Circle Mirror Transformation

"Are we going to be doing any real acting?" the exasperated 16-year-old finally asks.

In Circle Mirror Transformation, Lauren (Lilly Holleman) is the youngest of four students taking creative drama in Shirley, Vermont. Much to her chagrin, her quirky teacher Marty (Linda Gehringer) eschews script-based acting techniques in favor of open-ended improvisation and movement exercises.

The same question about "real acting" might initially be asked of this play Playwright Annie Baker has crafted a remarkably open script; characters develop as much in the physicality of onstage improv or in the awkward silences of bathroom breaks as in the stark simplicity of her words. Yet in the current production at South Coast Repertory, the openness of the text pays off in a refreshing collaboration with director Sam Gold and a gifted company of actors and designers.

Marty aspires to a deeper communion with self and others through acting. Although her students begin this six-week course as strangers, this earth mother aims to unite a group of ragtag amateurs. Her students stride the room with a heightened awareness of each other's presence. They engage in additive storytelling, each individual contributing one word to an improvised tale. In the exercise from which the play takes its title, they stand in a circle and mirror one another's actions, with the movement gradually transforming as it passes around the group.

But as the weeks continue, the "safe" space of the classroom begins to shift. In-class relationships cross with out of class friendships and romances, and students reveal their deepest secrets in increasingly personal improv exercises. The self-conscious divorcee Schultz (Arye Gross) finds himself falling for the peppy, wide-eyed Theresa (Marin Hinkle). Even Marty must confront truths about her husband James (Brian Kerwin) that would have best been left unspoken.

Through fragmentary snapshots, Circle Mirror Transformation masterfully probes human vulnerabilities: the discomfort of personal disclosure to strangers, the danger of forced confession. The creative drama class often verges on group therapy, led by a questionably-qualified but well-meaning teacher. Yet these vulnerabilities hold promise, as well. For every painful memory, there is a revelatory moment of self-knowledge; for every loss, there is the glimmering potential to connect with another human being.

Director Sam Gold has, in turn, crafted a genuine community among the South Coast Rep cast. Their camaraderie sparkles in the onstage games improvised anew each night, as well as their perfectly-timed quips and awkward glances. What's more, the gaps in Baker's script leave room for luminous moments of quiet, stillness, and connection as the characters - and the actors - intently observe one another's performances.

In one moment, the stubborn and withdrawn Lauren holds the audience in rapture; tears welling in her eyes, she gapes as Marty and James enact a heated argument between her parents. The levels of spectatorship - the audience observing the actors observing one another - are gripping.

David Zinn's naturalist set submerges the actors in a windowless rehearsal studio, arrayed with tumbling mats, a boombox and CD rack, storage cubbies, fluorescent lights, and an always-illuminated EXIT sign over the classroom door.

Though the improv and movement games may strike a chord of familiarity for actors, it is Circle Mirror Transformation's play of human emotions that mirrors reality to an uncanny degree; it is indeed appropriate that audience sits just beyond the "fourth wall," which is undoubtedly the studio's largest mirror.

For in the end, Circle Mirror Transformation is not concerned with acting technique at all. Through a well-orchestrated collaboration of creative team and cast, this new play resonates most on the level of human connections - and disconnections - in the drama of everyday life.