Michael Lucheme is resident lighting and set designer for Trinity. He is also a member of the acting company.

Trinity Square Playhouse is a small, 300-seat theater on the second and third floors of a church in Providence, R.I. When its production of Moliere's Tartuffe was seen by the translator of the play, Richard Wilbur, he gave some indication of why this small theater has been given the New England Theater Award for 1965:

"It is the best production of Tartuffe I have ever seen. It is much clearer to Moliere's intent than the New York production. It is spirited, and in the right spirit; very lively but not unfaithful. Trinity Square is the perfect setting for this production...a good repertory theater production makes Broadway look like an amateur hour."

Despite small sets, improvised props, and a few ancient stage lights which date back to vaudeville days, Trinity Square Playhouse has a magic of its own. The magic is in its personality--a composite of the directors, actors, and designers.

Direction

The director, Adrian Hall, is forceful; and has a new approach to acting. More and more actors are getting tired of the dominant modes on Broadway: Lee Strasberg's regurgitation of Stanislavski's Kazan's "emotional method acting," and the rest. At Trinity, the actor has nothing imposed upon him. "When you come on stage, you bring something with you," Hall says.

And that "something" must come from the actor. Here, the craft of acting is explained to its creative depths, and each actor is an individual artist, within the bounds of ensemble acting--that is, without upstaging anyone else. The simple precept of acting--"If you can believe yourself, then I'll believe you"--rules at Trinity Square.

Of course, it's not so simple, as any young actor knows. Try becoming John Hale in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Physical behavior is difficult enough; but the real problem is internalization. How does a minister in 1960 feel when he finds his faith to be false? How does an actor in 1965 believe in this own interpretation of such a character?

Development of a character

Hall's method is to draw out as many interpretations from the actor as possible. By eliminating those which are not convincing and keeping the few that work, he can eventually construct a successful character.

Take John Hale as an example. Hale's personality is probably the most difficult to capture because he changes from one to the next. During the three months covered in the play, Reverend Hale changes from an eager, confident minister into a disillusioned and broken-hearted failure, with little or no faith. "Now, you cannot change too rapidly in this scene, or I won't believe you," Hall says. And from then on, it becomes a trial and error process.

Hall can sit through the same scene twenty times in one afternoon, and "see" each scene for the first time, as an audience. He can pick up the key changes, and the falseness in the inflections and pauses, and the actor begins again. "Does that word bother you? Why?" he will ask.

Different approaches are tried, and the scene is run without concern for projection. "Try it in normal conversational tones; we'll bring it up when you're more confident." The theme of the scene seems to be obscure, so it stops. "Now I know that Mr. Miller has not written a good, clear scene here, but it is up to us to make it clear. You (Hale) are here to interrogate Goody Proctor, and even though you only address John Proctor, I must know that you have come to interrogate her."

Experimenting

Over and over, a few sentences are said, and Hale experiments. He addresses John Proctor and looks to Elizabeth for her reactions; but his reactions can only be as proportionately large as hers must be larger. Other tools must be found. Hale tries dividing the sentence between husband and wife. The whole ensemble must work to make Hale's purpose logical, but it comes, as much as it can, from the actors.