Like Buttah…

I know I am going metaphor crazy when I talk about Twelve Angry Jurors—last week it was butter and diamonds, and during the whole rehearsal process I kept stressing to the cast that this play was like a volleyball game (“whatever you do—keep the volleys going!") but what I really want to emphasize is how this play is like a marvelous chamber orchestra. Hey, I’m like a carnival barker—step right up and pick the metaphor you like best!

So another play is yet another scrapbook page in the cosmic drama scrapbook. I sat with my student helpers, Anna Rose, and Swara in one of the 90 seats we put around the playing area in this great multi-purpose room in the Fine Arts wing. I had nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the exquisite work of my actors and my production team. Anna Rose was the House Manager and Stage Manager (she is that good to be able to work back stage and front of house!) and I asked Swara to give the pre-performance speech to the audience. Gasp! Yes, I gave up speaking to the audience, and let Swara set the tone for how the audience might engage with the play.

The play opens with the warning by the judge as to how the jurors should approach this important deliberation. Our venerable headmaster played the Judge for this one-paragraph part, and then the jurors enter the room. I love the opening of this play because just from watching them enter the room you get some clues about their characters. Instead of plunging into dialogue, there is this great awkward silence as we watch these 12 strangers come into this caged-room and dart their eyes around. For 90 minutes the actors are just a few feet away, and this group of actors acquitted themselves magnificently (acquitted—get the kind of pun??).

This is the fifth time I have directed this play since 1994, but it so interesting how the performances are not carbon copies of each other among the five productions. While I have blocked the play remarkably similarly (it’s not like the set can change much!) each of the five actors, naturally, has brought his or her own intelligence and fire to each of these jurors. But tonight’s blog entry belongs to my excellent cast of 2010. Let me tell you some of their great moments in the play:

Mohammad: The last time I cast the play, I envisioned the foreman more as a meek man. If you met this tall, strapping guy, Mohammad, you would never think of him as meek. I didn’t want this part to be a “paper tiger” and Mohammad was anything but. He stressed the duty that Americans have in performing their role as a juror, and Mohammad ended up offering us a great reminder of how this foreman seeks out responsibility. When he entered the jury room in the very beginning he had a look of authority and promise on his face—this character wanted the responsibility of being foreman, and the practice of learning how to lead. Mohammad had a great debut in theater!

Abdullah: This actor has had the most experience of anyone in drama at KA—I believe this was his 5th dramatic outing. This is a part that could devolve into a squeamish weasel, but as with everything Abdullah does, he invested it with complexity. Every time he squirmed in his chair, or went to get water at the water cooler, he embroidered his character with details of body language and facial expressions and vocal nuances. This juror could have been merely a shy or weak person, but he created a much more interesting wilted flower.

Lawrence: This is maybe the showiest part of them all in the play, and perhaps the most challenging asking a teen-ager to effectively show the weariness of a lifetime of fatherhood, and failed fatherhood at that. The part always includes a teary breakdown in the end, and that takes courage as a teen-age actor. Lawrence was more than just loud; he
revealed to all of us the wounded heart of a father who misses his son. When I cast the play, Lawrence was the only senior, and frankly many seniors these days have been affected by that sea change known as senioritis—but Lawrence was a true leader in this play and committed himself to the play.

Adel: Juror #4 is another who couldn’t possibly be wrong, but not in the same way as others. He is successful, cool, calm, and collected, but narrow-minded. My boy Adel brought a real polish to this part that I imagine to be a bank executive. At the beginning of the week he still exhibited some typical traits of a novice, teen-age actor, but by the performances, his authority and commanding voice showed great improvement and strength as an actor.

Jamil: I can’t tell you what a joy it was to watch this guy in this play. In the dress rehearsals I made sure I had a good view to watch his engagement in the play. This juror has some of the fewest lines in the entire play, but Jamil did not waste a moment on stage. He invested his performance with edginess and a heartbreaking disappointment. He played this meek man who felt self-conscious, and we watched him erupt into a tirade of self-loathing and then transform himself into a man of action. Whether he was mopping his brow or rolling up his sleeves or piecing the argument together, he “acted” every second.

