Perfect Harmony
Director Braden Abraham talks about Opus' unique on and off-stage collaborations
By Christy Denny |
Opus Director Braden Abraham watches his team of actors during a
music rehearsal. Photo by Keri Kellerman. |
Michael Hollinger’s Opus spotlights the inner workings of a string quartet in the
days leading up to a big-time gig at the White House. As the characters navigate personal
relationships, debate Beethoven’s intentions, and rehearse ad nauseum, the creative team
working on the Seattle Rep production has found a remarkable similarity between their
preparation for performance and that of the quartet’s.
For both, the artists are given a specific score with which to work—the musicians read
notes, while theatre artists follow the playwright’s words. “Our work is interpretive,”
says Opus Director Braden Abraham. “We have the music of the play, with a specific structure
we have to follow, but we have to let it speak to us specifically.”
And like the characters in the play’s Lazara String Quartet who have played together for
decades, the Rep’s actors and designers have the advantage of familiarity. In the
theatre-creation process, that familiarity means it’s easier to find a unified vision. Abraham
has collaborated with each member of his design team on multiple occasions, so the artists
went into this production with a pre-existing trust and, as Abraham calls it, “a shorthand
style of communicating.” This enables the team to bounce thoughts off of each other
efficiently until these ideas snowball into the final design.
“I like to give [the designers] specific parameters and let them run with it,” Abraham
explains. “There’s a balance in being clear in what you’re looking for but staying open for
spontaneity. You let them say, ‘I have a crazy idea’ and just see what happens.”
For example, Abraham brought a piece of natural wood to an early design meeting. “It
reminded me of the wood that makes up violas and violins,” Abraham says. Inspired by this
object, set designer Etta Lilienthal showed Abraham a piece of wall texturing, and the two
realized it looked like an abstracted musical score. They decided to carve images of
abstracted musical scores into the walls of the set.
“Working with the actors is pretty similar,” Abraham says in regards to that trust and
shorthand. Each of the five actors lives and regularly works in Seattle, so Abraham’s
familiarity with their individual acting styles will help him shape them into a unified cast.
Four of the actors portray characters, now in their 40s, who have known each other since college.
But Abraham does not anticipate a problem in developing this sense of camaraderie during
rehearsals. By working through scenes on their feet, the actors will make discoveries
together because Abraham believes in “doing rather than a lot of talking.”
As Opus nears its first rehearsal, Abraham is preparing an environment in which the actors
can follow their impulses. His goal, he says, is to do enough of his own pre-rehearsal
research so that he can confidently steer his actors, while staying open to their ideas.
Abraham hopes that this balance gives the actors a rehearsal space “where accidents can
happen,” and music—both literal and figurative—is made.
