Monthly Archives: January 2015

Script Analysis: Other People’s Money, Part 5

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OPM2Now, I can make the opposite argument to the one I’ve been posing in the last four posts.  Let’s say that Jorgy and Bea’s relationship was physical from early on, and that they moved in together after Bea’s husband died.  Did they try to keep their affair quiet, or at some point did they stop caring what other people thought and carried on without apology?

They don’t strike me as people who would be that insensitive to their spouses, especially given the fact that they chose to not divorce.  So if they were sexually involved, it seems likely that they did their best to do it on the sly.

Even if they were very cautious about it, rumors were bound to start.  How Bea handled it is one of the defining things about her character.  “In a life filled with rumors and gossip and sideways glances,” she tells her daughter in the first act, “I apologized to no one.  Don’t expect it of me now.  You won’t get it.”

In fact, it doesn’t really matter which route you go in terms of their affair, this line still resonates effectively and says something important about Bea:  she does what she thinks is right and feels no need to explain herself or to pacify others.  This is also reflected in her second act scene with Garfinkle, when he asks her why she is offering him the $1 million trust fund that is her nest egg.  “That’s my affair.”

Alone, either line would say volumes about Bea.  Together, they pack an even more powerful punch.  When lines reflect the same character choices, pay attention.  The playwright is telling you something very important.

Let’s go back to the first four posts, where I argued that Bea and Jorgy aren’t living together.  I did this to explain why giving up the trust fund was such a sacrifice.  But is that the only way to ramp up the stakes for Bea?

Jorgy objects strenuously to “greenmail”, or paying Garfinkle to go away.  How would he feel if Bea gave away the money he invested to protect her?  Furious, undoubtedly, and it’s not unheard of for couples to split over something like this, which would be a matter of principle for each of them.  Why is she willing to risk his wrath?  Because she is afraid they’ll lose, that Jorgy has chosen a path that will be unsuccessful.  Even if they lose, Jorgy will be financially secure, and Bea may assume that he’ll forgive her and things will work out in the end, even if they go through a rough patch.  But no one looks forward to a rough patch with the one they adore, either.

And let’s face it:  $1 million is $1 million.  Even if Bea is confident that Jorgy will forgive and support her, it’s a lot of money to give away.  It’s financial independence, and as much as she loves him, I think she likes standing on her own two feet, too.

So why is she willing to give it up to ensure the plant remains theirs?  The answer is really embedded in the question.  She wants to keep the plant open – not for herself, and not for Jorgy, but for the 1,200 men who will be out of work if Garfinkle is successful in his bid to take over (and close down) the plant.

The script provides a nice clue to support this:  Bea sets up a retraining facility to help the displaced workers find other jobs.  It also offers a reason for her sorrow:  the men, used to working with their hands, are not qualified for anything other than McDonald’s or work as night watchmen.

So Bea’s “verb” in this scene is not really “to keep the plant open”, because that doesn’t have emotional impact, and stakes are always related to emotional impact.  Let’s rephrase it:  To save the jobs of the men working at the plant who have no other viable alternatives for employment.

Once you find the verb, you need to personalize it to make it have real impact.  So let’s create three men who are representative of the 1,200 men, all of whom Bea probably knows by name.  (Think that’s unrealistic?  Even if it is, it’s a good choice to make as an actor – that Bea knows each of them by name, how many kids they have, who has health problems, etc.)

One of the men is Frank, who has worked all his life at the plant and is five years from retirement.  He’s retire tomorrow if he could, to move to Florida to be near the grandkids, but he needs those extra five years.

Another is Joe, who has one kid in college and another who is a junior in high school.  He and his wife both work, but they are stretched thin when it comes to finding two nickels to rub together.  She’s had a series of health problems in the last three years, and that has impacted both her ability to work and added costs for her care.

The third is Mitch, who at 26 is a new homeowner with a baby on the way.  It’s been a difficult pregnancy, and his wife is restricted to bed much of the time.

