Eric Peterson and Sonja Smits are put to the test

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Veteran actors Eric Peterson and Sonja Smits are rarely at a loss for words, but both are practically tongue-tied when asked to describe Dublin-born director Jason Byrne's unorthodox rehearsal strategy for his new play, The Test.

"Jason's method is somewhat different in that it's not based on a lot of verbal discussion," throws out Peterson, who stars alongside his Street Legal co-star in The Test, which opens Thursday night at the Berkeley Street Theatre in Toronto. "Basically, he operates by having you get up and do things in rehearsal – even when you don't know what you're doing. It's like continually working in a fog. There is no looking for clarity here. It's all about impulse and emotion. And everyday is about fear management," adds the 65-year-old, who worked with Byrne before on the 2008 Toronto production of the critically acclaimed play Festen.

Then Smits takes a stab at articulating how Byrne's "unique" style of directing – by not directing – works. "He does not block scenes. He offers little guidance, and encourages his actors to simply engage in the moment with the material – in the raw emotions.

"It's both freeing and incredibly frustrating, especially when you start out," says Smits, who worked with Peterson 17 years ago on the CBC-TV series Street Legal and also collaborated with the Saskatchewan-born thespian on George Walker's play Nothing Sacred.

"The traditional rehearsal process means you walk in the first day, and the director shows you costumes, sketches, the set, and then you read and block the floor so everyone knows where they're moving. Jason doesn't work like that," adds Smits. "Literally the first week of rehearsal was improvisation. You could go off script, and you were encouraged to fly in extreme directions if you wanted to. It's all about being reactive and flexible. It's very much alive, but it's sort of like a non-acting, for lack of a better word."

Byrne's The Test is the first English-language translation of the play from up-and-coming Swiss-German playwright Lukas Barfuss. A Company Theatre production, which runs until Nov. 26, it's a gallows-humour comedy that revolves around the thorny issue of paternity. The Gemini-winning Peterson ( Billy Bishop Goes to War, Corner Gas) plays Simon Korach, an aspiring, but not very effective politician, who has been long married to Helle (Smits). Their son, Peter (Gord Rand), is happily married to Agnes (Liisa Repo-Martell) and they have a son. Things start to unravel when Peter – prodded by a protagonist (Philip Riccio) – questions the paternity of his boy.

Byrne has previously directed two plays for Company Theatre co-creators Riccio and Republic of Doyle's Allan Hawco – their sophomore production A Whistle in the Dark and Festen. Byrne used the same avant-garde approach with Festen, but acknowledges The Test, in particular, asks the actors "to be extremely vulnerable.

"For me, it's interesting to find a way to harmonize the actual feeling, the atmosphere, sensation and the moods that an actor is feeling on a day-to-day basis, and explore how that can be spontaneously utilized during a performance in a way that will confound my expectations and shed surprising light on the structure of the play," says Byrne, who lives just outside of Dublin.

"When I was younger, I worked in a more traditional way, finding very specific character objectives, figuring out what the arc was, and then trying in rehearsal to enact or perform those. But I got tired of the fixity of that approach. I suppose I'm trying to facilitate a process that allows for collaboration with chance. There is a very strong blueprint that's created by the actors as they make passes – again and again – at the material.

"But to get to where I want to go, we have to go through a lot of chaos, things have to collapse, and become a real mess."

Peterson, who describes all actors as "masochists," agrees Byrne's method is exhausting and exhilarating. "It's the damndest thing because it's so scary. Actors – hell, all human beings – crave safety and security. It's why kids get cranky when they're learning to walk," he says. "It's so hard to talk about this play – what it is, and what it isn't – because it's ineffable, in a sense. We're trying to describe something that really has no description in the sense of a formula, or sense of approach."

Earlier this week, The Test had its first run-through before a live audience. Smits says people reacted "very strongly."

"Some probably thought it was the strangest thing they'd ever seen," she adds with a laugh. "But I've never seen an audience so glued. It was like a good acid trip – or a bad acid trip – I'm just not sure which."