Dana: This great student was not my original casting choice…alas, I took a chance on a student for whom I hoped a commitment would stick, and it didn’t work out. So I had said to this estimable senior that I would put her on speed dial. When the experiment-actor quit the play, Dana was there within a half hour, picking up a part. I had always directed this part to a male actor, but Dana provided the fire that makes the part tick.

Rob: This is another of the students I have taught every day at KA (there were 2 in this play) and find him an absolute joy. This part is another one that could have been less interesting—I mean he is not as mean and nasty as Jurors 3 and 10, but Rob imbued with such a firm sarcastic identity. Towards the end of the play there is a look that sweeps over Rob’s face of his dampened fire—a look of discovery and disappointment that defied an easy assessment. The burning embers of a fire tamped down is a great sign of acting prowess.


Mounir: When all the jurors walked in during that purposefully awkward opening silence, you might not pick out this juror as the “Henry Fonda” part. I did not pick a senior, or the tallest, or someone who looked a phony-wise demeanor. This guy is a sophomore and had a part that must command the stage. I chose Mounir because of his dedication to his piano work—I knew he understood the value of rehearsal and polish. Mounir chose to have his character build up to a charisma of a master teacher—he didn’t wield all those skills in the beginning of the play, and so you got to see the evolution of a fearless leader. Command the stage, he did indeed.

Hanna: The oldest character went to the youngest actor! Hanna was our lone 9th grader, and I was never really as interested in how she was “old” in the role, but how she was trying to be strong, to be courageous, to show that she mattered as an older person. As I watched the chamber orchestra at work, somehow Hanna was able to show a face strained with agonies of time—with no make-up at all, just a performance of frailty and then strength.

Hana: This juror gets one of the greatest monologues in the play—I call them “arias” because of their size and proportion. In the auditions I was riveted by Hana’s reading of this part—not as someone yelling, but as someone hushed and bitter. She joins a cavalcade of great actresses doing this part, but she performed it with different shadings, and no less lethal. Approaching Juror #10 is tricky—she is not just loud, not just annoying, and Hana dug down deep trying to discover what makes her tick. Her “aria” was a moment of thrilling theater, but as she sat back down, her eyes welled with tears, and we got to see a lifetime of fear and confusion washing over her face.

Burhan: This young man always has a smile on his face and radiates joy, and that is what he brought to this part of the “immigrant juror.” He is so proud to be an American now (in the play) and he offers a sense of wonder to others who just seem jaded and resentful of their time being wasted on a jury. He is another of these fine actors whom I watched build up to his lines—he didn’t just say his lines, he was invested in the conversation, enjoying the volleyball game.

Robert: This actor came up with a whole new “back story” for his character. I have always cast the advertising exec as a female actor, but Robert created a whole new interpretation of a kind of ne’er-do-well posing as an executive, since when you are around strangers, you certainly could offer up your life story as an alternate reality. I wonder how this jury proceeding changed him after their time together. Robert made me wonder that.

My buddy Suhayb played the guard, a pretty thankless part, but I asked Suhayb to take the part simply because I love it when he is around. And to be surrounded by the thoughtful, energetic Anna Rose and the passionate and reliable Swara, I was blessed.

At the end of the play, after the last explosion and break-down, the jurors all leave the stage in an awkward silence, but of course, not exactly like the opening silence. Each of them has endured a moment or two of a wounded heart, and you get to watch them grapple with what has happened to them. Juror #8, Mounir, gets the final moment as he leaves.

In my direction of the play, when I directed Mounir’s exit from the stage, I explained to him that I wanted him to offer the audience a “look” like the one at the end of the final episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a sit-com I loved in my long-ago childhood. The episode has long affected me, in large part, since the actors in real-life professed such a love of their colleagues. In the last scene the single character of Mary Richards says to her colleagues, “I have often wondered what the word family means. I think I know now. I think it is just people who make you feel less alone and really loved. Thank you for being my family.” Of course, I relate to her sentiments. I live far away from my real family, but these students here, they have been more than just little letters in some grade book to me. They have served as my family here.

This chamber orchestra did fine work. While the afterglow of the performance will fade, they take their places among those other fine actors I have enjoyed in this particular play.

I know I will do Twelve Angry Jurors again someday. I wonder where I will be then. I wonder where these actors will be.