Can Three Days of Rain be played with 6 actors?
Can Three Days of Rain be played with 6 actors?
Yankeefan007
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
#1Can Three Days of Rain be played with 6 actors?
Posted: 12/9/07 at 5:11pm
Three Days of Rain, Richard Greenberg's time-traveling drama, has 6 roles - the children in Act I, the parents in the second - but only 3 actors required to play them.
Has it ever been attempted with 6 actors? Would 6 actors go against licensing regulations?
#2re: Can Three Days of Rain be played with 6 actors?
Posted: 12/9/07 at 6:10pm
I'm not sure about licensing regulations, per se, (I mean, Greenberg might not be as anal about his work as, say, Beckett or someone of that ilk was), but I think you'd lose an important facet of the play if you eliminate that convention.
You could still definitely make it work, though.
RentBoy86
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/15/05
#2re: Can Three Days of Rain be played with 6 actors?
Posted: 12/9/07 at 8:23pmI could see it both ways, but I think it's more of a challenge for the actors to have to play the two roles. Its like in Suzan-Lori Parks' "In The Blood" - the actors play the kids and the adults. You could use different actors, but it would loose what made it special, and the playwrights intent.
Yankeefan007
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
#3re: Can Three Days of Rain be played with 6 actors?
Posted: 12/9/07 at 8:37pmYeah. I'm not planning on directing it any time soon, I was just thinking about whether the idea would work. It's an absolutely gorgeous piece of writing.
#4re: Can Three Days of Rain be played with 6 actors?
Posted: 12/9/07 at 8:41pm
Dramatists Play Service Inc. licenses Three Days of Rain, and I believe this is illegal under their terms.
http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/upcomingprods.asp
Either way, it does have something to do with what Greenberg stipulated in the licensing contract, but it mostly is under the jurisdiction of DPS, itself. They might not come after you if it's an amateur production though. A professional production breaking these rules may not be a good idea though. Maybe you'll find something on the website that I didn't, and it'll provide a firm answer...
Personally, I think 6 actors would make the play FAR less effective. I saw a production of The Apple Tree a few years ago with different actors playing the 3 key roles in each act, and the show was far less moving and lost a lot of depth as a result. Picture Grey Gardens if Christine Ebersole did one act and Maureen Moore did the other each night. I just think that plays with this kind of symbolic structure are written that way for a reason. When I've seen Songs for a New World and the same actor and actress who do She Cries, and I'm Not Afraid, respectively, duet on I'd Give It All For You, the characterization and subtext of the whole piece is expanded. When different actors are singing all of the songs, it's... pretty.
A lot of the emotional journey of Three Days of Rain is due to the fact that we see these same actors playing both generations... that's my opinion anyway.
Yankeefan007
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
#5re: Can Three Days of Rain be played with 6 actors?
Posted: 12/9/07 at 8:48pmThat's an interesting comparison with Songs for a New World. Funny, it never crossed my mind, but in thinking about it now, I must agree.
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