Whew, boy! I'm working on a new project, and it's a doozy. I'm excited and challenged and my brain is switched firmly in the "on" position. It's a great contrast to the "awesome project" and though it is completely awesome in its own way, it's entirely different. Small cast - well, smaller than 34 - and intimate - well, it would have to be more intimate than 1800 audience members - and politically incendiary. It's about the death penalty, and it's a play where the characters all have real life counterparts.
We've had two rehearsals, and it's fascinating. The thing is, it's about a lot of really fucked up things - the criminal justice system, and racial prejudice, and who has power and who doesn't. So while I am relishing it, engaged in it, trying to be faithful to it, it's not the kind of project I can just say, ooo, today was super fun! It IS fun, and the cast is laughing a lot, and the play itself has a lot of funny moments, but there's an inordinate about of sad injustice brought into the open during this play, and it feels disrespectful to imply it's a fun romp for the actors. I don't play a huge part, but the bits I get feel important, I feel like I have to do justice to the people whose story I have been elected to tell.
It's also a co-production with a university, which is exciting in its own way. Y'all, there are several things I would be mad to write down online about how this co-production works and what I think about it, but I'll admit one thing about it that's entirely personal. I have a chip on my shoulder about this place, and I have to work really hard not to bring that chip into the rehearsal hall. See, the theatre students who graduate from this place seem to have an instantaneous leg up on the rest of us - just studying here seems to write your ticket to be in whatever fabulous play you want. And I've sat in the student union a few times already and looked around. I admit fully that what I'm about to say is biased and I have great hopes I will overcome my prejudice, but everyone seems so feckless. As if real life worries don't apply to them, as if they'll never have to do their own laundry or pay their own rent or even relate to someone else without a computer or a smartphone in hand.
It's partly their youth, their very extreme youth, that bothers me, not that they are inexperienced but that, having little experience, they do not value experience in others. And it bothers me that they are often right - their lack of practical experience will not stop them from getting cast in something instead of me due to the connections they have made while in school.
Ok. I'm going to work on overcoming this irritation I have, or at the very least work on defining it more clearly. For now, bed.
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