Two Young Actors in Middletown
Welcome to those of you joining us for the first time, those who have visited the blog before, Welcome Back!
This week we are featuring two actors currently rehearsing in our upcoming production of Will Eno’s ‘Middletown’, directed by Christopher Price. One performer spent his formative years here and continues to grace our stage with his thought provoking performances. The other, “from away,” came for her first play last year, and has continued to enchant us. We are delighted to have them both back for what will be a compelling production.
We asked David Bliss and Brynn Lewallen what performing in live theater means to them and to give us some thoughts on their current experience rehearsing for ‘Middletown’. We know you’ll enjoy their responses.
Bronwen Crothers
‘Mistress of the Blog’
DAVID BLISS
The first time I dipped my toes into the theater world was as a middle schooler. My mother shanghaied me into a mime class with Al Miller in 2008 (give or take a year). If memory serves, it was two or three days of me and three small elementary school kids learning basic miming from Al. Something about that class made me curious and so the next summer I enrolled in The Theater Project’s summer camp production of ‘The Three Musketeers.’ Several years and a B.A. in Theater later I’m still finding myself involved in local productions, most often with The Theater Project.
I think what drew me into theater (and what keeps me there still) is the live storytelling aspect of a production. It allows me to try being genuinely quiet or subdued on stage, which is something you can’t easily do on larger stages, where the audience can sometimes be many yards away.
The other reason I’m still so involved is the people. At The Theater Project especially, I’ve met so many talented, intelligent, and kind-hearted folks at all levels of involvement. I’m also continually surprised and delighted to see how directors like Wendy, Chris and Al can take someone from any background, whether they are professional actors or people who haven’t been in a play since grade school, and help them create an entertaining and impressive show.
‘Middletown’ is a challenging script. It’s funny, in an unexpected way, but also quite sad. I think my favorite aspect of it is how the play seems to lead the audience towards the ideas it’s discussing, but stops just short, giving you the space to find things for yourself. That might sound like a lot of words just to say it’s open-ended, but I think if we succeed in getting the audience to understand the rhythm and personality of this play, the odd patterns and style of the piece will start to make sense.
BRYNN LEWALLEN
Middletown is the first project I've worked on in a long time where I entered the rehearsal room with NO idea what the play was about. I had the feeling that there was something out there, just beyond my grasp, some overall meaning or message that I wasn't quite getting. It's taken working through the play during our rehearsal process-- talking with my castmates and our director, Chris, throwing around ideas, asking ourselves why a certain character feels or acts a certain way, maybe working through three or four potential reasons before we finally hit on one that makes sense-- to finally get to a point where I feel that I sort of know what's going on and what the point of it all is. And at the risk of sounding cliche, isn't that pretty much how life goes? There are times when you know what you're doing and understand exactly what's happening, and there are times when you're just getting through it the best you can.
This play has really shined a light for me on the ways in which we interact with each other, and the idea that not everyone's life is a grand story with a concrete, easy-to-follow plot. Most of us are just going day by day, searching for ways to make connections with each other-- connections that my fellow performers and I have been lucky enough to make through the rehearsal process. It's been a real treat to explore Middletown with this group, and to have discovered and figured things out together.
