Rachel Benjamin '14 describes the intensive training that cast members underwent to prepare for their roles in Metamorphoses and the unique activities prepared by the directors. 

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JustArts: What are your broad reflections on performing in Metamorphoses? 

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Rachel Benjamin: It was a really special experience because not only were the actors really invested in the show and the director Jessica Rassp '13 genuinely cared about every aspect of the show, but, I don't know, we came together, including set designers and costume designers and lighting designers and every single member of the cast contributed to the show, so every single time I went to rehearsal, it never felt like work. There was never a time that I would go and resent the fact that I had to give it a few hours of my day because it was actually the most pleasurable hour or several hours that I had to spend. I felt that when our director spoke, everyone listened, and I don't know if that's common amongst directors and casts here, but I personally value it tremendously 

Our director took the time to really look at the script and make sure that we would have the least amount of struggle possible with it.  Because it's based on Ovid's stories, she went and photocopied the actual stories that Ovid wrote and she gave them to us. Each character that we would play, she found the corresponding story, and that way, we would have that background to work with forming our characters. She also utilized Suzuki, which is a class offered here taught by Prof. Eric Hill (THA) and Prof. Adrianne Krstansky (THA). And Jess used a lot of the principles of Suzuki as a form of training for the show, which I value because it brought a lot of depth to the characters as well as visually the scenes.

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JA: How was performing in a Greek mythology play different from other roles that you've taken on?

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RB: I think the text is a little bit harder to deal with. It's kind of like Shakespeare in that you can't read each line as a sentence.  You kind of have to know that you go from punctuation mark to punctuation mark instead.  Also, there's  a lot of times that you're speaking about yourself in third person.  Like, I would say "She was deep within herself," but I am speaking about myself instead of any other characters. So I think becoming comfortable with conveying emotion even though you're speaking in the third person is a very strange dichotomy, and you just have to become comfortable in those words. As far as being different, I don't know if it was immensely different. I think it's the same process: You have to discover who you are as a character and then contextualize yourself within the rest of the characters and then find depth within the scenes and constantly be making relevant choices for your characters.

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JA: In Metamorphoses, many of the actors, including yourself, played several different characters in the show. Did you find it difficult to make those shifts between characters while you were performing?

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RB: I think because of the training that Jess had us do, it made the shifts a lot easier.  One of the exercises that both she and Nicole Carlson '14, our assistant director, had us do was we would take on the persona of the animals that we felt embodied our characters. So for example, Aphrodite, for me, was a leopard or some lioness who was really stealthy and could pounce but was also really caring and nurturing. ... And then, not only did we match the animals that matched the characters, but then we had, we each interacted with each other just as animals, which was really neat-and she let it flow.  She didn't give us much direction except, "Go, play, pick one. You don't have to tell us which one it is.  See what happens when you interact with each other based on these characters." And that made the shifts really easy.  Right before my scene for Aphrodite, I would kind of shut my eyes and feel like what a cat would look like.  I felt like they would always pace when they're anxious, so that became a part of my gait as Aphrodite.  Whenever she was watching something and getting ready to attack, she would pace.  So that was a really neat way to get into the bodies of the characters and being able to shift from character to character because you had the ability to refer back to animals.

We also did an exercise where you went into an elevator and the elevator stops and you have to see what happens when you play out with the rest of the characters that are locked in the elevator, and that brought out new perspectives to the characters. So there were a lot of tools that we were able to call upon during the show that we did during rehearsal, and those were really beneficial.