Learning to see the "glorious".

by Guest Blogger, Jonas Cohen

Forgive me those few and faithful who might be reading this blog. It's been nearly 2 weeks since my last entry and even this entry is behind the times. Nevertheless I hope you'll enjoy:

With 2009 drawing to its inevitable conclusion we did our inevitable run-thru of the entire show. It seems fitting to finish the year with a kind of review - a culmination of the work we've done in rehearsal thus far. This particular run-thru had a particular energy to it though as we had a bit of an audience. In attendance were our house manager Mary Alice, our Executive Director Liliy Zarda, our sound designer Donna Miller, our lighting designer Shane Rowse, our musical director Anthony Edwards, and our marketing supervisor Tricia Kyler Bowling. Officially this is known as a producer's run-thru. It's a chance to show the boss what you've been up to all this time. Just so everybody knows we're not only laughing, giggling, eating treats and drinking coffee. (Speaking of treats Bill whipped up a batch of banana muffins that elicited cries of ecstasy and heavenly praises from the cast - but I digress). The run-thru also helps our designers begin to tailor their designs for this particular production.

Sometime before we started the run, Paul told us a fascinating story. He'd been watching a play recently that he was not enjoying in the least. Now as you might think, theater folk have different critical standards when they go to the theater. The more you know about what it takes to put on a play, the more theater you've seen, the more theater you've helped create, well... invariably it's gonna affect how you watch a play, right? So it was with Paul. He freely admits he was watching the play with his own opinion of what makes something successful or not. Although the first act of this play wasn't quite cutting it for him, he said that by the end of the second half his opinion had changed. The show had impacted him quite positively. And the reason was fascinating... "I didn't give up hope," he said. "I stuck it out. And I realized by the end, 'don't let your critical standards keep you from seeing the glorious.'" A fitting message for life and for our play. It's made me think.

At one point in our play, Glorious, the character I'm playing says,

"The world was in chaos. But even so, if you searched carefully you could still find people living in their own cocoons. Determined to live their lives exactly as they wanted and to view everything about them through rose tinted spectacles, all appearing bright and pink and happy. Now I happened to own a pair of rose tinted spectacles, but these were only worn on rather obscure occasions and failed in my experience to make anything look prettier than it actually was. It took several drinks to achieve that. But I'm not as skilled as some people in the art of finding everything delightful. And I now realize that that's a shame."

I have to confess that on a personal level I identify with that view. I find it very hard to view things and take them in and discover what's delightful about everything I encounter. It's ironic then because actors strive to encounter the world with wonder and curiosity the way a child would. Part of creating truthful behavior onstage is to view things in that way. I had an acting teacher who reminded us that to enter the 'kingdom of heaven you must be as a child..." In other words, to approach each moment onstage with the same wonderment and curiosity a child does would yield our strongest work as actors. I suppose how one chooses to live one's life and how one chooses to approach one's work are different things - or at least they can be. Nevertheless it'd be nice to find a little more delight - I'm working on it...

Insofar as playing the part of Cosme though it's very helpful. I can take that cynical aspect of my personality and slide it quite neatly into place for this show. Acting is a form of self-exploitation. We take certain parts of our own lives and personalities and amplify, enhance, heighten and augment those aspects to create a character. After all, inside each of us there is a great lover, an imperious dictator, a poet, an athlete, an orator, ok ok... you get the idea. The fact is we are all capable of just about anything. For actors this is very good news because it means that we can play many different parts. Perhaps we learn along the way. In tracking the journey of Cosme in this play. He starts off excited at the prospect of having a well-paying job as a piano accompanist, frets when it's for a woman who can't carry a tune, acquiesces to the lure of the money, finds himself moved by the audacious spirit that Florence has - a spirit he lacks and can stand to learn a thing or two from. Ultimately he learns to admire, and respect the determination, confidence, and joy with which she devours life. In essence, he learns to love her. I think we seek out these kinds of people don't we? People who have in abundance those qualities that we admire and want to cultivate in ourselves.

I do hope that when our audiences come to see the show they will be entertained, but perhaps consider something that I've learned from working on this play. Don't let your critical standards keep you from seeing the glorious. I'm not talking about whether people should like this play or our production of it - although I do hope they will. What I mean is I hope people will walk away with a renewed sense of the importance, the art if you will, of seeing the delightful in everything - even those people, ideas, situations, etc that might otherwise run counter to everything you believe in. We don't have to change our beliefs or our values - sometimes those are the most important things we have. But what would happen if we chose to find the delightful in everything even those things we're sure we could never find delight in? What would that look like?
Ultimately it's just beliefs not facts. It's amazing I suppose how far belief can take you, isn't it? Some folks'll start wars over beliefs. Florence Foster Jenkins creates a wonderful life and career for herself that reaches its zenith with a performance at Carnegie Hall. Belief can take you pretty far. Finding delight can take you even further. I'm working on it.