Damien Wallace and Kash Goins in Joe Turner's Come and Gone; photo by Drew Hood, Throwing Light Photography

By Nelson Barre

Over the past couple months I have been fortunate enough to work on a production of my favorite August Wilson piece, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, at Plays and Players in Philadelphia. As the second play in the playwright’s Pittsburgh Century Cycle, it presents us with one of the early intersections of the African-American experience in a quickly industrializing area of America. This play examines everything from race issues to economic problems to questions of identity that draw on the African as well as American experience of former slaves and their children and grandchildren.

My experience as the dramaturg began with the play’s selection last spring. I was newly made the Literary Manager and Resident Dramaturg and working on a production of Lost in Yonkers. Among my preliminary research was a need to connect myself into the process. It was more than simply providing a glossary and being there to answer questions about West African culture and its echoes throughout the past century. Not that those weren’t important to the production team and the actors, but I wanted to make the process more personal.

I found myself speaking with people who grew up in Pittsburgh, historians who knew the Hill District from August Wilson’s early years, families willing to share a piece of their community and their private history. It was beautiful to research these things, read about them in books written by experts, but one can never substitute the real thing. Hearing firsthand about a mother raising ten kids, spending every night at the dinner table. That’s beautiful. Speaking about religion and its importance to a community, as a sort of extended family, an intertwined neighborhood where everyone knows and trusts the people around them.

Telling the cast and production team about these experiences brought more stories from their own lives. I had opened a running faucet of personal stories, from heartbreaking losses to joyful praise and everything in between. Several cast members shared memories about their parents and grandparents who believe in the power of Hoodoo, a major part of Wilson’s dramaturgy and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. By opening up the conversation for the cast’s experiences as well as supplementing with my research, we found ourselves sharing our past, our identities, much like the characters in the play. These characters (and by extension, my dramaturgy) became three dimensional before and after rehearsals just as much as during the rehearsal itself.

I wanted to talk to everyone who was willing to let me learn from them, and thereby inform my understanding of 1911 Pittsburgh, the African-American experience, and August Wilson’s place among the canon of literature. These stories tell about struggle, hardship, and the weight that slavery has even in today’s day and age. But these people also shared their songs, the part of them that sang who they were and that they were proud and unwilling to be cowed by the institutions of white America against all odds. These are the stories that will never die, no matter how many years pass. Time isn’t eroding these lives, these memories; it’s vitalizing them, giving them a voice on the biggest stages. These things all came out when I spoke to the people who had lived in August Wilson’s time and knew about who he was when he wasn’t famous. That tells the stories of Pittsburgh that he wrote about and loved more than anything else.

Wilson always wrote from his heart, which meant his plays were always proud and vocal in the theatrical arena. He is one of the strongest proponents for Africa-American art as a form that must come from the voices and experiences of these people. I would highly encourage you to read his 1996 Theatre Communication Group address entitled “The Ground on Which I Stand” which assaults issues of colorblind casting, racism in culture, and the African experience in America as something to be celebrated. This sparked an intense debate with theatre critic Robert Brustein concerning the concerns Wilson raised in his speech. Neither man gave up his ground. I believe that is a testament to what August Wilson represents as one of the greatest American playwrights. His convictions shine throughout his Century Cycle, and most obviously in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which is why I love it. The playwright takes a stand for what he believes and writes vehemently about its imperative nature to art, culture, and African-American identity. Writers like this affect an audience, a reader, anyone who comes through their life. And this is why I love the theatre.

Now, producing all these conversations into a useful form was difficult, as most of them were ad hoc. I tried to keep an unofficial log of what I heard and saw, and I shared what I thought was most useful and direct for the production team and cast. This was in direct contrast to past styles of dramaturgy that included exhaustive binders full of every possible article and book that had to do with the play; that daunting task always feels overwhelming and in the end not always the most efficient use of time. I still provide a large amount of research, but with a play like this, it needed to come from the heart. I shared many of my documents, conversations, and research via Dropbox, which not only significantly decreased my paper usage but also stream-lined my dramaturgical process. Everything from sound files to newspaper articles to Youtube videos helped in the creation of my dramaturgical process for this play. This allowed the story to come quickly and easily to their fingertips as well as mine when I needed to recall a specific piece of information.

© Nelson Barre (February 9, 2012)

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone By: August Wilson. Directed by Daniel Student.
At Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey Place, Philadelphia, PA. Through February 11, 2012.

