It is with great pleasure that I introduce Lori Myers, who is currently playing Theresa in the Chicago Victory Garden's production of CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION. Lori and I met in 1994 at Goldsmiths College University of London, where we were enrolled in the Performance Studies Masters Programme. Now, we are both playing Theresa in our respective cities. Victory Garden's has just extended their run, and we begin our tech at SLAC tomorrow.
I am blessed to know Lori and have her in my life. She is incomparably inspiring - in life and art - and when the opportunity to collaborate arose, even via blog, I leapt at it. Geography be damn'd.
So, Part I: Lori's bio and her blog about CIRCLE MIRROR and playing Theresa. Part II to follow...
Beannacht, Alexandra (Andra) Harbold
LORI MYERS was last seen as Mrs. Gibbs in David Cromer’s New York and Chicago productions of OUR TOWN. Favorite roles include Mother Courage in MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN (Vitalist Theatre; After Dark Award for Outstanding Performance), Adela Quested in A PASSAGE TO INDIA, and The Fool and Cordelia in KING LEAR; Gertrude in HAMLET (The Building Stage), and Xiang Xhang in Lee Breuer and Leslie Mohn’s WHITE BONED DEMON (Kennedy Center). She has worked with Steppenwolf Theatre, Redmoon Theater, Next Theatre, and Bailiwick Repertory. London credits include Paula in MRS. KLEIN, Aquilina in VENICE PRESERV'D (George Wood Theatre), and Marina Oswald in THE HAPPINESS COMPARTMENT (Oval House). Thank you, Dexter. Lori would like to dedicate her performance to the memory of the great Chicago actor Guy Adkins.
I Keep a Lot of Secrets
I have to sit down and ask myself why it has taken so long to write a blog contribution for your production of CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION.
CMT had such a huge impact on New York City when I was there doing Mrs. Gibbs in David Cromer's OUR TOWN. The city was lactating over this show, and Cromer picked the production as one of his absolute favorites. Somehow I managed to miss seeing it because I was too busy elbowing people on the sidewalk and trying to get off at the right subway stop.
Now the show has spread like Gestalt wildfire across the country. One of my favorite people on this planet is doing CMT right now. And we are both playing Theresa. And this makes me unbelievably happy, as if we are able to act together in a play once more. I haven't been onstage with Andra in a very long time, and the thought that we would both be going on this journey with this beautiful play made me giddy. You would think I would be able to divulge pertinent accounts of our rehearsal process and give some great zingers about our performances--considering we are three weeks from closing the run.
The difficulty I found in writing anything about my process specifically is that I think I have completely avoided talking about my inner dialogue. To anyone! Even Dexter the director. I can answer any question you may ask at a Wednesday audience talkback, I can make you laugh, come up with witty and inspired answers...but when you ask a question like, "Who had which secret?" I will ask, "What do you think?" And you will probably be right.
I am an actor who keeps a lot of secrets. I am forever clamming shut at rehearsals when actors step forward and speak out about their inner life or what they are feeling. History--ok, yes...but we keep reinventing it until closing night. Action, action, action. I keep my cards very close to my chest. I will give you my imaginary first born onstage, I will give you everything in order to ask you a question onstage and get a real answer. To hit the target. But I make up a lot of stories that only I will know. I invent an elaborate offstage life. At the end of the day I couldn't really tell you why there are certain performances that A, B, and C happen. Or why Schultz might strike me as A one night and B the next. But the culmination of my inner information is what propels me forward and into the arms of my scene partner. They don't need to know that I sit outside the parking lot for an hour before Marty's class because I am so anxious to make friends and hate being alone with my futon and my plant. That is a different play in which I am the only character.
