Artists are often thought to be egotists. Actors are often said to be narcissists. I beg to differ.

Most actors I know are worker-bees. People who take and do their work as seriously methodically and as any good blue-collar worker does with their hands. That, in fact, is the kind of actor my husband, Brian Mani, aspires to be – engaged in as much careful preparation and execution as an experienced carpenter.

When Brian found out three years ago that he would be cast as Lear in KING LEAR at American Players Theater, witnessing him attack the role was interesting to me. He had done large roles before, but Lear is so iconic and challenging – would it affect the way he worked? Especially since Lear goes to places where he completely loses control, would Brian’s preparation for the role be different? No. It didn’t rock him. Same calm and careful approach.

Director Tim Ocel and he started talking by phone regularly about two years before rehearsals began. They discussed the language in the play as well as the events, starting from the beginning, scene by scene. Analyzing the words and the ideas working towards the accumulated character and meaning from those building blocks.

It’s known as “table work” for an actor – if you’re lucky, it happens the first several days during rehearsals.

The whole cast sits down with the director and discusses the play page by page, scene by scene, taking it apart like surgeons examining flesh with scalpels. All the questions, all the lines, the punctuation, the stage directions (if there are any) come under microscopic focus. And before rehearsal begins, actors do this on their own – if they’re lucky, sometimes touching base with their director.

Ironically, all that calm preparation opens the way for emotional exploration and release. I saw Brian work month after month, heard him as he ran his lines in the kitchen, in the backyard… saw him go off to rehearsal… But when the show opened and I saw him entering alone onto the big stage this August – alone into the void and wind of the storm scene – I couldn’t believe it. “Blow winds”... Such a transformation! It brought me to tears. After all that care, an explosion of grief and wildness. The exacting work, composure, discipline and exploration had been internalized and Lear, in his chaotic state, emerged. It was as if the inside of Lear’s mind and soul burst out and spilled onto the stage.

Fascinating how order can beget disorder.

It doesn’t take very long, either. By Act I, Scene IV, the king has begun to lose his control.

When I asked Brian for insight into his approach to this emotional chaos, he said, “For me, the preparation for chaos and madness on stage means I need to know the parameters of where I can go. I know the playground on which I can play. Then I find the freedom within that structure. If all goes well, it can appear as chaos from the outside.”

We found a book – The Year of the Mad King – written by RSC actor Antony Sher and read it together. It’s a wonderful year-long story about Sher’s daily life as he prepared for playing Lear. Brian and I dug into it and loved it – the familiar things Sher did while prepping: time with his partner (also his director), vacations, dinners, differences with designers (and director), meals, conversations, the death of his sister, thoughts about other LEARS he had seen. To read it was a human comfort within the challenge.

A strangely upsetting moment arrived for us when we discovered that Antony Sher had died in 2021 – long before we even started his book. As we read, we were experiencing the moment-to-moment discoveries of someone who had already physically disappeared – much as a role or a play does, once it’s completed. But so much more final.

Theater is so ephemeral that it can seem strange to talk about it once it closes. Yet I think the making of a play, the building of a role, the effects of its creation, can – and should – be witnessed and talked about – appreciated – in retrospect. When all the work by a resounding team of artists has been put to rest, when the sound and fury end… reverberations continue.

Why else do we do it?