With: Kash Goins (Herald Loomis), Damien Wallace (Bynum Walker), James Tolbert (Seth Holly), Cherie Jazmyn (Bertha Holly), Jamal Douglas (Jeremy Furlow), Candace Thomas (Mattie Campbell), Mlé Chester (Molly Cunningham), Bob Weick (Rutherford Selig), Lauryn Jones (Zonia Loomis), Brett Gray (Reuben Mercer), and Erin Stewart (Martha Pentecost)

Kevin Bergen (as Bennett) and Bi Jean Ngo (as Clare). Photo by Seth Rozin.

by Kittson O’Neill

I recently sat down with Mike Lew, author of InterAct Theatre Company‘s current hit play, MICROCRISIS.  It was a fun and easy conversation that ranged from the zombie apocalypse to Mike’s very impromptu conversion to Islam.  (Oh the things we do for love!)  Later reflecting on the interview it got me thinking about what a great range there is in the paths a writer takes from first spark to finished play; and really what a great variety there is in those sparks.

MICROCRISIS, which premiered at MaYi and is getting its Philly premiere with InterAct, is a scathing satire of the financial services industry. The play imagines a second disastrous bubble built on the backs of microcredit recipients, which leaves the world’s poor even more destitute, the middle class closer to disaster, and the ultra rich a whole lot richer.  Mike described his inspiration as a near fixation with the 2008 mortgage crash itself. “I was pretty obsessed with the financial crisis when it was happening and wanted to know what the deeper causes were behind it.” He said “I wanted to see what the root causes were.”

From there he realized how vulnerable we still are to bubbles and crashes.  He wondered where the next one might come from and realized that a seemingly virtuous movement like microcredit could be the instrument of our destruction and that that had serious comic potential.  Mike said,

“I also thought that anything that involves money that’s going to be for the greater good is going to end up getting co-opted, which it has.”

But how do you write a play, with live bodies and some human drama about abstract ideas like credit default swaps and tranching?  In Mike’s comedy, the victims and the perpetrators intersect closely, so that we follow the ruin of a Ghanaian entrepreneur and an American school teacher just as closely as the internet wizard and the clueless do-gooder who are the selfish banker’s willing accomplices.  We are laughing at the absurdity, but we also feel for them as the financial machine grinds them to a pulp.

Mike says his plays don’t always start out with such strong emotional arcs. He jokingly describes himself as a bit “robotic.”  Lucky for him he’s married to playwright, Rehana Mirza.  Together they run the MaYi Writers Lab and they often serve as dramaturgs for each other.  He credits Rehana with pushing his characters into more emotionally truthful actions.  “If you read (my first draft) people are behaving like sociopaths and it’s like, how can I follow this if I can’t invest in anybody?” he says.  She pushes him to think as deeply about emotional logic as he does about the logic of plot and action.  The result is a very funny play with a totally plausible plot driven by complicated financial instruments and a truly human cost at its climax.

Two separate ideas, both very much in the news, mixed inside a vivid imagination and guided by an emotionally astute dramaturg, make for a play that sits right in the heart of InterAct’s mission.  Lucky us!

Kittson O’Neill © (7 February 2012)

Microcrisis by Mike Lew, directed by Seth Rozin, sets by Caitlin Lainoff, costumes by Anna Frangiosa,  lighting by Peter Whinney, sound design by Mark Valenzuela, properties by Avista Custom Theatrical Services, stage manager Tom Helmer, production manager Daniel X. Guy, dramaturgy by Kittson O’Neill, production assistant Rebecca Dennis, technical director Britt Plunkett. Production runs until February 12, 2012 at The Adrienne, 2030 Samson Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103. (215) 568-8079 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            (215) 568-8079      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

WITH: Kevin Bergen (Bennett), Maia Desanti (Chavez), Hannah Gold (Lydia), Dave Johnson (Randy), Bi Jean Ngo (Clare, Beta Test), Frank X (Acquah, Frankfurt).

To find out more about Mike, visit his website: www.MikeLew.com.

