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| Rosa Palmeri and Allie Bliss will travel to Scotland to perform their show, Twelfth Night, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (Zachary P. Stephens/Reformer) |
Also in the room were two young women vying very hard for the title of Hardest Working People in Show Business.
Rosa Palmeri and Aleda Bliss, both home after their freshman years in college, have holed themselves up in the Luna Room with the singular aim of defying nature's immutable laws of time and space. They are trying to cram the world of Shakespeare into a suitcase and then perform one of his plays in less than half the time it usually takes.
"We've entered into this realm of the absurd," said Palmeri.
More to the point, Palmeri and Bliss are about to embark on a great adventure. They have been asked to perform their two-woman version of "Twelfth Night" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest arts festival in the world. The festival began on Aug. 6 and runs through Aug. 30, and features more than 40,000 performances of 2,453 different shows in a great variety of styles and genres. In all, more than 21,000 performers from all over the world take part -- including Bliss and Palmeri, who were recommended to the festival by local actor Jerry Levy, who was slated to go but had to back out.
Palmeri and Bliss will pack their show in a suitcase, fly out on Aug. 20, land in London's Heathrow Airport, fly on to Edinburgh, have one day to prep for the show and then perform the play once each day from Aug. 24-29. They admit to being both "incredibly, incredibly excited" and "incredibly nervous" about the trip.
"It hasn't really hit us. We're sort of focused on the work right now," said Bliss.
The two-women "Twelfth Night" was something Bliss and Palmeri developed in late 2007 as a special project directed by Peter Gould. The first performances were in January 2008, and the show was hailed as a triumph. In it, Bliss and Palmeri, through quick changes of prop and costume, presented the entire play, filling all the roles themselves. It was a monumental undertaking -- each had to learn nearly 1,000 lines and the logistics of constantly switching characters, props and costumes, were challenging, to say the least.
"We always say it's like running a marathon. It's such a test of endurance," said Palmeri.
"It was really exhilarating to do it. We felt like we'd done this giant thing," added Bliss. "It takes over our lives."
So much so, that as the first performances loomed in 2008, the two actually took to spending the night on the NEYT stage.
After a few performances in 2008, the two were happy to put it aside. But they always thought they might come back to it. They had planned this summer to revive the show and perhaps take it on tour. Then word came in late-June about the opportunity to take the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
They jumped at the chance ... and then gulped.
"The one fly in the ointment is that only have an hour (to perform it). When we originally did this show, it ran two hours and 10 minutes," Bliss said.
So they set out to slice and dice "Twelfth Night" down to an hour, finding out just how hard it was to cut throught Shakespeare's sinewy plot lines.
"We realized how well Shakespeare wrote this ... everything is connected," Palmeri said.
With Gould's help, they made enough cuts to get it close. They were still trying to shave another five minutes or so as they rehearsed last Tuesday.
For most of the summer, they have lived at NEYT, teaching camp during the day and running the show in their spare time.
Surprisingly, after briefly reconnecting with the script, the lines they had worked so hard to memorize two years ago came back quickly. The hard part has been relearning them with the cuts.
Through it all, the two not only have made amazing theater, they've remained the best of friends. They're roommates this summer in Brattleboro and have plans someday to turn other masterpieces into two-woman tours de force -- "As You Like It" and "James and the Giant Peach" are two they mention.
"We're kind of like an old married couple," kids Palmeri.
"We always hope we end up sticking together," said Bliss. "We have a lot of trust because when we're on stage, we rely so much on each other."
There they were during last Tuesday's run-through, reminding each other of what they need to do, helping each other with flubbed lines all-business and all-kindness and only occasionally overwhelmed by the mad, manic adventure of it all.
"Sometimes we look at each other I've got a lampshade on my head and we say ‘What are we doing? Who are we?'" Bliss said.
Who they are are two of the many alumni NEYT can point to with pride. Palmeri just completed her freshman year at the ultra-selective acting conservatory at the University of Evansville.
"I definitely don't think I would have been able to handle the work if I hadn't been at NEYT every night in high school," said Palmeri, who will be continuing her acting studies in England this fall, before returning to Evansville.
Bliss finished a year at Bennington College, where she balanced her work in theater with other liberal arts courses. She has found herself drawn more closely to theater and will continue her studies this fall in France with the Roy Hart Theater, which specializes in voice work and speech.
In the meantime, you can see them live at NEYT as they prepare for their trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. They will perform "Twelfth Night" in Brattleboro on Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 18, and 19, at 7 p.m. For information, visit www.neyt.org.
Their performances lead into the NEYT's first foray into its own fringe festival. On Friday and Saturday, Aug. 20 and 21, NEYT alumni will present original plays at 7 p.m. in what is being billed as a fringe festival. Pre-performance activities begin at 6 p.m. Visit the website for details.
Jon Potter can be reached at jpotter@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 149.
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