'Twas the night before...

Rehearsals for the Coro of Oedipus el Rey began a week ago with Enrique Andrade, Tony Green and Rick Huddle.  Actors Nick Ortega & Marco Ballare Garcia arrived from Los Angeles on Friday, bringing good weather with them, and they've settled in to their Portland homes.  On Saturday, there was a production meeting with director Elizabeth Huffman, stage manager Caitlin Nolan and designers José Gonzalez, Kristeen Crosser, Sharath Patel, and Kenichi Hillis to discuss how the elements of the production, the set, the lights, the sound, the props and costumes, sprung from the imaginations of all the designers in response to the text, would come together into one cohesive whole.  Tomorrow, Monday, the rest of the cast joins in, Jose, Ozvaldo Gonzalez, and me.  We'll all be sitting around the table, fueled by the prep we've done to get us to the "first read"...

It's been over a year since Elizabeth brought us the script that launched the staged reading. Ever since then we knew we had to produce this play, there was a sense of destiny about the whole thing.  It's a story, millenia-old, that never grows old, about the downfall of the proud.  Now it's our turn to tell it.

I'm frankly a little concerned.  I've been memorizing my lines for months, taking playwright Luis Alfaro's strong, emotional statements to heart and mind.  It's very possible that they're getting under my skin.  I'm starting to feel  Jocasta's prideful misery becoming an undercurrent of my day-to-day life.  As an actor, I know that feelings like this stay submerged so that they don't interfere with real life, but it's always an odd sensation, reminiscent of a sci-fiction story where one's body is invaded by an alien being.  Jocasta is an especially strong presence.  When I study my lines (and I imagine in rehearsal and performance), the alien/Jocasta emerges, bringing her experiences and feelings to the forefront of my consciousness where they rule all.  She is no mere figment of imagination, Sophocles created an archetype, the all-consuming mother who destroys her child and herself, a character that launched an important strain of Freudian psychology thousands of years after her creation.

What this means, I think, is that I must make sure I find time over the next three months to participate in non-Jocasta activities, like gardening and yoga, that help me keep in touch with my truer identity.  Then, when it's time for Jocasta to emerge, she must be allowed to live as fully as possible.  Hers is a thousands of years-old voice that demands to be heard, alongside all the other voices of this story, in the arena of the theatre prepared by time and attention....