First rehearsal of Me, Myself & I was only two weeks ago

I feel bad that it has taken me so long to get this blog entry written, but things have been busy! Last Saturday was the first run-through of Me, Myself & I, Edward Albee’s world premiere. It was extraordinary to see the actors work their way through the play on its feet, and I felt like I learned a lot about the play itself.

You never go to a first run-through expecting to really get to see the play. Sometimes, it can feel like a miracle that the company makes it through at all - what with lines that have been freshly learned and only a week or two of rehearsal under their belt. So I was shocked when about 1/3 of the way through the piece, I suddenly realized that not only was I engaged and captivated, but that the run-through was allowing me to understand the play in a whole new light.

If you ask Albee what his play is about, he’ll tell you “it’s about two hours long.” This is, of course, entirely accurate, but perhaps not as detailed as one would hope. To me, this has always seemed to be a play about identity, about the way that we are shaped by our genes (it is, after all, about twins). But on watching the run-through I realized that there was a whole other component that I had missed entirely - it is a play about language. In a brilliant way, Albee uses the linguistic choices of his characters to question the way that language shapes reality. The point isn’t that the twins are identical, but that their names are identical, too. Word choices, turns of phrase, names, and the power of language are questioned throughout the entire piece, and at the end of the play I think that Albee makes a really interesting statement about language (which you’ll have to see for yourself when you see the play).

So this was a total revelation for me, made possible by the extraordinary work that this superb cast was doing. Since then, they’ve had another run-through, and are now getting ready for their first on-stage rehearsal on Friday. So cool!!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 8:38 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.