Opening THE NEVERENDING STORY

Opening a show is sort of like cramming for an exam. It’s a high stress deadline that the company psyches itself for but which ultimately is fairly meaningless. After all, you can get an "A" on a history test but instantly forget most of the dates and details the minute you leave the classroom. It’s your deeper and abiding comprehension of the material that matters and which can help to inform your decisions in the present. Though we tend to think of our VIP opening night audience, newspaper critics and Helen Hayes judges as the examiners in AMERICAN THEATRE who mete out our grades, it’s interesting to note that this is not the only way of working. Last summer when Robert Dion from DynamO Theatre in Montreal was co-directing THE ARABOOLIES OF LIBERTY STREET with me, he was delighted with the possibilities he saw for the show during our public previews. And he was shocked and horrified when I told him that it was too late in our process to make major changes to the set, costumes or action of the piece. With his own company in Quebec, Robert may keep a show in repertory for several years. Over that time, he attends every performance, many different actors cycle through the production, and Robert adjusts the text, the action, and the significant moments as he sees what suits the players. Always, he is striving to make the work deeper. As he understands the play at a more profound level over time from watching and living with it, he has the freedom to make the adjustments that will reveal these discoveries to his audience.

Even as we launch THE NEVERENDING STORY on its 7 week run at Imagination Stage, I know that this talented company is gaining new insights about the story and their characters with every performance they do. It is the response and engagement of the audience that takes them deeper into the hearts of their characters and the magical world of Fantastica. While they have a clear direction, there are still innumerable nuances to be found. I remember when I was an actor discovering something new about a line which I’d said a hundred times in rehearsal and performance but suddenly discovered its true meaning. “How could I have missed that” you ask yourself, “why didn’t I see it before”? Every production possesses an organic life that belongs to the company. Good actors bring new material from their daily lives, the news, a book they just read, a painting or movie they saw to the theatre each day. They challenge themselves to reveal more about their unique knowledge of life through the mouth of their characters in each successive performance. The production grows like a person into its maturity over the run. While I don’t have the option, like Robert, of watching every performance and tweaking the moments over the next seven weeks, I know that I’ll be dropping into the back of the theatre most days to catch my favorite scenes and see how different audiences are responding to the show. What makes live theatre so vital to me in our technological age is that is cannot be canned, graded or dismissed as a finished product until the lights dim on the final performance. Actors and audience are sharing real time, breathing the same air, and connecting in a magical and mightily meaningful way.

JS