the first practiced scene, which lasted about an hour. “It was kinda low energy. It needs to start with a surge of energy,” he said, excusing the actors because it was Monday and they had not rehearsed for three days. He also corrects the positioning of actors – problems such as being upstaged.
Then, the entire group has a discussion and everyone brings ideas to the table. They’ll continue rehearsing, breaking for the holidays and hit the stage from January 28 to February 29.
