Understudy Unlimited

The understudy rehearsal began at noon on one of those blistering Orinda days of almost Biblical heat (you could make matzo in the desert kind of heat). The normally bustling Bruns Amphitheatre was like a sun-bleached ghost town; the eight understudies present that day (usually more but the understudies for Caroline and Elvy were busy finishing high school) and a skeleton tech crew. This was one of those times when Les shows how truly capable she is; on “Understudy Day” the Stage Manager is basically the director, who has to take the actors through the entire play – except in this case the actors have never rehearsed before and have five hours to get the whole thing done.

The idea is to take the understudies (some of whom are off book and some of whom are not whatsoever) through the play in it’s entirety; including especially blocking, entering, exiting and general “getting it right”-ness. It is actually very physically and mentally taxing particularly in this heat. Plus for the understudies like Kevin, Raif, Brandin and myself who are also in the show the process can be frustrating. We haven’t had the chance to come to the show with a clipboard and right down all the intricacies of the performance we’re covering. In some cases we’re performing scenes we haven’t seen since the last run-thru at the Heinz yet we’re expected to approximate the performance as closely as we can. And in my case shadowing Reg’s performance – which to be fair is full of virtuosic little nods and bits all over – is no mere thing. So needless to say there’s a lot of starting and stopping – a lot of acting and then looking out into the audience to Les asking:

“He does some funny thing here doesn’t he? Doesn’t he do some kind of dancey-dancey bit here?”

“Yes. A sort of skippy-skippy thing.”

“A skippy-skip. Then he does a grabby-grabby and then a “ha ha ha” thing, right?”

“Yes, grabby. No, ha ha.”

“That’s the next scene, right?”

“No.”

“Is it the one after that?”

“No.”

“Where’s the “ha ha ha”, then?”

“To my knowledge, Max, he never does a “ha ha ha” anywhere in this particular production.”

“….. well I would.”

Yes, as one can probably guess understudying an actor is a weird thing – there’s often a palpable sense of trespass and unworthiness. You’re basically walking around in the theatrical equivalent of someone else’s underwear. If you admire the other actor’s performance (and in this show that’s certainly the case) you may feel strange and even guilty trying to “replicate” it. Plus if you have within you a glint of desire to someday play the part you are understudying then you may feel an instinctual urge to really “go for it” on the off chance that it might be your only opportunity. I know this makes it sound really emotional and Docter Phil and it’s not really, but actor’s (like most people) are an emotional and hysterical people and this sort of thing can be profoundly weird.

We did it though. All us understudies went up and did our lines. Like I said, taxing and occasionally deeply absurd. For instance, since there are a number of parts in Richard the Third and a limited amount of understudies there is naturally some doubling up. This becomes trully bizarre, however, when you are trying to run the entire play and the same actor is understudying all of these parts. You will, for example, have an actor do a scene in which he is understudying two characters: so he does it twice, once for each character, each time talking to an empty space with Les reading the other guy’s lines. Or sometimes two understudies will do a scene and exit and then run back on to do to completely different characters. A pity that Les disallowed all stage-combat from the rehearsal; otherwise you could have seen Thomas fighting Thomas, fighting Brandin and Brandin fighting me and eventually being killed in the end by Thomas. Can you imagine? It's like Henry the Fifth performed by schitzophrenics (hey ... not a bad idea! They could call it "Henry/David/Kenneth/Alice the Fifth")