Not Acting Acting : Lee Brock

Lee Brock is an actor, director, producer, teacher and co-founder of The Barrow Group a theatre company and performing arts centre based off Broadway in New York City. I caught up with Lee at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where she was performing in 17 Minutes with The Barrow Group. 17 Minutes is an ensemble piece about the aftermath of a school shooting. I got a chance to talk to lee about, amongst other things; the art of letting go, Community building and, prop behaviours.

TL Tell me about your background pre-Barrow Group?

LB I’m from Colorado and I love to sing and dance. I did a lot of singing and musicals and dancing. My mother brought me to NYC in 1974, when I was 15 years old and we saw about 8 shows. I saw Chicago with Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera. I was just blown away. We saw Pippin, and Ellen Burstyn in Same Time Next Year. I was just so enthralled by New York theatre. In high school I tried to do as much as I possibly could and learn from different people. Then I went to University of Oklahoma. They had a very strong acting programme and I immersed myself in dance, voice lessons and acting. Then I wanted to come to NYC where everyone was going to pursue their dreams and be stimulated by so much art. I arrived in NY in the 80’s when I was in my early 20’s and just started pounding the pavement looking for jobs. My first job was dinner theatre at Club Bene doing a show called Good News. I was also doing assorted acting jobs. This was all pre-Barrow Group. Then Seth (Seth Barrish, Lee’s husband, co-founder of the Barrow Group and director of 17 Minutes) and I met at an acting class with John Stix who was the primary acting teacher at the Julliard at that time. John gave us this ‘conversation exercise’ which we’ve taken and used for years in order to make the acting more real and spontaneous, like watching real people in real situations. It all starts with that ‘conversation exercise’.

 TL Can you tell me a little bit more about that ‘conversation exercise’?

LB   It always starts with you just having a conversation and then you start slipping into the text. So it’s really no different than just talking and then you slip into the text, it’s just that easy.  Its set up so that who you are is enough.  It’s not an idea of any character. You are enough and you are just talking and saying these lines. so that you’re letting go of ideas about how to play a character or, any ideas about should or ought to, or any sort of preparation and letting go so that you let the script do the work for you The story will ‘do you’ rather than you ‘doing the story’.

TL When you started The Barrow Group in 1986, 37 years ago, was it initially a theatre group?

LB Yes with 15 people with a similar way of working, there was an ease to their way of acting, very realistic actors, less theatrical, as such. Seth sought out people who could slip into that naturalism easily, tap into an emotional life easily, so that it might not even be an issue. People that had a good sense of humour and people that were nice people. So he brought these people together. And then we started working out for about a year. Refining those tools. When we decided to produce something we would work on it for a while to see if we could bring life to it. We wanted to make it as real as possible.

So yes, The Barrow Group started as a theatre company though classes were a part of it. Seth and I always taught our classes, usually on a Monday night so we could go off and do plays, even regional theatre. We would have Monday nights off so we were free to then teach. We always kept the teaching going to continue to learn how to play with those tools.

TL When you met Seth you got into this kind of realism fostered by the ‘conversation exercise’?

LB Yes, so the acting was so real that you couldn’t tell that it was ‘line-y’. So it was a question of how real can it be so the audience doesn’t think, ”oh, is that a line? It seems like she is just talking” but in fact it is the line. We started working out as a theatre company then we started to use specific tools to get the work even looser, less ‘act-y’, less ‘line-y’. Still, we would know the lines, we would be word perfect with the lines but it was kept loose. For example, in our current show, 17 Minutes, I listen to the show every performance and there are things that are different every performance, how people are discovering things or responding to things differently so it is different with each performance. Plays are so alive, and the audience is as well. They are living breathing entities. We are experiencing it right there in that moment.

TL Can you talk a bit about community and how that works.

