Today was a bit of a breather at Wayside Theatre unless you were Paul, our Lighting Designer, and Heather, our Master Electrician. The cast ofRobert E. Lee and John Brown: Lighting the Fuse had the day off after two very long and hard days of work putting the play together this weekend. I did some radio recording this morning and then headed in to catch up on some admin work, then spent the late afternoon and early evening with Paul, going over the numerous cueing sequences for lights in the show. That work went well, so hopefully everyone can get a brief few breaths before we gear up for some technical work during the day tomorrow.
Tomorrow evening we add costumes, multimedia and sound to the show, so we’ll have an arduous and difficult rehearsal to get through. But we’ll fight our way through it, knowing that we have to focus on these external elements before we can get back to the story we begin to see come to life last night in the first run thru. Expectations are building all around.
As the narration ends prior to Lee’s arrival in Harpers Ferry.
Harpers Ferry is an amazing place to visit for many reasons. Of course our reason for taking the Wayside Theatre cast of Robert E. Lee and John Brown: Lighting the Fuse there was to experience the locale where John Brown and his men raided the town and met their end at the hands of Robert E. Lee and federal and state troops. Of course many of the buildings that feature prominently in the story don’t exist anymore. Some were burned during the Civil War and never rebuilt, and some met there end due to flooding. The town sits at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. You can actually stand on the point and have one foot in each.
A key feature for us is the restored Engine House. The building isn’t even on the same ground where it existed when Brown and his men retreated into it with their hostages once they become entangled. Even so, you can get an idea of just how small a building this was thanks to the restoration. The obelisk marker in one of the pictures (after the jump) stands where the Engine House used to be located.
After the jump you’ll see some of the pictures taken during the trip and there are many more located at this Flickr feed.
I made a conscious decision when I wrote Robert E. Lee and John Brown: Lighting the Fuse that if anyone was going to condemn or praise the two main characters for their actions or their words, that they would be doing so based on the words that the characters themselves spoke or wrote. And many of their words make it into the play, along with words spoken and written by other figures of history including Frederick Douglass, Roger Tawny, James Buchannan, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, and many others. Yes, I created some dialogue along the way, but we are lucky in that each of these folks left a legacy of letters and writings that we are able to glean insight from. As a playwright if I couldn’t create a few words for these folks to say based on the volume of their words that were available to me, then I’d be one lousy playwright.
In many ways those words are what made me keep thinking that this play about these two men would be stage worthy. There obviously is no doubt about the evil nature of the principal issue of slavery. But how men approached that issue is what exposed the fault lines in our national character. Religion and faith play a part in it, as did the legal structure. Both Lee and Brown had a profound sense of faith. Brown’s adherence to God’s Law was his driving force and led him to force the issues. Lee’s fatalism, and belief that we can’t presuppose God’s plan led him to conflicting resolutions over the issue.
When issues so inflame passions that man forsakes the better part of his nature there is no “best” choice. May God then rescue us from the folly of our own acts and save us from our selfishness.
Yesterday was the first long day of two this weekend, the other is today obviously, rehearsing Robert E. Lee and John Brown: Lighting the Fuse at Wayside Theatre. We took great steps forward. The afternoon was spent on Act 1, working through it, and then running it. I feel like we left Act 1 in very good shape. The evening was spent working the last half of Act 2, which is a tricky beast. We made some progress there, but didn’t really nail it yet, so we’re back to that early today. We’ll be aiming to run thru the entire show tonight, but we’ve still got some work to do before we get there.
The nine men in this cast are really going at this wonderfully. Seven of them have to play multiple characters, and they are working hard at distinguishing them through voice and gest, but it isn’t easy. This play is populated with a slew of characters, many historical. They range from the title characters to Frederick Douglass, to Supreme Court Justices, to New England merchants, to the town folk of Harpers Ferry, and also Brown’s Raiders. But these guys are kicking butt and they need to continue to do so. I think they sense how close they are and that’s where whatever rehearsal frustrations they feel are coming in. If we continue to apply ourselves today, after the exhaustion of yesterday’s rehearsal, we’ll continue to move forward.
Tuesday we begin to add sound and the multimedia component to the show, and that will step us back a bit. Adding tech elements always, always makes the show step back initially. The multimedia in this show is so pervasive that it almost becomes a character. I shouldn’t say almost. It does.
Well, on to rehearsal, and another long day of good work. Will it be magical? Maybe cast member Dave Sucharski knows the answer to that.
