My Second Attempt at Directing at USC

The scene I chose to direct was Act Two, Scene Three from Lost in Yonkers by Neil Simon. I was attracted to this particular scene because of its weight and significance as a scene to the whole play; this one scene changes and somewhat reverses the relationship of Bella and Grandma. There are many layers to the scene to explore because of the complex relationship of mother and daughter. I found the main theme of the scene to be universal to every mother and daughter relationship: the daughter has to stand up for who she is even though the mother had a different vision of who the daughter is and will become. The predominant element in the scene is character, according to Ball's terms. The relationship of Bella and Grandma and their conflicting interests of who Bella is drives the scene. The event that changes within the scene is when Bella actually shows her mother the five thousand dollars. Grandma is skeptical of all Bella's stories and rants because she believes she is truly a child. Once Bella shows Grandma the five thousand dollars, Grandma realizes that Bella's life is real and not just a dream or made up stories. This event changes the way Grandma sees Bella.

I held auditions for casting using lacasting.com on two days. It was an interesting and eye opening experience that I think all actors should do to see what its like on the other side. I had never held any sort of auditions before so I was not as prepared as I should have been. Katy Reid helped me on the first day which was a great way to start off. It was nice to have someone to talk to about what we saw, liked, did not like, etc. Katy and I liked Jodi as Bella because she did not play “child” like most of the women, who were older, who came in on that day. It was hard to give character descriptions of Bella because no one had read the play before. Jodi seemed to understand the role and take the character in as her own and not necessarily act as a child. Even from her first audition, we could tell that she understood Bella as a woman and a child. The next day of auditions Katy could not help me, so I had to read and pay attention to the actresses. I have learned that this is not a good idea because it is hard to read and pay attention to how the actresses are handling the material. Rebecca first read for Bella because she had submitted herself for that role, but I had a strong feeling that she would make a good Grandma. I will admit that partially it was due to her look as an older woman with glasses because everyone who had come in looked like they were in their 20s, but nevertheless I wanted to see if she could understand the play and the character. I asked her to read for Grandma and her first read-through was not that great. I talked to her about the character and then it seemed as if something clicked and the second time she read was better. I knew it would be a challenge so I wanted to see how it would go. I was nervous because she is much older than me.

Our first couple of rehearsals were just read-throughs and asking questions to dive into the text deeper. I did not want to start blocking until Jodi and Rebecca fully read the play and understood the characters and situations. I asked both actresses to do research on their characters and create a backstory. Rebecca did a lot of research on German history around the 1800s to figure out what political rallies were happening in which Grandma's dad was trampled to death and her foot was broken. We talked a lot about why Grandma is so emotionally clamped and her personal views of each family member. Jodi did some research on mental, emotional, and physical abuse. She also did some research on mentally challenged illnesses and found some correlation between Bella and Lenny from Of Mice and Men. The following rehearsals were discussions over what they found and asking questions to really understand the situation and why each character believes what they believe about the nature of Bella.

The next rehearsal after the discussions and questions was a whole rehearsal devoted to verbs. Both actresses did not understand what I meant by verbs so we spent a whole rehearsal talking about them and what their verbs were for the scene. I brought Ball's book to the rehearsal to give them some ideas for verbs and also to help them understand what having a verb means. I felt that they still were not understanding so I read them a list of the many verbs he provided and told them to first write down any that they think pertain to their character. We built their verbs upon this first list.

The key verb for Bella is that she wants to convince her mother that she is a woman. We made her overall verb very broad so that her smaller verbs for her lines would all be subsets of how to convince her mother that she is a woman. Some of the smaller verbs we came up with are to earn respect, to figure out a solution, to persuade, to hurt, and to justify Bella's actions to her mother. Bella tries to make her mother understand that she knows what it is like to be a woman and she is in fact a woman. The key verb for Grandma is to manipulate Bella to stay a child. The broad verb manipulate allows for smaller verbs under the same category to be used to help her stick to her intention. Some of Grandma's smaller verbs are to preserve Bella's innocence, to belittle, to get even, to suppress until she cannot suppress her feelings anymore, to retain what is familiar to her, to crush, and to persuade Bella to stay a child. Grandma uses her tactics to make Bella realize that she is only a child and always will be a child.

The next rehearsals were dedicated to blocking, re-blocking, and exploring the verbs of the scene on their feet. We had an ongoing dialogue with the text and continued to find out more about the plot and characters as we were blocking and understanding the verbs. The most important emotional moment in the scene is when Bella reveals that she has done many things with boys in the past behind her mother's back. We kept talking about how hard it is to say these things to your mother and why Bella would finally reveal everything in order to prove she knows what these “adult” things are supposed to be. We also talked about Grandma's reaction to what is being said and concluded that Grandma does not believe a word out of Bella's mouth until Bella shows her the money. We achieved the emotional moment at the second to last rehearsal and in the performance. I had to work with the actresses a lot and ask a lot of questions to get them to understand their verbs for this emotional moment.

The scene was fairly easy to stage because the scene is more about their relationship and Bella's frustration that her mother cannot realize she is a woman. The most difficult moment to stage was actually all of Bella's attempted exits. It was hard to stage because Jodi at first did not understand fully why she would get up at the first time she gets up to leave at “I don't want to be your responsibility. Then maybe you won't be so mean to me.” After talking about her verbs she understood that it was out of frustration of not getting through to her mother that she wanted to get up to leave. We achieved this at the second blocking rehearsal. I had to keep reminding her to really get up and leave until something stops her. One rehearsal she went all the way out the door until she came back after what Grandma said.

If I were to stage the scene again, the first thing I would do is set the audience up in two rows so they are not too far out from the scene. I was in such a rush to get things organized that I did not realize that the audience did not make two rows until the scene started. I would take more time to breathe and make sure everything is how I want it before I start. I would also spend more time talking about Grandma's character and why she is so emotionally stoic until the end of the scene. I think Rebecca did a great job, but I felt that she did not fully understand the character of Grandma. I would also have asked the actresses to have their lines memorized sooner and put my foot down sooner to actually have them off book.