LB Community is one of the most important values at The Barrow Group and my life’s work of supporting community. Seth and I have nurtured community for 37 years. that’s what makes things so wonderful at The Barrow Group. We believe in supporting the artist and nurturing the artist and leading with what works with the artist rather than criticizing, “you’re not doing this’, “this isn’t working”. Rather finding what’s working. Actors are so hard on themselves with internal dialogues of “I messed up”, “I’m not getting it”, “I screwed up that line” really unhelpful stuff. It’s really all process. It’s more about what you are learning about yourself. Each time you get up to do a scene, or a monologue you are learning stuff about yourself and the more that you keep nurturing that in yourself and each other as artists, as community supporting each other and elevating each other the more meaningful and productive it becomes. So many couples and companies have formed out of The Barrow Group. I am always supporting actors to find their communities and other artists that they want to work with so that you are not sitting and waiting for others in order to work and create. How as a group can you make the work happen rather than sitting back and waiting. Then the community is there to make the work and to share their ideas and their problems, you know if they are struggling with ‘self-tapes’ then the community can help work those out so that each person can be the best that they can be.

TL You can feel that sense of community in 17 Minutes. and all those relationships that make up a community. Community is a complex of relationships. 17 Minutes teases this complexity out through 6 characters with 6 different viewpoints. The scenes are set up so that the emotional tension builds to the final scene which is your scene with the security guard Andy (Larry Mitchell). It is an emotionally complex scene of grief, shock, anger and fear so there is a whole range of strong emotions that your character Cecelia has got to negotiate in this 10-minute scene. Can you talk a bit about how you manage that range of emotions in the work.

LB I feel very blessed because I’ve always been able to tap into deep complex emotions. People ask, “what’s your preparations” and I don’t even prepare. Each performance I listen to the whole play. I stand back and really listen to what’s going on and thus the play affects me as it does the audience. Just hearing different things throughout the play. I think also that the story is so intense that I don’t really have to do that much because I am so affected by the performance itself and the play itself. I just allow myself to stay open to what is going to affect me rather than trying to affect the emotions. Scott Organ’s writing, the play itself is so complex, Cecelia, she’s the mother, she’s lost her son. She’s at the memorial, in the school where the shooting happened. She has to sneak out of the memorial to go to the place where her son was last alive to find the security guard who has been ostracized by the whole community. Why is he here? What is he doing here? Because she wanted to have a private moment but he’s here. Then he pulls out the gun. Is he going to shoot himself? Is he going to shoot me? Am I going to get my hands on the gun and shoot him? So all of those thoughts are going through my head and thoughts are us talking without the words. So all those thoughts are coming into play. It is so complex, like life. And life is so complex. Just trying to play one thing is limited rather than letting a whole bunch of complexity affect you.

TL So, about the gun. It is a different sort of prop – it is not inactive or passive – it has power and agency. Even though it is a decommissioned gun it has to be managed. It must be locked up every night after the performance. There are security issues there and a protocol has to be followed to even be allowed to have a gun on stage. A person can brandish a decommissioned gun and it is legally regarded as a threat. So it is not a normal kind of prop. It has an unusual status.

LB Yes, it has the strongest status in the scene.

TL How did you work with that in the scene?

LB Yes, well my duffle coat that I am wearing, my costume becomes a sort of counter-active mechanism. I open and close it. It becomes a sort of shield used to protect myself. I interact with it unconsciously as we do with objects. A sort of unconscious dialogue. If I close my coat maybe he won’t kill me. I hold up my handbag, maybe it will stop the bullet. It is all a dialogue going on as thought processes and it comes out as behaviour and behaviour helps to tell the story in addition to the lines. Lines are just a by-product of a whole life that we are looking at. So behaviour can tell the story as well and the audience can fill in the blanks. Behaviours are a sort of unknowing and it is this unknown space that can bring the audience closer. There is also a lot of unknowing for me. I get up there and I am not sure what is going to happen. Each show is different. You don’t quite know what is going to happen and this affords more spontaneity and unpredictability to the performance which is interesting to play with as a performer. I may know my lines and my blocking but the rest is unknown and it is a matter of how I play with that.

TL So much of the final scene is about unknowing and meaninglessness. Although the play opens after the shooting, the shooting itself is a meaningless act. Your character Cecelia says “I want more than justice, I want meaning.” And the security guard does not know what he did for those 17 minutes. But it is not an abyss of meaningless.

