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Dec. 21st, 2003
Ho. Lee. Shit..
Dec. 21st, 2003 11:19 pmA very interesting rehearsal today. As in the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times." Susan McCallum, the actress who's been playing the Nurse in R&J, Emilia in Othello, the Countess in All's Well That Ends Well, and a couple of other roles....flipped out. Completely lost it, as in she is fired, she will not be back, and she vomited her magazine rack of issues onto all of us in the process. We had a runthrough for time starting at the top of rehearsal, which naturally was slowed down because instead of holding her script in her hand, which was allowed and which would've facilitated Julie's estimation of the show for time, she sweated every line out and every scene of hers took forever. Then she made a big fuss of pulling Julie aside and asking her to ask us not to knit or go over our lines or basically do anything other than sit there blankly. It was just all too distracting. (And all this while the studio above us was apparently sponsoring a WWF match with elephants, because the banging and the noise above us was unbelievable. Yes, really. It even distracted me, and I have the concentration of a diamond cutter. Well, except during sex. But I digress...)
Anyway, after the runthrough Julie was saying she needed to schedule a Monday night rehearsal and Useless Actress flipped out. "I have an acting class!" Julie asked if she could change it or whatever, and Useless goes off on this unbelievable tangent about how she hasn't gotten what she's needed and the rest of us were ignorant and unprofessional and how Julie was a terrible director and...the level of anger was insane. I honestly thought she needed medication of some kind. I started smiling at one point and she started screaming at me and I said "I've never worked with anyone who needs the kind of hand-holding you do. And that's really your problem--you need to improve your concentration." Oh my God. Screaming. "You think I'm not good enough!!" "No--I think you need to improve your concentration. It's a skill, like any other." Screaming, insults, nasty remarks. She started going off on one of our younger actress who has a tendency to pull upstage, with which I deal very directly and immediately by literally yanking her downstage in our Twelfth Night scene. But see, that's too direct and proactive for Susan. She lets it build and then exploded at poor Tracy, saying she will NOT be upstaged and how DARE someone try to upstage her by forcing her to say her lines to upstage. Apparently Tracy committed to mortal sin of doing her warmups in the rehearsal space!!!! In front of Susan!! I know, the hubris! Apparently this offended Susan somehow, and threw her off, and God knows we can't have THAT happen. Because you know, she's so rock-bottom solid otherwise.
(Just to give y'all some context, Susan has consistently sucked on her lines for awhile now. She is a decent actress, and I'm sorry she flipped out and therefore got fired, but her work as the Nurse pretty much sucked. The Nurse's whole monologue just stymied her--honey, it's just not that difficult. The Nurse is a flake and is rambling about a minor incident in Juliet's infancy. Stop over-motivating shit. Maybe she was learning disabled or something--she didn't get very basic, simple things about Shakespeare, and human nature. Maybe you DO need that acting class.)
Drinks. Several drinks afterward. She's fired, and will not be rehired, and I felt terrible for Julie. This person's anger was just so out of proportion--she kept screaming--I think there was a lot going on there, like pathologically low self-esteem and possibly substance abuse. Julie's taking over most of her stuff, including the Nurse scenes (although we're cutting one). Julie pointed out after how flushed I was--I looked in the mirror and my chest and neck were bright red. Julie said she thought I was having a heart attack. It's funny, because as angry as I was, I dealt with this psycho c---'s yelling at us fairly calmly. I didn't even get mad until after she'd left. Huh. Flushed red chest while maintaining a level voice--my WASP heritage. Ve vill stay calm!!
Fucking loser actors. So many of us are so pathetic. Leave your issues at home--learn your lines and hit your marks, or don't take the job. Fucking losers.
Anyway, after the runthrough Julie was saying she needed to schedule a Monday night rehearsal and Useless Actress flipped out. "I have an acting class!" Julie asked if she could change it or whatever, and Useless goes off on this unbelievable tangent about how she hasn't gotten what she's needed and the rest of us were ignorant and unprofessional and how Julie was a terrible director and...the level of anger was insane. I honestly thought she needed medication of some kind. I started smiling at one point and she started screaming at me and I said "I've never worked with anyone who needs the kind of hand-holding you do. And that's really your problem--you need to improve your concentration." Oh my God. Screaming. "You think I'm not good enough!!" "No--I think you need to improve your concentration. It's a skill, like any other." Screaming, insults, nasty remarks. She started going off on one of our younger actress who has a tendency to pull upstage, with which I deal very directly and immediately by literally yanking her downstage in our Twelfth Night scene. But see, that's too direct and proactive for Susan. She lets it build and then exploded at poor Tracy, saying she will NOT be upstaged and how DARE someone try to upstage her by forcing her to say her lines to upstage. Apparently Tracy committed to mortal sin of doing her warmups in the rehearsal space!!!! In front of Susan!! I know, the hubris! Apparently this offended Susan somehow, and threw her off, and God knows we can't have THAT happen. Because you know, she's so rock-bottom solid otherwise.
(Just to give y'all some context, Susan has consistently sucked on her lines for awhile now. She is a decent actress, and I'm sorry she flipped out and therefore got fired, but her work as the Nurse pretty much sucked. The Nurse's whole monologue just stymied her--honey, it's just not that difficult. The Nurse is a flake and is rambling about a minor incident in Juliet's infancy. Stop over-motivating shit. Maybe she was learning disabled or something--she didn't get very basic, simple things about Shakespeare, and human nature. Maybe you DO need that acting class.)
Drinks. Several drinks afterward. She's fired, and will not be rehired, and I felt terrible for Julie. This person's anger was just so out of proportion--she kept screaming--I think there was a lot going on there, like pathologically low self-esteem and possibly substance abuse. Julie's taking over most of her stuff, including the Nurse scenes (although we're cutting one). Julie pointed out after how flushed I was--I looked in the mirror and my chest and neck were bright red. Julie said she thought I was having a heart attack. It's funny, because as angry as I was, I dealt with this psycho c---'s yelling at us fairly calmly. I didn't even get mad until after she'd left. Huh. Flushed red chest while maintaining a level voice--my WASP heritage. Ve vill stay calm!!
Fucking loser actors. So many of us are so pathetic. Leave your issues at home--learn your lines and hit your marks, or don't take the job. Fucking losers.