Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Small Parts, Small Actors

Article first published as From the Green Room: Small Parts, Small Actors on Blogcritics.

As the old canard has it, there are no small parts only small actors. Recent experience suggests that it would be more truthful to say there are indeed small parts and small actors aplenty to fill them complaining all the while. Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which I find myself one such small actor playing one such small part, offers a case in point. While the play has some of the great acting roles in the contemporary American theater, it also has some real stinkers. Included in the cast are a cadre of servants who are little more than walk-ons, a gaggle of no necked children, Dr. Baugh and the esteemed Reverend Tooker, the small part for this small actor. Williams, if nothing else, provides a lot of work for actors.

Now for a professional actor even a small part is a pay day. It may do little for the ego, but it does put food on the table. I would imagine that Maxwell Glanville who played the servant Lacey and Fred Stewart who was the original Rev. Tooker were just as thrilled to get their paychecks as Burl Ives, Ben Gazzara and Barbara Bel Geddes. Of course Burl, Ben and Barbara got the plums as well, but half a loaf is worth something. With the economics of the theater today, however, there are few, if any, new plays—straight plays especially—requiring these kinds of small parts that are likely to be produced professionally. Equity actors don't come cheap. It is not the typical theater that can afford to cast even classic dramas like Our Town, neglected relics like Camino Royal, let alone produce a new work with a cast of thousands. Non-profits may be, but don't look for them on the Great White Way. On Broadway, you're more likely to see a show with a cast of two than you are with a cast even the size of Death of a Salesman.

If a paycheck is at least incentive for the professional actor, what is the incentive for the amateur? Take Rev. Tooker. He first appears in Act I. He is playing croquet with Doc Baugh. They have a few lines about the game as a kind of background for Maggies' plaints about life with Brick on that hot tin roof. He is, unfortunately for the actor, off-stage. He appears again at the beginning of Act ll, provoking Big Daddy with his prattle with Gooper about memorial gifts. He has his big moment in the play when Big Mama pulls him on her lap and leaves the stage in embarrassment when Big Daddy begins to make sexual remarks. He is back before the end of the act sheepishly looking for the "gentleman's lavatory. In the third act he stands around for awhile as the truth about Big Daddy's cancer is detailed, and quickly gets out of the way. It is not that he has no function in the play. Like Maggie, Gooper and Mae, he is, on a lesser level, another leech—or in his case a gnat—looking to suck a little blood out of the dying man. He has a moment of comic relief.

The role may be better than a walk-on, but it really offers little for the actor and adds little to the drama that couldn't have been done in some other way. Indeed, you have to wonder what difference it would make if he were eliminated entirely. Were Williams writing today, I have no doubt he would have found a way to get rid of the good reverend, and he would be right to do so. Certainly there are small parts that offer the actor a moment on stage that has creative possibilities. I think of the Professor in Our Town, Marley's ghost in A Christmas Carol, even the Gentleman caller in The Glass Menagerie. These are the roles where the actors may be small, but the roles aren't. Rev. Tooker is a small role, just right for a smallest of actors.

Making Movies in the Hinterland: Extras

The Next Three Days, the Russell Crowe film that has been filming in Pittsburgh and environs for the past few weeks, has just gotten a section of the newly built Route 43 closed to traffic for about twenty four hours while they shoot at one of the toll plazas. The $25,000 fee reportedly negotiated by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission for the use of the road will no doubt be a boon to the depressed Western Pennsylvania economy and in truth not all that much of an inconvenience to locals who tend to avoid the little used toll road. The shoot will also be a boon to an assortment of other locals with aspirations for either a career in Hollywood or simply a close up glimpse of Crowe or his co-stars, Elizabeth Banks and Liam Neeson.

The call for extras went out the other day from the local casting agent. They're looking for police types, highway patrol and such: big men, imposing, authoritative. Me? Even if I were the police type, which I am definitely not: too old, too skinny, too small, l no longer care to do extra work. The hours are long; the pay is minimal. The work is boring, and the film crew tends to treat you like dirt.

My one experience as an extra was several years ago in a commercial for a local chain of super markets. There were about a half a dozen of us, an assortment of ages and sexes. We were told to report to the shoot site, the Washington, Pa. location of the super market at eight o'clock in the evening with ten or so changes of casual clothing and prepare to be there until eight in the morning. Something of an exaggeration, I thought, since what we were shooting was a thirty second commercial.

We met at an employee break room in the back of the store. A production assistant barely out of her teens went through the clothing we brought, and told us what to wear. A little make up and we were out into the market, where we were placed strategically around the produce section. I was told to fondle the grapefruit. Two others were paired and told to walk down the aisle backs to the camera. Another gazed longingly at the egg plants. Then we stood in place as the crew made sure that the lighting worked. Then we waited while the principle in the shot, a young mother type, was given her directions. Then we waited while her make up was freshened. Then we waited while they fine tuned some of the lighting. Then we waited while they struck some offending debris in the back ground. Finally, after almost an hour, they shot the scene. It took perhaps a minute, perhaps not that long. Then they shot it again, just to be safe, and another two times, just to be safer. They moved the camera position, and then the whole process began all over again.

