I've been invited to be an actress again in different productions and plays over these past two years which is something that I love to do, and it's been bringing back so many memories. When I first moved to New York it was to be an actress, and at that point in time I had wanted to be an actress for most of my life since the time I was very young. Over the years I've found that though I love acting, there are so many parts of a creative life that I enjoy, and so I go wherever I feel the most enjoyment, whether it be writing, acting, singing, dancing, performance art, collaborative events, producing, curating, or some of the projects that I'm working on now and have been developing over the past fifteen years that have to do with bringing arts education and enrichment opportunities to youth and adults and communities.
Just recently I was asked to be a part of a collaborative project that will be produced in the next few months, and the nature of the performance and how the rest of the group and I are working together to develop it reminded me of something that happened a number of years ago when I was still relatively new to the New York theatre world. From time to time in these pages I've been writing a bit of my own personal New York history, at the request of several people who have heard some of the stories and some parts of my history and want to know more. It's a strange thing to think that my life is something that would be interesting to anyone to read about, but the truth is that I have encountered some of the greatest Artists and performers of the 20th century and beyond in one form or another during the time that I was a fledgling just beginning to try my own wings in one of the greatest cities in the world.
When I was still in college, I was invited to audition for a play by Tennessee Williams titled "The Two Character Play". The Director had seen me in other plays, and she had also thought that casting me opposite one of my classmates in this play would work beautifully because the play was about a brother and sister who have a very symbiotic relationship and we were already close friends who looked very much alike. I am a Tennessee Williams fan, and at times when I'm asked I tell people that he's my favorite playwright of all time. There are other playwrights who I love, but Tennessee Williams uses language time and time again and explores so many different genres and styles that I can read his plays and act in them over and over again and always feel like I'm discovering something exciting and new. "The Two Character Play" was a new one for me, and I was thrilled at the opportunity to work on it, and somehow or other I had already met someone who knew about this play, a professional Director and theatre critic who offered to come to the performance and write about it.
We began our rehearsals and it was one of the most difficult things I had done to that date. The play itself was written in a style that was new to me in Tennessee Williams' work, having been premiered in the late 1960's. The author described it as "My most beautiful play since Streetcar, the very heart of my life," and I can attest that it is lovely. It has a lyrical flow to it, the beauty of words that seem to sing in poetry that is always my experience of Tennessee Williams' work, but the subject matter, though seemingly very simple in structure, is so deeply haunting and riveting that it asks the Actors to go deeper within their own experiences than sometimes we are ready and willing to go.
The play tells the story of a brother and sister, but in some ways it could almost be the story of two halves of one self. There is a symbiosis of their experience of life and of each other, and a need to have the support of each other to survive and continue moving onward in life. Rehearsing that play asked something of me that I wasn't prepared for, but that I embraced as an actress as a way to grow in my craft. Performing in that play was one of the highlights of my life, while also being one of the most physically and emotionally exhausting yet cathartic experiences I had up to that point.
The theater critic who came to see the show wrote a rave review, and told me that in his experience of seeing nearly every performance of so many of Tennessee Williams' plays over the years, he had never seen anyone who understood this play in the way that I did. He sent me a copy of the review of the original New York City performance which closed after on a few short weeks, and wrote that if I had been in that original cast and been a part of the production, the play would have been recognized for the masterpiece it is. Of course these words meant so much to me at that time, as an actress just starting out, and that play has remained in my memory as a moment in time when I was able to rise to an occasion far beyond my own understanding.
About a year after that, when I was living in New York City after college and working with the Circle Repertory Company, I came across a manuscript in the literary office that was unmarked and unsigned. I had offered to help clean up the office and read through and catalogue old scripts, and between and behind some of the bound plays I found some loose pages that in my still very limited experience seemed like they bore the marks of my favorite playwright. It was a short play that was written in a style that was reminiscent of Kabuki theater, with two main characters and another who acted as narrator. The two characters, though married and not brother and sister, seemed in some ways to be interacting like the brother and sister of "The Two Character Play". I contacted the theater critic who had given me such a rave review for that play when I was still in college, and shared a copy of this unidentified play with him. He agreed and confirmed that what I had thought was most probably true, and he had the background information to share that made it all the more probable. Tennessee Williams had done some work with Circle Repertory in its early years in the 1960's and early 1970's, and this play was of a style that he was experimenting with during that time.
Because of the unknown nature of the play and also the fact that at that time especially it was very difficult to get approval to do any Tennessee Williams play, even those that had been seen and done many times before, the theater critic and Tennessee Williams expert contacted the necessary people to ask if we could do this play in any way. We were allowed the opportunity to do a reading for a private audience, we could not publicize it and we could not say for a fact what we thought it was. But that was a gift in itself, and the theater critic who was also a Director, set up a reading at the Ensemble Studio Theatre summer session in the Poconos for a very small and very select private audience. He cast someone opposite me who had been an Actor in New York City for many years and had performed in premiers of several prestigious plays including those of Tennessee Williams, and it turned out that he was the father of someone I had gone to college with. That experience was one to remember forever, and that play and being a part of it were life changing.
I suppose that these memories and times that I've had are extraordinary, but that was just just the way life was in New York at that time. Friends have described it at times as the Golden Years, and in some ways I think that's true. We were still very young and wide eyed ourselves, and in a beautiful way we were able to connect with those who had gone before us. Performing in "The Two Character Play" was challenging and difficult, but I didn't feel as if I had to follow in anyone else's shoes and because of that I was able to go deeply into the character and discover her for myself and as a part of myself which is one of the greatest joys of acting. Discovering a play that was most likely a draft of a masterpiece hidden in a bookshelf was a rare find of a treasure, but that's the kind of thing that was possible if you worked at the Circle Repertory Company and offered to read scripts in the Literary Department as I did. There were so many extraordinary people I met in those years and so many extraordinary things we did together. Life in New York City was always an adventure, and every moment of every day offered something new.
"The Two Character Play"
Tennessee Williams
Published 1969
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
