The lights in the theatre slowly dim to complete darkness; the audience is brimming with anticipation. The still silence is suddenly broken by what sounds like a full chorus, all singing in unison on a single chord, along with a flood of lights from above the stage. The lights reveal a single figure with a bushy Santa Clause-style beard who is dressed in tux, top hat, and carrying a silver platter with a solitary champagne bottle on it.
As the Russian opera continues, now with a solo male voice, the old figure stumbles toward a portrait on the left side of the stage. As the music and lights slowly change, different characters enter, all of them in Victorian aristocratic garb. After all seven characters grace the stage with their entrances; the lights dim to near darkness.
Intrigue grips the crowd…anticipation. Someone appears from behind a curtain on the right side of the stage, he looks excruciatingly different from the rest of the cast. As he shuffles onto the stage he stops and turns toward the audience, the light illuminating on his menacing face. His face is startling, speckled with dirt, blood, and a beard. The clothes on his back are tattered, worn, and look like they have been soaked in the mud outside a butcher shop. The script refers to him as simply “The Tramp.” I call him Gustav, and he is my part in the play.
The play I’m referring to is a one-act original play, based off of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Anton Chekhov was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician. He is as good at writing short stories as Arnold Schwarzenegger is at blowing stuff up. The one-act play in which I played the Tramp is titled The Blood Cherry, and it is similar to the short play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The similarity lies in the way that both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and The Blood Cherry take minor characters out of larger works and expand upon the characters, giving them a back-story. The character of the Tramp was my most challenging acting part so far; because of the way the Tramp tells his murderous tale – THROUGH A FREAKIN’ TWELVE MINUTE MONOLOGUE!!!
Leading up to performance I had as much free time as Bill Gates did back when he actually did work. About two weeks before the performance I rehearsed nearly everyday, with the average rehearsal time running around six hours. I felt that I would have had more free time if I took up something easy like rocket science, or getting a major re-haul of America’s healthcare system through the United States Congress. Yet the amount of time and money I put into the play is miniscule compared to what my director put into it; a man who is possibly one of the most interesting people I have met...and out of respect for his wishes, I will not be writing about in this blog.
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