LB No it isn’t because finally the security guard does not kill himself. In the end he takes the bullet out of the gun. And before that Cecelia says,’ I forgive you, I truly forgive you” that this problem is beyond blaming anyone because it is a bigger issue and I think that is what the playwright Scott Organ was trying to get across that gun violence affects every single relationship that we have. How are we able to look at that as a larger problem. You know a security guard cannot go into a school with a small handgun against a semi-automatic weapon. It’s impossible. You cannot be asked to go in and protect children from that.

There was another school shooting in Texas where a SWAT team, you know fully trained and weaponized didn’t go into the school for 2 hours. You know there is this human element of self protection and protecting others from a death threatening situation. Are you going to be another dead body. You know that human element. We don’t ever know what will happen, how someone will respond until you are in the situation.

TL Let’s switch tack here and talk a bit about your teaching. How does your acting inform your teaching?

LB I love acting. I love teaching. I love directing. I love developing plays. For me, acting is a spiritual thing. I feel connected to a higher thing. Also with teaching, which might sound a little airy fairy, but as with my acting, so with my teaching. For example, I do this action with my hands to let things go (Lee bends her elbows and makes a circular waving movement with her hands). To let the ideas go, let the last performance go, let stuff go so that stuff can come and affect you, so that as a teacher, with my class, that’s the main thing I am trying to help people with, letting go of their ideas, letting go of their low self-esteem. Are you having fun, are you telling the story, is it spontaneous, are you loose, are you discovering different things. For example, today’s performance backstage stuff was going on, things were set a bit differently, I got too hot in the space, I noticed the audience laughing at a different instance, I was discovering different things, to be open to, to be affected by. I think the more I can let things go it’s helpful to me as a performer. Helping actors let things go in their work, their ideas, how they worry about their lines. Letting that stuff go so that more stuff can come in and happen to them so that more spontaneous, unpredictable behaviour can happen

Doing this letting go action helps to let go. A lot of my students will come off stage and do the movement. Let go of those thoughts that are not serving you, or someone has upset you. Let that go and come from a deeper understanding with someone. So your defences are not up, how are you going to be able to let that go and go deeper into the art of compassion, being more empathetic. That helped me in my last scene. Sitting there, there is a lot of complexity, he was the last person that saw my son alive, he could have protected my son, he’s in a lot of pain, the pain of the room. In the Fringe run we changed the location of the last scene from outside in the courtyard to inside the classroom which made the scene hotter. The sheets on the tables give me something to play with, if feeds me a little bit more. Also the script for 17 Minutes has a lot of ‘yes’, ‘you know’, ‘ah uh’, ‘oh yeah’ those kind of verbal behaviours scripted right in.

TL To bring the script to life – to enliven it. Reviewers here in the UK have commented on the acting in 17 Minutes; that it is not ‘actor-ly’.

LB I think that is exactly what Seth and I have been trying to do with The Barrow Group for the last 37 years with our ‘no acting acting’. That is what we are known for, how real can it be. Not all acting is like that. We go see shows where you can really see the performances. The Barrow Group is really known for that spontaneous, unpredictable acting. We’ve spent years and years trying to get loose and spontaneous where the acting is invisible. The cast of 17 Minutes are all Barrow Group so the acting style is consistent across all the roles. Some of us have been working together for over 20 years.

TL The space you perform in in Edinburgh is acoustically challenging. Nonetheless you chose not to use mics. Can you talk a bit about that.

LB Yes, without mics the audience has to lean in a bit more to come into the story rather than us taking the story out to them. So if we are really acting it up then the story becomes obvious to the audience and then there is less engagement. There is more of a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ experience when the audience lean in. At first the actors had to find their levels so that they get the balance right – that they can be heard but that they are not overtly projecting the lines. It is again about making it close, spontaneous so that the audience is brought into the story, into what is happening. It is all about the audience. Asking how this story is landing on the audience. What is being observed, by the actors, by the audience.

TL The staging in NY has the audience on either side of the stage so that the audience could see each other across the stage.

