In Tandem Theatre has opened the final program of its ‘08/’09 season as it presents Romantic Fools--Rich Orloff’s series of romantic shorts. Ryan Schabach (who recently appeared in Next Act’s Ears On A Beatle) and Georgina McKee (originally from Madison)star in the show directed by In Tandem Co-Founder Jane Flieller. I had a chance to sit down and talk with them about the show a couple of weeks ago on the 17th . . . her are some more excerpts from the transcripts of that conversation. This portion of the conversation opens with Jane talking about handling the very real, human edge of light comedy with numerous characters:
Jane Flieller: These guys [McKee and Schabach] jumped right in on a feeling of playfulness without being goofy. You can take a script like this and go way over the top. But we don’t need to go there, because these people are real. And they ARE people who are a little extreme, but . . . real life is in there.
Me: Had you put a lot of thought into the ages of individual characters within each sketch? Is there any generational sort of thing going on here?
Ryan Schabach: No … the audience is looking at you the way they perceive your age and you can’t necessarily hide that. And the author doesn’t give any reference to like . . . this is them 40 years into marriage. And we don’t have THOSE kinds of opportunities.
Jane: I think it’s written so strongly that the audience is going to take away from it wherever they are in their life. If you’re a 40 year old married man sitting next to a 20 year old college kid, you’re both going to enjoy the show, but you’re going to get a completely different take on it. And it attracts the kind of audience that In Tandem likes to attract, which is all over the board.
MAINTAINING THE ENERGY
Me: And . . . how are rehearsals going with respect to the show. You’ve got . . . is it 90 minutes with no intermission?
Jane: There IS an intermission. The first act is about 50-55 [min] . . . and the second act is probably about 40 [min.] Depending on if they screw-up.
Laughter.
Me: As far as the rhythm there . . .
Laughter.
Me: You’ve got to start somewhere and end somewhere and you’ve got all these places to go in between . . . how is the rhythm of that working right now.
Ryan: We’re still discovering that . . . we DO step out of it into these fantasy roles. And everything builds into the next . . . they are layering on top of each other and there’s that loose thread that connects them all the way through this romantic journey and keeps that tie together.
Me: It sounds like it could be exhausting.
Georgina McKee: Yeah.
Jane: It doesn’t stop.
Georgina: It move like a freight train. It really, really does. We come out of the gate running. Especially after yesterday where we choreographed the beginning of the second act and now the beginning of the second act is just as physical and intense. The first two scenes of the first act are very physical and very fast-paced and you never stop moving and then . . . the second act starts that way too it’s really a matter of keeping up. And Ryan’s the same, we’re still at that point where we’re just starting to put everything together and trying real hard not to think really hard about what comes next and just go with the flow and keep it all moving.
Ryan: There are plays where you have moments of drop-off. In Shakespeare you have drop-offs where you decide to make this moment precious and of course, nobody wants that moment to be so precious that you lose the audience, but [here] I don’t think we have a single moment that even allowed to be precious. And as many witty banters that happen . . . like with [the] Who’s On First [vaudevillian orgy scene] . . . everything is funny. It’s a word play. There’s no moment to reflect on the preciousness of this moment. There’s no having a moment where you say, “oh, that’s Yorick, I remember him . . .” Everything pushes to the next thing.
Georgina: No reflection.
BEGINNING AND ENDING A SEASON WITH BREAKNECK COMEDY
Me: It sounds really dense. You’re moving from one line to the next.
Jane: No, we’re just ALL really dense. . .
Laughter.
Me: But is this like All The Great Books? [The fast-paced light comedy written by The Reduced Shakespeare Company that opened In Tandem’s season.]
Ryan: That’s interesting.
Jane: No, because All The Great Books is literally timed to a stopwatch. And the whole point is—we’ve got 90 minutes to get through these things. Where as this is about . . . there’s no time limit. But we DO need to get through this stuff to get from Point A to Point B—First Date to First Marriage. We need to plow through all the dating and romance . . . carp that comes up. Otherwise it would be a pretty boring play. So I would say that it’s fast-paced like All The Great Books, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. [To Ryan] You’re familiar with . . . you’ve done [The Complete Works of William] Shakes [peare—also written by the Reduced Shakespeare company.]
Ryan: Yeah. I wonder if both [Orloff and Reduced Shakespeare] had the same inception and said, “I want to write a play. The skeleton will be . . .”
Jane: You take the formula and what kind of packaging are you wrapping it in? I would say in as much as it’s fast-paced and utilizes the same actors to play different characters, but it’s a whole different kind of comedy.
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