By Richard Thieriot, actor in When Tang Met Laika, Denver Center Theatre Company
Richard Thieriot
My name is Richard Thieriot and I’m playing The Young Communist (retired) in the world premiere production of WHEN TANG MET LAIKA I was part of the first reading of the play at Perry Mansfield right after I finished my degree at the National Theatre Conservatory (2008). The play has changed and grown a great deal since that first reading. I’ve never worked with a writer who is as active in changing and editing a script as Rogelio Martinez; he has given us a stack of new pages every day since began this rehearsal period on Monday the 14th. An actor gets to watch performances and themes develop in all rehearsal processes but it is a rare treat to watch the actual script change shape and evolve every day. Terry Nolen, our director, has put together an awesome group of actors for this play as well. I sit back during most of the read-throughs and just watch my cast-mates tell this story. They make me forget where I am. Just awesome.
A great deal of the play takes place in space and we’ve been researching the space race a great deal and talking about it. Last week, we had a real life astronaut come into the rehearsal and tell us about his experience in space. Bruce McCandless went on two expeditions in a Nasa orbiter totaling fourteen days in space. He looks pretty unassuming, just a quiet older guy with a bit of a Texas accent, but the stories he had about his life were unbelievable. He was the first man to do an untethered space walk (which means he was just floating around in space with nothing attaching him to the spacecraft). I’ve been on boats far from land and it was enough to make me nervous. FLOATING FREE IN SPACE! It’s a real stretch for me to conceive of being calm doing what Bruce did. He was absolutely calm in talking about it though and said he wasn’t that scared when he did it. I feel brave jay-walking in Denver.
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