LB Yes that was intentional. It made the audience all a part of it. This is your story. You are a part of it too. We are all a part of this story. That beautiful last line where my character says, ‘it’s not your fault, it’s all our fault’. We are all in this together and again the community. How we can help our communities, nurture our communities. Putting the stage in the middle of the audience meant that the audience was not just looking at this from afar. They are instead a part of it. They tap into all of those families that have lost children. They are grieving. Like I said, I listen to the play afresh everytime and very carefully. The security guard Reuben (Larry) asks, ‘are there any fatalities?’ because even though he was there he doesn’t even know they were dead, who were they, the kids? He doesn’t even know. And the grief is unfathomable. It is all unfathomable. A child with a machine gun. What? That’s not even a hunting weapon, it is a weapon of war. The whole matter of hunting. My father and brother were hunters. There is such respect for the gun. Respect for the animal. Respect for the ritual. You just don’t go shooting children down in schools. I was also from Colorado where Columbine happened. Columbine was the first one of those incidents and now its become a national epidemic. We Americans are so reticent about choosing gun laws. It’s ridiculous.

TL How have the Scottish audiences been responding to the play? They have their own tragic history with a school shooting, Dunblane. Scotland enacted gun laws as a result of Dunblane and that seems to have helped. But this play is not only about guns it is about a community in crisis and how a tragedy affects a community How has it been performing here at the Fringe?

LB The Scottish audiences have been great, very receptive. You can feel that the audiences are really drawn into it. They are deeply affected by it, deeply moved. And I think the play gives a different perspective on it rather than just the news story. Seeing people in all their complexity. I believe that art has the capacity to heal and I think just by seeing human beings on stage talking about this provides a more human connection to it. I really feel that the audiences here are getting that.

TL I’ve sat outside the theatre watching people come out from the play and I can see that they have been moved. I have seen the play several times and it never fails to move me to tears. I feel that the whole cast works together to pave the way for the final scene with you and Larry where the catharsis takes place.

LB yes this is the beauty of ensemble acting. We have been working together for a long time. We speak the same language, sort of speak. We respond to each other. As well, the props speak and have their own story to tell, keys, coats, cups, coffee, guns they are part of the story being told and interact as behaviours. The audience are watching how people behave, giving the story its human touch. It is what we do, we touch our hair, we fuss with our glasses, we play with our keys. It is what we humans do. These behaviours make the performance more real, more fluid, less static. You see people, real people, behaving and it brings you into the story even more. Behaviour is helping to tell the story, not just the lines. The more specific we are as actors to help tell the story. For example putting a stick of gum in my mouth gives me something to do so that I am not just standing there on the stage. It’s more fluid and gives you stuff to play with. A prop is always an actors friend. Life’s texture. Even the smell of oil on the gun. It’s noticeable. It’s real. The matter of what is the whole life around a thing.

TL  So what’s next for you?

LB Going back to New York. The Barrow Group is building a 60 seat theatre. That is for more developmental work, nurturing new projects or works in progress. The theatre will be ready in October. To continue to develop more work. Scott (Organ) has a new play that has 5 women in it. So that’s really exciting. I’m also part of a community of women called FAB which is a branch of the Barrow Group. It is a group of over 100 women, and it creates projects for women, about women and by women (For By About) F.A.B. We meet about twice a month. We share work. We also produce work. Before the pandemic we were producing 2 big projects a year.  Also, when I return to New York, the new school year begins. So classes are starting at The Barrow Group and I’ll be teaching. Lots of artists to nurture and get out into the world. I also hope to see 17 Minutes get a larger venue in New York, for example at The Signature Theatre which is on 42nd Street. They have a beautiful facility. They have a small theatre called the Griffin Theatre and I think this play would be so beautiful there. That would be wonderful. I’d like more audiences in the US to see 17 Minutes as it allows people to process this issue in a different way rather than just see the tragedy on the news. I think these news stories make people desensitized. It just makes for ‘another school shooting’ it doesn’t allow for deeper reflection. I think art has a lot to offer in terms of its healing potential, its cathartic potential and its reflective potential. Art also knocks us sideways. It can transform us into better people. I think also with The Barrow Group we try to do projects either with a social, political or spiritual bent to the play so that when people come to see a play they will come out with either a greater awareness politically, spiritually or socially, asking themselves how they can do something better in the world, or understand it better.