Rehearsal Challenges
Similar to most therapy group schedules, we rehearse just
one time each week. This past Sunday’s rehearsal posed a number of challenges. Three actors were absent—illness, out of the
area, and meeting an editor’s deadline, respectively. The musician was joining us to begin the
process of cueing the music segments. Most
notably, we were in an alternative rehearsal space for the first time. Our regular rehearsal space was unavailable.
Group therapists are skilled at managing disruptions to
emotionally complex group processes. Specifically we know how to work
empathically to understand their meaning and recognize their impact on the group’s
members and their collaborative work.Preparing a play for presentation poses the
extra theatrical challenge of understanding how the disruption may also be
linked to the dramatic action of the play.
Location Change
Group therapists know that a location change has
impact. If a group member so much as chooses
to sit in a chair different from the one typically chosen, the domino effect on
everyone else can cause quite a stir.
Themes such as competition, sibling rivalry, privilege, past losses, accountability,
entitlement, seeking new perspectives, aversion to change, thrill seeking and sexual
attraction may emerge in the process of exploring the group members’ experience
of such a ‘small’ occurrence. The impact
of moving to a whole new group room could take months to fully comprehend!
Ideally, the process of reflective thought and introspection has the potential
of leading to a deeper understanding of relational and small group dynamics.
So I took seriously the possibility of negative consequences
resulting from my decision to conduct the second-to-last rehearsal in a new and
foreign space.In an effort to ameliorate the impact of the disruption, I gave
weeks of notice to the one-time location change, offered reminders along the
way, provided directions and my cellphone number for late-arrival access, had
the room set up in advance, brought bottled water, and stood guard at the door
on the lookout for arriving actors. But
still… every move was nonetheless unfamiliar—and uncomfortable. “Where is the
bathroom? The room is too small. Oh, shit, I forgot to bring coffee. What, no
coffee cake? There are three entrances to the building!Which one will people
use? Did we just get locked out? I don’t
have a key, do you? Where are the
others? Where do I sit?”
Group members understandably felt some increased level of
anxiety and thus an increased dependence on the leadership to create safety and
familiarity. We were ‘forced to make’
countless micro-recalculations, consciously and unconsciously, all of which
took precious brain and heart power that we did not really have to spare, on a snowy,
cold Sunday morning.
Name the Beast/Stay Positive
Once all the actors
were finally in place, I offered, “Last week we had a very organized, planned,
scene-by-scene rehearsal—with coffee and cake provided. I am making an effort to repeat that approach again
this week, but I can already tell we’re going to have to improvise our way
through much of this morning, as best as we can manage. Without coffee.” Name the
beast. Stay positive.I hoped that would be enough. But I wished I had brought
coffee!!
Three Group Dynamic Adjustments
Firstly, I found myself involving the actors more actively
in giving feedback to the musician about what worked best from their perspective,
which I supported whenever possible. I
also found myself soliciting the actors’ guidance in how to proceed with the
scene study. “I have some new thoughts about this scene since our rehearsal
last week, I’m sure you do too. Would
you like to share first, or would you like to hear from me first?” “Are you
ready to try the scene again?” While these are not untypical statements for a
director to make, in retrospect, I think I felt a stronger need than usual to
keep the actors involved and focused on the immediacy of the task. The task was a dependable source of
familiarity and comfort. I similarly
gave the musician ‘center stage’, sitting next to him, extending as much
encouragement and space as I could to allow him to take the lead in cueing the
music. He is a gifted professional, but human like the rest of us. His skill and familiarity with the
collaborative process of working with actors helped put us all at ease.
The second noteworthy dynamic emerged in the debriefing
segment. The demands of the rehearsal left us with only 15 minutes to check in
with each other about the mornings’ work.Barely minutes into the debriefing, I
found myself reactively protesting a facilitator comment that I felt went beyond
the boundary of his role and function, and, I felt, ran the risk of shutting
down the lead actor emotionally. On
another day I may have let the comment pass, (and have), but today the myriad
of other disruptions activated me to take a more protective stance. My gut
reaction to openly challenge the facilitator in front of the actors was risky
business, but saying nothing felt ever more fraught. The experience left me
unsettled for the rest of the day, and it was not until the next morning, after
a night of frenzied dreaming, that I realized the parallel to the “dangers”
dramatized in the play, The Great God
Pan. I felt some relief, and frankly a bit of vindication, by making the
connection between our experience and the play.
Parallel Processes
In one of the scenes we rehearsed on Sunday, Doug, the father
of adult son Jamie, confesses a family secret to his son. When Jamie was 4, his parents (Doug and
Cathy) had sent him to stay for two weeks in the home of Dennis Lawrence, an
acquaintance who was the father of a 4 year-old playmate of Jamie’s. As the play opens, grown-up Jamie learns from
his childhood playmate, (now grown up Frank), that Mr. Lawrence is, and has
been since their childhood, an alleged child molester. Frank was a victim. Jamie may have been a
victim too.
