Play, meet audience

I've been scurrying from teaching and telemarketing to PTC these past few days, working as a literary assistant and general helper for the PTC@Play new works festival. We're about halfway through.

Being a "literary assistant" for this means basically being the stage directions reader for the readings you've been assigned to, as well as the person who picks up out of town artists, gets them their W9s and their checks, and generally helps out with whatever needs to get done, ushering, table lifting, etc. It's the kind of role I know well, especially having worked with Play Penn as an artistic intern a few summers ago and as an Arden Apprentice back in the 2009-2010 season.

Being able to be a literary assistant now is a huge gift. I can actually read stage directions with clarity and breath now. I have confidence I didn't have. I know what to worry about and what not to. I worked on Bruce Graham's reading of Stello & Lou, the opening for the festival, and I just had a blast. It was easy! Since when is anything in the theatre easy??! But Bruce really had done all the work.

I don't think we knew quite how special the reading would be until we were up there in front of the audience. The actors of course turned up the juice. And the first joke gets thrown, and boom! The audience just erupts in laughter. ERUPTS. And that energy just kept perpetuating itself.

It was like the play and the audience were on a first date, and everything was just CRACKLING. It was hot, it was easy, it was fast, it was incredibly fun. What a great night.

It's one of those plays that's just a coupla guys and a lady talkin', but you can't help but be drawn into their rich emotional worlds hidden just beneath the acerbic one-liners and South Philly parables. You laugh and cry, each almost as easily. I certainly did up there on stage.

It was damned fun to read, and all I was doing was helping along. Stage directions are just there to help the audience imagine the visual action. They're there to make the process easy, and there to keep the energy afloat in between dialogue.

And you could FEEL that energy rushing back and forth between actors & audience, easily, again and again, the build up to the next joke, the next observation, the next argument in someone's logic, and then there'd be the release, the laugh, the sigh, the knowing snicker. It was incredible to be up there, sitting right beside these actors as they do their thing, and to feel so acutely the audience responding. And I'd just cut in every now and then to help the story along.

It felt good to feel so good about something like this, actually. Because I think this play and this audience knew what mattered. It was all about connections, between the characters, between us.

In a way, it became a great way for me to have a brief audience of myself. Seeing how far I'd come since I first started assisting in staged readings, etc. Seeing my confidence and ease, my focus on what I feel matters, it was a nice date with myself, too.

I'm glad I get to be along for the ride.

More on more with regards to this soon, I'm sure.