I asked Angie to contribute some thoughts from working on R&G.
"If we start talking about toenails, we'll never figure this out." I want to keep a running tally of all the things like that that the circumstances of rehearsing a play lead people to say--the funny and (usually) insightful combinations of words and ideas that just don't seem to crop up anywhere else. Willie said this last week in rehearsal, and it was funny (obviously) and exactly on point as to what his character needed in the scene we were working on.
Theatre people amass mental collections of strange bits of information and odd tricks (like knowing the names of all of Jacob's sons in the Old Testament or being able to play only one song on the mandolin), and it's because over the years, we work on so many different plays that explore different ideas and require different skills. I mean, with this play alone we've discussed the nature of identity, the theory of multiple universes, Hamlet, the law of averages, when the precise moment of maximum humorous impact is for plucking a coin off another person's head, how to make a coin disappear, how to make people disappear, being the agent of your own fate, Samuel Beckett, and how to score tennis. It's an exciting way to spend the day.
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