A few days before the start of technical rehearsals for The Big Meal, Literary Associate Lauren Halvorsen spoke with Sam O’Brien and Maya Brettell, the youngest actors in the multi-generational cast, about their first reactions to the unconventional script, how they prepare for a role, and what they’re looking forward to as performances get underway.
How long have you been acting? Where do you go to school?
SAM: I have been acting for two years now, and I attend The Field School. I really enjoy playing sports, and I also really enjoy acting.
MAYA: I am an eighth grader at South County Secondary School in Lorton, VA. I have been acting and singing for four years, and dancing for ten. I’m also a part of the Synetic Theatre Teen Company. Last season I performed in all musicals, but I wanted to keep growing and try new things.
How did you get involved with The Big Meal?
SAM: I got a call saying that I could come to Studio for an audition, and I was then cast in the part.
MAYA: My two brothers were called in first to audition for the role of the Boy. They asked me to help them get ready for the audition by reading the Girl’s lines. We thought it was really funny, and we could relate to how the brother and sister were trying to top each other’s stories. It turned out that my brothers were too young for the role and I just happened to be called for the next round of Girl auditions. A few days after the audition, I came home from school and was really excited to hear that I was offered the role. I didn’t want to jinx myself, but I had told my mom to say “Yes!” if the call came when I was at school.
What was your first reaction when you read the play? How do you prepare for a role?
SAM: My first reaction to reading the play was confusion. The play is written in eight columns and looks like an Excel spreadsheet, so it took awhile to get used to. Overall, I really like the play and think it is very interesting.
MAYA: My first reaction was like a state of shock, because I was still digesting what I had just read. I was also kind of nervous, because I had no idea how to rehearse with the script written in such a new style. I had to sit back from my script and put the pieces together; once I did, the story completely came alive in my head. It’s been really cool to unravel the story with Johanna and the cast; they are all pretty amazing.
When I’m preparing for a role before rehearsals begin, I don’t like to get too far into the details of the character. It’s better to have a general view of the character. Then, when working with a director, I am more open to input and feedback which drives my acting. For example, when one of my characters is annoying her brother I will pull from what I know as a sister with two younger brothers, but also take in the challenge from the director to see different angles and react to those choices. I love to dance and sometimes it means just going inside myself and feeling the music, and my acting comes from that same place.
What’s been the biggest challenge during the rehearsal process? What have you enjoyed the most?
SAM: The biggest challenge so far is remembering right when to say your line. Because of the way the play is written, it gets very complicated. I also really enjoy all of the light changes; they’re cool.
MAYA: The biggest challenge is being consistent with your emotions and how you say the lines. When you deliver something just the right way and you wish it would sound or look like that every time, you know that’s the direction the line or emotional impact should go. The hardest part is being able to stay on that path and make it just the same every time. It’s not something you can immediately do; consistency takes lots of rehearsing.
We start performances in a little under a week. What are you excited and/or nervous about?
SAM: I am overall excited, but I’m a little nervous and hope that I don’t screw up.
MAYA: I am really excited to have a large audience, because in rehearsals you don’t have the same amount of emotions to toy around with. In a full house, anything is possible and chances are most of the people haven’t seen the play. That’s great for the cast, because we can also start fresh and see what the public thinks of our work. I’m nervous about all the crazy overlapping lines, because as artistically arranged as they are, those things are hard. Correct timing is crucial, or the whole scene is in jeopardy. But I like to remind myself to relax and have fun, because while I really stress over these things, I love theatre and wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else.
