I’m working on a scene for Michael S., who is taking a directing class at the Studio Theatre. I’m doing a 5-minute scene from Jon Klein’s Dimly Perceived Threats to the System with scene partner Amal. Klein’s play is a dark comedy that swings the Hauser family from dysfunctional reality to frightening fantasy and back again, sometimes in the course of one page of script.
In my scene, Amal’s Christine is called into the office of the school mental health counselor, Mr. Sykes. A conventional upbraiding turns ugly: an imagined Mr. Sykes contemplates electroshock and desktop lobotomy with Frankensteinian glee.
Michael’s assignment for this phase of the class is characterization, so we’ve done a fair amount of table work before putting the scene on its feet. (Or floor work, in Michael’s case: he likes to work lying on the deck.) We did an improv in which, instead of the understanding Mr. Sykes, I became a harpy of a department secretary, chewing out Christine for what she’s done (she spit on three students’ baloney sandwiches because she’s having her own food issues).
Now we’re actually working the scene, and in realistic beats Michael has me moving about, leaning on the furniture, that sort of thing. Let’s hope the scene doesn’t turn out the way the last one did. There’s no storage available, so it’s pack-your-own props: I’m schlepping an extra jacket and a Makita cordless power drill back and forth on the subway.
Since the last time I was in the conservatory space upstairs, the Studio has completed the reconfiguration of its space, and now we enter through the main lobby on 14th Street. I still feel a little like I did when I was taking a class at Woolly earlier this year, working in the classroom while the mainstage production was being rehearsed in the next room over, that is, like the Bud Light gate crasher guy surrounded by all these professionals. But this evening we worked from 6:30 to a bit before 8:00, so I was on my way out through the main lobby as the house-opening announcement for The Long Christmas Ride Home played on the PA. That was cool.