Pass the Pulse!
Cast members from Distracted pass on professional advice to teenage players in Roundabout’s afterschool Student Production Workshop program.
This March, at the lowest level of the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, a score of New York City public high school students, members of Roundabout’s Student Production Workshop (spw)), are playing “Pass the Pulse.” The common theatre exercise helps focus and center an ensemble. Participants stand in a circle, holding hands, and a leader lightly squeezes one of the hands she holds. When that group member feels the pulse, he passes it on by pulsing the hand of the other person whose hand he’s holding. Before long, the pulse races around the circle, hand to hand, and the group becomes united as if by a communal heartbeat.
On this particular early spring afternoon, the spw teens are jumpy and nervous. It takes several attempts for them to quiet down enough to “pass the pulse” successfully. Part of the problem is that cast members from Distracted, Lisa Loomer’s comedy about attention deficit disorder in the digital age, are watching. They are observing the students’ first run-through off-script of spw’s spring show, Alky, a play about teenage drinking and alcoholism.
The warmup game is a perfect metaphor for Roundabout’s mission with its Student Production Workshop program, a four-year-old initiative of the education department. New York City high school students meet twice a week after school and form their own mini-theatre company. Roundabout offers each semester’s group the Black Box theatre and technical support, and most importantly, the expertise of its theatre artists. When the spw produced Angels in America, the education department got director Joe Mantello to share his experience acting in the original Broadway production. In this way, Roundabout passes the pulse—the theatrical impulse—to the next generation. Overseen by education associate Jay Gerlach, this spring’s madd) included 34 kids from 5 different schools. Past productions, in addition to Angels in America, have included plays like Joined at the Head, as well as original student-created pieces. The teens can get English or an arts credit toward high school graduation. But they give as well as receive—each show’s participants pick a charity. Though tickets are free, the students pass the hat at their performances and ask for contributions and deliver them to a select charity. For a play about New Orleans called Jazzland, money was donated to Hurricane Katrina relief; for Alky, the funds will go to madd) (Mothers Against Drunk Driving).
Back underground, the teens run-through the first scene of their play, almost flawlessly, rarely dropping a line. Afterwards, they pepper the cast from Distracted about tips and advice. The first question is: ’What’s the hardest part of acting for a professional?’ Lisa Emery assures them that even after decades as an actor she sometimes feels in rehearsals that she’s “lost and the floor has suddenly dropped out.” She urges them to have patience and to focus on the character’s circumstances to regain confidence. Mimi Lieber warns them about not letting the “self-esteem issues” that arise from failed auditions “separate you from your work on the craft of acting.” Then one student asks the age-old question: ’How do you overcome nerves?’ All the actors on the panel answer at once: “Breathe.” Then everyone laughs—student actors and seasoned pros—in solidarity. They may not know it yet, but the pulse has been passed.—John Istel
