I Can’t, I Have RehearsaL

by Patrick White

It’s not really a coincidence that both times Trump was elected president, I was in rehearsal. What’s a little crazy is that I was in rehearsal with the same person both times, Jen Van Iderstyne, who I’m currently loving up on stage in A Moon for the Misbegotten at Schenectady Civic Players.

The first time he was elected we were doing a British sex farce, Out of Order, by Ray Cooney at the old Curtain Call Theatre which had nothing on its mind but double entendres, exposed adulteries and body parts, and escalating panic (although it did have British politicians in its cast list). We went home from rehearsal almost giddy to watch the returns which would certainly proclaim Hillary the first female president. After my partner Chris and I threw our television out the morning of 11/9/2016, we showed up in rehearsal crestfallen and in no mood to prance around and grab each other’s body parts. It felt like we were doing exactly what we shouldn’t be: producing escapist, feather-brain fluff and this one had an unfortunate leering mentality.

We opened the show and were met with the loudest, most outrageous, almost violent laughter I had ever witnessed in a theatre, whether I was onstage or in the audience. There were gale force laughs projected back at us onstage; we had to pause numerous times, and the length of the laughter certainly extended the run times on Saturday nights. The audience needed to purge itself, and the laughter was expelling anxiety, fear and dread.

This year, Jen and I are in rehearsal for the aforementioned A Moon for the Misbegotten, Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece wish fulfillment written as a benediction and salve for his older brother Jim who drank himself to death at the age of 43. And what system of government could be more badly designed or conceived (the definition of misbegotten) than America’s with its impending new cabinet filled with sex offenders and Fox news hosts? 

Another production, Into the Breeches!, previewed the night after the 2024 election through my theatre company, Harbinger. The audience entered the theatre as if it were a wake. With Kamala’s loss, it seemed as if there was a death in the family. The play sees a woman take over her husband’s Shakespeare company while he’s off fighting the Axis and carry on with a production of Henry V cast all with women. The production was greeted warmly and gratefully. One of my best friends Kathleen Carey said, “There were lots of much needed laughs from this talented cast but more importantly, this is a play and production needed for this time, right now, when much of America has continued to remind us that they consider women as less than.”

Two elections, two or three disparate productions. Do you offer an escape, a meditation or a direct rebuke? One thing seems incontrovertible, at this time of national peril: art is essential. The last time I threw out the television. What do I throw out this time? I will tell you that I have not read an op-ed article since 11/5 and have avoided everything but the headlines of the incoming administration. The one thing I will not throw out is theatre. I took on the massive role of Jim Tyrone despite producing Into the Breeches! and the cast party to benefit the Capital Region Festival of Theatre because it was critical to my well-being as an artist. You can’t be a sentient theatre maker and let that opportunity go by.

A friend messaged me after the election that we ought to organize a night of agit-prop theatre in opposition to Trump and it struck me as “so 2016,” pink pussy-hat marching and “Resist” and all that. We had a direct response with Into the Breeches! the night after. We don’t have to concoct something; we are in the theatre every night and if we are not directly responding to the right wing (this has never been a conversation or consensus building), we are holding on to our sanity and creating the world we want to live and engage with in our theatres with our collaborators and audiences.

I think of a third election, Obama’s in 2008, which buoyed me and gave me a second chance at a life in the arts. It gave me hope. If America can elect a Black man president, surely, I can create a vital, engaged, committed life in the theatre, even in Albany. Since then, I have started teaching privately, directed three dozen productions, written hundreds of reviews, started a podcast which is going strong in its second year, founded a theatre festival to celebrate and promote all the dramatic arts in the Capital Region and created Harbinger, a theatre company that has produced 14 Capital Region premieres and worked with 90 different actors for thousands and thousands of audience members all within the last three years.

Fill the theatres, concert halls, museums and libraries with your dedication and commitment to a better world that was promised to us. The better angels of our nature are working it out with a piece of art. As Carrie Fisher said, “Take your broken heart and turn it into art.”