First Work on A Perfect Wedding

Over the past couple of weeks, we've begun work in earnest on A Perfect Wedding.

We began with all of the actors choosing a particular area of research that seemed significant to the play, and bringing in presentations on what they discovered. Since we're working as an ensemble, it seems useful to have everyone engaged in research on the play as a whole, and it seems like the information everyone presented enriched our understanding of it. At this stage, none of the actors was focusing specifically on character. For example, there is a character in the play who is a priest, and so one student did research on priests, but we have not yet cast that role. Another student did research on female genital cutting, because the character Djamila in the play announces that she has been circumsized and has had a "ritual deflowering," but he is not the actor playing that character.

One unusual thing about this process, which I'm sure I've already mentioned, is that the actors in the class are choosing the characters they will play based on their own interests; based on which characters they think are most different from them and from whose identities they might learn the most through the process; or whom they might never be asked to play in another context, but with whom they feel a particular affinity for some reason other than surface assumptions (that is, an actor who is a woman may have an interest in playing a male character who shares her passion for nature and the outdoors, but would never be allowed to play that character in a different context).

This part of the process may be jarring for audience members who are used to the idea that actors must always look like the characters they are playing; the standard of "believability" is key in our understanding of how theater works, most of the time. But we are hoping that because of this extended research process into which we are inviting outside members of the community, and because the play lends itself nicely to ideas of defying expectations, people will be able to put aside that expectation and think in terms of the value of actors working against their supposed "types." How can this help us and audiences think in terms of finding surprising similarities with other people, while also appreciating the attempt to bridge the gaps raised by difference? (See this blog entry from last year's version of this class for some of the inspiration for this idea).

After the research presentations, the students prepared scenes from the play so that we could start talking about their initial perceptions of these characters. After they finish compiling and performing their character research, the idea is that their understanding of the characters will probably change drastically, and they will make different choices based on interviews, feedback from interviewees, and other research. We also used Viewpoints to play around with their initial understandings, and were fascinated by how just changing the physical layout of the scene changed their impressions.

I'll use one of the scenes as an example. In the play, there is a young couple, Meridee and Amadou, who are engaged to be married; the beginning of the first act entails the leadup to what is supposed to be their wedding. Amadou's parents, Djamila and Vikram, arrive sometime through the first act, and the actor who is playing Djamila performed this scene for the class with help from someone not in the class who played Vikram. Essentially, this scene represents the first meeting of the young couple's parents. But the scene is immediately surprising, as Vikram right away begins to discuss women's bodies and what he finds or does not find attractive. Eventually, Djamila reveals that she has been through a ritual deflowering and a circumcision. Vikram becomes uncomfortable, and Djamila brings up the fact that he was allowed to talk about women's bodies all he wanted - as he says "We are not secret people with things to hide!" - but he tells her to be quiet when she begins talking about her own experience.

This scene raises so many questions that will be significant to our production, and so many concerns that could lead to really valuable community discussions, I think. First, the actor playing Djamila is not Indian, has not had a ritual deflowering or a circumcision; this is, of course, a major difference. We also have discussed the possibility that she was raised in some branch of Islam. But this is a sensitive issue that we'll be representing on stage, and the question of perceptions and misperceptions of Muslim women is raised. We also can use this as an opportunity to learn about the history of Islam in India, and the difference between civil law and Islamic law for members of the Muslim faith. For a small part of the play, these are bigger questions that can extend beyond the scope of our work, but what we learn should inform our choices here.

In addition to this specific question about identity, the two biggest issues that arose for me were about gender: women and their bodies; and what is or is not appropriate to discuss in public, and why - what is considered appropriate and "normal" and therefore okay for public disclosure, and what is supposed to remain secret. The question of gender, what is or is not "normal," and what is appropriate for public conversation is raised again and again in the play, and because it ultimately deals with marriage this is incredibly significant. What kinds of physical relationships are sanctioned by social convention, what kinds of physical processes get celebrated in public, and who determines what is and is not okay to discuss?

One of the most compelling things that came out of this early rehearsal, for me, was related to gender and staging choices. The first time the actors staged the scene, Djamila and Vikram stayed together, and their argument about these things seemed to be a more personal marital dispute. The second time, I had them choose a different spatial relationship, and we added the other characters who are present onstage - all male - into the scene. The actors chose a configuration in which all of the men stood together with Vikram in the middle, and Djamila was alone on the other side of the stage. The scene then became a conversation among the men about women's bodies, and there was a definite "boys club" process happening, in which they all played off and reacted to and tried to impress each other, while Djamila became increasingly uncomfortable off on her own. We aren't sure what choice we will make in production, but we're hoping that this research and discussion process will inform what we ultimately choose. Nonetheless, it was very exciting to see how the physical form onstage automatically affected how the actors behaved and the meaning of the scene.

We worked on three other scenes in class: one pivotal scene in which the group of couples who are gathered at the beginning get lost in the woods and their relationships get all thrown into chaos by this new natural environment outside of the expectations of civilazation; another scene in which two of the four Radical Faeries talk about the possibilities for turning the planned wedding into a funeral; and another monologue in which Willie, a young son of Djamila and Vikram, launches into a diatribe against marriage - another moment about gender and appropriate conversation. But I'm fully aware that I have been the dominant voice on this blog all semester ... I'm waiting for the students to join in the discussion and post their own initial impressions of these characters and scenes, so I'll leave it to them for now.

If you'd like to read the scene of which I was writing above and give us your thoughts, you can find the play here. The scene is about two-thirds of the way through the first act, I think, and I recommend beginning with Edmund's line that starts "The main thing in love, I think, is trust ..."