Luke as The Comedian

Frankly, casting Luke was the result of happenstance and blind faith. Luke initially decided against auditioning for IP’s because his experience last year was traumatic. I had originally cast Antón as “The Comedian”, thinking that his sense of humor and timing would lend itself to the role. However, after several re-writes, I was still nowhere near satisfied with material I’d written for “The Comedian”. It was during the Victoria Ballet’s production of Ballet Rock! that a number set to “Nobody Home” by Pink Floyd triggered the entire monologue in my mind… I began furiously scribing during the show, and when I returned to school, I transcribed everything that I could remember. As the monologues as they would ultimately be took shape, I realized that a) it would be unfair to ask Antón to memorize such a substantial piece of writing, and block a relatively intricate progression of movement in roughly two and a half weeks, as he was straining under academic pressure and expressed concern at the fact that English is not his native language. It was during a sailing trip to Victoria over (Canadian) Thanksgiving Weekend that I handed some of the material to Luke on a whim, and was simply blown away by what he did with it. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve noted his newfound comedic timing in social situations; however, his ability to enliven my written words on the page simply floored me. I convinced him to join the project, and after some coaxing he obliged.

My primary obstacles in directing Luke involved his physicality and stage presence. He is self-admittedly “slight and awkward”, and so it took a great deal of effort to make him appear more comfortable onstage (he really is, I promise). I didn’t want to completely remove his almost jittery theatrical sensibility, however, as I felt is diversified his character. We also worked intensively on the different voices and narrative arcs within his first monologue. He said at the first rehearsal “I only have one funny voice.” After two more, he had a working cache of about ten. It was fantastic. He had to be coached in making his monologue a story, rather than a series of dryly sarcastic one-liners… and so he delivered his first monologue, in his mind, to his family at Thanksgiving dinner.

His second monologue required a completely separate didacticism, however. I was more forthcoming with Luke about my interpretation of certain thematic elements in the central narrative than I was with the other actors. His rehearsals were separate from the rest of them until production week, and I really didn’t want him to integrate with them too much—with the central cast, I strove to cultivate a strongly familial and trusting dynamic, bolstered by stronger connections within (between AJ and James, AJ and Kristina, Samantha and The Students, etc.). Just as Luke’s narrative was removed from the central narrative, so too was he as a cast-member. I did my best to explain to him that he embodied both the tragically conflicted Generation X yuppie-turned-suburbanite, as well as the dichotomy of the persistence of the dialogue on social issues without recourse. Honestly, I cannot fully articulate the significance of The Comedian… and through his monologues, I attempted to make the piece Delphic in nature and the audience member part of a subjective force.

Luke really took my challenge to him and ran with it, though: I told him to be the picture of stereotypical comedian in his first monologue, and that same comedian humanized by the death of Kurt Cobain during the second.