Guest Post by Philip Cuomo - "Unleashing The Monster"

This post comes to you from the tech week for "Big Love," directed by PAC associate director Philip Cuomo.

Charles Mee’s Big Love is a huge story. All about power and gender, sex and love. His narrative exposes the elegance and the vulgarity of life. It is sophisticated and base, witty and boorish.

As we approach tech week everything is still very polite. We seem stuck in low gear. Many of the performers have shifted out of second into third gear, some from third to fourth, but we have yet to open up the throttle. Repetition will help, adding tech will help, picking up the pace and understanding the text and action of the play better will help. But as I watched our run-through Sunday night I wondered if that will be enough, will we reach overdrive, attain maximum velocity.

It occurred to me I needed to take the reins off big Rich Cashin. Let his character Constantine explode onto the stage. I have been working Rich to find the cap to Constantine’s emotional life, which has stifled and contained his instrument. He has worked the text with a sophistication that has shamed his arrogant director and taken my direction fully to heart, working to govern his impulses, and as a result Constantine has become polite.

It is time to honor Rich’s large physical instrument, his booming voice, expose the head banger he once was: unchain the beast. Let him tear it up, over the top, big and bad. No apologizes. Rattle the stage and upset the delicate imagery created by the director.

It is why I cast him in the role in the first place. Allow him to be the electric performer he is capable of being. Unleash the Monster.