A Quick Change for Forrest Richards

Gina Wilhelm Actress - A Quick Change for Forrest Richards

Actress Forrest Richards has put shows together in a week for summer stock and dinner theatre.

In spite of that, she was completely unprepared when she was chosen to replace an actress in a two-woman show two weeks before opening.

With three days before the first preview, the director, artistic director, and original actress decided "Black Pearl Sings" should have a change.

Richards found she had to learn the part in an entirely new way. Ordinarily she likes to get the script two to three weeks before rehearsals even start.

She likes to spend that time working out who her character is in private. Instead, she had to do that in rehearsals, and then in front of preview audiences.

And while she prefers to develop her character from the inside out, in this case, she was forced to learn her from the outside in.

In spite of her nervousness, she said the preview audiences were actually quite supportive.

Her costar in the piece, Alice Gatling, calls Richards "my unsung hero...I didn’t realize how stressed and worried I was until she came in and hit that role.”

Gatling was reprising her role from the world premiere. She says her performance has grown partly because she'd done it before, but partly because of her work with Richards.

Director Kate Alexander agrees. Because of the short time, she calls what they had to do "directing by bombardment."

She said she had to toss out suggestions she wouldn't ordinarily. Even so, Richards kept making new discoveries, which in turn would fuel Gatling's excitement.

Playwrite Frank Higgins came out and saw the play last weekend and was very complimentary.

“Forrest is probably still making discoveries,” he said. “What’s nice about that is if someone is continuing to make discoveries, it alters little nuances so the other actor is going to grow as well.”

Gatling agrees, saying that her character, Pearl, is more real to her this time around.

While Richards isn't surprised she's been able to succeed at this -- she has plenty of self-confidence -- she says it's nice to be able to look at her performance and say "Guess what, I can do this.”

Gina Wilhelm Actress