Aftermath of Rage

Collective Rage presented by Mind’s Eye Theatre Company has come to a close. After a week of rest, I want to talk about my experience working on this production. I always learn new things about myself and who I am as a performer with every project I do. This one was of course no exception!

This is my second project with Mind’s Eye. I did the musical Bonnie & Clyde with them last summer. I think their mission to put women at the forefront of storytelling is important and necessary. I want to help facilitate that mission in any way I can! This does lead to some cognitive dissonance on my part. This isn’t exclusive to Mind’s Eye. I was assigned female at birth and have experienced sexism that women go through…and still do. But I am not a woman. In as many ways I can relate to what women go through there are even more that do not & cannot register with me. I often feel like I am taking roles away from women when I audition for female roles. There are simply more talented women than there are roles available. And, honestly more male roles than there are men to fit them. These days, generally speaking, I audition for male roles. I think it’s important to portray men with my body type so trans men can see some representation on a stage, and I think it’s important to remind people that there are cis men with all kinds of body types that exist in the world. It’s important to me, on a personal level to know others can see me as something more than a pair of tits & vagina. It’s important to me to explore masculinity in a safe place without having to worry about people thinking I’m somehow disingenuous as a person if I don’t adopt those qualities into all aspects of my life.

Collective Rage was my first time being cast as a woman since coming out as non-binary. Yes, I did play Joy in Unexpected Joy with Pandora Productions, but for only one performance and as an understudy. Yes, I was cast a Gov. Miriam Ferguson in Bonnie & Clyde…as well as Charlie the male fry cook and two other unnamed ensemble roles that were each assigned a male & female gender at my discretion. Collective Rage was the first show where I saw the casting call, saw a woman I wanted to play, auditioned for her, then was cast in the role I specifically wanted to play. I considered the women who Mind’s Eye normally work with. I thought about who would be great in that role….realized that those I could think of were already cast in other things that would conflict with the performace schedule 🤣 and decided to audition.

Betty 4 is a “butch lesbian, any ethnicity, great tattoos, gently melancholic, is too often ignored” according to the script. Decidedly NOT who I am. This role made it’s way into my life when I’m grappling with lesbian culture. Simply put, I’m not a lesbian. Yet there is so much I can relate to in what they experience. I have ultimately decided to identify as “sapphic” as it conveys the most basic information in regard to romantic & sexual situations. I’m not butch. There is a lot about masculinity that simply doesn’t align with my lived experience. I can’t tell you how confusing it was as a child, discovering the existence of “tomboys”, believing I had unlocked a great secret…then realizing I am NOT a tomboy.

Betty 5 is canonically genderqueer, but is typically cast as a person of color. I felt strongly that that was more important. But. Depending on who showed up to auditions, i had kind of resolved myself to probably playing her. But I got Betty 4!

Betty 4 is more masculine than me in so many ways. She works on her truck, a thing I have never been able to do with any sort of vehicle, much to the chagrin of my father. She was played by Lea Delaria in the NYC cast of the show, and I turned to her vibes for a lot of my prep work. I watched her standup & interviews she did on late night shows. Did you know she is the first openly gay person on network TV? Also the first person to say the word “dyke” on network TV? I watched Orange is the New Black (which I hadn’t seen before). I listened to her jazz albums on Spotify, and those became the jumping off point for creating my Betty 4 playlist that I listened to almost every day to help me get into character. To listen to this playlist on Spotify, click here.

The script is so funny. I was actually a little disappointed. 🤣 I wanted to play RAGE. It’s in the title!!! And fuck. This script and characters were goofy af! But! This play IS called Collective Rage for a reason. After the first read-thru, I made the decision to play Betty 4 straightforward & dramatically, rather than reach for comedy. I felt all the other Betties were so much stronger in the comedy arena. The comedy was accessible through their lines. But for Betty 4 I felt that, if I tried for laughs, my performance would be the weakest of the ensemble. So. I decided to do what I had hoped to do in the first place: play sorrow and rage.

I actually came to…really dislike Betty 4! What a bitch! Ugh! Just SAY SOMETHING to the love of your life, you useless sapphic! She is dismissive to everyone around her, and is selfish in very harmful ways. She actually seems to be the only one of the Betties living a life that she actually wants, yet is still so unhappy. She blames her closest friends for that unhappiness as well. She has wildly unreasonable jealousy for people she’s just met. As I worked more and more on my lines, the more I saw her as an antagonist in the play. She’s not, not really. There is no real protagonist or antagonist in this show. But. If i WERE to pick one Betty to be the Bad Guy, it would be Betty 4. While I strongly doubt I’d ever be friends with someone like Betty 4, that doesn’t change the fact that it was an absolute joy to play her.

