"The Wrestling Patient" by Kirk Lynn in collaboration with Anne Gottlieb and Katie Pearl is a finalist in the Outstanding New American Play category. It will have its world premiere March 27 - April 11, 2009 at SpeakEasy Stage Company (Boston, MA) in a co-production with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and FortyMagnolias Productions.
posted by Kirk Lynn -
One of my favorite moments of the first rehearsals is looking at the model. The set for the Wrestling Patient is designed by Richard Chambers. It’s beautiful and we were all excited about it. Of course, there are all sorts of caveats and discussions going on—that’s not quite the color—what will it look like under the lights?—etc. But the basic gift of a model is to make its ideas available for the company’s consideration. You may not be able to tell, but the set is established on top of a reverse rake—the idea is to shift the audience’s perspective and give the actors just a little resistance with which to work. Some of the platforms and the steps are removable so we can take the set apart and scatter it around, to allow the feeling that the whole world is falling apart as the war advances. And the color treatment, whatever it will be, is intended to allow the set to disappear in the right light and really give the costumes and the actors a chance to stand out. It’s a generous set that lives up to the textual demands of representing Amsterdam, the Nazi transit camp at Westerbork, and, more or less, the inside of Etty Hillesum’s mind—while at the same time giving the focus over to the actors and the action.
I think there should be more dioramas in our lives. Wouldn’t it be fun to show up for a job interview with a little model of the office and a little doll representing you and you could show your boss-to-be what your 30 years at the corporation would be like? Or to bring a diorama along for a first date and show what’s going to happen over the course of the evening. I think it would be great if the playwright could come into the first day of rehearsal with a tiny little postage stamp-sized script with only enough room on each page to print, “sad” or “happy” and then talk the company through the basic concept of what the play is going to be like when the real thing is built.
Of course, the first rehearsal draft of the script is a model. The play will be radically different from the way we conceive of it now. We have to carry our caveats and discussions about the characters and the action through the rehearsal process. And in the specific case of the Wrestling Patient, we have to cut about 30 minutes off the length, and sharpen the story up a little. The script is a model—but it gets fully built and then we work on full size parts and pieces. We cut them back. We remove some. We change the color of some scenes without changing any of the structure. There’s a lot of work to be done. That’s why I have to stop blogging and start playwriting. So I can begin remodeling the script…
photo: Paul Daigneault of SpeakEasy Stage Company, Elise Manning of Forty Magnolias, Chip Schoonmaker the costume designer in the background, and Kirk Lynn.
photo: Katie Pearl, the director
Here's a short documentary tracing Etty’s footsteps in Europe and the process of developing this play--
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