Sustaining

As many of your probably know, I am currently directing a workshop production of fellow blogger George Hunka's play Sustaining. I haven't been writing about it on this site, although I can't really pin down why. Over at George's site, he's been keeping a day-by-day journal on the process that is a good read and quite accurate.

Workshops are curious animals. They're not quite public readings (in which actors stand at music stands and read the script) and they're not quite fully staged productions (what you're used to seeing at the theater). But in between those two is a huge gulf with thousands of different possibilities. I've been involved in workshops that were, essentially, fully staged and designed productions that were low-budget, closed to critics, and with some pressure off. I've acted in ones where actors had scripts in hand, used random costume pieces from Vassar's basement, but had full blocking. Volume of Smoke was also a workshop, but resembled more than anything else a very low budget, almost no-tech production of a play.

So what does this word mean for us? It means for theater artists a chance to try out all sorts of different ideas without the idea of a performance being any kind of final product. But some people treat full productions this way too. Tony Kushner, for example, has said that he will never finish rewriting Homebody/Kabul and the two productions of it here in New York (three years apart) had different directors, actors and scripts. Were these plays overpriced workshops?

For me working on this show, workshop means a few things. Very little rehearsal, for example (we have nine rehearsals). We are using a different play's set (Woyzeck which you can read a rather glowing review of here). Costumes will be, at best, indicative. There will be almost no tech, and I will make all of the sound effects using only my mouth.

Workshops are generally thought of as serving the writer to help them write a better script (unless you happen to be one of these people). The script goes through many changes, including during and after production. I try to treat them as workshops for myself as well, an opportunity to try out some new ideas. With Volume of Smoke that was physical work and using minimalist presentation to create a world. With this play, it is getting actors in their twenties to play people in their 80's. How do we create this difference when we know that the audience won't buy it? What other options are available to us now that verisimilitude is out? This is what I'm playing with.