Pistachios and Almonds

I don't know Why it started.

Ken called them "Community Pistachios" and every day at notes, there they were. To one of us, maybe the only thing we'd eaten in far too long. To another of us, the salt of the shells perfect to counteract all the whiskey (aka water) we'd been drinking during the repetition of scene work. And to another, perhaps an obstacle to easily win--the cracking of the shell to get to the good stuff--as opposed to the monster of life O'Neill created for us to live in, only to come out empty-handed at times, still trying to figure things out. Almonds came along to slow down the consumption of the pistachios--then more pistachios--which made note-time with John feel like six friends getting together, spitting watermelon seeds and sunflower seeds into the lake that we have our bare feet in, talking about life.

All I know is notes aren't the same without them. The nuts, at least to me, have become what bind us together--as silly as that may sound. They bring us back to real life, back to the every day, back to casual. As we crack each pistachio, bite into each almond, we slowly but surely come back to being Ourselves again.

Perhaps that's where YOU come in.

We're running low and are gratefully accepting donations.

American Players Theatre
ATTN: The Cast of Long Days Journey

5950 Golf Course Road

P.O. Box 819

Spring Green, WI 53588

Excited/Terrified HENRY V

Ah, beautiful Monday... Mondays are our day off, you see, and for me it is an important time for sitting outside with a cup of coffee and doing absolutely nothing for as long as possible. But that isn't working so well at the moment because I am equal parts excited and terrified about HENRY V as we head into Tech on Tuesday. Instead of gentle, flowing thoughts of sleepy nothings my mind turns to lines and inflections and rhythms and accents.

What is so exciting about this particular HENRY V (besides an absolutely riveting King Henry courtesy of Matt Schwader) is that we are doing it all with 13 actors. That means each of us is playing 4 or 5 or 6 different parts. We have been exploring the ranges of our voices and bodies to find where all these various characters live. In some cases we have a good 5 minutes before we come back onstage as someone else but sometimes we have only a few seconds to switch costume pieces and dive into a completely different person and place.

The one that scares me the most is playing Alice (al-LEECE), the waiting gentlewoman to the princess Katherine of France. Not only am I playing a woman but I am also speaking French. No stress there. I actually made up my mind early on that this would be the character closest to me in terms of voice and body. I didn't want it to be like a Monty Python skit (though I do love me some Monty Python). In taking that big a leap, and asking the audience to go along with me, I felt that I needed to be extra conscious of being absolutely real. Playing a woman isn't about a cheap laugh, it's about playing a unique person and inhabiting her world the best I can. It has been a fascinating journey so far to try to find where she lives, how she connects to those around her, how she dreams and worries and strives.

One of the things I love the most about acting is how it can open up parts of yourself you never knew of before. By trying to inhabit another person you get to see things from a new perspective. In the case of HENRY V, I get to juggle 5 different perspectives. That would be where the terrifying comes in. I'm glad I have a few more days to work on it and layer it in. And then I have the rest of the season to play and explore.

Making Up Polixenes

Well, I've tried 3 times to upload a video here and it doesn't seem to want to work for me, so here's a link!

It's of me doing my make-up for the role of Polixenes in Winter's Tale. I actually made the video primarily for this blog because I thought it'd be neat here, so hope you enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MljI_cUjgN4

It's Been A While..

What a day to try to start anew, and by writing, erase the fact that I haven't written in over a month. 30 years of APT summers. WOW. You guys have been doing this before I was even born.

There have been so many incredible moments I've wanted to write down and share with you. Believe it or not, my climbs up the hill for rehearsals or shows are usually spent working out sentences in my head for my blog I'll write as soon as I get home. But I'm so tired, so maybe tomorrow... too busy, so maybe the next day... need to go for a run, so maybe----

I remember the first time I saw cars in the parking lot for our first performance with an audience for Comedy of Errors, as a soft smile came to my face at the silly thought of them coming to see me. I remember feeling too cool to be parking elsewhere, because I was an "APT Employee" and have the sticker on my car to prove it. I remember my first entrance as Sonya, Adriana's Spanish Servant, and out of my peripheral seeing all the bright colors having filled up nearly every seat of the 1148-seat house. I truly felt like a moth to a flame. I had to look. I was being drawn like Eve to the Tree of the Forbidden Fruit. Like being in a gallery of breakables and wanting to touch everything despite all the warning signs.

I remember feeling proud for Colleen when she nailed the trial-scene in Winters Tale on Opening Night, having been there for part of her journey throughout rehearsals as trepidations about it began to surface. I feel pride every night at her courageousness. I also remember the immense pain of putting on what feels like a 100-pound "Queen Elizabeth" costume, neck ruffle and all, in 90 degree weather with 100% humidity and having to sit under a sheer sheath, motionless and pristine, while my body was boiling.

