Year of the Pearl

About this book

Here is an immensely rewarding book for theatre lovers everywhere, for anyone who is interested in the interior workings of the theatre, and, especially, for audiences who want to know how it all comes together. David Hapgood, whose own love of the theatre was fired by a childhood encounter with the great Russian actor and director Stanislavski, takes us day by day, step by step, through a year in the life of the Pearl, a small Off Broadway repertory company dedicated to. The classics, and lets us watch and listen to the people who make this particular theatre work. We meet Shep Sobel, the high-principled founder and artistic director of the company, deciding what the year's repertoire will be (Moliere, Euripides, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov), auditioning actors, directing that dark satiric comedy Tartuffe, debating crucial points of interpretation, and always pushing his actors to extend themselves. We meet the actors, one by one, And come to understand their dedication as they talk about what different roles mean to them. We see close-up how they turn their emotions inside out on stage every night, and we learn of the sacrifices they must make, working for a pittance and juggling other jobs to keep afloat. We come to know, too, the less visible players at work: the stage manager, the costume designer, the light and sound artists. We meet the whole troupe, share their frustrations and their. Triumphs - all this while the spectre of AIDS haunts this talented company. David Hapgood's journey of discovery in his year at the Pearl becomes the journey that every audience seeks. He helps us to reach across the footlights and to penetrate the mystery, "the magic that inhabits actors at the moment of creation."