Quick, what do these artifacts have in common? Ben Hur; Tom Stoppard’s new trilogy at Lincoln Center; the comprehensive list of Cher’s boyfriends; two theatrical productions now playing in small, off-Loop theaters.
Answer: Casts of thousands.
All right, so, not thousands. But about 30 or more, anyway, for that last item. Three dozen Chicago actors giving their all in a theater that seats roughly 100 people.
One is “Marathon ’33,” produced by Strawdog Theatre with 36 actors, the other “Dead End” by the Griffin Theatre Company with 27 actors and one dog. Both are Depression-era plays about the desperate acts born of poverty — plays that throb with a critical mass of youthful energy.
Plays where, on a slow night, the actors onstage just might outnumber the audience.
“Marathon ’33” is based on the book “Early Havoc,” a 1959 memoir of June Havoc, and tells what happened to “Baby June,” Gypsy Rose Lee’s sister, after Vaudeville collapsed. Turns out while Gypsy went on to become a big-time stripper, June became a professional dance marathon contestant. An early form of seedy reality entertainment made famous by Sidney Pollack’s film “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969), dance marathons were contests to see who could keep dancing the longest. They stretched into weeks and months, they were partially scripted, and they were brutal.
Couples stayed on their feet around the clock with an 11-minute break each hour, and at some point, the contestants would get “squirrelly,” i.e., have a delusional, hysterical, convulsive breakdown–every actor’s favorite bit.
Director Shade Murray says his biggest challenge, not including organizing the Excel spreadsheet for the rehearsal schedule, was figuring out how to manage the audience’s focus.
Here’s the rule: The audience looks at whatever’s moving. This is how actors upstage one another–they move when someone else is speaking. I once saw Annette Bening drum her heel in a Denver production of “Cherry Orchard” and completely steal the scene. (I’ve heard Annette Bening is an extremely generous actress to work with. I’m just saying I saw her drum her heel.) So when there are 36 actors lindy-ing on a stage for two hours straight, how does the audience know where to look?
“We worked on a lot of oppositions of tempos,” says Murray. If two actors needed to be seen, then everyone else would start moving at a “4” pace, and the actors in the scene would move at a “9.” Or vice versa.
“Dead End” plays at the Theatre Building. While the vibrant “Marathon ’33” cast is onstage for most of the play, this show keeps its 27 actors and one dog tucked quietly in a tiny-whiney dressing room–or some other space behind the stage–waiting for their scenes.
“Dead End” is Sidney Kingsley’s 1935 drama about the human collisions that occur in an alley between a luxury high-rise and a tenement next to New York’s East River. Kingsley gets several plots going all at once, but a centerpiece of the play is a gang of poor street kids. The play was politically influential in its day–Eleanor Roosevelt brought a command performance to Washington–but is now rarely done, probably because of the technical expense of creating the East River onstage, which the script requires the gang to dive into. And also because the cast is prohibitively huge.
“For me this play works because of its size,” says director Jonathan Berry. “The scope of the problem it’s dealing with is so large. To do less cheapens the problem.”
But as exciting as this play is to watch, I’d really like to be backstage when some subset of the 27 actors are getting ready for their next entrance. “It’s what it would be like if you were on a crowded “L” train going to a Cubs game,” says Karyn Morris, an actor in the show, “and all of a sudden everybody had to change their clothes.”
Director Berry says when the actors playing the Dead End Kids (most of whom are recent Northwestern grads) are waiting for their next scene below the stage, after diving into “the river,” they look like puppies in a box.
So what’s it like to be in a mondo production, rehearsing 22 hours a week, getting a nominal paycheck and even less spotlight? (Actors in the Griffin show get a cut of the house, less than $40 a week. Those in the Strawdog production get $50, except ensemble members who are unpaid. And a lot of the performers who get $50 donate it back to the company). Here’s what some of the actors in these two shows had to say:
“We’ve sweated all over each other.”
“It’s like being in a plastic bag.”
“There’s not enough space to go around, but there’s enough respect to go around.”
“They don’t feel like small parts. Everybody has a moment where they pop.”
“That’s Chicago theater–small houses, big casts, ambitious shows.”
“I love it. I really love it.”
`Marathon ’33’
When: Through Oct. 28
Where: Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway
Price: $20; 773-528-9696
`Dead End’
When: Through Nov. 12
Where: Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont Ave.
Price: $24; 773-769-2228
———-
onthetown@tribune.com
