In the best plays, the “suspension of disbelief” is produced involuntarily. Some theatergoers may work to subdue the natural, incredulous impulse—“that’s just fake blood,” “she’s not really dead,” “he’s ACTING,”—but, ultimately, it is the show’s responsibility to make an audience suspend its disbelief. When we go to a play, we want to immerse ourselves in the characters—to buy into an illusion we all know is patently false.
The theater company Hudson Warehouse has gotten and will continue to get audiences to do exactly this with Euripides’ The Trojan Women in June, Rostand’s Cyrano in July and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in August. Each weekend, these plays will work to make hundreds of people forget that they are at a play, and to therefore believe the joys, pains and tribulations of the invented people we call characters.
Yet this blog, however diminutive its scope and limited its ambition, will work against this goal. Through anecdotes, stories and interviews, I, along with fellow Production Assistant and old friend David Martin, will explore what the show will try to get you to forget. We’ll ask our actors what they really think about the people they pretend to be, reveal our director’s manipulation of ancient scripts, and, even, divulge our secret recipe for fake vomit.
So—whoever, if anyone, is out there—sit back and enjoy, gently to hear, kindly to judge, a blog about our play.
--Jeff Stein
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