Life imitating art: ‘I and You’ actors cultivate a rapport
“It’s not going to feel like a performance. … You’ll be able to see two real people really trying to connect.”
Like the strangers they play onstage, two actors who barely knew each other before auditions are learning how to connect during rehearsals.
Mei MacQuarrie and Matthew Beagan had seen each other around and had mutual friends but had never really met. Then they were cast as Caroline and Anthony in Umbrella Stage Company’s production of Lauren Gunderson’s “I and You,” running October 9 through November 22.
In the two-person play, Anthony arrives at Caroline’s home to work on a high school English project. Caroline, 17, is homebound because of liver disease and has become increasingly isolated. As they work through Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” their assignment offers an opportunity to learn about each other.
As MacQuarrie and Beagan have rehearsed the play, they’ve found their processes echoing their characters’ burgeoning relationship.
MacQuarrie says she sometimes notices herself responding to Beagan’s questions the way Caroline responds to Anthony — “I’ll freeze up a little bit.”
Beagan says he senses that Anthony’s speaking style and the things that excite him are surfacing outside the rehearsal space.
‘So engaged’
“I think most of the time I adopt characters’ mannerisms,” he says. “The way each character is written is so specific.”
The two-person play “really forces us to be present in a different way,” MacQuarrie says.
“We are paying attention to each other’s every move,” she says. “We are so engaged with each other.”
Beagan says director Michelle Aguillon has encouraged them to follow and incorporate those instincts and spontaneous reactions.
MacQuarrie says the naturalistic script includes a moment when Caroline and Anthony say “whoa” separately. In rehearsal, she and Beagan organically said it at the same time.
“It was just so instant,” MacQuarrie says, adding the freedom elicits “moments that are really beautiful.”
Character connection
Beagan sees much of himself in his character. Anthony is popular and plays basketball, but he also loves poetry and jazz and wants to experience as much of life as he can.
“There are very few characters that, as an actor, I feel completely seen by,” Beagan says.
The characters’ relationship develops slowly, through curiosity, he says.
“She’s her own person, and even though it takes her a second to show that, once she does, he’s like, ‘OK, there’s a lot there that I want to see,’” Beagan says.
Beagan says he hopes people leave with “a renewed sense of gratitude for each other and for the world and for the small things in life that we get to experience, including connecting with someone.”
In the intimate Black Box Theater at the Umbrella Arts Theater, he says, audiences will get to watch that connection develop up close.
“You’ll really get to know us in the room, and it’ll feel real,” Beagan says. “It’s not going to feel like a performance. … You’ll be able to see two real people really trying to connect.”
For information on performance dates and times, tickets, KidCare performances, dinner-and-a-show nights, and post-show talkbacks, visit theumbrellaarts.org.
