Many things that I did not expect ...

Days 14, 15 and 16: Wednesday, March 1, Thursday, March 2, and Friday, March 3

I don’t know how I could have forgotten to mention our rehearsal visitors. I blame the late hour and my enfeebled mental processes of trying to recall what happened a week ago.

Anyway, at rehearsal Tuesday, we had an audience. David, a friend from grad school, was in town with his university students and had asked me months ago if they could attend a rehearsal. I replied that it probably wouldn’t be a problem, but that we wouldn’t actually be in our space until the day after they left. Fortunately, the bar space was big enough to hold them (I think it was nine students, David, and his wife—who actually knew Pidge before I did [they went to grad school together]). We did the first four scenes with them right on top of us (which, in retrospect, actually turned out to be a good thing, given how close our audience is at 59E59), and I found an interesting tension between doing what we’d been working on in this rehearsal process and what we had done (and what had seemed to work) in San Francisco. I kept vacillating between the two impulses, so it was a good lesson in what I’ll need to avoid in our actual run.

Wednesday, then, I decided to stop at Veneiro’s, an Italian pastry shop on 11^th that I’ve been walking by pretty much every day. It’s been there since 1894 (or so the sign outside would have us believe), and I’d been wanting to sample their wares. I figured a box of good Italian butter cookies would be an appropriate “thank you” to the rest of the company for them allowing me to disrupt our normal process by having something of an audience. (Not that it went badly at all; they seemed to like it, actually. It was just a wee bit early to have spectators.)

 Go here. Eat.

I got the cookies (which were, indeed, great) and proceeded to the subway where, on entering, I saw a service announcement that, due to some kind of issue at 51^st Street, the R train wasn’t running and that I’d have to transfer at 34^th to the 4, 5, or 6 and get off farther away from the bar than I’d anticipated. I ended up being about 25 minutes late, so the cookies served a dual purpose of being both a thank you and an apology.

As previewed in my last post, we were tackling the longest scene in the play, and we started by really digging into the language, mostly in terms of punctuation and pauses. We’d gotten a little, well, careless, in paying attention to both, so it was good to get back to the text. Frankly, I fought the process a little, not especially wanting to get out of my comfort zone, but damned if I wasn’t wrong and the whole thing did pay off.

(An observation in passing about the bar’s men’s room—at least the one upstairs; I don’t know what kind of air freshener they use [and like most men’s rooms, it needs one], but it smells like the cheapest cologne one could imagine. Sort of like “that guy” who uses way too much cologne and who you just can’t get away from in a room. Then double it.)

After rehearsal, we were pretty well done, but (since I was going to a show that night and the subway still being questionable) I decided to walk the 40 or so blocks to the theatre. It was a pleasant evening, and a nice way to see the East Side, which I almost never frequent. It really is (to me, anyway) a different world from the West Side, which seems, well, grittier. The East Side always feels a little more polished to me. On the other hand, it still retains some of the charm of the “old” New York, in terms of having actual neighborhoods and local shops and retailers.

The show for the evening was August Wilson’s Jitney, and it was marvelous. It’s early Wilson, so it may not be as accomplished as his later work (and the ending had distinct overtones of the ending of Fences), but any Wilson is worth seeing—especially when it’s done this well.

After the show, I dropped into Junior’s for a quick piece of cheesecake. It didn’t seem as crowded as usual (I was disabused of that notion as soon as I walked in the door). I sat at the end of the bar and spent most of my time in quiet fascination watching a nearby couple. They were having a conversation, most of which was being accomplished by the woman, who was apparently walking a tightrope between being extremely drunk and demonstrative and really holding it together well. She kept going back to a Martini glass filled with something red (which I assumed was a Cosmopolitan; she seemed like a Cosmo drinker), and her gestures and adamancy of argument kept growing. It was truly fascinating to watch and a good lesson in how to act drunk.

After that, it was, of course, home to bed in preparation for Thursday’s big challenge of working Scene 6, which is, in some ways, the most difficult in the play.

At the risk of giving away spoilers, let me say that, after the (mostly) naturalism of the play, Sam and Dede shifts into Beckettian mode for its final scene (which is actually given away by the poster/postcard), and all our dialogue is in quick staccato bursts. It really got to us in the first run, and in fact, the only time we got it right was the final performance (with Andre #4). When I was re-learning my lines, it was the one I really wanted to avoid, since A) it’s so damn complicated, and B) so much of it depends on my timing with Brendan. I was finally persuaded by Pidge to work on it, though, and that practice became invaluable in my process.

 Our names up in lights

We spent a whole day on the scene, working on the timing, the exchanges, and the silences, and finally got it in a good place when we left. This isn’t a long play (it runs about 80 minutes), but we’d managed to spend two whole weeks breaking it down and putting it back together again—and still had two rehearsal days to do a little polishing before moving into the theatre.

As a reward, I decided to take myself out for some fried chicken. There’s a nearby restaurant that’s highly ranked on Yelp for its chicken, so I gave it a try. Going there, I was exposed to the world of Avenue C. Avenues A and B are chockful of restaurants and bars (at least around here), and C proved to be no exception to this. Many places I want to try and probably won’t get the chance, since I’ll be busy five nights a week with the show. Regardless, this place was (as might be expected) pretty much a hole in the wall, and was, thus, jam-packed. I was able to get a window seat—meaning just that; a barstool next to the window, with (more or less) a plank as my table. I ordered the special: a glass of wine, three small pieces of chicken, and mac-and-cheese, all of which were as good as advertised. My initial reaction was “it’s good—and such small portions,” but in retrospect, I’d probably rather have too little of something like that than too much. I hope to get back there, but have been advised of better chicken places, so we shall see.

I came back home—early for a change—and probably updated this blog to whatever its state was then, and turned in, knowing we had a big day Friday; aiming for a couple of run-throughs. Since Brendan had a callback for a production of Measure for Measure on the West Side, we agreed that it would be easier for all concerned to go back to the studios on 29^th Street. Otherwise, his travel time would have been prohibitive, and we wouldn’t have been able to get as much work in.

Most of the rooms on 29^th are small, so we knew we were going to be cramped—and, indeed, had to shift the orientation of the room as we changed scenes. The work went well. We were able to keep most of the values we’d found at the bar, and when Brendan had to leave, the rest of us walked to a bagel place to get some lunch, then Beth and I ran my lines for Scene 5 (she’s still a pretty good Andre). Brendan came back, we did some more scene work, and broke for the evening.

Since I was going back to Birdland to see Mr. Pizzarelli, I came home to change (gotta look decent at a nightclub, after all), then headed back uptown. When I arrived at the club, the hostess told me that there was another single patron who’d been told that, while she had a good seat, if another single came along, she might have to share it, and that was indeed the case. It turned out to be a very good seat—dead center—and we got along fine. She was kind of mopey—between jobs, unhappy living in Jersey City—but pleasant nonetheless. We talked some (I was sure to plug the show again) and the evening passed pleasantly enough. The first set was good, and since the second show was sold pretty well, if I wanted to stay for the late show, the charges that had been waived on Tuesday would apply. I sucked it up, but she couldn’t afford it, so she left once it became apparent that they were, indeed, going to charge her if she stayed. The second show was very good, and the whole evening was enhanced by the guest saxophonist, giving the trio a sound it usually doesn’t have. The only drawback was the couple in front of me, who—seated dead center, right in front—spent most of the evening texting. It wasn’t just that they were texting, though. The guy kept texting something, turning off his phone, then getting a message ten seconds later, and responding to it—for ninety minutes.

After the show, I spoke with John briefly, then returned home to get some rest for what would be our last day of rehearsal before hitting 59^th Street.