By Nalee Praseutsack, MCT Intern
BOEING BOEING will be opening MCT’s 2015-2016 season. A
French farce, the play is about a bachelor, Bernard, who has three air hostess
fiancées and struggles to keep them from discovering each other with the help
of his Wisconsinite friend, Robert, and maid, Berthe. I sat down with Ryan
Schabach (Robert) and Marcella Kearns (Berthe) to talk about doors, characters,
and cocktails.
For the actors, the implied comedy in the script of this
bedroom farce stood out right away. “When you read it,” said Schabach, “it
doesn’t do itself justice because you have to visualize—the comedy lies in the
odd set of circumstances that comes with people going in and out of doors.”
The doors are an integral part of any farce, but
exceptionally so in BOEING BOEING, which surpasses the traditional number of
doors. While there are typically three doors in a farce, the play calls for
seven, which have been adapted to six for this production. “I’m sure it’ll feel
like twelve [doors],” Kearns joked.
The actors also discussed their characters with me. Kearns
described her French maid character as having “a stereotypical sense of
superiority and ennui” and said, “I think of a lot of her humor—besides how
just odd she is—comes from that.”
I also asked about
how Kearns has been developing her French accent. She has been working with
Michelle Lopez-Rios, the production’s dialect coach, to “modify what might be a
natural sounding accent for the stage.” She has also been building her French
repertoire. “I spend 10-15 minutes every day speaking French. I can say things
like ‘the men are calm and rich’ and ‘I am eating an orange with fish.’”
As Schabach delved into Robert’s origin story, some
similarities between actor and character became apparent. “Robert was
definitely raised on a farm in northern Wisconsin, so he gets to have the
greatest accent ever. And he probably went to UW-Madison which, oddly enough,
is everything that I really have done! So I get to use my own accent that I use
in everyday speech and it’s wonderful.”
Bernard’s habits of keeping three fiancées is old hat for
Berthe, but for Schabach’s character, Robert, it’s all new. “I think he’s a
little…innocent,” Schabach said. “He comes into everything with overjoy.
Everything is exciting, everything is new, kind of like a child seeing a toy
for the very first time. I guess in my case it’s a dog playing with a toy for
the very first time. It’s all new. It’s exciting. And the things that he’s
never heard of that are scandalous are just beyond him.”
The play’s 1960s aviation theme is nothing new to Kearns,
who comes from generations of military and commercial aviators. “I had grown up
with pictures of people in uniform, but also of…the officers clubs overseas in
Japan or hanging out in Hong Kong or Taiwan,” she said. “So the first impression
I had of that era was of high fashion and flare and cocktails. It’s all about
the cocktails. As soon as you walk in somebody hands you a drink. And I think
that oddly enough really hits here in this play. There’s fashion and cocktails.”
To end our conversation on a high note, I asked the actors
to compose their own dream trio in lieu of air hostesses. Rather than flight
attendants, Kearns decided on pilots: Han Solo from Star Wars, Apollo from Battlestar
Galactica, and the Wright Brothers (as a unit). Schabach went with a clan
of influential women: Amelia
Earhart, Cleopatra, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Join us for BOEING
BOEING August 13 – 30.
