This weeks blog is brought to you from our very own Pato Dooley, Alex Egan. Take it away, Alex...
My first year out of college, I did an internship with Circle Repertory in NYC—the company famous for its most distinguished playwright, Lanford Wilson. That year, I did an assortment of jobs backstage and was an understudy to earn weeks toward my Equity card. I had never actually done crew assignments before—my only experience had been as an actor and some directing. I grew to love working backstage doing set changes, wardrobe, and assistant stage managing. These were all new plays and we would usually be hanging around in the green room with the likes of Lanford, or A.R. Gurney—playwrights who liked to listen to the evening’s performance over the monitor. They would listen to the delivery of a new joke or rate an audience response, making notes to make changes the next day. They were very kind to us lowly interns and would kid and joke with us. A.R. Gurney, the author of Sylvia and Love Letters, (who everyone called Pete), commented after watching us complete our tasks that he wanted to write a play about what happens backstage.
These many years later, I am appearing as Pato Dooley in The Production Company’s production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh. I don’t think I have ever been so proud of a performance or of being in such good company. I can’t wait for each weekend for an opportunity to share the stage with my fellow actors, Ferrell Marshall, Judy Nazemetz, Rob Herring and (for a short time as understudy), Daniel Halden. This is a beautiful production, thanks to the actors and our wonderful director August Viverito, and producer TL Kolman.
When actors talk about acting in the theater, they tend to wax philosophic about how theater makes them feel alive. That no matter how many times you perform in a play, it always feels a little different. And I agree. It’s a little dangerous, a little unknown, and you have to turn yourself over to wherever the performance takes you. But there is that other part of stage acting that people so rarely talk about—the routine and ritual of the thing which I think I love just as well. There is something very satisfying in this work, and the routine of it I find very comforting. Listening for your cue to enter. Making sure you do your blocking. Working with props onstage.
Like most smaller theaters, we don’t have a crew. Our wonderful Stage Manager, Tiffany Cole, is in the booth during the show running the light and sound cues. Backstage it’s the actors that help each other with quick changes, props, and set changes. In a blackout, Judy gathers up the coat and car keys that Ferrell will need during a subsequent scene and hands them off to me while Rob helps Ferrell make her quick change. I finish a scene and in a blackout, reveal a prop that has been hidden onstage. We take turns with a spray bottle spritzing down raincoats so actors appear as if they have just stepped in from the rainy Irish countryside. Each of these tasks keeps the show humming along and is vital to the story we are telling. And we are glad to do it. Our cast of four has grown very close during our weeks of rehearsal and performance and these chores help tell the story of the play.
And then there are the nightly rituals. We meet as a company before the house opens to gather our focus and wish each other well. The actors meet again just before places to cement our connection with each other and to get our energy up. There are improvised Irish ballads based on plot points from the show that crack us up. And maybe even a little interpretive dance to the recorded song that is playing when the lights go to black. Then there is the popcorn. I received, as a Christmas gift, one of those enormous tubs of popcorn that we snack on every night. Despite this fact, we never seem to make a dent in it. Talk about your loaves and fishes.
As I write this, we have only five more performances of The Beauty Queen of Leenane and I am steadying myself for the end of the run. These are some of the best actors I have ever had the pleasure of working with and I will sorely miss seeing them every weekend. I am also going to miss spritzing them down.
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