To find out more about InterAct, and to listen so some of my interview, visit here: http://interacttheatrecompany.blogspot.com/2012/01/talking-with-mike-lew-playwright-of.html

By: Amy Freeman

Whenever I see a show, the first thing that I notice is the costumes worn by the characters. Costuming, more than any other aspect of a production (in my mind, at least), gives the audience a clear picture of the play’s dramaturgy. Through the costumes, an audience sees the time period of the play and is given a snapshot of the characters’ qualities and personalities. Excellently designed costumes help push the play’s dramaturgy forward. Poorly done costumes hinder a play.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat about the connection between costuming and dramaturgy with Erica Hoelscher, who designed costumes for August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, being performed at Philadelphia’s Plays and Players theater until February 11, 2012. Erica traveled to Pittsburgh, PA to perform research on the play along with Heather Helinsky, the associate dramaturg on the production (Nelson Barre was the lead production dramaturg for Joe Turner). The conversation gave me a chance to see how research and dramaturgy helps a designer on a project.

The Cast of<!--em Joe Turner's Come and Gone/Drew Hood, Throwing Light Photography"

Amy Freeman: What was your process for designing for Joe Turner? Did you do research on your own and then did you talk to Heather Helinsky and Nelson Barre, the dramaturgs, and Daniel Student, the director?

Erica Hoelscher: I did research on my own. In fact, it’s pretty much when I learn that I’m going to be designing something or when I’m contracted, as it were, I start my research process. I’ve done a lot of productions, so I’ve collected a lot of work but what I’ve found with Joe Turner is that there has been a lot of new stuff since the last time I did an August Wilson play. That was very exciting to find books and specifically, what I’m looking for, is visual research more so than text. So that’s where I started.

I had done my renderings and pretty much designed the show before we had the chance to go to Pittsburgh. What I found in working with Heather and what was very exciting about working with a dramaturg is that they are never done. They continue researching even after the play is open. To me, the message in that is that you can always do a play again. There’s always something more than you didn’t do the first time, either by choice or by design, or by accident that you can do the second or third or fourth time you do the production. What I really enjoyed about was that even though I had done my renderings and shopped for fabric, I still found more information [in Pittsburgh] that I could then incorporate into my design. I left enough allowance and I left room so that I could still learn from that.

I think the other thing that working with Heather did for me, or just working with a dramaturg in general, was that her interest was not limited to or even focused on the costumes at all. And, so, I was watching her find things out and it did inform my thoughts about the costumes as well. So, where I ended up with that was really feeling that the clothes had to look like they belonged in Pittsburgh. We found a photograph of Pittsburgh in 1910 that showed how filthy and dirty it was there due to the steel industry. That made it critically important to me that the clothes be clothes and not costumes. At the end, they turn a little costume-y, but that was director’s input. For stylistic reasons, he wanted certain things at the end of the play, he wanted to see a progression.

Amy: Can you explain that, what makes something costume-y versus just clothing?

Erica: Clothes are lived in. Clothes belong to the characters and not to the designer. That’s very important to me. It was Robert Edmund Jones who said “get the ‘me” out of your work.” And to me, that’s what a dramaturg really can do for you. Get the me out of your work and it’s not about the designer, it’s about the play.

Amy: Can you talk about what happened in Pittsburgh and maybe the connection, how you ended up going there?

Erica: The play is set in Pittsburgh and it’s rare that a designer, or anyone in theater gets to visit the locale of the play. Of course, we can’t transport ourselves back in time, which would be handy-dandy, so being in the location at least lets you see what’s left of 1911 Pittsburgh. It’s available, if you search it out.

Amy: Is there a lot left?

Erica: There’s more there than any place else. I knew that, that was kind of a gimme. I knew I wanted to go there and the benefit of having Heather along was that,  here was a person really disconnected from what I was doing but really connected to the world of the play and of the playwright. Some of the most informative and exciting things that happened were just our conversations in the car on the way there. We discovered our similar interests and our similar attitudes or opinions about Wilson and the play and where we were coming from with it. That was all the plan that we really made. We didn’t schedule our time to the nth degree, we just went with it. She had good ideas of where to start and I was depending on that.

Kash Goins and Damien Wallace in Joe Turner's Come and Gone/Drew Hood, Throwing Light Photography

Amy: Where did you go?

Erica: Our first stop was the Carnegie Library. We to the library and could have stayed there the whole time, they had such a wide array. But what we found was the Pittsburgh Courier on microfilm. That was not available in 1997, I think, the last time I was there. That was very exciting.

Actually, I think the first place we went to was the Heinz History Center. Heather knew that they had this book. There’s been a recent publication about August Wilson and his connection to Pittsburgh and all of the locations in Pittsburgh that have to do with his plays and life. So we went and got that book and accidentally stumbled upon an exhibit of the Pittsburgh Courier. That had a lot of photographs available. We stopped by the Heinz History Center Library, which is where we found the photograph [from 1910] that I mentioned a minute ago.