Annie Baker keeps secrets. She just recently started doing interviews live and in person. Before this, she sat at her computer--writing out answers via e-mail. Keeping the details of her work closely watched and shaped to the correct answer on the screen in front of her. A direct path. She doesn't spell out everything in CMT. At least not on the page; that is left up to the actors. The play is stuttering and awkward and interrupted and painfully rich and incredibly detailed and embarrassing and joyful and hilarious and wretching and celebratory. So much of CMT is about what isn't said--what wasn't said--what couldn't be said. So diabolically human. Which can be infinitely more interesting than a highly structured Act One, intermission, Act Two, Climax, Denouement.
To solve the dilemma of no real tangible blog-o-matic stuff to spew, I decided that the best communicator will be an exercise we were asked to do for the Victory Gardens Newsletter. Questions were posed.
As you have prepared for a role (either in a class or for a production) has there ever been a moment in which an acting exercise has led to an unexpected personal revelation or realization? Were you able to use such a discovery in service of the character, or was that revelation something that might have been suited more for a therapy session than for crafting a performance?
I think this is a great section to include in my contribution, as the major points brought up by audience members after our performances are about the secrets and about how the characters became slowly involved with the class as a group therapy. Here is my answer to the question. Good luck, break legs, and remember--you will survive the blackouts during previews!
From the V Magazine, Issue II:
"Some theatre professionals are wary of bringing the personal into acting exercises. "Drama teachers and your fellow students are usually not trained psychologists." writes critic Jerome Weeks. "So they have no business messing with your private life."It can be difficult, however, to draw the line between personal and professional in work that demands emotional honesty. "I'm really fascinated by the therapeutic tole that the arts can take on," said Annie Baker. CIRCLE MIRROR "is actually kind of about...people who would be too embarrassed to actually sign up for group therapy."In that spirit, we asked the artists working on the play to share some moments when the personal and professional collided. The following is a story from Lori Myers, who plays Theresa. Steve Key, whose character is interested in dating Theresa, should definitely read this one.
I was in Jean Scharfenberg's 'Animals' class at Illinois State University. This was during a time when the Department of Theatre was gurgling with thinly-veiled therapy sessions every day. The drama and psychosis was wafting through the halls on an hourly basis. And I had very few boundaries at this time. The combination was probably utter psychosis in these acting classes. I mean, just imagine seventeen-year-old acting students in the late eighties in the middle of a corn field with these absolutely explosive drama teachers cheerleading them into Stanislavski-esque frenzies.
'Animals' class was an acting class created by Dr. Scharfenberg to free an actor from their physical inhibitions. Students chose an animal, became that animal...and in order to pass the class to the next semester they had to convincingly 'kill' another animal of the exact same species, gender, and size. If the students were not convinced that you believably 'killed' your imaginary doppleganger you were out. This class was a coveted favorite in the department. Actors would be able to drip from trees like gorillas and let their freak flags fly all whilst gaining college credit.I chose to be a spider monkey.
I researched every inch of that animal. I sat for hours next to the ancient squirrel monkey at the Bloomington zoo. I ate like a squirrel monkey, breathed like a squirrel monkey, slept like a squirrel monkey, walked like a squirrel monkey, tree-climbed like a squirrel monkey--did everything at that time like a squirrel monkey short of flinging dung at the other students in class as they acted like horses, panthers, bears, and baboons.When it came time for my 'kill', I crouched on the mat and began a typical day of the squirrel monkey. After some time I began to see this other dreaded enemy that I had to destroy in order to save my baby. Well, after that I don't remember much. But the next thing I know I passed. And Jean didn't want to talk much about it. Which was rare. Now, I would pride myself thinking that I never used drama classes as psychotherapy. But something went on during that twenty minute period of squirrel monkey gnashing that Freud could make into a nice Schnitzel. At the time I was working on THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA and took my kill victory as a lesson in 'acting is believing'. Which I still find to be true. But if I were to have dug down for the honest truth of the matter....I think that acting exercise made me into the actor I am today. I'm a picker.I have a habit of picking lint, string and other such specs off of my scene partner's costume. I straighten cowlicked hair. I fix crooked ties. I wipe schmutz off of faces. Let's face it: much like the mama squirrel monkey. Watch out, Steve Key."
