A 3D Adventure.

A small theatre company's ill-advised production, a modern vaudeville, goes off the rails the night before opening. The cast rebels against Doc, the writer/director/star/producer, and chooses a midnight showing of the newest Star Wars movie over ironing out the show's kinks. Then, of course, they're all sucked into a vortex and spit out into a world that resembles some of our most beloved films. It's up to Doc to rescue the cast, the show, and the entire theatrical art form. Part vaudeville, part Hope/Crosby Road Show, A 3D Adventure is an inventive love letter to both the theatre and the movies.

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The play and the role of Doc presented a challenge for me that actors often encounter in absurd and fantastical pieces. A 3D Adventure creates, as one can gather from the summary of its plot, a surreal and absurd universe. Even though the world of the play is outlandish and ridiculous, though, it is nevertheless the reality of the universe in which Doc lives. It is tempting, in a play like this, to metaphorically “wink” at the audience throughout, but the humor and pathos of the piece are lost if the actor does that. To this man, this is the truth of his universe, and the actor must fully commit to that.

 

A second source of creative growth in this production came from the fact that this involved the premiere of a new work—one in which the playwright was present during the entire rehearsal period. Both playwright Matt Lyle and Director Matthew Gray were very interested in collaborative input from the actors as far as the script content to a degree I had never experienced in my career before. While we as actors certainly examine how the words are performed, it is rare to play with what the words are! Many of the ideas that were born of the process wound up in the final script.