I look forward to every night that the cast of Comedy of Errors is fortunate enough to perform such a fun play in front of a too-generous audience. I'm lucky enough to witness the support we give one another and the energy in the green room before and during this show because of the immense pride and joy we have in performing it. I look forward to every time I sit down by the upstage steps of the stage as Mopsa, and wait for Kiwi the Clown to bring me my drink of choice like Pomegranate Liquor and Tequila, or Ginger Ale spiked, or surprise me with something new like an entire mango, peeled and in my pint glass to drink--courtesy of the infectious silliness that is Steve Haggard. No one realizes how funny a whole peeled mango is until you can't laugh uproariously about it for fear of stealing focus.

I lose sleep over being in a room with Ken Albers, Sarah Day, Jim DeVita, Darragh Kennan, and John Langs for the start of rehearsals for Long Days Journey Into Night. In the new Touchstone Space no less. I cringe at the thought of cutting into the thick air of family pain and suffering with a heavy Irish accent and the all-consuming woes of a peasant servant.

I don't know what I did to deserve feeling these things over and over again here, throughout APTs 2009 season. But what I do know, is that I'm not the first to feel them. There have been 30 wonderful years of newbies and veteren actors that have experienced much of the same that I'm fortunate enough to feel every day. And if that's not a reason to celebrate, I don't know what is...

30 Years of Summer

Big festivities today! APT turns 30 and celebrates the opening of the Touchstone. Can not wait. It's such an exciting time to be a part of this extraordinary company. It's growing and expanding and the art is getting better and better.

The Story

I was listening to WPR a couple of days ago while driving on County T and I heard an amazing interview with a doctor who had spent a year in a town in Darfur. He had just written a book about his time there and was talking about how he tried to translate the entirety of his experience. He said that people had a very difficult time wrapping their minds around it unless he was able to make the stories personal and specific. When he talked about the little malnourished orphan that tried to suck the moisture off his metal stethoscope because she was so thirsty, that reached people in a way that statistics or generalizations never could. He acknowledged this with a wonderful statement: "The story is the unit of human understanding".

That stuck in my craw because when you come down to it all that we do up the hill is tell stories. That is our purpose. To tell stories. To make them personal and specific. To share in our collective human understanding.

I got to thinking about one of the stories on our stage right now - Winter's Tale. It is both complex and heartbreakingly simple at the same time. The language is rich and densely layered and yet the ideas are clear and light as the spun silk of spider's web; within their arcing strands there is truth and understanding that a direct gaze could never discern. It is one of my favorite plays.

What I like so much about it is that it is neither a comedy or a tragedy, light or dark; it is both and more. It is moments of incredible joy and devastating sorrow. It is laughter and wails of anguish. It is love and thick-venom hatred. It is a story told in all the gray shades of life. And above all, it is a story of redemption.

For me, the most powerful, meaningful stories we can tell one another are those of redemption. We are all imperfect beings. We all fail and fall short. We all trip, stumble and fall along the way. But what saves us, what defines us is our ability to forgive and to redeem. We cannot undo but we can rebuild. We can accept our failures, accept the consequences of our actions, and make humble amends to the best of our ability. Sometimes black-and-white stories of right-and-wrong have their place, but they are artificial at best, removed from actual life and set in the clean, cold world of ideas. Stories that get dirty, that don't flinch, that bleed and breathe, those are the ones that "hold the mirror up to nature". And those are the ones that help us to understand ourselves in all our shades of gray.

Late Night Walk

Spring Green is a beautiful place. One of my favorite things to do is walk around here at night with my dog, Chevy. She does the sniffing and the rustling and I usually am either memorizing lines or exploring some aspect of a character I am working on. Tonight though I was hit by the beauty of the place and came home and wrote this poem...


Low Roam Clouds

The clouds roam low tonight.
They meander under the corner lamps
and tread upon the bean rows
as silent elephant ghosts,
misting into fragment beams
the moon glow and street light flicker.
One kisses the nape of my neck
with chilling moisture,
but when I turn to catch
the lurking phantom, he's faded on.

My girl Chevy and I
move in tandem with even breaths,
she on her padded fours,
me in a dusty autumn jacket
unusually roused from deep within a closet;
a late night early July stroll
encased in perfect rural silence;
nearly.

The sand piper is having a terrible night.
He screams again and again,
we follow this moan
deeper steeped in mist,
not sure if he's doing his duty
luring us away from babies
somewhere tucked in rocky nests
or if he's clueless of our presence
and aching for a painful wound
or mortal loss to his tiny heart.

Lonesomeness settles in
like gravity pulling rain puddles
down into the groundwater
and for a second
the clouds roam clear...
My dog spends hours each day
with the hum of an empty room,
the piper braves the night,
and I will never be anyone
but my self.


matt schwader 2009