We went to the UPitt library, which also has an extensive African-American collection. At none of these places did we exhaust the available resources. We didn’t have time. I got a Carnegie library card, Heather already had one. We were checking out books and returning them the next day, making copies, things like that. We could have easily spent an entire week going through this stuff, but we were limited.

We had dinner with an actor who had played the original role of Selig in the Pittsburgh Public Theater production of Joe Turner and that was very interesting. We didn’t sit down to dinner and talk about the play the whole time. We talked about other stuff, but I was able to ask a couple of questions and the actor opened up about it and gave some pertininent details about his experience that were very enlightening and we then pursued those further.

We stopped by the  August Wilson Center for African American culture, which was fabulous and incredible but had nothing to do with this play. It did in a profound, but abstract way, so it wasn’t a direct connection. The last thing we did was drive around the neighborhood of the play. We stopped by several addresses that are specifically mentioned in the play and took some photographs. We went to August Wilson’s birthplace, the home. And I was sorry that we didn’t spend more time doing that. I was sorry that we left that to the last because I ran out of time and I had to leave. There just wasn’t enough time to do everything.

It was a really good feeling to come back and feel that I had done all of this work and had this much more full understanding, even if I was not capable of inserting it all into my design.

Amy: Costuming and dramaturgy to me seem like they are kind of connected. There’s more research into the historical aspects for costuming than for other designs. When you are doing sound, for example, I mean you  have to listen to historical stuff, but it’s different. Does that make sense?

Erica: It does. The way I think of it is that a set is usually built for a play and then it’s done. Usually, honestly, it gets tossed in the garbage, because it is so expensive to recycle and it’s so expensive to have storage space to keep anything like a set piece  whereas costume designers hoard everything. We are the original recyclers, re-users, re-procurers of everything. I have closets where I work that are so packed, they are overflowing with stuff because we refuse to throw anything away. It’s partly economic but it’s mostly artistic. Once we have made it and done it, we know it and we will use it again.

I also think it’s the people connection. Sets are things. They are environments. . . Costumes are hanging on the actor’s body, whereas a prop is in their hand or something like that, it’s slightly disconnected.

Amy: The costumes almost make the character.

Erica: They do, they do. . . anything you wear is a costume if you are wearing it on stage. It may also be, I don’t know if this is part of it, but since I’m an academic, I also have a great interest and love of doing this kind of research and doing this kind of scholarship. So even if if doesn’t inform this play or this production, it’s valuable to me for the future and to my ongoing work as a scholar, so that may be partly why I felt very keenly that I  needed to go to Pittsburgh. Having Heather along for a dramaturgical standpoint was just invaluable. There’s no substitute to having her come with me. I couldn’t have done what I did by myself.

Amy: How do you design the costume’s to fit into the play’s dramaturgy?  How do costumes push the story of the play or its themes forward?

Erica: The most exciting part about the dramaturgy is the little tid-bits that you find out, it’s like a lightbulb that goes on over your head. You can’t predict them. You can’t expect them. You can try your best to prepare yourself and position yourself to access them but you can’t guess at things like that.

As a for instance, as we were scrolling through these microfilms of the Pittsburgh Courier, we found an article that was also an advertisement for an African-American couple who ran a boarding house. It was a long description of what you’re going to get if you stay there, their amenities, their background, who they are, their history, their affiliations and how great it’s going to be if you come and stay at this boarding house. It was perfect. There was a photo of the couple and it described their interactions and who they are and all this. Their house was just like the play, it was a little piece of the play that was in reality. Just finding that opened the whole world of the play up and I thought, wow, this is real. These are really, truly real people.

Another example of that was another article in the Courier about a man who was a former slave and he somehow came to own a parcel of land. This was not around Pittsburgh, I think it was in Georgia, if I’m correct about this. He became recognized because he grew the most cotton per acre of land for several years running. This article was kind of celebrating the achievements of this former slave, who is now the top of his producing line. But it was written in the most deplorable, racist language you would ever read. But it was published in an African American newspaper. So, I guess I sort of understand who Loomis is now. He’s enslaved by his own thoughts of who he is, his own boundaries of self.

And it is still going on today.

Amy: But today we have more of a reaction, you know?

Erica: Right, we think it’s weird and unusual and we don’t see that the same kind of language and visual representations are alive in our world.

