To prepare for ‘Nickel and Dimed,’ a theater company lives hand to mouth

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 1| September 29 - October 5, 2006

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel

At a recent rehearsal of “Nickel and Dimed,” the 3Graces Theater Company spoke about their preparation for portraying characters who live on the minimum wage.

By Nicole Davis

Inside a rehearsal studio at Collaborative Arts Project 21 in Chelsea last Sunday, Cherelle Cargill described to her fellow actors what her week had been like, living on $11 day. “I work in a restaurant,” she explained, “so I really took advantage of the free meals. And because I lost my Metrocard” — at this her audience let out a collective gasp — “I walked everywhere. It was completely different for me, because I was poor.”

Earning six figures between herself and her engineer husband hardly constitutes as poor, even in money-hungry New York. But to prepare for her role in the upcoming, New York premiere of “Nickel and Dimed,” Cargill and the other members of the 3Graces Theater Company actually tried to not make ends meet, just like the underpaid workers they’re portraying in Joan Holden’s adaptation of the Barbara Ehrenreich book.

The assignment came from company member Kelli Lynn Harrison, who as Dramaturg for this production, tried to simulate the experience Ehrenreich had when she took three different low-skilled jobs in 1999 and 2000. The result was “Nickel and Dimed,” in which she detailed what was like to actually live on the minimum wage.

“In the book,” Harrison said over the phone last week, “Ehrenreich gives herself some rules, some outs.” At the beginning of the experiment, for instance, the author explained to readers that she wasn’t going to allow herself to become homeless, starve or lose her car just for the sake of her story. “We wanted to find out for ourselves,” Harrison continued, “What are the things we concede — what do we end up fudging about?” And of course, what does it feel like to live below the poverty line?

Because all of the actors in 3Graces have day jobs they need to keep, Harrison invented an imaginary, low-paying workweek for them. Taking into account that anyone making $6.75 an hour—the current minimum wage—would not be able to afford a first and last month’s deposit on a New York apartment, Harrison calculated the cost of a single occupancy, furnished room instead. On Craigslist, Queens offered the best deals on these no-deposit rooms—just $130 a week—so she tallied that expense along with a monthly Metrocard, utilities, a small stipend for communication like a pay-as-you-go cell phone, and subtracted it all from the wages of a 40-hour workweek, which translates to $14,040 a year. The spending money left over amounted to just $11.16 a day. That may sound doable to frugal New Yorkers, but to follow Harrison’s exercise to the tee, cast members couldn’t reach into their pockets and pull out a credit card, or withdraw more money from their bank accounts. The working poor can’t afford such luxuries.

Harrison also had the cast record their thoughts on scrimping in a small notebook, which she collected from the nine company members at last Sunday’s rehearsal. Seated in the fluorescent-lit, mirrored studio, the women rehashed their ordeals.

“It’s really hard to do this without eating like crap,” said Suzanne Barbetta. “I actually ended up getting sick one day.” Luckily, she discovered, “I had one more Airborne left” — a homeopathic medication she wouldn’t have been able to afford on her salary.

“What pissed me off,” Kathleen Bishop chimed in, “Was all math I had to do.” Instead of the $4 energy bars she eats every morning, she had to buy a $1.49 bag of puffed rice that she would be able to stretch into five breakfasts. Even simple chores like laundry became big money drains, as Barbetta described what it was like not to be able to afford a jug of detergent on her daily allowance. Sure, she could buy the single-load packets at the Laundromat, but her skin reacts to those products. “You can’t be poor and have allergies!” she exclaimed.

Harrison asked the group if they made any concessions during their money-strapped week. Chelsea Silverman, who along with Harrison is one of the company’s four founding members, explained that she decided she wouldn’t give up yoga, though she did budget for the $2 bottles of water she drank on class days. But when she showed up for a session without her yoga mat, she had to go without one, since a rental would set her back $5. Silverman laughed when she recounted her instructor’s dismay at seeing her practice poses on the hard wood floor. “What was I going do? I couldn’t tell him, ‘Oh, I’m on minimum wage.’ ”

Another founding member, Annie McGovern, explained how much she appreciated her roomy apartment on the days she didn’t have the money to go out.

“These women must deal with a lot of depression. I was imagining what it must be like living in an 11x12 room. I would be like, ‘Get me the hell out of here!’”

By the end of the week, Silverman and the rest of the cast received a surprise gift from Harrison: she got them all second jobs, which gave them an extra $8 a day.

“After that second shift,” said Silverman, “I felt rich!”

The 3Graces Method

A handful of theater companies specialize in all-female productions, but 3Graces is unique in that its members try to steep themselves in the particular experiences of the women they portray.
“Everyone comes from different schoolings on how to approach the text,” Harrison explained. Anne Bogart, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meiser are just some of the dramaturgy heavyweights whose techniques help individual actors to develop their characters, and “learn about the time and place of the play without the script,” said Harrison. The trick for 3Graces, she explained, was to get the company to approach the text together, “where they can still have the process as an ensemble.” Harrison jokes that the 3Graces Method “capitalizes on the salad bar of others before us,” specifically the teachings of Uda Hagen and Stella Adler, both of whom “emphasize getting to know the world of your character.”
For instance, to prepare for “Flyer,” a play about Fran Douglas, one of an elite corps of NASA-trained female pilots who never made it to space, the company went through flight and G-force simulators at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. And for “Piece of My Heart,” a play about women who served in Vietnam, they attended lectures about the war, read up on its history, even listened to songs from the 60s. Both shows were part of the company’s first season, titled “War Stories.” “Nickel and Dimed” is the first play to kick off their second season, whose theme is “Second Class Citizens.”
As the rehearsal wound down, Harrison gave the company one more assignment before their October 5 opening. She paired cast members off in teams, and gave them onerous tasks to figure out, like applying for food stamps, Medicaid, and low-income housing on hard-to-navigate websites like the Department of Social Services’. To one team, she gave the following scenario: think of a way to celebrate your son’s 10th birthday in New York City, along with two of his friends, on just $40.
“Jesus, that’s inhuman!” a 3Graces member said under her breath, before the cast handed in its minimum-wage diaries, which Harrison will excerpt in the play’s program. Leaving the rehearsal, company member Dorothy Abrahams reflected on what the week had taught her. “It was really an eye opener on how much money goes out of my pocket,” she said, and into things like skin care and ATM fees. “And forget Jamba Juice!” But beyond these minor sacrifices, it was the big picture of living on less that allowed her to get at the heart of the play.
“I feel a sense of respect now for the voices of the people we’re portraying,” said Abrahams. “It feels exciting to use art to catalyze change, or at least get people thinking.”

“Nickel and Dimed” runs at The Bank Street Theater from October 5 through the 28th. For tickets, call 212-279-4200 or visit www.ticketcentral.com.