The Making of THE NORMAL HEART - Episode 3 -Opening Night

I'm Eric Davis, Artistic Director of Free Fall Theatre, and I'm honored to be playing Ned Weeks in our production of The Normal Heart. And now, an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the making of our production. Theater's so much more about the journey and the process than the final product. Our goal is to really capture everyone's hard work, the moments between the moments. It really captures in a really unique way kind of the spirit of the group of artists that come Now, Eric, it's interesting, you know, we're driving to the— what kind of shoot is this, Eric? This is the print campaign, or? We're doing publicity shots of the shows. So these are just staged pictures for the newspapers and stuff to use for preview articles and things like that. I'm actually— I'm gonna have you shift your weight back a little bit so that the other shoulder— no, no, no, come out this way a little bit. There you go. Ultimately what I need this for is sidebars for shots of like Eric Davis plays Ned Weeks in The Normal Heart when they run it with the big picture. Yeah. All right, Brian, you have got to get out of the picture. What? Can't go underneath the desk. Do a couple more, like, not quite serious, just like they're chatting about something important. Jim? Jim. I have to have a cup of coffee. Yeah, yeah. With press photos for a show like The Normal Heart, there are so many different ways you can go, and I thought it was better to really push up the sort of the drama and the inner workings of the office environment where they're together Trying to save people, trying to get the word out, which is very important to the story, which makes it that political drama. They did a Law and Order shot, then some shots of just Eric because he's playing Ed Weeks. It's a very important character. Then shots of these 2 together to show that Normal Heart's also a love story. Will that shot, the office shot, probably be the one on the playbill? That'll be used a lot. That's the one. That's the one. That's the money shot. Well, yeah, because they look great and it looks like this is a show I want to see. Yeah, ignore all stage directions. Oh, I like that too! Anything like that. We're ready for an audience. We need an audience. We need to get this up for real. Preview is tomorrow night, right? Yeah. I don't know about you guys, but for me, I don't sleep as deeply, you know, because your mind starts to think through your sleep process. So I find that I don't So I usually look pretty tired on opening night. The audience being there— Thank you. As the third person in the room that Larry was talking about, I mean, is that, is that like just to take it to a whole other level by itself? Tremendously. I think it makes all the difference in the world. It gives you a feeling of how the play really does land. And I think no matter what your process, no matter who you are, no matter what you do, it changes when there's an audience. The audience definitely affects the production, and different audiences affect it. in different ways on different nights, and that's one of the scary things about live theater and also one of the beautiful things about it, because it is like an actual experience that's happening now. This will get born on Saturday and have a life for 4 weeks, and then it'll die and it'll never happen again. And that's one of the interesting things about theater— it gets born and it dies and it never happens again. I do see opening night as the moment of Giving birth. It has that special nature to it. Theater doesn't exist until the audience arrives. That is, the pressure and pressure and pressure keeps getting added and more intense until opening night. It is the eruption. Are you excited to see Normal Heart tonight? Absolutely, yes. Why are you excited to see it? Because it won some Tony Awards a couple years ago, and I've never seen it, and I'm a drama major. I'm a drama teacher, so I should know this material. I've heard Free Fall has a really great reputation, that they always do good productions, and I've heard that it's a really touching story. I know that it takes place during the '80s, I believe, and it's about the AIDS crisis. Craig, all you've come for is some test results. Now stop being such a hypochondriac. I am tired all of the time. I wake up in swimming pools of sweat. It's something that I've never ever done before. It's given me a lot to work with. work with and kind of realize a lot about myself as an actor and kind of how to just get into this place and, and, and kind of tap into that emotion. Thank you for coming with me. You're a good friend. My name is Tommy Boatwright. Why don't you write that down? Tommy Boatwright. In real life, I'm a I'm a hospital administrator and I'm a southern bitch. Tommy Boatwright. The name. Like, it's almost in the name. Tommy does help get things steered in a direction. Get the boat moving the right way towards the patients, the people. And there are gonna be a lot of mamas flying into town not understanding why their sons have suddenly upped and died from pneumonia. And you two have been barking at each other for an hour and a half. You're the writer fellow who's scared. I'm scared too. I hear you've got a big mouth. Is big mouth a symptom? No, it's a cure. Come on in, take your clothes off. I think there's a lot of her that tries to be an iron lady in her own way, but that her passion and her depth It's a rough bark and a, you know, no bite kind of girl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think she's got plenty of bite for those doctors who won't help her. We are enduring an epidemic of death, and women have been found to have it in Africa, where it is clearly transmitted heterosexually. It is a question of time. We could all be dead before you do anything. But you You want my patients? You take them! And Ned keeps calling the mayor a prick, and Hiram a prick, and the commissioner a prick, and the president, and the New York Times, and that is the entire political structure of the entire United States! Everybody's nerves are frayed. Everybody's doing 5 jobs, and I think it just all finally comes to a head. So you tell him I was wrong, and I'm sorry. And