"I been to the zoo" 11

I read the play several times before the first rehearsal. The part was tremendous, Jerry a sort of down and out character with long but great monologues.I learned a lot from doing those monologues from "Glass Menagerie" and was eager for this new challenge. It was to be directed by Mark, whose family was connected to theater one way or another. He was basically the electric and lighting person for the theater and this was Tanden's way of repaying him for his work. The other actor to play Peter, the other character in the play, was Dan, a very good actor who I worked with before. Peter was a difficult character in that he listens to Jerry rant and rave about his life. The actor playing him must have great concentration and a inner life. I was happy to be doing this play with Dan.

We started reading through the play and right off the bat, Mark said I was superficial, that I wasn't reaching down deep inside myself to achieve the character. He said I must examine myself to feel the pain, the alienation from society.I studied the play trying to understand Jerry, a lonely man, homeless by today's standards, brilliant and suicidal. At the end of the play, Jerry thrusts himself on a knife held by Peter. If he wanted to kill himself, why does he approach a total stranger and agitate him to a point that Peter holds a knife to him?

The beginning of the play was very delicate. It had to be believable that a man like Peter, a college professor, would stay and listen to Jerry about his dismal and lonely life. It could be said that Jerry was insane but you can't play him like that because Peter would just get up and walk away.The insanity would come out later after Jerry has totally absorbed Peter with the stories about his life.

The first line of the play was Jerry to Peter" I been to the zoo". It felt forced and artificial. Mark said he didn't believe me. He didn't believe I was in an open park.He didn't believe I was Jerry. Mark said he was feeling Jerry's pain, his pain was the character's pain. I think he wanted to do the role. One night we argued so hard that we went outside to settle it. We yelled at each other right there on 14th Street until we both realized,at the same time, if we didn't cool it the production would be dead. Dan said he would quit if we didn't stop arguing. So, we shook hands and went back in to finish rehearsal.

I explored my own life, the times I felt nothing was going right. The times I felt completely alone.To help myself with this opening, I decided to try it for real. I went to Astoria park near my neighborhood and looked for someone sitting alone so I could walk up  and tell them "I been to the zoo".I went up to this guy sitting and smoking a cigarette and when I was a couple of feet from him he looked up and if to say"what the hell do you want"? I was embarrassed so I just walked away.

I saw another man reading a newspaper and when I was near him I mumbled "I been to the zoo". The man looked at me and continued to read his newspaper.I walked out of the park thinking my experiment had failed when I got a revelation.What if it was just as hard for Jerry to do this?What if he was trying all day to engage someone and was unsuccessful, until he came upon Peter?

That night at rehearsal, I tried what I had learned in the park. I casually walked into the scene and didn't say anything until we made eye contact a few times. We played this back and forth until these 2 characters had a rapport before even the first line was said.

I gained more and more insights about Jerry as I went through every line in the play. Jerry has some very descriptive dialogue and I worked until I had a very good visual image of everything I was describing. For instance,Jerry talks about this woman who lives in his flop house that he has never seen but hears her crying all the time. I pictured someone I loved, down and out living in a flop house. This image brought me to a emotional place that fit the character perfectly.

One of the main subjects that Jerry talks about is the landlady's dog. Here I had to make up an image out of fantasy as I couldn't think of a dog in my own life that was anything like the the dog in" The story of Jerry and the Dog". Here I was using the Strasberg technique of affected memory, using real objects in your life to get to the reality and the Meisner technique of using fantasy. Combined , they worked very well together.