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Pat Downey

Gardo

Acting II: Scene Study

18 April 2021

Acting Response Paper: The Woodsman

L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard Of Oz has become the quintessential American fairytale and

weaved its way into the heart of pop culture in the United States. The characters are as

recognizable as any mythological hero or superhero. In the play The Woodsman by James Ortiz,

provides an origin story for one of the most iconic characters from the original story… the tin

man. And he does so be weaving puppetry, pantomime and music together in this avant garde

telling of this previously unknown story. Ortiz himself plays the titular woodsman a Mr. Nick

Chopper. However, standing out along side him is the love interest Nimmee who is played

wonderfully by Eliza Martin Simpson. Although, there is only possibly one line of dialogue in

the show, that is spoken by Mr. Nick Chopper, Simpson doesn’t need lines to shine as Nimmee.

Her physicality and use of props, creates a creatively unique character for the audience to enjoy

and achieve her goal.

Nimmee’s goal for the play seems to be to escape the Wicked Witch of the East’s

torment. As in the first half of the play it is revealed that she was taken captive by the witch as a

child and was subsequently forced to be her servant. Her tactics she uses for this goal is to trick

the witch and to woo Mr. Nick Chopper into falling in love with her. Nimmee, however, is not

wooing Mr. Nick Chopper for malice or selfish purposes. She has fallen in love with him and

wishes to live with him. To Nimmee, Nick symbolizes safety and someplace where she can live a

normal life. She ultimately succeeds in her first goal of tricking the witch allowing her to escape
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and gain her long deserved freedom. She uses Nick’s heart necklace to give her strength and thus

is able to escape the witch’s magic. After she escapes she continues to woo Nick in a scene

where he begins to show her his trade, being a woodsman. Nick teaches her to chop down trees

and she allows him to teach her how to use an axe. The physical intimacy of their approximity to

one another allows for a light hearted sequence throughout the scene of them falling in love and

wooing each other.

In this particular scene, Eliza Martin Simpson utilizes several physical choices to

romantic effect and allowing her to woo Mr. Nick Chopper. Again, to reiterate, Nimmee is not

wooing Nick out of any malice or evil intent, she sees Nick as a sort of safe place. After escaping

the witch, Nick and Nimmee find each other in the woods. After staring at each other for a

minute they run to each other and embrace and kiss. Clearly, Nick and Nimmee are in love but

not all the way there. She does not want this to be a one off thing, so she continues to woo Nick

into a deep romantic spiritual bond. She slaps his chest twice indicating a heart beat. But not just

any heart beat, the shared continual heart beat of her and Nick. At one point the take each others

hand beginning a new tactic, to settle… to settle into a new life of love and safety with each

other.

Simpson also uses beautiful prop work in an earlier scene where Nick is teaching

Nimmee to hold an axe. The axe itself, is in all likelihood, not a real axe and is made out of a

light material such as foam or plastic. This is in all likelihood, so the actors are safe and that.

They can hold the axe without any difficulty. It goes back to Uta Hagen’s on endowment. Where

actors pretend that props and other things on stage have some sort of physical force to them that

they do not actually have. In this case, Eliza Martin Simpson gives the endowment of weight to

the axe she is given by Mr. Nick Chopper. When she initially receives the axe, she lets the head
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of the axe fall to the ground, as it its weight is too much for her. This gains a laugh from the

audience and allows her tactic of wooing Nick to continue. One may argue that this does not

count towards it but I believe that it does. Men like to feel like they are stronger, and so she

playing the part of a women in distress continues to woo Mr. Nick Chopper into falling in love

with her. As in the scene they have just met and he is providing aid to her. She then however,

picks up the axe all by herself because she is strong independent woman and she does not need a

man’s help. She manages to get in a good chop with the axe and gets it stuck in a tree. Here is

where Eliza Martin Simpson shines. She does a wonderful job of allowing the audience to see

that there is a tree there, when in reality there is no tree. When she gets the axe stuck in a tree she

accomplishes the great physical task of keeping it in place. The axe almost never moves, despite

the fact that Simpson is moving the ret of her body. She keeps that axe in there and it is truly

awe-inspiring to watch her keep it there until she finally is able to pull it out of the tree. It is

amazing the prop work that she uses and really allows the audience to imagine and see things on

stage that are not on stage.

To conclude, James Ortiz’s The Woodsman is a truly incredible piece of theatre that fully

utilizes pantomime, puppetry and music to tell a clear and coherent story without dialogue. I

compare it to a ballet I had to watch last semester for my arts management class where I had no

idea what was going on throughout the whole thing. Eliza Martin Simpson shines as Nimmee

using her tactics but without dialogue. That is a amazing feat that would seem to be only

achievable by the most well trained of actors. Her physicality and prop work more than make up

for the lack of dialogue.