I had input on the costumes, something actors don’t always have. I’d say about half the clothes I wore for her were my own, but they were also combinations I would never put together, dressing myself. I had lucked into some secondhand mens clothes in my size during the rehearsal process, so I was able to rehearse in them too. Wearing the clothes a character wears helps me embody them so much. Things like the shoes they wear affect how I walk. Sleeve lengths may or may not give my hands something to fidget with. There are even practical production aspects that can be figured out well in advance if given the chance to rehearse in costume before tech week. For example, there is a scene where Betty 4 pulls down her pants. The pants I had originally planned to wear actually fit too tight for me to do that scene with the established blocking. If i hadn’t rehearsed with them the week before tech, we would have had a scramble to find appropriate pants. I wore a cap, something i very rarely do. And I learned that I (Floren) don’t care for boxers. Betty wears boxers, and that was important due to the aforementioned pulling-down-of-pants. And yes, even just having to…arrange my undies onstage periodically helped me understand how Betty- and men- move. There’s such a strange masculinity in simply Adjusting My Boxers that one doesn’t generally think about. It’s that kind of thing that thrills me about acting. Those very minute embodiments that the audience doesn’t even consciously notice, yet they still perceive. Becoming aware of those behaviors & mannerisms in another person, even though they are fictional, helps me in my own personal self awareness.

As previously mentioned Betty 4 has great tattoos. Unfortunately, our order from Inkbox never shipped, let alone arrived in time for the show. We ended up using temporary tattoos of the quality you would give a child, and touched them up each day with a new tattoo added here & there. I was very intentional with my choices of tattoos. Betty talks about her favorite kind of story in the play. She mentions great views and riding in a truck with a dog. She also talks about vacations. I imagined her constantly daydreaming about roadtrips in her truck in the moutains. I also follow a few tattoo artists on social media, and recently saw a video where the videographer asked women tattoo artists what tattoo was a red flag for a toxic, douchey guy. The overwhelming response was silhouettes of trees. So. Tattoos. Trees. Mountains. And in similar searches also turned up wolves, which I liked since she had also mentioned a dog. Now…after tech week with pictures and opening weekend, almost all of the tattoos had worn off. We were also running low on temp tattoos that kept with my mountain-y theme. I expanded to space, as in Outer Space with some astronauts and planetary bodies. Compasses were brought into thw mix too, since that seemed to coincide with a yearning for adventure. Then from the compasses, I expanded to some ocean-y tattoos as well. Thusly, I was once again covered in art for weekend two of performances! Ohhhhh these tattoos made me want to get more. I only have two tattoos, myself (neither of which was visible in the play, go figure). But particularly undressing, seeing myself in the mirror, I really want more tats. Particularly on my chest & legs. I LOOK GOOD with tattoos, and even got a few comments agreeing with that.

Collective Rage seems like such a simple piece on the surface level. It’s only 75 pages and runs about an hour & a half. It’s written to not have an intermission & to be performed at breakneck speed at certain points. But the way it critiques itself: its industry, its plot, its characters- gives it innumerable layers. My Betty, Betty 4, is pretty isolated, and I found myself almost NEEDING to not pay close attention to the other characters because there is just SO MUCH to unpack about each of them. I used Betty 4’s selfishness as my excuse to focus solely on her rather than analyze each of the other characters & relationships in the play. I found so much in Betty 4, and I am now, now that production is over, wildly curious about how I would play each of the Betties. I certainly know I would never be cast as a few of them in a production even if I were to audition for them. But I think about the actrix I have been at different stages of my life and how I might have been a very good fit for any of the other Betties. Or. How a Betty or two might be different if they were much older. Could I play a different Betty 20 years from now?

Collective Rage stirred the artist in me. The creativity in me. I am so very thankful to this show, its cast, its crew. It made me realize I can continue on with this stressful & difficult artform when I was questioning my desire to do so. Because of it, I’m eager to work on my art again.I begin rehearsals for my next show, Tangled Webbs with Bunbury Theatre, in April. We open in June. Hope to see you there!

💜🦄 FK