"The Second Woman," Part 1

Friday night, 11 p.m.-1 a.m.

I leave my apartment and walk to BAM’s Fisher Theater. By now Alia Shawkat has been on stage for six hours and has performed her piece probably 25 times. She’s set to go until 5 p.m. Saturday: a 24-hour, 100-performance marathon of a single 10-line scene inspired by John Cassavetes’s film “Opening Night” (1977). The BAM show is called “The Second Woman,” also the name of the fictional theater piece in which the star of “Opening Night," Gena Rowlands, was performing. I’m holding a ticket for 8 a.m., but BAM has encouraged attendees to arrive at other times, especially in the wee hours when waits are likely to be no more than the 15 or so minutes it takes to run the scene. There’s confusion at the door as staff calculate how many of us to let in: those who started at 5 p.m. and have returned after a break? those scheduled to arrive at midnight? wait, you’re 8 a.m.? — oh, hell, let ‘em all in. More than half of the 250 seats turn out to be empty, and, oddly, almost all of the open seats are on the theater’s right-hand side, as if magnets have pulled patrons left. The attraction, it transpires, is that the two actors perform on that side of a stage bifurcated by an opaque red curtain that blocks upstage action, meaning those sitting opposite must follow via a large screen (stage left) showing a feed shot by six cameras, four stationary and two hand-held by black-clad operators with complicated gear on their backs, who between scenes sit to the side, like high-tech supplicants or priestesses. The rectangular half-stage set is simple: one orange and one green chair at a wooden card table; upstage, an armless chair lifted from a Mad Men shoot, perhaps, along with the stereo system beside it; cherry red carpet; a neon pink sign reading “The Second Woman.” Two sides of the set, including the fourth wall, are fronted with red mesh. 

I arrive during one of Shawkat’s 15-minute breaks, which she takes roughly every two hours. We listen to a recording of a solo pianist pounding out a stately song whose low chords sound like distress or mourning, followed by a theme stroked on single keys that’s similarly cadenced but more plaintive. Shawkat — Virginia, though the character’s name goes unspoken — walks on stage at a similarly unhurried pace, in black 4-inch pumps and a shapeless red dress, pushing a drink cart, then carrying a wicker waste basket. She walks to the card table, pulls out a chair, and sits silently for more than 5 minutes, staring into space. Audience members chat, check phones. The music shifts; the camera operators rise, one moving to front stage center, the other downstage right. We put our phones away. Shawkat, her brown curls (familiar from Arrested Development and Transparent and Search Party) stuffed under a blonde wig, strolls downstage, turns her back to us, and stares upward. A camera shoots her face through the red mesh; we see her wide brown uplifted eyes in closeup projected stage right. A man enters — Marty, carrying a paper bag. He looks at her back, approaches, sniffs or kisses her neck. He moves away. She turns. He apologizes for acting crudely before, saying she had shocked him. She asks how he is, what he’s thinking about. He answers, asks if she wants a drink. She does. He pours two, sets them and the bag on the table. They drink, eat with chopsticks from two cartons of thin Chinese noodles. She wants to tell him something. Is it the end of the world? he asks. No, she says. “I’m too good for you,” she says. “I don’t want to hear that,” he says. He kisses her cheek. She stands, pours another drink, apologizes, says “I’m begging again,” sits back down. “I don’t care if you don’t think I’m beautiful,” she says. “I do,” he says.“You don’t think I’m funny,” she says. He says she’s hilarious. “You don’t think I’m capable; all I want is to be capable,” she says. He tells her she’s capable, then lists approbative adjectives: She’s smart, beautiful, talented, wonderful, outstanding, great. A pause. “And I love you,” she says. “And you love me,” he says. She dumps her carton of noodles on him. She walks to the stereo, turns on a peppy, syrupy R&B number (“Love To Touch Your Love”?). He approaches, wraps his arms around her. The embrace turns into a dance. After a while they separate, and she turns off the music. She moves to the drink cart, where she takes a $50 bill from her wallet, extends it to him, and asks him to go. He says one last sentence, then leaves. The camera operators sit. The piano music resumes. Shawkat with a steady precision picks noodles from the carpet, throws away the garbage, rearranges furniture, returns glasses, lines up bottles, and, with the set back to its original state, sits at the card table for three or four minutes as we check our phones until the music shifts and the camera operators rise and the next Marty enters. Shawkat will perform the scene with 100 different Martys, most not professional actors. 

