Acting: She Eats It Up

If an actress is rehearsing--only rehearsing--the breakfast scene of a play, does she have to eat the cereal? Depends. But the slim and lovely Heather Ehlers scarfed a bowl of raisin bran during a recent run-through at South Coast Repertory.

“Marlys,” quipped stage manager Randall K. Lum, using Ehlers’ character’s name, “have we finished our breakfast?”

She had, but a few other tasty backstage nuggets revealed themselves before the end of a rehearsal of “Dimly Perceived Threats to the System.” New York playwright Jon Klein’s surreal depiction of a dysfunctional, wacked-out ‘90s family opened Friday and runs through Oct. 25 on SCR’s Second Stage.

For starters, every business seems to have its own lingo, and show biz is no exception.

So what did director Mark Rucker (who recently shepherded “Our Town” at SCR) mean when he said, “let’s routine it once”?

He didn’t mean for the actors to go over the dance number. There isn’t one. He wanted two actors to repeat their carefully staged walk-ons so they’d arrive at precisely the right spot--with a flourish--at the top of a particular scene.

Other nuggets:

* Is there such a thing as a laugh track in live theater?

Sort of. Even Rucker wasn’t laughing anymore at his six actors’ lines. By this point, two days before opening night, Klein, Lum, a lighting technician and a sound technician sitting in the otherwise empty audience had heard the script umpteen times too.

But to maintain the timing and rhythm the play would follow when performed in front of real people, guffaws were provided by Rucker, who alternately sat with chin in hand, stood or walked about onstage throughout the four-hour run-through.

“Ha ha ha, ha ha,” he said with all the vitality of a machine.

* Sipping a can of cola, his legs draped over the row in front of him, Klein looked positively bored by it all. It must have been his quiet demeanor. No, he was anything but bored.

“When I arrived today, they were taking [publicity] pictures,” he said during a break. “That was boring. And opening night is boring because I have nothing left to do.” (Also, he added, because he can’t trust opening-night patrons, many of whom are friends of cast and crew, for honest reactions.)

What was keeping him mentally occupied?

The Oregon native, who has had 19 plays produced, wasn’t there to see this one come alive for the first time, nor even to tweak his script. The play has already had two full productions, the last one a hit at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

So, he was behaving more like a director, helping finesse actors’ deliveries to make sure the lines he wrote came across as clearly or as humorously as intended.

“Our roles do merge,” Klein said, referring to himself and Rucker. There’s always a certain decorum to be followed in such potentially sensitive situations, however.

Klein rarely spoke his suggestions aloud, more often whispering them in Rucker’s ear. That’s standard protocol, he said.

“You can’t have too many cooks. There’s one cook and [Rucker’s] it. I’m kind of the guy who ordered the meat or something.”

* THEATER REVIEW

“Dimly Perceived Threats to the System” is a too generic look at the Great American Dysfunctional Family. Reviewed by Don Shirley. F5