Copious Notes

Lexington Herald-Leader culture writer Rich Copley has a bullet wound applied to his head by makeup artist Scott Turner at the Carriage House Theatre, Sept. 17, 2009. Copley was playing a cameo role as the murder victim in Agatha Christie's "The Unexpected Guest." Photo by Rich Copley | staff.

Note: Studio has added a performance of The Unexpected Guest, Sept. 24.

Doesn’t every theater want this: A dead critic on its stage?

Studio Players got that wish Thursday night when I played Richard Warwick, the dead guy in Agatha Christie’s The Unexpected Guest. Seriously, my character is dead from the moment the play starts and the title character (Graeme Hart) comes through a window to find me with an entry wound on the left side of my forehead and my wife (Lisa Welch) standing in the shadows with a gun.

All the actor playing Richard has to do is play dead for 25 minutes at the beginning of the show and then come out at the curtain call. Since it’s fairly short order-acting, director Gary McCormick is passing the part around to area theater notables, celebs, and me.

My evening started with showing up for a 6:45 p.m. call so Polly Robinson could walk me through my part, which actually required a bit more prep than just sitting there. Though I am dead, there were still some things I needed to prepare for, like a welcome jostling by Hart, a few characters poking and prodding me, and a gunshot pretty darned close to my left ear — wouldn’t work out well if the dead guy suddenly leaped from his chair. There were also entrances and exits to prep for.

Then, it was to makeup where Scott Turner, who also plays my brother Jan, had to concoct my entry wound.

Scott started by having me apply a moisturizer where the wound would go while he created this rubbery little hole for my head. Then he applied the hole and started trying to blend it in with my skin. One frustration he had was that the blood he was using didn’t stream down my face the way he wanted. I saw Bob Singleton sporting the wound last week, and it was ghastly. I joked that my blood clots quickly, though it was probably that the faux blood was no longer flowing the way it should.

Me, center with the hole in my head, and the cast of "The Unexpected Guest." Photo by Tanya Spears.

Finally, I had my entry wound and I was in some PJ’s and a robe, apparently Richard’s attire of choice for his favorite evening activity: drinking brandy and shooting at cats in his yard. Really, this guy was a major creep. No wonder they had trouble figuring out who wanted to shoot him.

So, it was time to play dead, which is not as easy as you think.

I was seated at the back of the stage in front of a window with my back to the audience, so they could basically see my head, shoulders and arms. Still, I had to be perfectly still.

The second I heard the curtain open, every possible itch on my body came to life. For a few minutes, I seriously thought I would walk off the stage and scratch myself bloody. I was trying to keep my breathing pretty shallow, but after a few minutes, a bigger concern was a need to draw a deep breath. So, I started trying to remember, from seeing the show last week, where Graeme and Lisa were on stage so I could take bigger breaths when they were drawing attention elsewhere.

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Studio Players announced the lineup for its 2009-10 season at Tuesday night’s members meeting in the lobby of the Carriage House Theatre on West Bell Court.

Sam Shepard

The highlight of the schedule is True West by celebrated playwright Sam Shepard, who lives in Midway. True West is a story of role reversal between two brothers, one a petty thief and the other an aspiring screenwriter. It is the first production of a Shepard play by one of Lexington’s leading theaters in several years. The play will be Studio’s March 2010 production, and a director has not been announced for the show.

All the other plays on the season have directors attached, though specific dates have not been nailed down yet. Here’s the rest of the lineup, as announced by Studio Players president-elect, David Bratcher:

• The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie — Gary McCormick will direct the play, which Bratcher says opens with a dead body in a wheel chair. Begins in September.
• Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol by Tom Mula — Dickens’ classic tale, told from the perspective of the guy in the heavy chains. Carly Preston directs. November.
• Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott — This is the original stage version of the hit 1967 movie starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman who has to contend with three thugs searching her house for a missing drug shipment. The Broadway cast was pretty good too: Lee Remick and Robert Duvall. Bob Singleton directs. January.
• Run for Your Wife by Ray Cooney — Director Ross Carter described this as a “quintessential British farce,” about a Taxi driving bigamist whose cover is blown. May.

Studio still has two productions left in its current season — Six Degrees of Separation, which runs March 19-April 5, and Dearly Beloved, May 21-June 7 — plus a summer musical, Always, Patsy Cline, July 9-Aug. 2.