Posted By Heather Harvey '11
We dedicated the second day of rehearsals to act one of Death of a Salesman, which ends on a rather hopeful note. With the chairs arranged in a tight circle, the cast hammered through the first act, not quite into blocking just yet. As we moved through the scenes, we had a chance to focus on the subtext of each character's lines and the significance of past actions and conversations to Willy's present. The benefit of spending the day on act one before we got to blocking was that the day was a consciously cerebral journey.
Death of a Salesman has always been a cerebral piece; the past overlaps and interacts with the present, and throughout one must be conscious of the fact that we see the past through Willy Loman's eyes. This alone is a considerable amount of material to contemplate for the actors; those who have scenes from the past must keep in mind Willy Loman's perspective of the time as well as of their characters.