ActorQuest - Kristin Huffman Goes Inside 'Company' 5

In November, Kristin Huffman made her Broadway debut as Sarah (flute, piccolo and sax) in John Doyle's production of Company.  The actress, with a new series of tales that go inside the making of Company from an actor's perspective, starting at the Cincinnati Playhouse and on to New York, continues her stories about a 15-year career that has led her to the door of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. 

This is the fifth story in my MAKING OF COMPANY series. If you haven't read the first four, go back and do so...then come back to this one! Thanks for reading! 

FIVE: DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES MEET SEX IN THE CITY - February 20, 2006

I gave a telephone interview yesterday to an Art and Entertainment reviewer for the Columbus Dispatch.  He asked how I would describe the show and I said: "'Desperate Housewives' meets 'Sex in the City.'" He wanted to use that quote in his article and I realized that I was using my promotional 'salesperson' brain for the first time in a few weeks. 

Today, though, it's back to intense acting and singing and playing. There is no time to let your attention wander.  In this show you must pay constant attention because everyone is on stage the entire show. Any mistake affects and is noticed by everyone.

Since John Doyle is so forgiving and non-judgmental of the cast, it is ironic to hear this creative man say about one of his own ideas, "Oh no we are cutting the cell phones I put in for this scene. That was a crap idea and I don't care if I never see those phones again."  When he makes a modification, it always seems to turn a scene into a more meaningful moment. A light bulb goes off in our heads and we marvel at the genius of the plan.  Then he changes it again. Most of the changes involve a simplification of our character or a scene.  In today's theatre world, 'simplification' is not a commercial word.

His approach is to experiment with everything. Starting with a certain quantity of props, he takes pieces away one by one until there is only one thing left that you absolutely need to tell your story.  Nothing can get in the way of the text.  The same goes for deleting actors' 'tricks'. We do exercises that are introduced with: "If this end of a line is 100% and this end is naught (0%) go to the spot on the floor that shows how happy your character is. Or how much medication your character takes. Or the age of your character.  We all do it at once and then he questions each person about their decisions.  He never imposes his ideas but offers a number of alternatives for consideration.  

Once he designated the four corners of the stage as Fall, Winter, Summer, Spring, with instructions to go to that season descriptive of our character. The same four corner exercise designated as: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass.  This exercise was not so much about the voice part we sang but where our character's natural voice resided. If I read behind the teaching psychology of it I thought I saw it as a way for him to get one of the actresses to lower her speaking voice without making her feel too self-conscious. Far from being acting games we get to know our characters in a memorable way and we get to know each other's characters as well. His directing style is pedagogical.  I am waiting for a "Desperate Housewives" four corners game to explore tensions between the characters next. 

Once, while working with one of the actors he tried to help her play the scene more matter-of-fact with less "sentimentality." Although it was a very heartfelt scene when she played it more matter-of-fact, it made us really feel for her.  Once she got back to her seat, she said to me, "I guess I just see more in the scene than he does." I told her that when she simplified it we as the audience got to see it all instead of her imposing it on us.  When you see that technique work on someone else, it makes all the sense in the world. While you are doing it yourself, you feel like you aren't acting at all and that you aren't "doing" enough to be interesting.

Another actress said to me, "Well, I have just decided to abandon any 'back story' I might have had for my character and just be myself." And that is really the trick.   Just be yourself in this character's set of circumstances.  I have heard that the real job of a director is to cast his or her show well.   The more I get to know this cast the more I see why that is true. Either we are subtly becoming our characters or we are getting comfortable enough to show our real selves to each other.  Either way, the effect is that the characters become real rather than simply played. Kind of like the actresses playing the roles in "Desperate Housewives."

Whatever seems faked is out. Whatever distracts from the text gets cut.  After about 10 minutes into the musical, even the instruments no longer seem novel but are instead an extension of the characters. You accept the fact that "Sarah" carries around a flute and "Harry" plays the trumpet.   The paradox of John Doyle's directing is this dialectic of natural acting and the unique playing of instruments.  And because the cast accepts that the instrument is part of our personality, the audience accepts it too.

John told us that the simpler we are with our interpretation of our characters, the more the audience will understand the actual story.  There is no need for splashy props and effects like a flying car or a chandelier that drops from the ceiling. The humor also becomes more sophisticated in a way that he believes the writer and lyricist intended. As we take more and more physical things away we also seem to be adding more and more humor and intellect.  Like the "Desperate Housewives" or the gals in "Sex and the City," we are starting to create a world that lives up to our Armani costumes.

John said that as the 'singers' we should always stay in the moment and in the 'middle of the words'.  No "Middle Earth" or "Singer land" allowed. In other words, to concentrate specifically on the words coming out of our mouths and not to 'apply' extra emotions to those words.  Wow, is THAT difficult for us hard core musical theatre actors!  To think that all we have to do is just "say" the words and not add more to the interpretation is so…..quiet. As the instrumentalists, he says we are the "soul of the song". THAT is where we put our solo or emotional tendencies. In fact, he has had us play through all the songs during a run through of the show without any singing at all just to prove that therein lies the emotion.  With Mr. Sondheim's beautiful writing, it's not hard to feel that! Finally then, the audience plays the 'effect' of all that. I have never thought of that before. LET the audience play whatever effect they feel and stay the hell out of the way.  Don't describe it for them. Don't spoon feed them the thoughts. Trust them to think and feel for themselves.

I put it this way so that I could make some peace with my own "do too much" tendencies: Think of a crowd of folks on a museum tour. Some of them will interpret the painting one way, and others will see something else. Every interpretation is valid because the artist felt a certain way when he or she was painting the picture, but if we see something else in that painting it's still aesthetically pleasing and a fine interpretation.

As much as I love the commercial description of "Desperate Housewives" and "Sex in the City" as a marketing tool, I think that for what I am learning, I can live without the commercialized ideas for a bit.  This time, real Art is being created.

Visit www.KristinHuffman.net for more on Huffman.

Photos by Fred Rose - 1) John Doyle and Mary-Mitchell Campbell; 2) Robert Cunningham, Angel Desai and Leenya Rideout; 3) Keith Buterbaugh and Kristin Huffman; 4) Elizabeth Stanley; 5) Angel Desai