Each of us has developed her own system for getting through her quick-changes, which are sometimes accomplished in mere seconds. Mary drapes her chair with each of her costumes in reverse sequence, so that it's weighted with about nine layers at the top of the show, and she gradually denudes it over the course of the evening. Sharon is svelte enough to be able to under-dress a couple of her characters and get away with that. Antoinette and I tend to just rip off clothes and dump them on the floor before yanking the next ones off the rack. What was panic and mayhem during the first few runs of the play seems like a harried but ritualized routine at this point.
One of the disappointments of leaving the rehearsal room was losing the opportunity to watch the other actors do some favorite bits. But there's no time to stand in the wings and marvel. When we're not actually onstage, we're backstage wildly changing clothes and make-up in preparation for the next character appearance. There is nothing like downtime for any of us. Over the course of the evening, one is backstage with various combinations of the rest of the cast as we move through the series of characters and the arc of the play.
Sharon and I have the most time backstage, as it happens. We can't speak to each other because the dressing room conveniently opens directly onto the stage and we'd be audible the clothes rod had to be wrapped in velveteen because the audience could hear us frantically sliding the hangers around as we yanked the clothes off the rack but there's a certain amount of muted chuckling we allow ourselves as we listen to Mary and Antoinette. We know exactly what they're doing out there. We watched them do it dozens of times in the rehearsal hall, but it never ceases to amuse. There's nothing like listening to an actor ride a laugh, then land a line at the exact nanosecond when it can have the greatest impact. It's a satisfaction akin to watching Michael Jordan weave through the defense like a knife through butter and then lob that ball just so, the perfect angle, the clean drop. Beautiful. And when you know how hard it is to do that, there's a kind of sweet awe to listening to it done again and again.
The play is designed like a theatrical baton relay and there's simply nothing like the trust and respect one feels in such an ensemble. That baton never drops. We feel like the luckiest actors in New York to be in each other's company.