From casting to curtain, the Joker's wild

BY JOSH DRIMMER

HYURA CHOI

I still don't know what I did to get into this incredible show, albeit with a role that my dramaturg Lisa Grinfeld, TC '01, and the New Penguin Shakespeare edition of Othello alike call "poorly-written" with "little individuality" and "feeble jests." But though Reggie Austin, BK '01 (Othello), and Tracy Appleton, JE '01 (Desdemona), and Grinfeld's senior project is the most professional show I've ever been a part of, the sacrifices (my GPA, my weekends, my sleeping habits) and the oddities (inevitable last-second cast changes, performing in a slightly modified gym) of acting at Yale persist. I'm tired despite the relative small amount of energy my role requires—not to mention the sleep binge I took the day before that caused me to miss our load-in. (It's worth noting, by the way, that my load-in shift was from 1 to 4 p.m.; my body was really trying to tell me something.) I stay fairly quiet as the storm bellows loudly outside. "I wish we were doing The Tempest," our Montano, James Bickford, DC '01, remarks.

Tonight's run-through, our fourth in as many days, goes fairly well, but there's a general feeling that we're still scratching the surface. I walk into a backstage room to find Reggie and our Iago, David Blasher, DC '01, talking about superobjectives and digging deeper into their scenes— "There was more there!" "There was definitely more there!"—and I feel just how far I have to go as an actor, the main superobjective for my scenes being "try to make at least one person laugh." Still, our blocking is solidly in place, and our Cassio of just four days makes it through with only a couple calls of "Line," and there's a certain thrill to the simple fact that we have a show, even if that show ends tonight with our curtain falling down in my hands and all of us laughing at the end of our tragedy. Well, at least I accomplished my superobjective for the night.

TUES., APR. 10: Actor's purgatory, a.k.a.the cue-to-cue, starts a little late tonight because Reggie and Chris ventured to New York to get our costumes. The wait, however, was well worth it. In addition to the luxury of a show where, for once, the actors don't have to raid their own wardrobes to slap together a costume, we have some beautiful—if initially hysterical—digs. Roderigo's incredibly shiny silver and black jacket looks like something out of Puff Daddy's closet and makes the eyes of its wearer, Jamal Caesar, ES '03, light up. Bianca's huge pink dress is at least two sizes too large for Lisa Rabie, BK '01, but the effect is way too funny to be fixed; Chris even asks Lisa to augment the effect by wearing sneakers tomorrow, preferably pink ones. Blasher's Iago, with slimy, slicked-back hair and clothes as black as his soul, now seems complete. And as for my own combination of emerald green vest, blue pants, and brown tuxedo jacket with tails—well, it's generally proclaimed awesome.

Dress-up time aside, however, there's a lot of technical work to be done: a late night and early morning by the crew has our lights in place, but now the cues have to be built and run to as close to perfect as we can by the early morning. Chris wears the fatigue fairly well, but even he needs a boost after a long talk on the phone concerning something about our professional (and thus, quite incredulously to me, paid) actor's equities. "Get me two big coffees!" he proclaims from his plush blue director's chair. "Wait, no, make that two big coffees and two bags of heroin!"

As the cues are set up, the actors are only used as props in front of the surprisingly strong lights—and this means a lot of waiting. We all have our different ways of killing this seemingly endless time, whether it is sitting in the backroom doing work to the ethereal music of Tracy's laptop (our Emilia, Desiree Burch, TD '01, calls this place the "womb room"), or maniacally bouncing a rubber baseball, like Reggie. Our Othello's past childish antics have called into question his actual age, but it's safe to say that, at this point—from a combination of fatigue and boredom—we're all five-year-olds.

Seven and a half hours, 20 minutes of actual acting, one book and two magazines later, we head home at 1:54 a.m., a little closer to finally telling this tale on stage. As I close my eyes to sleep, I swear I still see the spotlight burning a hole in my vision.

WED., APR. 11: "Just tell us the story," Chris had told us time and time again since we started rehearsing in January, and tonight, we finally have others to tell it to. It's dress rehearsal day for our two reviewers and a few other spectators, and though I will completely massacre my first lines today, it seems that despite not doing a run the day before, none of us is nervous. Our focus is just too concentrated for that, and through a few technical miscues, a few dropped lines, and even one complete blackout—in which the play continues, unflinchingly, in total darkness—the show goes on. David, in a way I've seen few actors get, seems to sob offstage, in the scene before Iago will enter in chains—a self-contained catharsis. There's no shouting or laughter after we're through, but there is a silent pride on Tracy and Reggie's faces, an unspoken contentment in their project coming to fruition on the weight of their talents and ours. As Chris puts it to us later, "I could get hit by a bus right now and you would finish the run."

The only frustration is that this, a play I and much of the cast will play outdoors in New York this summer, must be delivered to a small, scattered audience tonight, which makes this a little less satisfying, and stranger, than it should be. Still, Chris's words make the feeling rub off quickly: "It's all there...you're learning the process and it feels weird, but this is what it feels like when you have a brilliant show and there are three people there...if that feels uncomfortable, you're in the perfect place." We're ready for an audience. I only wish they were waiting for us right now.

THURS., APR. 12: "Will they come?" our Lodovico, Ran Frazier, SM '03, asks with a tinge of fear in his voice. Backstage we all sit, unsure of the answer on our opening night, which unfortunately also happens to be Tap Night, the night before the start of Easter weekend, and, as is common at Yale, opening night for about five other shows. "They'll come..." multiple-role-playing Michael MacKenzie, SM '03, replies. "We've built it...they'll come." Only about 20 of our 76 seats are filled tonight, but then again, we're not putting up Field of Dreams. We look to our senior leaders; Reggie Austin, eyes tightly shut, blocks out all these cares; Tracy Appleton bluntly tells us to make the best of what we have: "If the audience serves your purpose, use them. If they don't, don't look at them."

I'll leave the rest of this story where it belongs, to jump out of Shakespeare's script for at least two more shows. A far better tale than this, a far greater end out of all our means, awaits you. (Exit Clown.)

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