Connect...Connect... Connect... Connect

Momentum Rep is in rehearsals for "Assassins." I am playing Squeaky Fromme. At the first rehearsal, Jackie (MRC co-founder, Producer, and director of this production...) talked with each of us about our characters' motives for killing or attempting to kill a President. So, a room full of sane (well, mostly. Not homicidal anyway.) actors sat around and tried to figure out why someone would do such a thing. All of our characters had different reasons- love, vengence, or because they were actually insane. The problem with that last reason is that it's a really weak cop-out for an actor. "He did it because he was crazy." Well, yeah, sure, but that's not why HE thought he was doing it. It's a tough, sometimes scary assignment to do this kind of character work, but it is exactly this work which will make the piece so effective.

Sondheim offers us lots of potential reasons to want to kill a President, but there is one that is particularly striking to me today. A line in the finale. "Free country, means you get to connect."

We just started rehearsing last Tuesday. Here is a small sample of the conversations I have had in the past week or so:

- Whether the dotted-eighth, sixteenth rhythm written in my score or the two eighths rhythm written in the libretto is the correct rhythm. Discussed: how each of these rhythms sound with the other vocal line, how they sound with the accompaniment, what the rhythm was on the previous page, (which was determined irrelevant information because it's Sondheim and he may have wanted it the same way nine times but different the tenth...) and finally, how one would speak the lyrics in a natural speech pattern.  This was for one measure.

- How that chord sounds just like that chord in "Into the Woods."

- How Jason Robert Brown and Adam Guettel tend to write roles for men who sound just like them, and Sondheim just writes what he needs and the singer is expected to work it out.

- How the female assassins are portrayed as weaker than they were in real life.

We are a cast of fourteen. Of those, I knew seven in a professional setting before last week. And among just the seven of us (because those are the backgrounds I know...) we have a combined 40 years of higher education in this field. These are my people. And as tough as it can be- emotionally, physically, artistically, even legistically- this is where we go to connect.

And that's a heck of a lot healthier than shooting a President.