Farce, Part 1: A Flea in Her Ear

To the person who said "drama is hard, comedy is harder," I'd like to suggest an addendum: "Farce is exhausting."

It's no secret that farce is my favorite genre in the theater. It's an adjective specific to the theater, no matter how many times film directors have tried to trap it in the confines of a movie screen. Some Like it Hot comes closest to achieving the comedic effect of a true farce, but even that falls short, in that we know the mistakes have been edited out. And if all the Marilyn Monroe stories are to be believed, we know there were many. To be a good farce, the material requires an element of danger that can only be achieved on the stage. Quick exits, surprise entrances, and doors slamming at an alarming rate can only truly be appreciated when the possibility of actors missing their cues is part of the equation.

I've been fortunate (and in one instance, not so fortunate) to be involved with what I consider to be the three best farces ever written for the stage. As an audience member, Noises Off by Michael Frayn. As a director, Moon Over Buffalo by Ken Ludwig. And as an actor, A Flea in Her Ear by Georges Feydeau. Two of these experiences were terrific examples of how a well-written, well-staged farce can be a rewarding and complex theatrical experience. The third, however, was proof positive how easily the structure, no matter how strong the material, can become a disaster.

PART 1: A FLEA IN HER EAR

The cast, or should I say survivors, of A Flea in Her Ear.

This was the second last play in which I appeared as an actor, back in 2003. I considered giving up acting all together after the final curtain call (and once in the middle of a particularly bad performance), but I summoned the nerve to give it one more go. That production, Twelve Angry Men, went infinitely better than A Flea in Her Ear, but I never quite got over the the jitters that were permanently lodged in my stomach from Flea, so I never acted again.

A well-written farce pretty much directs itself, so long as the director is willing to play the role of a traffic cop. Such was not the case on this production. I knew we were in trouble when on the first day of rehearsal the director had the entire cast form a circle and internalize our characters. I closed my eyes along with everyone else, hoping against hope that they had no idea what the hell he was talking about either. Internalize our characters? Up to that point I had only read the sides handed to me at the audition, and even more confusing, I wasn't 100% sure what role I was even playing. Oh well, "What are details?" I said to myself. After a few more relaxation games and some exercises I'm sure he picked up in Lamaze class, we went home without ever having looked at the script. I thought perhaps this was his ritual for building an atmosphere of teamwork, so I went to the next rehearsal with an open mind. Alas, it was just more games, more games, more games. If memory serves, we spent a couple hours tossing a beach ball around. This went on for what seemed like weeks and I could see others in the cast starting to get concerned.

In the words of my high school drama teacher: "I can shoot you all with one bullet."

I was lucky enough to be cast in the role of Camille, which in my opinion is easily the best character in the play. He appears only sporadically, popping in and out of doors at inopportune moments. Even better, I barely had to know my lines because the character has a cleft palate, which made him unable to pronounce anything but vowels. I had fun with his speech impediment, changing his babble from one rehearsal to the next. This would have been all well and good had the director not changed the set from one rehearsal to the next. Each night I'd return to rehearsal only to find that the doors had been moved, or were leading to different rooms, or were at the top of a new staircase, or worst of all, had disappeared entirely. Now I'm sure the director went to theater school and knew a thing or two about Elia Kazan, but the last thing an actor wants to hear while rehearsing a farce is "find your entrance."

I never did, nor did the rest of the cast. To their credit (certainly not mine because I was ready to jump ship) the leading players arranged a top secret rehearsal, where they mapped out a general idea of what we should do and where we should enter and what we should say. Thank god for their intervention or we'd still be staging the first act. Still, it was tech rehearsal before we had run the play in its entirety. Somehow, and I have no idea how, the play was coherent enough for the director to give himself a huge pat on the back, just in time for him to find his exit.

I think I was shouting, "Let's get the hell out of here!" Also note the effort made to disguise the doors in our door-slamming farce.

I've blocked the performances from my memory, but seeing as I survived, they couldn't have gone that badly. Although I didn't allow any of my friends to buy tickets, I remain friends with many members of the cast to this day, so in that respect it was a worthwhile experience. It's impossible not to admire others paddling water on the same capsizing ship. But actually living out the actor's nightmare of not knowing what's going to happen when you set foot on the stage is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Part 2: From my seat in the audience, Noises Off. (Or as a I like to think of it, a dramatization of my experiences backstage on A Flea in Her Ear.) And on Friday, Part 3: From the director's chair, Moon Over Buffalo.