Word: kanter
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...Kanter has a more specific and pressing challenge in Side Man: it is his directorial debut. A veteran of Tommy, A Winter’s Tale and Hasty Pudding Theatricals, Kanter’s penchant for treading the boards is clearly evident in his managerial style during rehearsal. “One thing I am very aware of as an actor is that anything a director can tell an actor doesn’t matter if the actor can’t do it naturally,” he explains. Despite the narrative’s virtuosic leaps across time...
...narrative is bound together by the reveries of Gene’s son Clifford (William J. Musgrove ’06), realized through a plethora of audience addresses, flashback sequences and a fluid minimal set suggestive of a more substantive world. Kanter says he chose the Ex because there is no clear delineation between actors and audience. Through these devices, he hopes “the audience will become active participants in the show...
...rehearsal, someone voices a concern that the audience may not “get” these stylistic details. Kanter is exasperated. “Does anyone want to write a paper about how art is inherently fictitious?” he asks. “Because I think some people need to be told, ‘It ain’t real.’” Musgrove replies: “Only if you want to write a paper about Nietzsche, Alex,” and then launches into his direct address monologue on the sacrifice...
...soundtrack of the play has been lovingly assembled by Kanter and the sound designer, Amanda Rigas ’05, but although music is the conceptual basis of the play, Kanter is quick to explain that “it’s no musical.” In rehearsal he sits with a portable stereo playing excerpts from jazz classics interspersed at key points in the action. It’s the first time the actors have heard the complete soundtrack and the response is resoundingly positive. Someone remarks it is “very moving?...
...Kanter is loathe, however, to make the audience feel like it is “at a concert,” so there is only one point where the action stops completely and the cast of characters—a motley crew of jazz club musicians—stop and listen to a particularly integral song. This moment at the climax of the play “shows what the music means to the group,” explains Kanter, echoing Clifford’s final musing in the play on the lives of the side...