Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Directed by Anne Lewis

What a difficult and humbling experience this turned out to be. I have known (and taught) this play for forty years. I was quite sure Willie Loman was a role I could do quite simply and directly. But teaching a play is one thing; understanding (intellectually) is another; but playing a role--inhabiting a character this complex turned out to be more than I had bargained for.

I knew this man. My father had been a salesman, and an extremely good one. His territory was sold out from under him when Tracy and Avery was taken over by another company and my father found himself facing circumstances not unlike Willie's. And the household I grew up in was one that believed in the American Dream. My parents raised children who aspired to excel in everything. And no one took greater pride in my boyhood accomplishments than my father. Unlike Willie Loman, my father left the road, stayed homeand changed careers, teaching himself television repair and eventually working as a superb painter and paper hanger. The Turney family had a much happier outcome than the Loman's, but I knew this man. I knew his explosive temper, that grew out of displaced frustrations. And looking back with adult eyes, no doubt, some of Willie's guilt as well. And working for the last forty years as an actor, I know well the frustrations of being in a workplace that is not in one's control. And though, like my father I have avoided some of Willie's self-destructive behaviors, I am human enough to understand that it is only by the grace of God, I went not there. It didn't hurt that I had raised a son in his late twenties and knew the joys, pride and helplessness and love of a father. Though I didn't do it intentionally, I gained about twenty pounds in the rehearsal process, self-medicating with comfort foods and turning unconsciously into the walrus specified by the script.

And I knew the salesman storyteller. Papa was truly a natural. While his ancestry was not Irish, he nonetheless was gifted with blarney and had a poet's instinct for colorful words. He could weave and embellish a story worthy of a Celtic bard.

So getting into Willie's skin was a traumatic journey and a revelatory. It was also considerably more difficult technically than I imagined. I knew so many of the famous lines and I knew (or thought I knew) the arc of the character, so I approached the rehearsal period as I approach almost every rehearsal period: familiar with the script, but without having memorized every detail. I do this because I find it helpful for me to learn the text as I discover what the particular production demands. Memorization of a script involves not just learning the words, but the reasons for using the specific words (specificity is my favorite concept for teaching acting) and the actions that go with them. This is a more complicated process than "rote" memorization and involves what Stanislavsky calls "muscle memory," and a great deal more--come take a class with me when there's time. When I come into a rehearsal totally memorized, I find it more difficult to remain open minded. If I have done the work of analyzing the text well enough to have it memorized, I think I have mastered the thing--not always the case. So it came as a huge surprise to me that this text was very difficult to remember on the fly. Willie's mind is so disordered that it literally jumps from place to place sometimes in mid-sentence--almost always mid-thought. There is a sort of crack-logic in it all, but finding the specific places in the text where the thought jumps to the next proved to be a nearly disabling and certainly humbling task. Dear Anne Lewis was remarkably patient as I grew more and more frustrated with my inability to remember lines I had just gone over. The frustration and the insecurity it bred were useful in developing the character, but painful to endure.

Through it all, Anne Lewis was there to ride herd and give much needed feedback. She brought special family oriented insights to the project that gave this production a depth and richness that was not lost on the audiences.

Will Neuert's set was an homage to Mielziner's original adapted to the exigencies of the Labuda proscenium/thrust. He built two ingenious elevator contraptions so the boys could disappear from their beds on the upper level of the set without descending on stairs in view of parts of the audience. I didn't appreciate it until I saw some of the scratch video of the production. Truly a beautiful--and apt--space for this produciton.

Sam Fleming's clothes were a great help as well. She wanted Willie's clothes to be as broken down as the man himself, so she let me wear the new suit she bought all through the rehearsal process and even insisited that I throw it in a heap between rehearsals. I had to remember NOT to hang up my costume, a traumatic experience in itself.

The most joyous part of all this was the fine supporting cast. Undergraduates all, but of the highest quality.