We have completed our three months of pre-rehearsal
exploration of the play, The Great God
Pan. The group now begins rehearsals to prepare their assigned roles for
performance.
These past few months have given us an invaluable head start
in developing a shared perspective on the play.
I, as the director, understand the play in surprising new ways and I
personally have a deeper appreciation for the complexities of the
person-as-actor-in-character situation that play reading creates. I also
continue to be impressed by the depth of clinical insight, theatrical
sensibility and personal courage the ensemble members bring to our project.
A unique aspect of play reading is the experience of the
play ‘getting inside us’. As an ensemble, we start feeling, thinking and even
behaving in ways that reflect the heart and soul of the play. The
Great God Pan has a potent victim-perpetrator-rescuer dynamic built in,
reflective of its trauma-related circumstances.
I am determined to be vigilant in my efforts to track this
dynamic, knowing it will eventually emerge from within our ensemble and
potentially reeking havoc. I got a
glimpse of this process at the end of the first reading, when we turned our
attention to the actor’s debriefing/discussion segment. Some of the actors later reported feeling
intruded upon—not quite violated—by our very direct inquiry of their
experience. I came to understand that
the boundary crossing we might normally feel free to make in asking exploratory
questions felt more like a boundary violation, signaling to me that the
parallel process of victim-perpetrator-rescuer had begun to emerge.
By openly discussing this with the actors, we all agree
that a more free associative, non-directive approach to the debriefing segment
would better respect the vulnerable nature of the actors’ task of getting in
touch with, and revealing their subjective experience. Allowing the actors more
control over the pace and degree to which they shared their experience of the
play has been one of the early adjustments we've made in our work thus far,
with good effect.
Rob Williams did some web-based researching and found two
interviews with the playwright, Amy Herzog, discussing her approach to writing The Great God Pan. I found her keen interest in the nature of remembering clinically very relevant. The neuroscientists understand the normative
processes of encoding and retrieving memories of past experience, the
disruptive impact of trauma on that process, and the vicissitudes of memory in
the aging brain. Herzog has translated
those sensibilities with such skill and artistry into her characters of Pan. We’re fortunate to be working with
a play—and playwright—that has such exquisite clinical attunement.
You can experience the interviews with Ms. Herzog at:
Part of the actor assignment is to narratively track their
rehearsal experience that will eventually be posted as blog accounts for all to
read, after our first performance date has come and gone (AGPA, March
8). The actors' unique vantage point will
make very interesting reading. Look for their blog postings after March 8.
In the meantime, I will continue to post some of my
directorial process. This will both help
me in gaining clarity as I move through the final decision making process for a
number of artistic and process related decisions, and hopefully will be of
interest to both the actors and prospective audience members!
One directorial decision that has arrived is the choice of
an image for the program cover. This is
the image we have selected:
Food for thought…I’m looking forward with confidence to the formal rehearsal process that begins January 12.
Bob Schulte
Bob Schulte
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