Overall, it went great! Here’s my report:
Context
In one section of the play, about half-way through, Eddie returns to the motel room in which he and May—former lovers with a murky, hinted-at history—have been arguing. May has told Eddie that she has a date coming to pick her up. Eddie erupts in fury, at first, grabbing a shotgun from his truck and making vague threats. After more arguing, Eddie leaves again, but this time returns with a rope bag and claims to be calling May’s bluff, that there is no man in fact coming over. He takes a rope out of the bag and starts roping the posts of the motel bed in a move that is partly threatening, partly trying to be annoying, and partly flirtatious / erotic. After more arguments and roping the posts about six or seven times, Eddie says: “You know, I hope this guy comes over. I really hope he does. I wanna see him walk through that door.” May replies: “What are you gonna do?” Eddie pauses, then swings the rope again and catches the second chair at the motel room table where May has her feet. Yanking the chair backward, he snarls, “I’m gonna nail his ass to the floor. Directly.”
The Roping
The first thing I discovered once we had a real stage and set to work with was that there would be no real throwing of the loop. There just wasn’t enough room. I had to learn to let go of the loop when throwing it but keep ahold of the spoke–mentally, it’s more like placing the loop on the target than what I had been practicing in my driveway. But, you know, it’s still possible to miss!
The bedposts were comparatively easy, though I did manage to miss one of them in maybe half the shows. The interesting thing was that if I just played it in character it wasn’t really a problem, and every line that involved roping a bedpost had an interesting alternative cast to it if it was accompanied by a miss instead of a hit. I never wanted to miss, as Sam Shepard does write in the stage directions that Eddie “never misses,” but I know for a fact that Sam Rockwell, who played Eddie on Broadway, definitely missed and just played it in character. Eddie is supposed to be drunk, after all. And the bedposts are mostly about how you play Eddie’s affect – it’s about having some swagger and really snapping the rope taut.
The chair was the stressful part, but as my 12-year-old son suggested when I first talked about this with him, I always had a back-up plan. If I just completely missed that chair, I’d go up to it and flip the chair over angrily myself. I did that once in a dress rehearsal and managed to flip the chair all the way off the stage, though—it’s amazing what you can do when your adrenaline spikes like that.
I only missed the chair in one performance, and it was one with lots of friends and family present. My son was also there for that one (he saw it three times), and he was thrilled that we employed his back-up plan. And, frankly, my anger over missing the chair may have heightened the delivery of the next line a little bit: if you roll with things, almost anything that happens on stage can be interesting or even advantageous. I had to exert some mental self-control for the rest of the play in not letting my brain start going, “F#@$… I wish I hadn’t missed the chair!”
But it mostly went great, and the majority of the the time I got a great snap-back on the chair where it flew backward and I grabbed it as I gave my threat. I did always experience a sense of relief once I crossed that moment in the play, as everything that followed was comparatively easy, or at least dependable.
Conclusion
Lots of people seemed to like the roping, and the characterization made possible while rebuilding the coil after each time using the rope was really fun, and I think amply used all the specific instruction I’d gotten from the videos people posted here. For me, learning that skill (to a small extent) was also a really fun part of having this role. I told a lot of people about the advice and assistance I got on this forum and how grateful I was for all of you and your encouragement.
