Sense and Sensibility

Pre-show... getting that ascot just right!
Photo ©Jeremy Clowe. All rights reserved.

March madness turns into April Fools... surely it's the time of year for absurdity! For me, it's time to catch my breath after finishing up Woman in Mind at Schenectady Civic Players last week. We had a good run and I learned a lot... about perfecting comedic timing, dealing with varying audiences, and working as part of an ensemble. 

The cast was great. We had some very talented people on board, including Victor Kahn who played Dr. Bill Windsor, the physician attending to Susan (the wonderful Amy Lane) for much of the play. During one of our pre-show conversations, Victor told me that Alan Ayckbourn, who wrote the play, doesn't find his work performed much in the States. The more we worked on the show, I realized that Sir Ayckbourn's British "sense and sensibility" might indeed prove a challenge for many American audiences to grasp, at least in seeing much of the inherent humor in the text. There were nights we had near deadly silence, and others where the audiences reacted more vocally to the dry, dark comedy (having a fondness for British literature and music since I was a kid, I may have been the exception to this particular kind of taste).

In terms of my own performance, I tried to straddle the line, adjusting my tone and delivery as I felt it needed to be... playing slightly more broad or intense as I felt the evening justified. I think I also learned that with a play like this, you need to play it fairly brisk. 

One night in particular during our second week I felt like we really nailed it−the show was sailing along, and I really found myself amused backstage as I listened to my fellow actors do their thing− interesting to note that that night was a fairly quiet audience... at least until the second half. 

Master of ceremonies... getting ready for the big finale of "Woman in Mind"
at Schenectady Civic Players. Photo ©Jeremy Clowe. All rights reserved.

To sum it up: Woman in Mind was a complex show to perform, and I think we all learned quite a bit from working on it. Again, I tip my hat to Schenectady Civic Players for being brave and talented enough to pull it off. Our final show on March 24 was met with a very receptive audience which was nice, which made it feel like all the hard work did not go unnoticed. Immediately after that show, we went about striking the set and enjoying a cast party... a night of mixed emotions, of course.

Things have showed down a bit this past week, as I get used to not being "famous" anymore... ha ha. Actually, I have had time to reconnect with Sarah and visit with our families during this past week of Passover and Easter... and rest... let's not discount that.

But it looks like it's time to ramp up once again... a few new projects in the works this week, as well as some offers that came my way during the run of the show... so we'll see what happens next.

Cast of Schenectady Civic Players' "Woman in Mind," March 2013. Left to right: 
Alysson Kelly, Joan Justice, John Nickles, Jeremy Clowe, Amy Lane, Marty O'Connor, 
Ben McCauley, and Victor Kahn. Photo courtesy David Goldfarb. ©Jeremy Clowe. All rights reserved.