Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal: Four kinds of people

When it comes to challenges

By James Knudsen

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” –Tom Hanks, A League of Their Own

There’s an old saying that goes, “There’s two kinds a people....” Well, I’ve been trying to make this idea work with just two and it ain’t happenin’.
    The way I see it there’s four kinds of people—those who seek challenges, those who avoid challenges, those who accept challenges and then shrink from them, and those who don’t actively seek challenges but when forced to deal with them rise to the occasion.
    I’m currently rehearsing a classic American play, The Man Who Came to Dinner. It was written by George S.Kaufman (1889-1961) and Moss Hart (1904-1961), authors of Merrily We Roll Along, You Can’t Take It with You, and George Washington Slept Here, among others. I’ve been cast in the supporting role of Mr. Stanley, the gruff, businesslike man of the house, and the process continues to be a delight. It’s my first time working in the theatre at the College of the Sequoias and it’s a treat to work on a stage I first saw as a child viewing an excellent production of Hamlet over 30 years ago. And this character, Mr. Stanley, is right up my alley. I’ve quickly found his voice and whenever I can do that I know I have an inside track to nailing down the character. Thus far this has been an easy gig and I expect it will remain so. Unlike the show I just finished.

The show I just finished, on October 12, was Liz Flahive’s From Up Here (mentioned in September’s column). I was offered its role of Daniel this summer by my colleague and former grad school classmate Janine. I must confess that from the start the play did not grab me. I read it, corresponded with the director via e-mail, and said I’d be happy to take on any role she needed me to play. Janine has proven herself a very adept director. I had become aware of her skill as an actor when we were classmates at Cal State Fullerton. And From Up Here is just her sort of play. It’s modern, new, edgy. The language is close to what we hear everyday, only better. And the people that inhabit the story are the kind of people we find in our own lives. And they are exactly the kind of people I find difficult to portray. For me, playing the role of Daniel was hard.
    I haven’t pinpointed why. Perhaps he was too close to me—I cook, he cooks, I’m involved with a mother of two children, he was married to a woman with two children...maybe it was the writing. From the standpoint of creating a character, there was nothing about Daniel that stood out for me. Mr. Stanley fairly leapt off the page fully formed. All I’ve had to do is define the basic shape, accentuate the traits that are already there. Daniel was an amorphous lump of rock that even after weeks of rehearsal remained undefined, hidden.
    But gradually, as rehearsals devoted to separate scenes gave way to run-throughs of entire acts and then the entire play, followed by dress rehearsals with all the elements of theatre folded in, I found Daniel. Or maybe he found me. Acting’s that way. You have tools and tricks, talent and technique that you bring to bear on a project and sometimes, most times, you’re still not sure what it is that made it work. But it did start to work. I came to understand the character and in doing so I was able to tell his story, which in the end is all an actor can hope to do. And in every case, telling someone’s story is what the actor must do.

So, that show is over and the process of another is underway. But already I understand that one will be very different from the other. While we were still rehearsing, Janine, having watched us blunder through a particularly bad rehearsal, utterly devoid of heart and commitment, admonished us and then reminded us that good scripts don’t come along every day. And months from now it will be the story of Daniel that is still with me. When last I saw him he wasn’t sure how things were going to turn out. He was clear about the choices he’d made, but the future seemed very uncertain and he was scared. Mr. Stanley’s going to be fine, things will always work out for him.
    Let me be clear, The Man Who Came to Dinner is a good script. Parts of it are great. The reparte between Sheridan Whiteside and his friends is splendid. From a literary standpoint it may even be better than Ms. Flahive’s From Up Here. But I’m not a literary critic or scholar. I’m an actor. And just as there are four kinds of people, there are, for the purposes of this story, four kinds of actors. And I’m the fourth kind. I don’t seek challenges, but when I’m faced with one I’ll rise to the occasion.
_______________
Copyright © 2013 by James Knudsen

Comment box is located below