In two hours I see seven or eight scenes (I lose track), but the extremes of Marty behavior are set by the first two actors. Marty No. 1 plays it fast and goofy. His line deliveries are stilted, and he does a lot of stage business. He and Virginia get into a chopstick fight. He seems to forget lines. (At this point I don’t know the scene and can’t be sure.) They break up laughing at least twice. None of the dialogue registers; they could be saying nonsense words. She throws her noodles as if at a 4-year-old. They conduct their dance in an awkward hug, with exaggerated back pats, as if Pee Wee Herman were forced to slow dance with a lady who smelled bad. The audience laughs steadily. Marty No. 2 plays it slow and sexy. He lingers at his initial approach to her neck, comes back for a second whiff. Their gazes crackle. HIs approach is lupine, his lust overt; audience members groan in distaste. Each line of dialogue registers. When she says “I’m too good for you,” Marty falls back in his chair; his delayed response (“I don’t want to hear that”) speaks a jilted lover’s pain. When he lists her positive adjectives (“You’re great, outstanding …”) his measured pace makes their increasing vacuity distressing; when she says, “And I love you,” she’s finishing his thought, indicating that as the next line she wants him to say. When he answers, “And you love me,” the pronoun reversal is too much: she dumps her noodles with rage. When she turns on the music he waits a long time, then seems to win her back with a dance that’s slow and heated. Her request that he leave and his departing “I love you” register as equally wretched. 

None of the other Martys approach No. 2’s considered pace or his charisma, and without heat the scene plays as comedy. Shawkat’s stage business varies. She feeds noodles to some Martys, taunting or silly. She mugs with others, sticking out her tongue or making faces. Each of her dances is different: she collapses to the floor solo; slides slowly down one’s torso; provokes another into a brief dance battle; theatrically eschews a battle with another. When one Marty neatly folds his paper bag, she spends a long minute opening it wide, jamming a fist into it, standing it upside down on the table: a protest against his anality. 

Shawkat’s line readings are almost identical in every scene, conveying emotional neutrality. After three or four scenes their flatness starts to seem odd. At first I attribute this to her need to conserve energy. But I’m disappointed: Why not try different colors? Why not play giddy, or sloppy, or morose? Wouldn’t that keep her interest over 100 performances and 24 hours? Then I consider: Maybe her role is as this experiment’s constant. Start and speak from the same point on the horizon, and see what the 100 Martys can evoke or provoke. In my two nighttime hours, the Martys save No. 2 generate little but silliness. 

When Virginia ends one scene by carrying the wicker basket and pushing the drink cart off stage — break time! — I leave. I step into the autumn chill at the same time as Marty No. 2. He’s good looking, vaguely familiar. I tell him his scene was the best I saw. I mention the moment when he lists the empty compliments and she concludes by telling him what he should have said: “And I love you.” No other Marty provoked anger, which strikes me as the only way to make her noodle-tossing make sense. No. 2 says, “We got the pages three days ago, and I read it a bunch, but I never understood that moment until she did it on stage. She was furious. I’m glad that registered.” I want to praise his pacing, but we’re going separate ways. What’s your name? I ask. “Josh Hamilton,” he says. “What’s yours?” 

At home I look him up: the son of two actors, Hamilton has been acting since age 8 and trails a long list of credits in theater (The Cherry Orchard at BAM, Proof and The Coast Of Utopia on Broadway), film (Away We Go, J. Edgar, Frances Ha, Manchester By The Sea), and TV (ABC Afterschool Specials, Absolutely Fabulous, Louie, 13 Reasons Why). HIs résumé seems to stand in opposition to an effect sought by the play’s Australian creators, Anna Breckon and Nat Randall. Their format, including amateur Martys, they write in the program, “makes the show vulnerable to failure; it is also what makes it dynamic, live, and full of possibility.” Myself, I wouldn’t have minded a few more seasoned actors to push Shawkat harder.