Writer polishes ‘Heath Ledger’ for spring showing

“Well, here we go with my play, ‘The Last Days of Heath Ledger,’” senior and playwright Harry Watermeier said to the rehearsal cast. “I’m already embarrassed.”

Three rows of empty desks sat like a silent, invisible audience watching Watermeier’s play read aloud for the first time.

The rehearsal cast sat around a table in a classroom in the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center, pencils at the ready to mark up their copies of the script.

“We’ll talk about the play after we do a read-through,” rehearsal director Chris Lee said.

For Watermeier, the discussion after the play is just as important as the reading itself.

“The Last Days of Heath Ledger,” a play he has been working on for more than a year, will be the first student-written play the University Players ever runs as an independent show.

And he wants it to be good.

The play is based on a story of the same name by Lisa Taddeo that ran in Esquire magazine in April 2008. It is a fictionalized account based on actual investigation of the days before Ledger’s death and his interactions with celebrities such as Jack Nicholson, Mary-Kate Olsen and Michelle Williams.

Watermeier said he fell in love with the story the first time he read it.

“It was a very visual story that I couldn’t help but see on the stage as I read it,” he said.

After contacting the author for permission to adapt the story for the stage, Watermeier set to work, spending evenings sitting on the floor of his room with his laptop immersing himself in things he “wanted the play to feel like.”

Eventually, he submitted the script to the University Players, and the group approved its production. The show will go on stage during the 2010 spring semester.

During the week of May 25-29, after more than a year of writing and rewriting, he gathered friends and classmates to read through the script, rehearse it and put on a public reading for comment and critique.

“It was embarrassing to hear it being read,” Watermeier said. “When you’re acting, you have a script to interpret, and a bad actor can ruin a good play. But the quality of the play is essentially the writer’s fault.”

IU alumnus Jason Nelson read the part of Heath Ledger during the read-through, circling difficult words or phrases in his extended monologues as he went along.

As Nelson read, Watermeier pinched his brow, shook his head and furiously scribbled notes in the margins of his copy of the script.

“To hear your own words read aloud, you feel much more vulnerable,” Watermeier said. “It’s a naked feeling. You can be judged critically, which is not something I’m used to. But over the course of the week, I got more confident and now I’m happy with how it sounded.”

At the end of the week of read-throughs and corrections, the cast did a public reading of the work and invited audience members to share criticisms and concerns.

“I’m the first to say something needs work,” Watermeier said. “I’m the first to criticize my writing. Criticism is expected. And people were saying a lot of the same things that I thought needed work.”

In the coming months before an official director and cast are selected for the final production, Watermeier will return to the floor of his bedroom to write, rewrite and critique his own work. But he said he is already happy with the direction the script is headed.

“People interpreting it are finding messages that I didn’t even know were there,” Watermeier said. “I’ve created something, as flawed as it is, that creates discussion. That expands the possibilities of what the show could be.”