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Acting Naturally
Richard's Writings > Acting Naturally > Poetry Reading
Synopsis of Poetry Reading
This was the world premier of a new work, which means that the original cast will be forever immortalized in theater lore. Samuel French and Company, the theater world's principle purveyor of scripts for plays and musicals, details in their catalog the original performance date, location, company and cast. I am credited with "creating" the character of Fenton. Cool.
Excerpt from Poetry Reading
We were thrilled and relieved to hear the audience laughing with delight on Opening Night, catching hold of every little bit of humor throughout the whole two hours of the performance. But then, the next night, a stormy Saturday, the audience was silent as a tomb, and we began to wonder: "Is it us? Does the play work?"We concluded that the audience was dead, and that we would have to audition audiences from now on to make sure only the lively ones got in. As the shows went along, we began to grow with confidence in the play. It does work. It is funny, after all (in a quirky way). And each night we would spin a different bit of special magic to our roles, and see how it was received, and generally it was received very well.
The lead actors deserve all the credit for mining the humor out of this stony script and bringing it to life in unexpected ways. All three were excellent.