Each time we rehearse a different scene in Robert E. Lee and John Brown: Lighting the Fuse at Wayside Theatre, words that I wrote or assembled just come pouring over the proscenium line and leap out of their historical context and into the nuttiness that is today’s insane political landscape. When it happens it hits me like a 2x4 upside the head, and I know they are coming. One can only hope audiences here them in whatever current context they bring to the play.
Here’s a snippet between JEB Stuart and Robert E. Lee, sitting around in the early morning ours in a scene immediately before they put their plan into action to take down John Brown and his men.
Stuart: No question there, sir. Makes you wonder where this is all headed. Men leading others into trouble like this.
Lee: Indeed.
Stuart: Violence in the territories. Politicians painting pictures from their pulpits, egging it on, in my opinion. Now this.
Lee: The air is certainly poisoned by the rhetoric and the actions from both sides, Mr. Stuart.
Stuart: Ever wonder which is worse, sir?
Lee: Go on.
Stuart: Those who carry out these terrible deeds, or those who use words and rhetoric to create the climate necessary for them to breed.
Lee: When issues so inflame passions that man forsakes the better part of his nature there is no “best” choice. May God then rescue us from the folly of our own acts and save us from our selfishness.
We moved onto the stage last night for the first time in our rehearsal process for Robert E. Lee and John Brown: Lighting the Fuse at Wayside Theatre. We mostly spent our time getting used to the staging for the large ensemble scenes in preparation for today and tomorrow where we’ll spend each of the entire days working through the scenes, adding dimension to the characters, and propelling the play forward. We also added weapons to the show last night which was both a boost and a hindrance. First, our weapons dealer sent us the wrong period guns. We’ll get the correct ones this week. And second, these guys who don’t deal with rifles and pistols as a part of their life have some adjusting to how to hold, carry, and use these things.
Today and tomorrow will be grueling. We’ve got to really hit some scenes in depth, and then really start to pull large chunks of the play together. We begin adding tech next week, and this play, as written and designed is a tech nightmare, so we’ve got to know our stuff when we hit Tuesday night. Two days of long rehearsals, in a dark theatre, with nine men who can taste that what they are creating is something really special. I can’t think of a better way to spend a weekend.
Here’s a video of John Alcott, who plays John Brown, from our recent excursion to Harpers Ferry. I’m pumped too.
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We're moving into the theatre tonight so rehearsal should have a whole new dimension.
On, October 16, 1859, between the hours of 10:00 and 11:00 P.M., John Brown entered the town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia with eighteen men, took hostage some of its prominent citizens, and captured the federal arsenal. Today the cast of Robert E. Lee and John Brown: Lighting the Fuse enters Harpers Ferry for a research trip. No, we won’t be taking hostages, nor will we be taking the arsenal. But, I’m guessing we’ll have some fun.
We had an excellent rehearsal today for Robert E. Lee and John Brown: Lighting the Fuse, filled with hard work by the entire nine man ensemble. We tackled most of the scenes in the first act, none of which are easy. During the last hour (after four hours of hard work) we hit I-7, or Act 1 Scene 7, which unfolds the actual raid by John Brown and his men on Harpers Ferry. It’s a complex scene where 7 of the nine member ensemble portray all 18 of Brown’s raiders in the first 30 seconds of the scene. And that’s just the first 30 seconds. It gets even more crazy from there as they also have to play members of the town as the scene proceeds.
By the time we got to I-7, we were all tired. Scratch that. We were all exhausted. I should also stop with the “we” as they were doing all the work. You could see it in everyone’s face, but you could also tell that everyone was eager to give it a go. After running and working through it several times I required the men to go through it one more time before wrapping the day.
We had had some line stumbles throughout the rehearsal by just about everyone and stumbling comes easier the more tired you are, but the last one took the prize for the day and left us all in stitches. In a great collision of the past and the present, geekery and theatre, instead of delivering the narrative “the conductor begins sending frantic telegrams about the raid at Harpers Ferry,” the actor (I won’t embarrass him here, I’m sure his cast mates will do enough of that) said, “the conductor begins sending frantic emails about the raid at Harpers Ferry.”
We all collapsed in laughter and more than one of us said, it could only have been funnier if he had said “frantic tweets”.
Tomorrow the cast is taking a field trip to Harpers Ferry (about 45 minutes from us) to experience the location where most of our play takes place. Should be fun.
It keeps happening. As we continue to rehearse Robert E Lee and John Brown: Lighting the Fuse, certain words that I wrote or assembled for the play back in 2004 keep leaping out at me in a light made different by current contexts. Here's one that was actually written by Robert E. Lee in a letter in 1857.
It has been evident for years that the country was doomed to run the full length of democracy.
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