When we finished, we were sent back to the break room where the production assistant, with a judicious eye, prescribed new costumes. Presumably we were now different customers, after all what super market doesn't want to look busy with a crowd of shoppers. Then we were moved out to the meat counter, where, like the steaks, pork chops, and chickens, we waited. We, like the steaks, pork chops, and chickens, were the scenery. Extra work doesn't often call for creativity.
At one in the morning everyone stopped to eat. First the principles were sent to what passed for craft services, then the crew, then when everyone else had passed through, the extras. At eight in the morning, we were handed envelopes and sent on our way. Walking to my car in the parking lot was when I decided extra work wasn't ever going to further my acting career, and it is a decision I've been very happy with since.

Every once in awhile when an opportunity to stand as a piece of scenery in the vicinity of a Russell Crowe seems to be available, I think that maybe I made a mistake, maybe I ought to reconsider. But then I hear the story from one of the actors in the show I am currently rehearsing who did manage to get one of those highway patrolman extra jobs. After he was chosen by the assistant director, he was sent to one of the trailers to get his hair cleaned up. He sat down in the chair and the hair stylist proceeded to shear off the whole left side of his head.

"Wait a minute," he yells, as he tells it, "What are you doing?" I suspect that those were not quite the exact words he used.

"They want something military. You know, like a marine," says the stylist.

"Never again," the actor tells us at rehearsal that night.

"But at least you got to meet Russell Crowe," one of the little actresses in our cast gushes.

"Russell who?" he says.

The only good thing I know that ever came out of extra work was the Ricky Gervais series.

From the Green Room: Speaking Like Brits

We are three weeks into rehearsal for the Actor's Civic Theater's production of A Christmas Carol, and I am taking a break from the British accent CD I should be attending to. At last night's rehearsal, a dialect coach appeared and gave us some helpful hints on how to speak like nineteenth century English gentry; tonight he'll be back to help those of us who are going to attack Cockney. I have the good fortune to be dealing with both. In the first act of this production I play Marley's ghost, an upper class ghost in this production. In the second act, I turn into Old Joe, the rag man who buys the stolen property from Scrooge's death bed, and he is about as slimy as can be, and sliminess in Englishmen is, as often as not, signified by a heavy Cockney accent.

Now, while my attempt at a British accent needs some fine tuning, it can pass. The Cockney, on the other hand, is a complete joke. I seem to be all over the place. I can drop my 'aitches' like a veritable Eliza Doolittle; I can even get rid of the "t's" in words like better and button, substituting some sort of glottal grunt. Some of the words, however, torture me: sugar tongs, blankets, teaspoons. But even more importantly, when the words are all strung together sometimes they come out Cockney, sometimes something that smacks of Southern Baptist, sometimes hybrid Brooklyn (my natural accent, Brooklyn born and bred) Scotch with a smidgeon of nasal Eastern European. The rhythms of the line are all wrong. I can't seem to wrap my tongue around the phrasing. Besides whenever it seems to be going well, if that ever happens, no one can understand a word of what I'm saying. My Cockney accent is a joke.

I should no doubt have my ear glued to the dialect CD. I should be practicing getting the sounds from the back of mouth where, according to our dialect coach Cockney lives. Unfortunately, Cockney doesn't seem to live in the back of the particular mouth which happens to reside on the front of my face, or if it does, it is clearly on life support. All I can think of are all the critical reviews I've read about actors, sometimes very good actors, butchering British accents. I can hear the snickering now.

"Keep at it; keep practicing," I can hear the soothing voice of the dialect coach, a nice, gentle sort of man. "You're getting better. I can hear the difference, already." "You'll be fine," adds the director, a believer in positive reinforcement. The trouble is I can also hear what I sound like, and it isn't pretty. All I keep thinking is Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Perhaps it's begging the question, but wouldn't it be better to get rid of the accent altogether, rather than make fools of ourselves (I am not the only one struggling) in the vain attempt to sound like Robert Hoskins.

Why do nineteenth century Englishmen have to sound like Englishmen? While it seems absurd to even ask this question, hold on for a minute. Think about it. The nineteenth century French men in the highly acclaimed Les Miz, don't speak in French accents. In fact they speak is beautiful British accents, and the master of the 'ouse has a Cockney "to die for." I remember reviewers of Tom Cruise's Valkyrie pointing out that his American accent was less jarring than other actors playing Germans with their British accents. Surely a good accent is valuable, if nothing else it helps in the creation of verisimilitude. But clearly, a bad accent does nothing but destroy.

The obvious answer here is to cast actors who can do the accents, if the accents are in fact essential. While that may well solve the problem in any particular production, it doesn't really deal with what may be the more central aesthetic question. To accent, or not to accent: that is the question. I recently was in a play about some older Italian immigrants for the third time; we didn't use Italian accents. The first time I did the play we all used Italian accents. The second time, none of us used them. None of the audiences seemed to care. None of the audiences seemed to notice. How should the actors in Othello speak? Romeo and Juliet? What if you were producing Moliere or Cyrano de Bergerac? I don't know that Jose Ferrer would have been any better if he sounded like Peter Sellers doing Jacques Clouseau. It is certainly something to think about.
On the other hand, it may just be the sour grapes of someone simply trying to avoid going back to the dialect CD. Repeat after me: "The rain in . . . ." Where is Stewie Griffin when you need him?