Amy: After finding these things, did you go back to your designs and tinker with them?

Erica: I did, yeah, I changed them. I dyed some fabric, I trimmed things in a different way, I cut patterns differently. Now, after the fact, there’s always things I would do differently. It’s the designer’s curse.

There’s one dress that I would have totally redesigned if I had had the opportunity.

Amy: Why do you say that? Was it seeing in on the actress?

Erica: Yes, it was seeing it on the actress and seeing how she envisioned the role. I brought too much of a white woman’s context to the character.

Amy: I think that’s another interesting aspect, the actors themselves contribute to the dramaturgy of the play. You  might actually have a costume that is conflicting with what they are doing in the role.

Erica: It did turn out that way. She worked with it, she made it work, she brought it to life, but it could have been better. I don’t know when she came to this interpretation. The director told me it was later in the process. He could also see it. I first encountered this problem with his reaction which was one of frustration and he said, don’t you have something different for her to wear? I didn’t completely understand it and then I started seeing it. She made it work, though, it was okay in the end.

Amy: When I see the play, will I be able to tell which character?

Erica: I don’t know. That will be interesting to see.

© Amy Freeman (January 30, 2012)

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone By: August Wilson. Directed by Daniel Student.
At Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey Place, Philadelphia, PA. Through February 11.

With: Kash Goins, Damien Wallace, James Tolbert, Cherie Jazmyn, Jamal Douglas, Candace Thomas, Mlé Chester, Bob Weick, Lauryn Jones, Brett Gray, and Erin Stewart

Lately I find that more and more of my dramaturgical hat is worn before pre-production even commences.

One of my earliest theatrical experiences was playing Yente in my high school production of Fiddler on the Roof. And while today, I inwardly cringe at the very thought that video of that production exists somewhere, I seem to have inherited a few things from a certain Anatevka resident. As a literary manager and dramaturg, I have fallen into the matchmaking tradition (albeit a behind the scenes one).

June Ballinger and Peter Jay Fernandez in Passage Theatre's production of The History of Light by Eisa Davis, directed by Jade King Carroll

I have the good fortune of being the Literary Manager for Passage Theatre in Trenton, NJ and the resident dramaturg at Premiere Stages, the professional theatre in residence at Kean University. Both theatres are dedicated to new play development, focusing on first stagings like Passage’s upcoming premiere of Slippery as Sin by David Lee White or Premiere Stages Play Festival, which offers developmental opportunities to four previously unproduced plays and includes the new commissioning initiative Liberty Live. Premiere and Passage also feature second or third productions of exciting new work like Passage’s recent show The History of Light by Eisa Davis. Lately I find that more and more of my dramaturgical hat is worn before pre-production even commences. I think contrary to popular belief there are a great deal of inspiring, well-written scripts floating around in need of a good home. The challenge lies in getting past those awkward first dates and pairing a script and writer with a theatre where the play can grow and flourish.  It can be tricky–there are so many elements at play in making a match—What stage is the script at? Is the chemistry right? How will the play fit in a theatre’s space? Does the theatre have the budget and staff to fulfill the technical requirements of the writer and director’s vision? Will the play connect with and challenge the theatre’s audience? The list goes on and on.  And since there’s no ok cupid survey to fill out, those questions can be tricky to answer. For me they often start with the ever-mounting stacks of scripts that live in my work and home offices and inbox. I try and read and see as many plays as possible always with an eye for where can this script live.  For example, I first encountered Eisa Davis’ work while interning at New Dramatists. I fell in love with her excellent plays Bulrusher and Paper Armor as did the rest of the Passage Staff. That eventually led to finding a home for The History of Light in the talented hands of director Jade King Carroll and being able to give the show a second production. The play follows two inter-racial couples a generation apart and traces the intersections of love, friendship, music, trust, politics, and family. The show’s themes and amazing writing resonated deeply with both the Passage Theatre audience and the artists involved in the production.

My work at Premiere Stages is matchmaking on a very different level. Our Play Festival Competition calls for submissions from writers born or currently residing in the greater metropolitan area (New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania). Play Festival affords us the opportunity to get to know work from literally hundreds of new playwrights over the course of a few short months. It’s a very different skill set meeting a writer for the first time and pairing them with a theatre where in less than six months you could be potentially working on a production together.  Often the first introduction is a synopsis and eight-page sample. These small excerpts actually give a great deal of insight into if a writer is a good possibility for the theatre. We read them carefully and I feel a great deal of responsibility when taking a look at such a small snippet of a playwrights work. In an ideal world, it might be possible to read only full scripts, but sometimes due to staff and time constraints that is simply not feasible and this is the best way to extend consideration to a wide pool of writers. While the excerpts are brief (think of it as theatrical speed dating) a strong synopsis and sample gives a good idea of if the voice and subject matter might make a nice pairing with the Play Festival program.

