Twenty Years Ago, a Roland Tec Play Gave Me One of the Most Terrifying and Thrilling Two Weeks of My Career
Lisa Barnes and Carl Palmer in The Culture Project premiere of Roland Tec’s, Bodily Function. (2002)
The most terrifying moment of my career was hands-down the two weeks in November of 2002 that I spent rehearsing as a last-minute replacement for the lead in Roland Tec’s wonderful play Bodily Function (formerly titled: Rapt). My character, Suzanne Goodman, VP of HR for Global Com, had lines of dialogue on every single page of the script.
Two weeks to learn it.. not to mention inhabit and understand it! I was not an ingenue with a photographic memory and was in a constant state of flight or fight.
So many lines. So many beats! So much subtext!
I lost 10 pounds from the panic that I might not be able to learn the words, let alone come up with a rich character who moves from scene to scene, monologue to monologue. My beau at the time was from Avellino, Italy, and with a very thick Neopolitan accent, responded to my loss of girth, “Why-a you lose-a so much-a weight-a? You HAVE-A NO BUTT! What-a man-a is-a going to want-a you!” with the cliché shaking of praying hands toward me.
That show taught me an important lesson: the projects that terrify us are the ones that will take us to new heights.
Bodily Function was a fantastic play with a dream cast (including the incomparable, Carl Palmer). The designers were stunning and would drag me from beauty salon to high-end clothiers for costume fittings while I ran lines on the subways, buses, cabs.
I would miss Thanksgiving that year but what did I care? I was opening in a thrilling new play on December 2nd, 2002 at The Culture Project, New York’s iconic downtown theater address.
Two of us who remained on stage for virtually every minute of the 100-minute fever dream of a play: Carl Palmer and Lisa Barnes.
When you’re on stage for the whole frickin’ show, you hope to god to be lucky enough to have an actor like Carl right there with you wherever you find yourself.
Cut to… 2020 and… LOCKDOWN!
When Roland invited me to help bring a little theater to the Zoom box during the height of pandemic isolation, it was a no-brainer. How lucky was I to have the opportunity to bring two rich and unforgettable characters to life in work by playwrights Holli Harms and Leilani Squire for Hear Me Out Monologues.
Lisa Barnes performs Shock Treatments, 1941 by Leilani Squire at the June 2022 Some1Speaking, a production of Hear Me Out Monologues.
Lisa Barnes performs Walking by Holli Harms, a finalist winner at the 2022 Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.
When Leilani Squire’s heartbreaking monologue, Shock Treatments, 1941, was programmed on the June 2022 first Monday of the Month Some1Speaking Series, I had the absolute joy of rehearsing with director Suze Allen.
I loved working with her. And I guess the feeling was mutual cause a few weeks later she was looking for a full-length play that she could mount in Maine to feature two Lisas: Barnes and Stathoplos.
Add that impeccable minx, Carl Palmer – and Suze had the cast, city and venue!
We gathered on Zoom to read Roland’s play. It’s rare to just know almost from the first few pages that this cast and this play just work. We all logged off that Zoom meeting knowing that something exciting was about to sweep us up and deliver us to Portland, Maine this summer. And it looks like we’re going to be Mainers for August and early September.
It is now April. I shall learn those lines by August, fret-free.
