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The other Strange Devices cast

posted by Megan Wygant on Thu, Apr 1, 2010
in Our shows

How many of you saw the animated film production of Coraline?

I ask because I very much had a similar experience to the title character yesterday.

Only without the buttons

And with Champagne.

So, in other words, a significantly better experience than Gaiman’s hero ('though I wouldn’t mind having the cat come for a visit).

You see, every production at Berkeley Rep is fully understudied — every actor has a double, charged with learning the lines, memorizing the blocking, and generally taking it upon themselves to prepare so that if a member of the cast falls ill (it happens), the show will still go on. These understudies are actors that you might have seen in local productions elsewhere. They tend to be newer to acting than the people they’re understudying, but they are committed, driven, and talented.

The understudies sit in on early production rehearsals, but their work begins in earnest once the show has opened. They have unlimited privileges to attend the show, and most attend night after night, absorbing nuances and mannerisms, dialect and intonations. They also gather once a week to rehearse the show together, on the stage where they might, someday, perform.

The group for Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West was quickly dubbed the "wunderstudies" — they arrived for their first rehearsal either completely (or very nearly) off-book, with much of the blocking already memorized. Quite literally from day one, any one of them was ready to go on, should it be required. Luckily, of course, their services weren't required, but all that preparation, we felt, shouldn't go un-used.

Yesterday, in lieu of the final understudy rehearsal, Berkeley Rep staff attended the understudy performance: the entirety of Strange Devices, including lights, sound, videos, you named it — it happened. (The lone exception from the full experience was costumes, as there wasn't enough time to have everything clean and ready before the evening performance — but it also meant that, for the first time, the wardrobe crew got to see the show from the audience).

And this is where the Coraline nature of things comes in: the set was the same, the staging was the same — even gestures and mannerisms that you might have thought were a matter of personal choice often were identical. And yet, the experience was completely different. These were literally different people up on stage:  Rebecca Pingree's Isabel Hewlett or Timothy Redmond's Farsari aren't quite the same people as Kate Eastwood Norris' Isabel and Bruce McKenzie's Farsari, even though both of versions are fully believable, engaging, entertaining options for who Isabel and Farsari could be.

Watching this other cast drove home the fact that this now-world premiere play will go out into the world on its own, soon, and it will have a life separate from Berkeley Rep — and even from the actors who originated these roles, some of whom have been involved with the play since the workshop process. Shawn Oda gave a great speech that I'd always thought was animated by the unique alchemy of Naomi Iizuka's words and Teresa Lim's acting choices; it was wonderful to watch it also take flight with a different actress delivering the lines. Derek Fisher made me laugh for different reasons than Danny Wolohan does when he plays Edmund Hewlett, but there were still laughs, and still in the same place, even though they were brought about for different reasons. Steve Hu remains as sexily enigmatic as Hiro as Johnny Wu does, and yet, if you were to sit down and have a cocktail with both of them, their motivations would be completely different.

All that to say, the wunderstudies totally lived up to their name. It was a great performance, and, since the actual show closes in a little over a week, it served as both opening and closing night (that's where the Champagne comes in — chilled and waiting in the green room, popped and poured as the exuberant cast came bursting up the stairs).

All in all, it was one of those great afternoons at Berkeley Rep that you wouldn't get from a non-theatre job. Have I mentioned I really like working here?