Doorknobs, Assemble!

After almost two years of preparation, months of wading through endless paperwork and logistic details, and hours and hours of worry, the kids have reassembled on campus. Much is beign made of our "co-ed dorm" which features the girls on the third floor and boys on the first. The giant common room, at the end of the second floor is our home base and meeting room. The kids are not shy on calling me out on any behavior or language of mine that they deem too heteronormative, (I think because it's rare, they jump on it when they can) but they've given me no pushback about the gender division on the floors. It's something I was worrying about, since they do not all have strict binary gender identities.

Anyway, the first order of business was the play-through, which is a chance to run the show just to see what we learn, to try new things, and to make sure everyone is off book with the new material.

For me as a playwright, I was incredibly nervous to see whether the new material even worked. It's one thing as a professional to churn out page after page and hand it to actors willing to re-memorize again and again. These teenagers, some of whom have already have 8 drafts of scenes under their belts in the past year, are at their limit. The text had to work. Especially after our disastrous showing at VTA this year, where the audience loved our work but the judges disdained it, rating us at the near-bottom of many categories and refusing to write comments other than "pretty costumes!" and "nice job!" I am feeling a heavy weight of responsibility. What if this play is terrible? Is this some awful ego-driven madness I'm dragging these poor kids through? Am I letting everyone down? Will total strangers think this play is interesting? Relatable? Funny?

For me as a director, a play-through is a necessary exercise that requires me to sit on my hands, smile, and reinforce everything that is going on, even when it doesn't work. I chant in my head "smile and behave, smile and behave...let them know they are doing great" over and over and over until the playwrighting part of my brain gets worrying again. It can be a bit crowded in here during production.

For the kids, the play-through is a chance to get over the nervousness of acting in front of each other. EHS has a special place in my heart because I've never worked with kids who are so self-conscious and concerned about what the rest of the cast might be thinking about them. It's one of the reasons I cringe when people make casual jokes about actors just wanting to show off and prance around on stage all the time. For these kids, who are so accutely attunded to each other, and so panicked about not looking cool or smart or "chill" or together, acting is an act of bravery. Which is why, even though they typically get a little silly during play-throughs, I sit on my hands and smile big. When I worry that the silliness is getting in the way of the work, I have to remind myself that the silliness has to be gotten through so that the work can begin. As I say to my Acting 1 kids all the time, "to survive being in a play, all you have to do is stand there and say words and not die."

This playthrough is very silly. It's also a little like old home week, with favorite lines getting saluted by the cast, and characters being played a little too broadly. They aren't thinking about the moments, the thoughts, the character objectives--they are teenagers putting themselves out there in front of each other again.

After all, only 24 hours ago they were on 4 different continents, in 8 different states. They were immersed in the patterns and rythyms of home. Now they are back in teen world, and as much as I have on the line with this trip, they have a lot on the line as well. They've invested so many hours in dreaming adn planning and hoping for this experience. And let's be honest: they're the ones who will be performing on the world stage.

At the end of the play-through, one thing is clear: one of the new scenes I wrote just doesn't work. It's got some funny lines, it's got some elegant parallels, it's got some fantastic character moments, and it's just got to go. The show needs to clock in at 60 minutes (most Fringe shows are around an hour, and if we want punters to roll the dice on an American High School production, we've decided it can't require a huge investment of time.) The other scene that is on the chopping block (and has been since last fall) is the Tea Scene. It has no rythym. The actors keep making choices that war with the text. When I tell them to play it differently, they polietly refuse. They know better. They don't feel like playing it the way I'm suggesting. Tonight I will only announce that the seconf iteration of Shoe Folly is cut. I'll tell them tomorrow about the Tea Scene.

When I tell the kids the scene is cut, and they accept it without fighting me. I am relieved. I'll say it with affection, but this group often gives me a lot more push back than I'm comfortable with given our relative levels of education and experience in theater.

We shoo the kids to bed and warn them that breakfast tomorrow starts at 7:30am. They accept this cheerfully as well.

It's going to be an interesting week.