This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
As anyone who has ever talked to an actor knows, learning your lines isn't even half of the game. Where acting's concerned, it's about the math of human drama.
And if math analogies hold at all, Annie Baker's acclaimed play could be called advanced calculus. Maybe even differential equations.
Or, switching metaphors, maybe even modern art, in the way the playwright draws lines around negative space that are as important as the overall composition.
In 33 brief scenes spread over six weeks, the dramatic art of "Circle Mirror Transformation" follows the emotional fortunes of four New Englanders. They're all taking a community-center drama class to improve their creative lives, taught by Marty, an almost comically stalwart believer in her own teaching methods.
The class includes recently-divorced carpenter Schultz (Michael Todd Behrens), precocious aspiring actress Lauren (Shelby Andersen), teasing former actress Theresa (Alexandra Harbold) and Marty's hippie husband, James (Morgan Lund).
Baker varies her characters' ages, with Lauren just 16 and James a ripe 60. She also endows them with dialogue that stalls, starts and pops like small explosions over bridges of no dialogue at all.
And those chasms are crucial. "Please heed the pauses and silences in this play," Baker writes in an author's note in the script. "Every one of them was placed in the script with great care. Without its silences, this play is a satire, and with its silences it is, hopefully, a strange little naturalistic meditation on theater and life and death and the passing of time."
Baker's directions are for the cast of Salt Lake Acting Company's production of this Obie Award winner for Best New American Play of 2010 (an award presented by the Village Voice newspaper). They're also an extreme challenge, as her dramatic style marks a vast departure from dramas where most actors roll out their lines in mellifluous, almost nonstop confidence.
"It's very exhausting," said Behrens, who plays Schultz. "Our bathroom breaks are like gold."
"It's a hunt," said Harbold, who plays Theresa. "The sentences are where the secrets lie."
Morgan Lund, who plays James, said he never laughed once reading the script. But in rehearsal he said he "found lung space I never knew I had, I was laughing so hard."
Dialogue aside, "Circle Mirror" also offers a taxing logistical exercise, which has prompted the stage crew to post three backstage notices reminding the cast of various prop, costume change and scene direction requirements.
The play dissects its characters by exploiting the fine line between what's done in acting workshops and what takes place in group therapy, said director Adrianne Moore.
But it's through workshop exercises that the audience learns about the characters. Onstage, they role play. They lie on the ground while counting down to their next, anticipated breakthrough of learning. In one hilarious scene, they attempt to communicate through gesticulating grunts of single words.
"Um … I signed up for this class because I thought we were gonna act," says Lauren during one of the play's crucial exchanges.
"We are acting," Marty tells her.
On its surface, the play could be mistaken for an extended sharp jab in the ribs of touchy-feely New Englanders looking desperately for their next New Agey artistic insight into the human condition. By play's end, what's disarming is how sympathetically the characters are treated. Much of the play's action doesn't take place onstage, but is implied, Moore said.
For a play that works best with an almost rapid-fire approach, its most shattering moment is thankfully quiet and almost slow by comparison. It comes when characters Lauren and Schultz plumb what seems to be the center of Baker's most urgent question: How can we recognize life's real, genuine moments?
The play presents a whole lot of interesting material in a hurry, the director says, but it also should prompt the audience to see a whole lot of themselves in the characters.
Salt Lake Acting Company's 'Circle Mirror Transformation'
When • Annie Baker's play previews Wednesday and Thursday, April 13 and 14; it opens Friday, April 15, and continues through May 8. Wednesday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7 p.m.
Where • SLAC, 168 W. 500 North, Salt Lake City
Info • $15-$37; at 801-363-7522 or http://www.saltlakeactingcompany.org