Cynthia Mercati and Rehearsal Thursday Night

I wrote Ms. Mercati and told her we were struggling with hating the guys and loving the women. Read Kayla's comments. This is the advice she has given us.


Playwrights love to talk about their characters.Maybe you have done this, but I usually create a backstory for my characters, much as I do for the characters in my plays. I think the guys need to think of the world their characters inhabit. It is a LONG way from equal rights, correct language and all that modern stuff. In those days you were pretty much on your own and you needed some group to hang with for protection, namely working for the boss as a thug. They're poor, with no education and very little chance for advancement in any way - their advancement will come through advancing through the ranks as criminals.They are trapped, and they hate the women for stepping outside of their wretched life and doing something about it.And of course, they don't think of themselves as thugs. I always tell my writing students you have to find some kind of empathy for your character - even Hitler didn't get up in the morning and say, Hey, I think I'll rally be bad today. You don't have to like your character but you have to find a way to get under their skin, find out what motivates them.Also, it was a terribly corrupt time, everyone took bribes, kickbacks, you name it. I am first generation American. My father was born in Italy and I remember so clearly the day he told me about the Mafia and how it was the salvation of the Italians. They couldn't read nor write English, and there was no one to defend them in any court. We lived in Chicago. Even in his 70's, he still had a residual hatred for the Irish because, as he said, they could speak English which gave them an advantage over the Italians, and in those days, Italian weren't even considered "white." My mother was Russian, a White Russian, meaning her family had fought for the Czar, and when the neighbors heard my mom was to marry an Italian, the whole Russian enclave was in an uproar.These guys are doing what they need to do to survive. Had circumstances been different, if they'd had a bit of education, lived in a better neighborhood, they would have turned out differently.To this very day, and it drives my liberal friends crazy, I cannot condemn the Mafia, because as my father said, we could only look to our own for protection. In Chicago, as I believe in NY also, the Irish became the cops and the firefighters and the Italians were the ones they were chasing.Can your guys think of themselves that way? I mean, these guys are tough, but have reason to be so. They grew up poor, with no hope, no help, they had to use what they had, their fists and their spirit.Godfather II gives a good example of this.So when your back is against the wall, you know no decent place is going to hire you, you do what you have to do to survive. And if it means whacking girls, you do it. As for the corrupt officials, they were corrupt in a way that we can't even fathom. You took bribes, you cozied up the slimy rich people, all to keep living. And if as a corrupt official, and you had a good thing going, you didn't rock the boat.I hope some of this helps.The guys need to get out of themselves and maybe brainstorm together, with you perhaps helping them. Who are they? Maybe someone's father is dead and he has to support his mother and brothers and sisters, being the oldest son, and all he knows how to do is fight. Maybe one of them sees the beautiful things in the window and knows he'll NEVER make enough legitimately to own some of those things. His only chance is to work themselves up the ladder, from thug, to bag man, to something higher in the order, bodyguard maybe.My cousin married the son of Sam Giancana's bodyguard - you might not know the name, but he was mob boss in Chicago, before he got whacked. My cousin's children were actually driven to school every day out of fear that someone might kidnap them or worse.Yes, they're mean to the girls, but they're being paid to do so, AND, everybody wants someone to lookdown on. The thugs are at the bottom of the heap, but as long as the girls are underneath them, they're not quite at the bottom.I still react defensively to jokes about Dagos, Wops, Guineas - when I moved to Iowa, people didn't even know a Guinea, as in sandwich, was an offensive name to Italians.So, they need to think, Their backs are to the wall, they need money and this is the only way they know how to get it.I couldn't watch The Sopranos, because it hit too close to home, but Good Fellas gives a good example of life as a thug.Have the guys think what would they do, what would they do - they live in a tenement, it smells, they have one bathroom for a zillion people, it's dirty. Their mother is in the flat, waiting for money from her son to wangle some food out of the street vendors, they have sisters they love, and actually can separate their sisters from the girls they push around. Their father is dead, and everywhere they look, are desperate people looking to them for help. You could get pretty angry and pretty crazy. My father was so poor, it haunted him all his days. On his deathbed he was still talking about the wretched way he grew up, even though he became quite successful and sent me to college. (Being a good Italian girl I was supposed to go college - the first one in my family to do so, but not use anything I learned, just get married.)I think cities like NY and Chicago and Philly have this loud culture because of all the flamboyant nationalities they settled there, Italian, Irish, Jewish, etc. The guys need to get in that mind set.Out in the country, at least here in Iowa, we have the stoic Germans and placid Scandinavians.But these thugs and Italians, too, we don't know from farming.And of course, think what a threat a bunch of intelligent girls was to these guys,Cindy

Her email address is mercatiwriter@aol.com Please write her with questions, especially about your characters.
Notes from Kara and Alli

• Anya, carry your purse to do your monologue, so that you can immediately cross to the Lannon scene.
• Lannon - Say what "you" got to say. not JEWS
• Can't understand Stolle as the thug.
• Bridget sounds Russian or something during the striking scene.
• Thugs, push one another around more.
• Girls, shield against the rain with shawls on the way to meeting after Bridget's monologue.
• Molly rules - She leads. She doesn't follow!

We made a lot of progress tonight. Thanks for sticking with us. We missed you Ladies so much!

"FIND IN YOURSELF THOSE HUMAN THINGS WHICH ARE UNIVERSAL."- SANFORD MEISNER