Michael Pressman and Lisa Chess, who are married, starred in a 2001 Los Angeles revival of Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, a two-hander about a couple whose romance begins with first-date sex. Pressman says the idea "began with our desire to do something together in the theatre. I'd been directing for film; Lisa had been doing theatre and episodic work. We thought, 'Can we do a play together?' Frankie and Johnny hinges on chemistry. It doesn't have much story, so if you don't have chemistry, you don't have the play."
At first, however, Pressman chose to direct, and the man cast opposite Chess could neither relate to her nor learn his lines. "The writing was on the wall for a couple weeks before the first preview," Chess recalls, "but there are actors about whom people say, 'He's very talented; he'll put it through at the eleventh hour,' so we went on hope and perception." After one preview, they closed the show.
"I felt the play was best served by me directing," Pressman explains, "but it complicated it. Something in the play's intimacy is such if you have an actor who's not clear, it can go astray, and our actor went astray." It was six months before Pressman and Chess revisited the play, with Pressman now acting also. "It was so hard when the first incarnation didn't work," Chess says. "I played a character in which you dig down, dig in mentally. I felt so ready to open, so not to was devastating." Yet the idea of acting with her husband concerned her: "I was incredibly apprehensive because Michael acted years ago; he's been a director and producer, and this isn't exactly ensemble work." Pressman and Chess say deep awareness of each other's process made the difference.
Their experience inspired Pressman to write and direct the 2004 film comedy Frankie and Johnny Are Married, which retraces their real-life experience with the play, certain names being changed to skirt litigation. Trust, they say, is the key to working together. Before revisiting the play, for example, Pressman noted Chess' ambivalence. "Lisa was hesitant," he says. "Either it was going to be the ultimate fiasco or it would work. So I started learning the part months in advance. Then I said, 'Let's read it a couple of times.' I think we read through it until Lisa said, 'All right, I'm willing to take a chance.' Sometimes that's how actors need to work."
Trust, in other words, is earned. Halley Feiffer and Adam Green, currently appearing Off-Broadway in Jenny Lyn Bader's two-hander None of the Above, acted together previously in Josh Tobiessen's Election Day, in which they played siblings. In None of the Above, Feiffer plays a spoiled Upper East Side teen who "bombs her SATs because she's acting out," Feiffer says. Green plays the tutor hired to help her.
"My agents called and said, 'Surprise, you're auditioning with Halley Feiffer,' " Green says. "I was glad we'd established trust in the earlier play. I know Halley's there 100 percent of the time." Feiffer analyzes their dynamic further: "Being cast in two shows with Adam has changed my opinion of casting. In the future, were I responsible for casting, I'd focus on casting actors who know and like each other. Ask actors sometime who they'd like to work with. Adam and I are so many steps ahead of where we'd be otherwise."
Because the characters in Bader's play misperceive each other, Green adds, "when I open the door to see Halley's character for the first time, that's what has to define my character for the next hour and 35 minutes. So 90 percent of notes given to us by the director are in some ways about more than the person getting the note."
Ideally, says Pressman, actors working closely together "respect and honor the work in rehearsal and have similar viewpoints about process." That may be easier when the actors know each other, but simply liking each other helps. Before being cast in Roundabout Theatre Company's current Broadway revival of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Jefferson Mays and Claire Danes didn't know each other. They also have different backgrounds: Mays trained at Yale, won a Tony Award for I Am My Own Wife, and starred in the acclaimed Broadway revival of Journey's End; Danes, making her Broadway debut, is best known for her work in television and film. Ask about trust and they giggle. "It's out the window," Mays deadpans, smiling at Danes. "Absolutely," Danes replies. Giggles resume.
"So many times you go to first rehearsal and look around as you're introduced: 'This is your mother, your brother, your sister, you've known each other forever—go!' " Mays says. "In Pygmalion, Claire and I, relative strangers, meet on stage as Higgins and Eliza, relative strangers. As our characters have gotten to know each other, we've gotten to know each other."