No matter what circuitous route a play takes to reach a production, there is a definite satisfaction when all the elements fuse together and a play has found a theatrical match. I think the behind the scenes selection process is often clouded in mystery and viewed with suspicion from the outside. It’s certainly not an exact science and yes, there are times when a match sours instead of soars, but I hope that opening dialogs about how new plays make it from page to stage is a way to clear the air and pass on the tradition of ensuring that original, important stories find a happy, healthy theatrical home!

Credits:

© Clare Drobot (January 27, 2012)

The History of Light by Eisa Davis, Directed by Jade King Carroll. Matthew Campbell – set. Karin Graybash – Sound. Robin I. Shane – costumes. Lighting design completed by Nicole Pearce. Projections created  by Passage Theatre’s design team. Production Stage Manager: Anthony O. Bullock.  Featuring June Ballinger, Peter Jay Fernandez, Steve Kuhel, and chandra Thomas. 

For more information on upcoming Passage shows go to www.passagetheatre.org

For more information on Premiere Stages visit: www.kean.edu/premierestages

Journeying is something common to all of us, whether it was in a state of mind, for education, for love, for work, or for a lark.  I’ve wandered from Texas to Michigan to California to Florida to Indiana to Pennsylvania for my theatre profession.  Along the way I’ve encountered extraordinary, unusual, sometimes downright odd folks who have challenged the way I see the world.  As an assistant to the dramaturg, I spent all my energies looking at the new, exploring the unknown during the process, overlooking my own connection to the play.  Discovering and sharing that story has been the latest, though I’m certain not last, surprise on this journey.

But I run ahead of myself.  Before I was assigned to this process, the journey began when Kenneth Lin first drafted the script.  At People’s Light and Theatre, we were fortunate to have him throughout the production, from casting through opening weekend.  During that time, Fallow underwent a second off-site workshop, resulting in the trimming of at least one scene and tweaks elsewhere.  Such edits and revisions, I learned, are commonplace in the facilitation of a new play from inception to stage.  Each round of changes earned a different color of paper to be inserted into the rehearsal script.  The end product is something I can only describe as “the amazing Technicolor rehearsal script.”

My journey with Fallow began a little over a year ago, which seems fitting given that the play follows Aaron sojourn of little more than a year.  As assistant to lead dramaturg Elizabeth Pool at People’s Light and Theatre, it has been a sweet (literally) and surprising time.  For example, what other show could send me to sample honey and mead for research?

Elizabeth (Mary Elizabeth Scallen, foreground) reads one of the letters her son Aaron (George Olesky) wrote on his journey across America. Photo by Mark Gavin.

Aaron’s journey is all about change, superficial and substantial: his physical appearance, the shifting landscape around him, his view and appreciation of the world.  He travels the country with his bees, going fromMaine, down the East coast, across the South, winding up inCalifornia.  At each stop, he composes a letter to his mother, chronicling his adventures and discoveries.  Travel is a job hazard with its own rewards—exploration, discovery—and costs—isolation, confusion, loss.  The further he travels from home, the greater his known world expands.  As he goes, the connectedness of everything and the interdependence of society assails him.  He muses how bees were brought to theNew Worldon the Mayflower, the same as his ancestors.  “Maybe it’s in our blood,” he concludes, “Honey and travel.  Oceans and fields.”

Honey and beekeeping play a predominant role in the life of Aaron.  Choosing not to return to classes at Cornell, Aaron follows the rotation of crop cycles with his bees.  The machinations of hive life fascinate him; the interdependence of bees, crops, harvesters, and how it reaches the dinner table sometimes astound him.  The same wonder struck me as I delved into the apiary world.

Surrounded by Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees, A World Without Bees, Beekeeping for Dummies, and the internet, I felt as though I had performed a magnificent swan dive into the deep end of bee knowledge. The more I uncovered, the greater my appreciation for the labor I never acknowledged went into something I assumed was as simple as the food I ate.  I tweeted fun facts I found, feeling utterly superior in my accumulated data.

