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| Alex Wiles as Thomasina Coverly |
When your rehearsal schedule says “one-on-one,” that’s both exhilarating and a little intimidating. It means you’re going to sit down with the director, who’s going to ask you to bare the deep dark secrets of your character’s soul (okay, not always dark)--things that you may not have explicitly told anyone yet.
Luckily, we actors tend to be a pretty extroverted bunch and sharing is a big part of what we do.
When your rehearsal schedule says “two-on-one,” somehow it seems twice as exhilarating (and almost twice as intimidating). You’re sharing with the director, yes, but you’re also sharing with one of your primary scene partners - in this case, Jonathan Conyers as Septimus. It somehow feels like the stakes are higher--the implications of your character decisions on those of the other actor are thrown in to starker relief. It’s almost like a first date: do your ideas and decision jive with those of the other person? --and in this case, two other people?
Now, it’s not that everyone has to agree--in fact, some of the most interesting moments we’ve found were instances in which the characters are on two entirely different wavelengths.
Septimus and Thomasina have a pretty significant relationship arc throughout the course of the play (I won’t ruin it for those who don’t know it), so that was a major topic of conversation. I’d expected that. How long has Septimus been Thomasina’s tutor? What does Thomasina think of Septimus intellectually and as a person--and what does he think of her? All of these were exciting questions I’d anticipated going into this meeting.
Then Foster (Solomon) turns to me and asks me to explain the arc of Thomasina’s mathematic and scientific interests throughout the course of the play.
Cue the chirping cricket, please.
Now, I’d done my research about the concepts Thomasina explores--an effort very much bolstered by the work of our dramaturg, Twyla Kitts. Deterministic chaos theory? Yup. The second law of thermodynamics? Got it. Fractals? Sure thing.
But how on earth does it all fit together?
We batted the question around a bit, looking at both Thomasina’s and Septimus’ lines for clues, noting the way she responds to Septimus’ teaching about the accepted knowledge of the time, trying to draw from that some through-line from one theory to the next. We decided that it was her own effort to develop the Grand Unified Theory (which gets hung up on the issue of gravity, if memory serves), but somehow it didn’t quite feel satisfying. I couldn’t figure out why.
Rehearsal continued with the first unification of the 1993 and the 1809 casts in the last scene of the play, full of waltzing, dress-up, and as Chloe (played by the talented and effervescent Liz Blake White) says “a lot of sexual energy!” Needless to say my mind was directed away from math and science for awhile.
The epiphany, if you will, occurred the next morning in the shower, which was probably the least convenient time or place for such a realization to occur. I had no pencil, no paper, nothing to write down all that hit me in a matter about 60 seconds.
Fortunately it stuck with me long enough to get to that pencil and paper, and 20 minutes later I had my diagram.
It’s a mess, but it works.
The problem with our initial approach, it seemed, was that we were trying to cram all of these concepts under one umbrella, while it seems now that they’re connected like links of a chain. With that, I humbly submit “The Diagram.” (You can click on the image for a better view.)
For all I know, these scribblings are as convoluted to everyone else as the mysterious hermit character’s tens of thousands of “cabalistic proofs.” The important thing in the grand scheme of this production is that they help make sense of a critical aspect of one character’s arc throughout the production.
The idea is not that this is all explicitly stated in performance. The idea is not that the audience has to understand the fine points of complex equations or theories of physics. The idea is that if we as artists and performers are doing our job well, and turn this thought process into something actable, you as the audience member will be able to come along on--and enjoy--the journey.
After all, while it’s great fun as an actor--or just someone with a wide variety of interests--to gambol through this play and discover all the brilliant little Easter eggs that Tom Stoppard has dropped for us along the way, I don’t think that’s what attracts people to Arcadia. Every character in this play cares passionately about something; they take something incredibly intellectual and infuse it with an energy that somehow makes it deeply emotional--and makes us feel something about it, not just think something about it. In expressing that passion, these characters bare some deep, dark part of their souls to us--exposing the vulnerabilities and desires that they all--that we all--often try so hard to hide.
It’s exhilarating to stand at the brink of knowledge looking out into a vast field of feeling. That’s where Stoppard leaves us: teetering on the edge, leaving us to decide how to balance the two.
As Valentine (played by Andrew P. Ballard) tells Hannah (played by Jen Meharg) with almost breathless excitement:
“it’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew was wrong.”
Also, the jokes are just plain fun. More soon!
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