"I have to keep reminding myself to breathe!"
A friend of mine overheard that remark in the ladies room at the Geary Theatre in San Francisco during the intermission after ACT II.
"You've ruined my second intermission business!" the bartender at that same theater told me. "Usually the audience comes out after ACT II for their second intermission really wanting a drink. But in this play, they sit tight in their seats. They want to TALK ABOUT THE PLAY!"
At this same theater, toward the end of the monthlong run, one of the elderly ushers pulled me aside. He wanted me to see the results of the audience questionnaires that the producers of American Conservatory Theatre were handing out at the end of their season to assess the impact of their selection of plays. Without exception the audiences had marked The Dolly as their favorite for the entire season.
"This is what I come to the theater for!" one of the audience members had written.
In the workshop production in New York City, I myself witnessed one of the most phenomenal moments in theater I've ever seen—perhaps the most phenomenal, as I think now upon it. Early on in ACT II, one of the female audience members began audibly to weep. At first it was sniffles, then later sobs. Since it was a small theater, it was pretty obvious. Still, everyone was so in tune with what was going on during this terrible husband-wife confrontation onstage that this woman in the audience didn't seem to distract, really, but to add to the emotions. I was sitting in the last row, and when the lights came up in the quiet after ACT II it was almost like witnessing some kind of destruction. The audience members were rather more crumpled in their seats than sitting in them. There was no applause. The woman who had been weeping was sitting with her face in her hands. The closest audience member to her, another woman, two seats away, dug into her purse and pulled out two tissues. One tissue she handed over to the weeping woman, tapping her on her arm to get her attention; the other she kept for herself. The weeping woman said nothing, tried to smile, and took the tissue gratefully. There was a sense of survivors of a catastrophe helping each other out.
Later I decided to get rid of this intermission after the Second Act, and I do think that that was a wise decision. I felt that the audience needed not to have the spell of drama broken by an intermission but to have the emotions continue into the Third Act. Because there is a scene change required, with Christmas present wrappings and empty fast food boxes strewn about the set, the audience is still given time to recover from the huge emotions of the Second Act, but they are not let off the hook by an actual break in the movement of the play. In this later version, I have the lights come up out of the black into a light dim enough for stage hands to strew the set, but I have the focus be on Laird as he opens some of the presents, most particularly the one from Jim to him, the baseball mitt from his boyhood friend that had meant so much to Laird. The mitt, the imaginary playing catch with Jim, the souring anger and frustration and hurt seems to me to give Laird a greater depth of character even as it shows the time passage necessary between ACT II and ACT III. And more, the audience stays rooted to their seats, watching the action, without break or relief.
In The City Theater Company production in Nevada City, which I myself directed, the emotions were perhaps more intense than in any other production because of the staging, which was in the center of a long room with audience at both ends sitting not in usual theater seating but in sofas and the more comfortable chairs that would be found in an actual home. This gave the audience the distinct feel of being actually in the O'Hare apartment. This feeling was intensified because on the walls all around hung paintings signed by an artist named Ruth, and I changed the name of the character Deborah to Ruth for this production. With the entire "artist's loft" hung with Christmas lights, it was very easy for the audience to imagine themselves flies on the wall, witnessing a family at home.
Since the actors were using the existing doors to the loft as their own entrances and exits into the apartment, the audience understood that they could not get up and leave during the act, and that they were trapped into keeping their seats. The producers felt that some audience members might be negatively impacted by the high emotions and this feeling of entrapment, and so they took what I believed to be a completely ridiculous precaution of having a psychologist or therapist on hand for all performances, and an announcement to that effect was made at the beginning of the play. This announcement, as you might imagine, got uncomfortable chuckles each night.
But sure enough, one night toward the end of the several week run, such therapy was needed. And wouldn't you know? No therapist was "on duty" that night, for some reason I never understood. But, can you believe it, there was a therapist in the house on vacation, and she saw what was happening and was good as gold about staying until well past midnight to help.
I saw it coming since I was sitting at the end of the theater opposite this young woman who was sitting on one of the sofas beside a young man whom I took to be her boyfriend. As the big emotions and revelations of ACT II unfolded, I could see this young woman visibly wincing and withdrawing into the arms of her boyfriend. By the end of ACT III, she was like a zombie over there. The audience filed out of the room slowly, and once the house was almost empty, I went up to this young woman—still sitting on the couch her knees drawn up into her chest, her boyfriend still with his arm around her—and I reached out and touched her knees, saying, "Are you all right?"
But I didn't get the words out. At the touch of my hand it was as though she woke from a trance and she started screaming, great, terrible, racking screams.
The vacationing therapist was on the stairway leading down to the street when she heard the screams and came rushing back upstairs. She took everything in hand like the professional she was, and we were able to quickly dim the lights to a more comfortable level and get rid of all the strangers so that the therapist could be alone with the young woman and her boyfriend.
The producers and some of the actors and I hung around in the next room for the next couple of hours, and finally the therapist came out and said that the young woman seemed to be okay now, and would I like to go in and talk with her. There was nothing much to say except that I had written the play and I hoped that she wasn't too disturbed by it. The young woman looked at me with huge tears in her eyes, smiled weakly, extended her hand to me and said, "Thank you."
Copyright © 2008 Robert Locke
All Rights Reserved