Posted By Heather Harvey '11
SPRING '08 ~ Although the excitement of the upcoming project seemed overwhelming, the spring read-through of Death of a Salesman resulted from less than three full days worth of rehearsal. Despite the relatively speedy pace of the project, Justin's vision was nonetheless complex and enriched the process with a new world of layered significance and subtext. Previous to this experience, I had read and seen Death of a Salesman before, but I understood Miller's work in a new light. I learned from Justin that the text did not require vast change in plot or speech, because Willy Loman's experience can be and is informed by more than one's assumptions from first exposure. The play I had once simply described as the dark side of the American dream now took on a new life in my mind, and I began to question each character's background and philosophy.
DAY 1 (Monday, August 18) ~ The room bustled with people, and in the beginning, we spent our time trying to learn names and introduce ourselves. Soon, however, we got down to business, and we began to delve into the design of the production. My thought was that the design elements and the director's concept honored the same code, to respect the the original text as the concept changed.
During the read-through, as we went through the entirety of the text for the first time as a group, I glanced around the room and took in a small crowd moved by different emotions. The text itself weighs on the mind independently, but now, we had a new meaning for every phrase, a new consequence for every choice. When we came back from break, and we began to delve into the complexities of the concept and the back stories, I thought that it was official; we had begun Death of a Salesman.