When Story is directing “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” he’s guiding his two actors through the same process of finding a different personality for each of the many characters. I’m trying to find the essence of each of them.” I’m trying to treat them all with the same kind of dignity. There are nine other characters who appear again and again, but then there’s another 30 who are just there for a moment. “Sam is the main guy,” Story says, “and I’m figuring out who he is. Meanwhile, Sam’s cellphone keeps ringing with calls from his backstabbing actor “friends” and his Midwestern family members who keep asking whether he’s coming home for Christmas. The restaurant’s neurotic employees call downstairs as well, insisting that Sam solve every problem they don’t feel like dealing with. Sam is camped out in the eatery’s grungy basement, where four phone lines are constantly ringing with callers who insist they must have a reservation, even though the restaurant is completely booked (or “fully committed”) for the next three months. The central character in Becky Mode’s “Fully Committed” is Sam, an underemployed actor who’s paying the rent by manning the reservation line at one of Manhattan’s snootiest restaurants, where you can pay north of $200 for such dishes as “smoked cuttlefish risotto in a cloud of dry ice infused with pipe tobacco.” But with this show you’re making all the choices, which seems like it might be easier, but it’s actually harder.” They’re making choices, and those decisions shape what you’re doing. There’s a pleasure in playing with another person it’s like tennis. “You take so much from your fellow actors. That’s the part I’m figuring out,” Story says. “It’s strange not to have anyone else to listen to and respond to. He has performed three or four roles in a show at Shakespeare Theatre, but even then he had other actors to interact with. Story has been a professional actor for 17 years, but this is his first one-man show. “I’m directing two actors playing 15 characters during the day,” Story explains, “and at night I’m rehearsing a one-person show playing 40 characters.” The shows are aimed at entirely different audiences, but they have a weird connection. At MetroStage, he’ll be performing the one-man show “Fully Committed,” which ran on Broadway this summer starring Jesse Tyler Ferguson. “I just made a wrong turn, and now I’m on Massachusetts Avenue.”Īt Adventure, Story is directing “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” based on the C.S. “Oops,” he blurts out during the interview. He’s so busy, in fact, that the only time he can squeeze in an interview is while he’s driving through D.C.’s rush hour from his daytime rehearsals at Adventure Theatre in Glen Echo, Md., to his evening rehearsals at MetroStage in Alexandria. ‘This is the busiest I’ve ever been in my whole life,” says actor-director Tom Story.
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