Traces of Lipstick

Voice, Emotion, Movement. It's like an equation; you combine those three words and you get the skeleton of a character. Toss research and dramaturgy into the mix, you find muscles. Repetition and risk sculpt your character with the appropriate perspectives and imperfections, all the while spinning that eventual, elusive breath that gives dimension--heat and scent, a soul--to this channeled person. You seek balance, ultimately, between work and play, and this enlivens the character and allows a real existence, albeit stylized with floods of colored lights, orchestrated silences and noise, and words prewritten, nested in the sky.

At this stage in our rehearsal process--a little over two weeks before opening night--the cast seldom relies on the script and, under Dave's direction, primarily spends time honing their particular nuances and smoothing the various edges off one scene or the next. We still stall or bumble during a few transitions and I, personally, still need to find the heart in a couple of key moments. Each actor performs one or more major monologue during the play, must master at least one passable English, French, or German dialect, and invest themselves in a minimum of two different characters. To better explain, I am primarily playing the English-speaking Londoner Malcolm McLaren, but I also play the old British talk show host Bill Grundy during a furious scene of laughing, expletives, and clear generational discord. Juggling those two voices--making apparent their marketable personal differences--truly challenges me, and I'm Bill Grundy for all of five minutes.

Dave and Jeremy (our affable stage manager) successfully blocked the play and continue to make adjustments to create natural movement and intriguing stage pictures while maintaining each actor's sense of freedom. At the end of every night, more color appears within the framework of the collective vision. Our growth and rapport as a cast, the critical timing involved with motion, music, and lights, the burgeoning strength of our confidence and excitement...we're getting closer and closer and closer to that balance, to truly creating and believing in the story's illusion.

And it's allure.