BWW Blog: Molly Garner of BIG FISH - Tears During Rehearsal

By: Oct. 24, 2014
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I felt the tears building long before I released them. I stood stock still as my throat tightened and my breathing became shallow.

We were rehearsing Edward's final scene. Only about a third of the cast was there, as the ensemble had not been called. Jeff Skowron, who plays our Edward, wasn't even singing full out. He was marking. The rehearsal studio felt like a meat locker. Our director liked to keep it cool-he works in TV and I guess sets are usually cool? (I wouldn't know.) Plus my mother says men are never cold. With the exception of my husband, she could be right. But I digress.

So I'm standing in a meat locker, Jeff is marking, it's 4:30 in the afternoon and I'm trying not to weep like a baby. The pressure is building and my control begins to slip. A tear escapes down my cheek, and I start to think, "What exactly am I holding on to? What exactly am I holding on for?"

For a second I'm transported back to my bedroom in Ohio in 1992, and I'm 12 years old and I have just finished listening to the entire soundtrack of Phantom of the Opera. And this may seem terribly unsophisticated to the contemporary theatregoer, but I remember feeling that tightness in my throat and tension in my belly and realizing that I wanted to sit down and have a good cry. It wasn't because I identified with any of the characters in the play: the Phantom was clearly crazy and Christine would have been insane to stay with him, but... it was all just so sad! He couldn't help loving Christine any more than she could help not wanting to live in an underground lair for the rest of her life. But the fact that I felt for the two of them under the most ludicrous of circumstances spoke to the power of musical theatre. It speaks to the power of all theatre. The Greeks had a word for it: catharsis, defined as "the purging of emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music." (Dictionary.com.)

Catharsis was what made me fall in love with theatre in the first place.

So I stood there, shivering, and allowed my catharsis to spill over. I let go and allowed myself to weep for Edward, this fictional character standing on the fictional edge of a fictional river, which in fact was a line of tape in a rehearsal space in a freezing cold studio in California. Or maybe I wept for Edward's son, who never really tries to understand his father until it is (almost) too late.

However, the sentiment in Big Fish is not cheaply wrought. The audience is taken on a journey with Edward and his son Will that blends myth with reality, that questions our ability to create the narrative of our lives, and examines how the creation of that narrative impacts those closest to us. The ending is hopeful and sad and many other things, but above all, it's beautifully done. And as I stood there, allowing my tears to flow, I looked around and discovered that all the other actors were crying too, and the entire stage management team had a Kleenex.

"That was awful!" wailed Rebecca Johnson, who plays our Sandra. "Can we not do that [scene] again until our opening?"

"Now I know why it didn't last on Broadway," someone else joked. "I'm so depressed!"

I don't know about that. All I know is my good friend Sara Walbridge is coming opening night, and she cried no fewer than three times when we went to see Best Man Holiday last year. She's going to be a mess.

So what is this incredible ending? I can't say. I wouldn't want to spoil it for ya.



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