Laddie or Lady? Part II: Dolores

I could go on and on about all the folks in the cast, but time is limited. So I'll just focus on the crown jewel.

Dolores.

Dolores looks exactly like Geoffrey Rush.

She's a New York Brooklynette, born and raised.

She's QUITE an actress. She plays the director/playwright of our play-within-a-play. The press release says, of her character, that he's "the crankiest playwright of all time!"

Cranky isn't the word I would use.

I'd use words like "scariest", "most terrifying" and "not suitable for children".

That's becase...

Bitch is crazy.

Rehearsing a moment of violence, Dolores got overexcited and grabbed me by the hair and threw me around.

Several times in this process, when the director wants a different stage picture, she'll ask Dolores to cross from one spot to another and deliver her line from such-and-such a place. Dolores' hands flutter up around her ears and she says, "I-I-I'm sAArry, could joo gimmie my motuhvashun? Why would my chahh-rek-tuh croo-awss the stage? That duddn' make sense." Every time. Without fail.

Dolores doesn't act ON the line--that is, she doesn't USE the line to express surprise, disgust, or any number of the emotions "her character" feels in the show. She acts OFF the line. Which means before she says her line, she has to pause, feel the emotion, express the emotion, then speak.

Dolores doesn't give eye contact on stage. She talks AT you, not TO you. She's actually looking about a foot up and to the left of your face.

The fight director had a fun idea for Dolores and suggested she do such-and-such. Dolores paused, considered, then said, in all seriousness, "My character doesn't want to do that."

So we've got all this gender-swapping going on. At one point, she--as the evil playwright/director, grabs me, his leading lady, and threatens me with a pair of scissors. Later in the rehearsal, Dolores told me that scene "gave her character a hard-on".

Dolores only knows how to play one level: Teeth-gnashingly, skull-bustingly, face-cuttingly ANGRY. She follows "impulses" so when someone says something "her character" doesn't like, she starts muttering a string of vile swear words and gets this contorted look on her face like she's possessed by the Jersey Devil.

At one point in a recent run-through, an actress did something funny and new. One of the other actresses watching in the wings laughed loudly. Dolores, in full character, ran to her and screamed in her face, "SHUT UP!"

Dolores belches LOUDLY. Dolores is scary-intense. Dolores is NOT fun to work with. Dolores embodies that old showbusiness philosophy that you don't have to like your fellow actors. You just have to be able to work with them.

And honestly, forks, I don't know how much longer I CAN keep working with her.

Because I can only take so much crazy. And my crazy tank is almost full.