Adds Danes, "Jefferson and I got sick in rehearsals, and I remember one point we were so sniffly that our stage manager brought in vats of chicken soup. So we're there with our soup, our tissues, runny noses, exchanging germs. Another time in rehearsal, we're in our silly costume gear—substitutes for what we'd ultimately wear—we're draped in these velvet capes like we're 6, and I saw Jefferson's very game and playful; I like to think I am too. Once we found ourselves in that same treasure box, everything worked." Says Mays, "I knew all was okay when I could accidentally spit in Claire's eye and she'd remain in the scene."
That bond allows them to brave the unknown together. "We have a little scene in Act 5 that's a rather odd and ambiguous, tricky little scene," Mays says. "We realized it's almost dependent on everything else that's come before it; it'll change nightly in accordance to how the rest of the show has gone. I love doing the scene with Claire because it's open—anything can happen."
Mays and Danes also bolster each other's confidence. "The first preview, I was nervous," Danes says. "I'd never performed this way in front of a live audience, and I wouldn't veer from Jefferson's gaze. He's my anchor, and while I've relaxed slightly, at that first preview I wasn't taking that risk." Turning to Mays, Danes deadpans, "I have confidence with you because I basically mooch off you the entire time." Mays giggles. "So many actors are coy about wanting to do something well," Danes adds, "and Jefferson isn't, which allows him to do what he does so well, which allows me to not be coy either."
Mays and Danes say they'll discuss working together again in 10 years, but in Denver, C. Kelly Leo has already done it: In September she opened in Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive at the Curious Theatre Company as Li'l Bit opposite Paul Borrillo's Uncle Peck, the same roles they played when it was the group's first show a decade ago. Borrillo, however, had to honor another acting commitment, so Marcus Waterman replaced him during the run, forcing Leo to re-examine her role, the play—about a young girl's relationship with her incestuous uncle—and the dynamic of working closely with another actor.
"Going into rehearsals was wonderful because that intimate bond with Paul was still there," Leo says. "He and I have been good friends for 10 years now, so there was no work to trust each other; we could go deeper." But she knew there would be a transition—and challenges—when Waterman joined the cast.
"I'm sure it was difficult for Paul to let go," Waterman says. The company's artistic director, Chip Walton, "had to find another actor who's right for Kelly. Paul's a different actor than I am. And things did overlap because they rehearsed, opened, and then, in the second or third week, she was in rehearsal with me in the daytime while performing at night."
Echoing Feiffer's idea of asking actors whom they'd like to work with, Leo says making her preferences clear to Walton helped: "I said, 'I have to know the person playing Uncle Peck.' You can't throw anybody in there. When it's two actors, there's a kind of falling in love, if you will, and I was afraid I wouldn't have that. At first I feared I wasn't as giving enough to Marcus—I felt I cheated on my Uncle Peck during the day. Yet once I let Paul go, I felt, That's it, that's done."
For his part, Waterman felt he could best forge chemistry with Leo by limiting how much of Borrillo's work he saw. "I came to the first read-through, saw a few rehearsals, and stayed away," he says. "I was already forming ideas about Uncle Peck. Paul and I are also good friends, and when we started to talk about the play, I realized I'd better keep my opinions to myself."
While Leo struggled initially opposite Waterman, the situation offered some opportunities as well. "I had 10 years of Uncle Peck in my mind," she says, "but Marcus can't play someone else's Uncle Peck. If I'm the same Li'l Bit, I also know of moments when this Uncle Peck reacts differently, so I'll react differently." When Uncle Peck gives Li'l Bit her first driving lesson and the audience first sees the molestation, Waterman says, "Paul played it that Uncle Peck was at least a little drunk, and it makes sense: Li'l Bit says she doesn't like it when he drinks. But I chose to play it sober. Dramaturgically, if the audience sees him stone-cold sober, it's not so easy to dismiss. But Kelly had to know or it wouldn't have been fair."
Will Ditterline and Liz Dailey have also revisited a play, August Schulenburg's Riding the Bull, which ran in 2005 at Manhattan's Theater for the New City and in 2007 as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. And like Pressman and Chess, they're married. But unlike Frankie and Johnny, Schulenburg's play isn't a well-known comedy but a kind of dramatized buddy film about a man and a woman who learn that the words she screams during orgasm can be used to predict the future, something they quickly exploit for profit. Problem is, Dailey's character is morbidly obese, and Dailey was cast after losing over 100 pounds.