Losing their jobs would create severe financial problems for each of them.  Bea can’t bear the thought of that, and is willing to give up her own security and peace at home in order to give it to the men.  This choice is supported by the fact that she sets up a job retraining facility at the end of the play.

So at the end of the day, I still can’t tell you, halfway through the run, exactly what choices Jorgy and Bea made about their relationship, but I don’t think it matters.  What matters is how I feel about him – he is my best friend, the love of my life, and the thing that has made life worth living.  The facts don’t really change any of the emotional choices I need to make in the play.

Just an Update

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I’ve fallen a bit behind in posts, for which I must apologize.  Other People’s Money opens on Jan. 16, which means I’m in Tech Week, and you know what that means.  Of course, that doesn’t explain why I didn’t post anything this past week, but I’ll just say that I’ve got a variety of posts half-written — Part 2 of Cheating, a couple of additional posts (at least) on Other People’s Money, and a post on how you can tell if you aren’t really in the character and attached to your emotional life — but I simply haven’t been able to complete them.  I promise to get to at least one of them by the end of next weekend!  Please be patient!

Actor’s Etiquette: Cheating, Part 1

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chambers-etiquette“Cheating”, in case you don’t know, is what we call “opening” yourself up, physically, to the audience, even if in real life you’d be facing in a different direction.  For instance, let’s say that two actors are face-to-face downstage center, which means that the fronts of their bodies are perpendicular to the proscenium.  This gives the audience in the center of the theater their profiles.  Anyone sitting on the sides gets a reasonable look at the face of one of the actors, and the back of the head of the other.

For brief moments, this is all right.  If it lasts for more than a few lines, however, it becomes problematic.  The profile view deprives the center of the audience of some emotional impact, which requires a more direct look at the actors’ faces.  The views from the sides of the audience are one-sided – that is, they have a good idea of what one actor is feeling, but can read nothing of the other actor’s feelings except from general body language, since they can’t see his face at all.

Once upon a time (like back in the days of the Greeks and for many centuries afterward), acting was declamatory.  Actors faced the audience fully and spoke.  There was no real pretense at reality as we know it today.

Somewhere along the line – perhaps because of Stanislavsky, or perhaps it began before him – actors began to pull one foot back a little so the front of their bodies were no longer parallel to the proscenium, but they were angled slightly – a bit of acknowledgment that they were talking to someone else on the stage, not to the audience.  These days, 45 degrees is typically the right place to start, and you adjust from there – more “open” (facing the audience more) when you can get away with it, and less “open” (facing another actor more than you do the audience) when the interaction between characters demands it (arguments, etc.)

If you aren’t used to cheating, it feels very unnatural, for the simple reason that it is.  We are accustomed to facing people more directly when we interact with them, and “opening” ourselves up, physically, to the audience for reasons of sightlines is nothing like what we do in real life.  However, it’s a necessary adjustment that adds to the audience’s pleasure and understanding.

The first thing you need to know about cheating is that it looks better from the audience than you think it does.  A few years back, I did a production of Blithe Spirit with an actor who did a lot of musical comedy.  In musical comedy, the cheating is a lot more apparent, because songs are typically directed out to the audience, even if they are being sung to someone else on stage.

When I watched Nick work in scenes I wasn’t in, I studied how he stood and how I felt about it, as an audience member.  He was angled at perhaps 20 degrees, not 45, and from the audience’s perspective, that’s almost as if he is facing them, and yet I never felt like he wasn’t fully involved with his partner.  In other words, it looked perfectly natural and realistic to me.  Why?

There’s two ways to handle this, and only one way works.  The way that doesn’t is to stand as Nick did and turn your head to your partner for the bulk of the scene (both when you’re listening and when you’re talking).  This isn’t much better than if you stood at profile to the audience, or anything between 45 and 90 (or more) degrees.  If the point of cheating is to give the audience a better look at your face, then turning your head defeats the purpose.

What does work?  That’s for the next post!