Blackbird, by Scottish playwright David Harrower, is a one-act psychodrama about the sudden reunion of Ray and Una. Ray sexually abused Una when she was 12. The grown-up Una has now sought him out. But this is more than the usual tale of damaged lives. It’s also about an attraction that has held these two people in its destructive grip for more than 15 years.
Sam Anderson
When Sam Anderson is asked what drew him to playing Ray, he replies, “Robin Larsen, the director, and I had talked about this play three years ago as one of a number of things we were very interested in. I’m a huge admirer of hers. We both thought the rights would never happen because you couldn’t get them in LA, they were just impossible. And then all of a sudden she called me and said ‘they’re here and I’m doing it and I’d like you to do it.’ I didn’t hesitate at all – I said great. If I’d stopped to think about it I might not have. But I really wanted to do it. It came to Rogue Machine, Corryn [Cummins] came in [to play Una], and it worked out really very well.”
Cummins continues, “I’m a company member here and I heard we were doing the play and I was already familiar with it. I’m from Chicago, and I keep an eye on the Chicago theater scene. I knew there was a run there, so I read the play and I loved it. I didn’t know Robin, so I had to come in and read.”
This play is a very intense hour-and-a half. When asked how long it takes to let go after a performance, each actor had a different response.
“I don’t let it go,” Cummins says. “It stays with me all week.”
“My experience is a little different,” Anderson continues. “When we come in to do it, about a half hour before, I start feeling nauseous, like clockwork. It doesn’t matter if I eat or don’t eat, and I’ve learned I can’t eat much beforehand, just because of the ride that we take. And then afterwards for whatever reason when I go out that door, I can partially let it go. I think it’s a different experience than hers. It’s like I go out the door and she doesn’t. I immediately, if I can, go right home and hug my kids and after a period of time my mind goes off it a little bit. During the week I’ll think about it off and on. Something I see in the street will remind me of it or something I hear on the news.”
The play takes place in a messy, claustrophobic break room of a large corporate plant (the scenic design is by Stephanie Kerley Schwartz). And the theater is small, which often puts the actors extremely close to audience members.
Sam Anderson and Corryn Cummins
“Initially for me,” Anderson says, “when we saw the set, I loved the fact that it was so claustrophobic because that’s really how the play feels. That was one thing, but then when we actually did it with an audience and there were really people sitting there the first time, it was different. I’m typically great at not looking at them, but in this case they’re so close. Especially in that front row that literally if you go there you’d see somebody, or if you go there you’d catch somebody’s eyes, so that was a little tricky. But now I think it’s fine.”
Cummins says, “I’m used to working in tiny little theaters, but in this particular case I felt really vulnerable with a lot of people there.”
Both actors were delighted to work with director Larsen. “As artistic director of the Road Theatre Company,” Anderson says, “I co-produced Pursued by Happiness with Taylor Gilbert, and we hired Robin to do it because we were both just huge fans of hers. The first thing I saw her do was Tryst at Black Dahlia Theatre about three or four years ago, which truly was one of the most stunning evenings in the theater I’ve had anywhere, ever. I still see images of that in my head. I think she’s very, very gifted, and we’re lucky to work with her.
”She loves verbs,” Anderson continues, “I know she loves verbs and that’s really helpful for an actor. She’s a very active director in that way. I’d say from my point of view she’s very firm about what she wants, but she’s also collaborative…she talks with you about it if you need to. I trust her, I trust her vision.”
Many hours of rehearsal were spent in character discussions. “Ultimately my character is a victim,” Cummins says. “But in her own mind, I don’t think that she believes she’s a victim, because for her the event was consensual. Actors always say you can’t judge the character that you’re playing. So I have to remove me, Corryn, from it. The aftermath of the affair just took over Una’s life. It’s been impossible to let it go. I think it’s true, that she thinks about it every day.”
“I think the one line in the play,” Anderson says, “that stuck with me tremendously and deeply right away was when, close to the end, I say to Una ‘I did think about you, I do think about you, it’s all I have’.”
“When I first read the play, I thought I might be the janitor. I kept saying that to Robin. She said ‘I don’t think so, but I don’t think you’re that far from it.’ He’s more like a lower-level management guy that everybody just ignores. Which is why the break room looks the way it looks and why the other employees go out of the building and turn out the lights and leave him alone. They just try and get his goat all the time. And given his prison record, there’s nothing he can do about it.”
“It’s interesting that we can always say that somebody should know better,” continues Anderson, “because they’re of a certain age, but everybody’s development is arrested at a different time. And one of the best things a director has ever said to me, Robin said to me during a rehearsal of this play. ‘You, Sam Anderson may be pretty much on top of things, or you try to be. But this guy, Ray, never is. Things are always a step ahead of him. This situation and relations
Corryn Cummins
hip was always a step ahead of him. And that’s how he has to live, trying to keep up’. And that opened up a big, enormous door in terms of how I could play it.”
“I worked very hard over the first three weeks of rehearsal,” Anderson says, “to really develop Ray’s point of view and to fight for his point of view. So every time Corryn or Robin would say ‘well he abused. . .’ I’d say, wait a minute, it’s a love story. It takes two, it wasn’t just me’.”
Toward the end of the play, a surprise third character arrives, taking the play in a new and thought provoking direction.
Both actors shared their thoughts on what they would like audiences to take away from the play.
“I wanted to do it because I loved the humanity of it,” Anderson says. “I loved the fragile humanity of it. I think it’s bold and not always politically correct. I certainly don’t want to be any kind of poster boy for pedophilia or improper relationships — that’s not my thing at all– but I love the humanity of the characters and that’s what I think people walk away with, looking at our own fragility really. And there have been people who have come and talked to me afterwards and said that beyond the immediate subject, which is so disturbing, it reminded them of hanging on to relationships and how powerful not letting go can be, in so many different ways, whatever the relationship. I think that’s something for anyone to take a look at in any time in their lives.”
“We talked in rehearsal a lot about how it’s not pretty, but it’s human,” Cummins adds. “And I find that I’m often drawn to work that explores the darker side of human nature.”
Corryn Cummins and Sam Anderson
“Both of them have been abandoned in their own ways,” Anderson adds. “And that’s what Una and Ray are left with for all those years, which is the other thing I found amazing about the play. To play that, that you
spend 15 years not knowing what the other person really did, but you have an idea. Una fingered me and put me in prison. And for her, I walked out on her.
“Actually Una’s parents put him in prison,” Cummins adds. “I would never have done that. I was still in love.”
“But I don’t know that,” Anderson says.
And that’s just one of the many intriguing conundrums of this provocative Blackbird.
**All production photography by John Flynn
Blackbird, produced by Rogue Machine. Sat. and Sun. at 5 pm. Now through July 24. Tickets $25-30. Rogue Machine, 5041 Pico Blvd, LA. 323-930-0747 or www.RogueMachineTheatre.com.