"Originally it made me upset," she says. "I'd been away from theatre. I lost my weight between 2002 and 2004, and here in 2005 is my first opportunity to do a show, and I've got to wear a fat suit. I'm like, Are you fucking kidding? I wasn't secure. You stop acting for three years and you don't know what'll be there when you return. To have the only other person on stage—my husband—saying, 'You're the fattest person I know' is very hard."
Ditterline understood Dailey's mindset—he too once lost a lot of weight—and this, more than being married to her, allowed him to understand how Schulenburg's play affected her, even if it complicated his own task as an actor. "When someone undergoes a physical change, especially on purpose, it takes a while to realize what you're seeing in the mirror," he says. "Yet some things I had to say about her I said to the audience, and when I'd have these words that would hurt her—and there's no fictional third person on stage—it's also hard. To honestly be trying to get someone to feel comfortable with themselves, then telling them in a play they're not—I mean, this is what actors mean by trust."
To stay in character, Ditterline sometimes "used dirty tricks that actors who work together know about, like substituting certain words in my head. Yet by the time we did the play again, Liz had enough distance that we together reached another level—we could focus on each other in our acting. The first time I thought about Liz reacting to a certain moment. The second time I thought about Liz and Will reacting to each other."
Off hours, Ditterline and Dailey rarely discussed process. "Because acting evolves—because it's fragile, in that once something you use stops working, you can't use it again—I kept to myself certain things," Ditterline says. "I had to watch Liz get gored and die. Now, I'm not going to pick someone else and think about them. But had I described to Liz my tension and fear, it wouldn't work anymore. So protect your fellow actor, but also protect yourself."
Steven Klein has also returned to a play in which he worked closely with another actor, but the second time around it was with a different actor. He appeared in David Schulner's two-hander An Infinite Ache in 2004 at the Black Dahlia Theatre in Los Angeles and again last spring at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia.
"The play is beautiful," Klein says. "You follow a couple from their first date through old age in a floating conversation. You go through a roller coaster of ups and downs with these characters, through their meeting, falling in love, through their differences in religion, marriage, having a child, losing a child, in divorcing and reconnecting, in having a second child, in divorcing again and reconnecting, in getting old and one of them finally passing away. People compared it to The Fourposter, but it's different in that the action doesn't stop; the characters age gradually during the play." He needed to work with an actor for whom symbiosis came naturally.
"There are two things you're doing," Klein explains. "One is you're forging the relationship that matches the text. The second thing is you're navigating each other's psyches—your whole psyches, figuring out the real chemistry occurring between you. That's where, for two actors, the director's voice and genius comes in. The director can and should be objective as to how you fit together. You use that as clay to build your characters."
In L.A., Suzy Nakamura fit the bill and then some. "At both the Dahlia and Walnut Street, I felt the actresses cast were those I felt the most challenged, most inspired, and most intimidated by," Klein says. "For me, a strong presence entering the room forcing me to deal with her was useful."
The audience also plays a role. "The Dahlia has 29 seats, so the audience is a real presence," Klein says. "It changes the actors' chemistry. You see someone cry or sigh, and it changes the rhythm of the lines. You have big emotional events that are very visible that actors have to go with; you have to know the other actor knows how."
Though Klein begins comparing acting with Nakamura to acting with Eunice Wong at the Walnut Street, he admits there's something ineffable about acting in close pairs, and after a few days, he sends this email:
"An Infinite Ache begins at the end of a first date between Charles and Hope, and it's not going well. In the text, Charles is more awkward and overcome with attraction, and Hope more withdrawn and, though friendly, disinterested. With Suzy, my Charles was far more awkward throughout, and she retained more of the power and assertiveness in the entire relationship…. With Eunice, partly due to my being older and seeing the play differently but very largely due to a different collaboration, my Charles was a guy who was comfortable having an attractive woman in his apartment and was thus all the more thrown by how awkward this particular woman made him act/feel. From the audience perspective, of course, the words were the same, but they came from a different place, and that was generated entirely by what happened between us in close collaboration."