Artistic Team
Johanna Gruenhut- Director
Brian Crane- Assistant Director
Tim Mackabee- Set Design
John Burkland- Light Design
Addy Diaz- Costume Design
Elisheba Ittoop- Sound Design
Cast
Josh Adams- Man 3
Maya Brettell- Girl
Ashley Dillard- Woman 3
Matt Dougherty- Man 1
Chris Genebach- Man 2
Annie Houston- Woman 1
Hyla Matthews- Woman 2
Sam O' Brien- Boy
Dan LeFranc
Dan LeFranc received the 2010 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award for Sixty Miles to Silver Lake, premiered by Page 73 Productions and SoHo Rep. His other plays include Origin Story, Bruise Easy, Night Surf, In The Labyrinth, The Big Meal, The Fishbone Fables, Backyard, Kill The Keepers, and Catgut. His most recent play, The Big Meal, received its world premiere at American Theater Company in Chicago. LeFranc’s awards include the Whitfield Cook Award, the John C. Russell Fellowship, a Djerassi Resident Artists Program Fellowship, and a MacDowell Colony/Alpert Foundation Residency. He has been commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and American Theatre Company in Chicago. He is a proud member of New Dramatists, the MCC Playwrights Coalition, and a former member of the SoHo Rep Writer/Director Lab. A graduate of the MFA playwriting program at Brown University, Dan served as visiting faculty in Literary Arts at Brown and head playwriting instructor of the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. He was recently a visiting lecturer at University of Rochester and Whitman College. Sixty Miles to Silver Lake is published by Samuel French and his short play Hippie Van Gumdrop is published in The Backstage Book of New American Short Plays 2005, edited by Craig Lucas. He was born and raised in Southern California.
Synopsis
The Big Meal follows a young couple, Nicole and Sam, from first date to first fight, their first kiss to their newly wedded life at a single restaurant table. The years pass and Nicole and Sam start building their own family—a son and daughter—who come enthusiastically and then reluctantly to family meals at the restaurant. Sam’s parents visit and accompany the family on their big meal tradition. More years pass and the children become adults with families of their own, as other loved ones fade away. Both familiar and surprising, and observed with aching accuracy, The Big Meal shows a family in all their embarrassment and heartbreak.
The Evolution of American Family Dining
The 1920s marked the end of an era, one of home-cooked dinners prepared by meticulous housewives who labored over a stove for their families. According to food and culture journalist Samantha Barbas, “urbanization, changing gender roles, and increased culinary standardization and commercialization led Americans to lament the demise of home cooking. Gone, they claimed, were large country kitchens, run by full-time housewives, serving home-baked bread and made-from-scratch pies.”
In 1927, home economist Christine Frederick reported: “Woman is no longer a cook—she has become a can opener.” Critics of the time pointed to women’s laziness and selfishness as the reason for the new “can opener” cuisine, while the restaurant industry was busy planning ways to get people away from the kitchen and into their businesses. The crisis over the decline of home-cooking gave restaurants the chance to serve as surrogate homes for mixed-sex, middle-class patrons. This movement became known as the “home cooking” campaign, and according to Barbas, “with hearty foods, matronly servers, and cozy decor, restaurants recreated the aura of a nostalgic pre-modern kitchen—the very institution that they had helped to destroy.”
The family dinner decline continued steadily into the 1940s; families were increasingly on the go, and meals were served on a kitchen counter for everyone to eat at their leisure. Canned, frozen, and precooked foods relieved women of the burden of making meals from scratch, and in the 1950s, T.V. dinners took American households by storm. With meals ready-made, mass produced, and easily consumed without a table, home home-cooked family dinners were becoming harder to organize and easier to avoid.
The restaurant industry had long served male, working-class customers, so the notion of getting “home cooked” dinners seemed unlikely. “To most Americans,” Barbas explains, “eating in restaurants was a hurried, unappetizing, and generally unpleasant experience—nasty, brutish, and short.” But in 1919, the National Restaurant Association was created by a coalition of restaurant owners, suppliers, and managers. Together, their crusade to change the image of the rough, working-class restaurant led to a revolutionary transformation of American dining.
“In one of the great ironies of the modern social experience, Americans were lured into restaurants by promises of home.” —Samantha Barbas
Restaurants aimed to provide a sanctuary to an increasingly busy American family, a place to escape the chaos of modern life, or at least keep it away from their own houses.
Busy lives and more sophisticated ways of preparing food have transformed the family dinner, but there’s hope that it’s not becoming entirely obsolete. Recent studies highlight the benefits of the traditional family dinner, and many people believe that sitting down for a family meal is one of the most critical efforts a family can make to keep kids out of trouble and protect the integrity of the nuclear family. American families still value the simple routine of eating dinner together; they just don’t want to cook it.
—Jamila Reddy