March 2008
Satellite Theater
Shamrock McShane

The Web of Acting

"Nothing is what it appears after the police pick up a man and a woman who have stumbled out of the woods covered in blood. We soon find out that the two individuals are wrapped up in a web of abduction, torture, and murder that all leads to a secret underground lab buried beneath the forest floor." — Project Threshold

There's nothing particularly out of the ordinary in dressing in your best suit — the shave and a haircut a few days earlier having transformed you from unkempt absent–minded professor or homeless man into a shining member of the middle class — and heading off at eight in the morning for an office building south on 441. Except that it is Saturday and the office building is the Gainesville Sun, which today is masquerading as Police Headquarters.

The call for this the last day of shooting on the Dupree Brothers new movie Project Threshold is for 8:30. It'll be nearly noon before my scenes get rolling, so I pace back and forth and trace geometrical patterns around the editorial offices, running lines.

Actors, like writers, often lead several lives simultaneously. I am alternately running my lines as Police Captain Werger in the coming scenes and Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple, which opens this month at the Eden Dinner Playhouse.

Scot Davis, who is playing Felix Ungar, is scheduled to arrive at eleven to play Detective Stephens, delivering a fiery profanity–laced tirade in Werger's Office. Right now, Scot is down the road at Expressions Academy, rehearsing as the Wizard in the Fable Factory's production of The Wizard of Oz.

The actors are called to shoot the Interrogation Scene. "I wish I had a cool name like Shamrock," Bryant Smith calls back. He's playing Detective Carter, a guy I can trust, and we hit it off right away.

The night before, Bryant opened as Max in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at Constans Theatre at the University of Florida, so he has just shifted from rehearsal mode to performance on stage, and now he's got to throttle onto the screen, before gearing up for The Real Thing again at night.

Bryant's in his final semester as an MFA student at UF. In another week or so he'll start rehearsals as Jean in Ionesco's Rhinoceros, and then put together a New York City Showcase.

The Dupree Brothers know what they're doing. They size up the scenes, we hit our marks, and we let fly. We're cops. It's a crazy world out there. Pay attention. But lighten up. Now, think!

Scot blusters and fumes as Detective Stephens. Then he takes off to resume the role of the Wizard. In another week he'll be Felix Ungar.

Actors look for resemblances between the characters they play. Last fall Scot and I took on the roles of Donny and Teach in American Buffalo. How do those guys stack up to Felix and Oscar? Like blood relatives.

The Odd Couple grew out of Neil Simon's own life. Actually, his brotheršs life. Danny Simon was a successful TV writer in California in the 1950s when his marriage broke up. Pressured by alimony and child support, Danny proposed that he and a fun–loving buddy, an agent named Roy Gerber who had just gotten divorced himself, move in together to cut down on expenses.

Neil Simon, watching the situation, could see the humor, as his persnickety brother drove his easy–going roommate nuts.

"You know how to write plays," Danny Simon told his brother Neil, with one of the greatest theatrical understatements of all time, "I don't. You write it instead."

What Simon proceeded to write was a paradigm of comedy, which we now weave our way toward constructing.

Malcolm Sanford who plays Vinnie is a veteran not only of the ART, where we teamed up as Marx and Freud in Secret Obscenities, but also the High Springs Community Theater, if not World War One.

I first worked with Bobby McAfee, whošs playing Murray the Cop, in a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Acrosstown Repertory Theater, then a maverick production of Macbeth at Thornebrook Village where Bobby played a witch and everybody a witch could turn into.

After a few years as one of the best actors to grace the stage of the Gainesville Community Playhouse, Bobby is fresh from a stint at the Hippodrome where he morphed into three different characters in The Dead Guy.

At GCP Bobby and Jake Seymour, who's playing Roy in Odd Couple, teamed up in a production of The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged, playing parts that Bryant Smith just played at Constans last summer.

And round and round we go. Jake and I worked together at the Acrosstown in Boys in the Band. Bobby and I worked together on my quirky adaptation of The Princess and the Pea for the Fable Factory.

The Fable Factory was our personal school for comedy. Joe Argenio is the headmaster and Scot Davis is his star pupil, because he makes Joe laugh. Now we're trying to tempt Joe into directing Odd Couple. Let's see if he falls for this.