someday someone will come along and put the knife in you and tell you that everything you've worked for your whole life is bullshit! Hey, hey, hey, bro, come on. Come on. Shh. I'm from Oklahoma. I left home at 18 and put myself through college. My folks are dead. My father was a refinery worker in West Tulsa and my mom worked at a luncheonette and Walgreens. The only thing he knows how to do is take control of a situation, which ultimately makes it even more frustrating for him when he starts to decline, as he can't control that anymore. This is his first great love, and he's dying. He's got all of that heaped on his shoulders, and at the same time, this person that he loves so much that he's fighting for to save his life in the— in that scene has You know, ostensibly given up, wants to just be done with everything, and all of those things come to a head. Who would ever want any milk? You might get some calcium in your bones! You wanna die, Felix? You can't expect us to concern ourselves with every little outbreak those boys come up with. And could you please reduce the level of your hysteria? There's a, there's a There's a lot of lines that Hiram says that are startling. If so many of you are so upset about what's happening, why am I only hearing from this loudmouth? That's a very good question. There are over half a million gay men in our area. 509 cases doesn't seem to be so high considering how many of us— I mean, you— there are. I think that that's one of those hot lines where I think it just takes your breath away a little bit, that it's gambling with life. When's the meeting? Tomorrow. What time? 8 AM. For the mayor, I'll get up early. We can only bring 10 people. Abrams' orders. All of this work that Ned has done has gotten them to this point, but Bruce is finally gonna come in and can him. And then Ned has that impassioned speech at the end. I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Cole Porter, Tchaikovsky, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjöld. These are not invisible men. Bruce actually seeing a glimpse into Ned's world and seeing that, you know, I had to let you go, but I want to keep you. So that kiss has all these emotions wrapped up in it. I'm sorry, Ned. For Felix. For other things. You know, creating this relationship with my brother Ned, Mr. Eric, he's such a— he's a giving, really, really giving actor, and that's a really wonderful thing. This wonderful, miraculous event happening, because it is miraculous because it's an actual giving birth It's injecting life, life that didn't exist before. Somehow this thing happening. I mean, it's basically a master class for me. I wake up in swimming pools of sweat. Last time she felt me, his saddle was swollen. It's such a powerful play, and I think it would not be as special to me if it wasn't such a good group of people, and everyone Seeing how far we've all come through the whole process, it was like, wow, this really is something special. It's something, something to be proud of and something I won't forget for the rest of my life. I think the most interesting thing is to be in a group of people That you can trust emotionally or dramatically, and this is a very trustworthy group. It kind of allows you to go to places maybe you didn't think of. They are going to persecute us! For me, the journey's been really warm and safe and really fun. Do you think they'll find a cure bef— How strange that is to say it out loud for the first time. Well, I don't know if I've grown. I mean, it's still scary. Every time you walk out here, it's scary, and you just manage that. Yeah, I'm having a good time. And as much as you rehearse something, you never quite know exactly what's gonna happen in the moment, so. Now listen, don't you think I want to help you? I have a friend who's dying of this in VA Hospital right this very minute. Then why? You know, Felix, I think of leaving here too because I don't think anybody's listening to me either. I set all this up as well. Every day that you don't tell them, more people infect each other. Don't lecture me. I'm on your side, remember? Theater at its best can make us uncomfortable. It can take us out of a place of complacency. It can incite people to action. It can wake them up. It can educate them. I went to Emma and I begged her, please test me somehow. Please tell me if I'm giving this to people. And she— I was on the phone with my wife. She's a playwright. She's an actress. She sat here and watched tonight and she wouldn't stop. This is not a piece of theater. This is not— this is just a vital force that And just grabbed her and drug her and, you know, pulled her along with it. In my old college dining hall, just across the campus from that little freshman room where I tried to kill myself because I thought I was the only gay man in the world. I'm proud that we're doing this piece because so many great voices in our art form were silenced by, by this disease. So what, what plays and what musicals and what performances were never created that, that should have existed because this took them away? I think this production was everything that really good theater should be. It was It was touching, it had a point. There were moments when you could just laugh with the characters, there were moments when you could cry with the characters. It was really great, and it's just one of those things that even though it's really cliché and people say that, oh, a piece can change you, like, you take so many little pieces that it really, like, it sinks in. And for me, like, I have to wait for things to marinate, and it's like, it's It's a different level of just change. It's such an important story that, like, needs to be told and not a lot of people talk about. Not a lot of people realize, like, the severity of the issue. So incredibly well done. Seeing this play has really changed my outlook on life. We've come to the end of a long road of filming that began on day one, the table read. We've been behind the scenes, the drama, the agony. As Larry would say so often, we've been in the moment time and time again. We thank you for watching. We thank you for your support, and we wish you all the best, and we'll see you at the next Free Fall production. Thank you.