8477/21396
I had my first anxiety dream about Educating Rita last night and then, this afternoon, the first rehearsal. We read through the play, stopping to discuss what we felt was going on and what was motivating the characters in each scene. It's a subtly shifting dynamic and it's tricky to work out everything that's driving the relationship. It's going to be a lot of fun working this out together.
Frank, who I am playing, is full of flaws and trapped in his room and his world of academia, which initially seems wondrous to Rita, but she outgrows it. He knows from the start that this will happen, initially tries to get her to move on, but then takes on the tragedy of his destiny.
The play still very much holds together, even though it is very eighties, but the distance of 45 years, I think, makes Frank a less likeable character (and he wasn't all that likeable in the first place). Back then I am not sure an audience would really have totally looked down on Frank for being in a relationship with a former student (though he does qualify she's now a tutor at the college, so is aware it's at least potentially embarrassing) or for at least having feelings for this new student.
Regardless he knows that the professor/student relationship starts with him admired and high status and ends with the student leaving to live their life and explore the world, where he is trapped in the same cycle, which he can only escape by semi-deliberately fucking things up for himself.
It's certainly not a romance in s conventional sense and Rita, I feel, is not interested in Frank in that way at all, whilst his interest is maybe speculative or something he's always done, and is unaware now, that he is too old or almost to be behaving this way.
For a while I've been toying with a sketch idea about an older guy saying to a younger woman "if I was twenty years younger you'd be in trouble" or whatever, because I think men say that because it gives them some distance from openly flirting, but also opens the possibility that they might say, "that doesn't matter". So it's a speculative flirtation technique and a deeply icky one, because it also supposes that all that is holding the woman back is the age of the man. I think a lot of men have difficulty understanding that they are no longer attractive, but even more so than they might never have been attractive. Or certainly not on some universal level.
Age, when both parties are adults, certainly isn't a major consideration. I think being the kind of man who says "if I was 20 years younger" is much more of an issue. Just like a man saying "I'm a nice guy".
Anyway, already lots of interesting things to think about and Anna is immediately excellent as Rita and the director Max is better at this than he is at tennis.
I am mildly terrified about learning all the lines - even though I am capable of remembering a 90+minute monologue for my stand up, this does seem like an awful lot to get on top of. In the old days of student theatre and my own plays when I acted in them, learning lines was the easy part for me. My old man brain is less sponge like, but I think I should be able to do it.
Weirdly there are a few versions of this play and I started learning the opening monologue from one book and it's quite different in the one we're using (which I think was the basis of last night's dream, where the opening of the play kept extending and extending and Rita never arrived). We have a couple of months to nail this. I am pretty confident we can do a great job, even if the play contains an amusing critique of amateur productions, which we have to decide whether to play with a wink or not.
It's totally sold out right now, but we are adding a couple more performances and I'll let you know when those are on sale.