The parallel of sending the actor playing Jamie (and the
rest of us!) to an unfamiliar ‘home’ to rehearse put me squarely in the symbolic
position of Doug. I had made the decision to send us to this strange place, and
it was a risky one.When the facilitator ‘took liberties’ by making comments that
I felt were ‘out of bounds’, I reacted by protesting. As I reported in an
earlier blog posting, the play inevitably ‘gets inside us’, and begins to
emerge as we react to the contingencies of rehearsal. This was one such occasion when the trauma of
the play and the contingencies of the rehearsal converged.
Group Therapeutic Goals
Making these kinds of connections between the play and our
small group dynamics is a central part of our work together as an ensemble,
uncomfortable as it might be at times.
One of our primary learning goals is to understand the dynamics of the
play through the emergent “parallel processes”arising out of the dynamics of the
acting ensemble. Today we furthered both
the theatrical goal of preparing a quality performance and the educational goal
of recognizing the links between the play and our work. It was a good day.
Unfinished Business
The third noteworthy dynamic has yet to be recognized and
fully explored. I will meet with the
consultant/process observer (John Dluhy) Friday, when we will have a first chance
to compare notes about the rehearsal in our weekly consultation. Bearing
witness to these kinds of group processes is very demanding work, emotionally
and intellectually. Without an acting
part or directorial responsibilities to discharge some of his own activated
emotional response to the rehearsal experience, the consultant is left ‘sitting
with the experience’, and at some emotional risk. Our weekly consultations provide each of us
with a chance to ventilate, expand our clinical and theatrical perspective and
offer support and guidance. John’s vast
experience and gifts as both a group therapist and an actor makes him uniquely
suited for this demanding assignment. I
am grateful for his perseverance and commitment to our project.
Upon further reflection, one other interesting—even
disturbing—feature of Sunday’s rehearsal now stands out in my mind. One of the actors brought his camera, fitted
with a telescopic lens, to take pictures of the rehearsal, some of which are
included in this blog posting. The
request to take pictures was made a few weeks ago and seemed ‘innocent enough’
at the time. But in the small, windowless, unfamiliar rehearsal room that we
don’t usually ‘reside in’, and having some guy silently, but intently taking
pictures ‘from the shadows’, felt a little creepy. But it didn’t quite register at the conscious
level at the time, so I didn’t think to say anything. Looking back, I feel differently. When I
associate to the camera’s intimate relationship with child pornography, I get chills.
My empathy deepens for the parental characters Doug, Cathy and nanny Polly. The
awesome responsibility of real life parents for noticing what dangers lurk
around their children, often visible before their very
eyes, is humbling to consider.
A Telephone Rehearsal
The next day, Monday, I conducted a telephone rehearsal with
the actors playing Jamie (YavarMoghimi) and his mother Cathy (Barbara Keezell). The scene they share is actually played ‘on
the phone’, so the cellphone conference call format was eerily “in vivo”. Still sensitive from the day before, we spent
most of the time facilitating a shared discussion about the scene. Their one reading of the actual scene brought
us all to tears. Poignantly, we each had
to ‘admit’ this to one another, as the opaqueness of the telephone allowed us
the option of keeping this emotional fact to ourselves, if we chose.
So much transpires in so many different and interesting ways
through this experience of preparing a play for performance. My respect, admiration and gratitude for the
talent and sensitivity of the playwright, Amy Herzog, the actors and our
consultant grow week to week.
Next week we have our final dress rehearsal before heading
off to Boston.
Epilogue
On Monday afternoon I conducted an individual therapy
session with a successful lawyer and businessman with whom I’ve been working
for a few months. Late in the session,
he paused, and then abruptly revealed that on a shopping trip to a local mall
with his ten-year-old son over the weekend, they had both witnessed a mother
kick her small child in anger. Hard. She was with her husband and two other
children. “Did you see that Dad?” asked
the son. “Just keep walking”, the father protectively replied, upset by what he
saw, but not wanting to get involved.
When the two got home, the son told his older sister and mother what
happened, clearly upset. The father
overheard their conversation, but said nothing.
In our ‘unpacking’ of the experience, the father told me, “I didn’t want
to confront the woman. And I looked at her husband. That could escalate into a
mess. But frankly I really wanted to do
something. The woman assaulted her
child, and nobody did anything”.
We explored other options, most notably calling security or
the police, and remaining available as a witness. I was surprised that this option was both a
relief and “a novel idea” to the father.
Upon reflection I understand that his fight-flight response had
overtaken him, leaving only a risky confrontation with a stranger or a “just
keeping walking” escape. When I suggested he could also revisit the situation
with his son, he was again relieved and surprised. It hadn’t occurred to him. I told him he could share with his son what
they might have done differently. He could invite his son to talk about his
thoughts and feelings about the incident, and then just listen. “Maybe I should wait until he brings it up”,
suggested his father. “That’s a very
thoughtful idea, and often a good strategy”, I replied. “But in this case you
already know from his conversation with his sister that the incident is on his
mind. Your “keep on walking” might have sent him a message you don’t want to
talk about it. You did feel a need to talk about it today. He might too”. “Good point”, he acknowledged.
Life imitating art…
Art imitating life…
Bob Schulte
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