Bees live for their hives and work themselves to death over it.  Summer bees, who work from sunup to sundown collecting pollen, live around sixty days, half as long as winter bees, who cozy up inside the hive.  They can communicate the location of pollen-laden flowers by dancing.  Considering they will journey up to three miles away from home, that’s a bit of movement.  The first year of keeping bees yields nothing; they need the time to build up their home in the hives.  Sometimes a hive will swarm, or leave their home for no apparent reason en masse.  Then again, it is one thing to read about bees and another thing altogether to experience them.

Which led to the sweetest part of my experience: attending the Philadelphia Honey Festival and connecting with Suzanne Matlock, local beekeeper and bee enthusiast.  The Festival, run by the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild, runs each year in September.  As the luck of the dramaturg would have it, the Philadelphia Enquirer ran an article on New Jersey’s official apiarist at the end of the summer, which included news of the festival.  A

Beekeeper Suzanne Matlock opens up her hive at the Philadelphia Honey Festival, September 2011. Photo by Hannah Daniel.

few festivals and beekeeping guilds had been on our radar, but this one fit in with our busy lives.  Originally, Elizabeth and I were to go together; a last minute conflict arose and so I journeyed alone.  The main goal was to attend a seminar entitled “So You Want to be a Beekeeper?”  We needed to know the basics, for ourselves, for the cast and crew, and for the audiences yet to come.

Suzanne Matlock led the seminar and afterward provided a demonstration outdoors with one of her hives.  She detailed the intricacies of ordering bees (yes, through the mail) and caring for them and demonstrated removing honey from the comb with the power of centrifugal force.  Outside, she slowly and carefully exposed the inner sanctum of one of her hives, explaining that her protective gear was worn not from fear of stinging but because bees like exploring dark holes, such as ears and noses.  While sampling a palate-pleasing array of honeys after she spoke, I approached her explaining my interest in the subject and inquiring whether I could contact her with questions throughout the rehearsal process.  She was quite enthusiastic and the idea of a play with beekeeping thrilled her and the other keepers attending.  In the first week of rehearsal, she and her husband brought an empty hive for a demonstration and a Q&A with the cast and production team.  By the nature of their work, beekeepers tend to have a patience, openness, and awareness of the natural world than I’ve seldom encountered.  They are effortlessly comfortable in knowing who they are and where they belong.  I love how storytelling, especially in theatre, can connect us to something new, bee it knowledge or experiences or other people.

As far as first experiences go, this sojourn proved quite educational and raised new questions for me as I begin the next project.  Beekeeping became a connection point, not only between dramaturgs and cast, but also with props and the local community.  That Aaron and I share a common bond of traveling for the love of a job didn’t even click until opening night as I watched the performance.  While there is always something new to discover in the process, there’s a merit to identifying how I personally connect to the story itself.  If I can’t find a connection to a story, how can I participate and share in that story at all?  I’ll remember that on my next journey.

©  Hannah Daniel (January 20, 2012)

FALLOW, by Kenneth Lin; Director Jackson Gay, set by Wilson Chin, costumes by Jessica Ford, lighting by Josh Schulman, sound design by Toby Algya, dramaturg Elizabeth Pool, production stage manager Kelly O’Rourke.  At the Steinbright Stage, 39 Conestoga Road, Malvern, PA 19355.  For tickets, call (610) 644-3500.  Now through February 5, 2012.

WITH: Mary Elizabeth Scallen (Elizabeth Hazzard Hayes), Robert Montano  (HappyLugo), George Olesky (Aaron Hayes), Laura Giknis (Chloe), Stephen Novelli (Jimmy), Joe O’Brien (Danny)

(L-R) Anna Deavere Smith, Lisa Kron, Sarah Jones, Mike Daisey, 2 January 2012 at Playwrights Horizons, Dramatists Guild Academy Solo Actor/Writer Roundtable. Image by Martha Wade Steketee.

• “Theatre is a vocation. It chooses you.” (Lisa Kron)
• “A journey to absorb America through its sounds.” (Anna Deavere Smith)
• “Getting audiences to the spot where they don’t know what the fuck is going to happen.” (Mike Daisey)
• “In an organic, urgent kind of way … cathartic and inevitable.” (Sarah Jones)

The Dramatist Guild holds readings, panels, and other events for its members in many areas of the United States. As a member and now a resident of New York City, I frequently take advantage of these benefits of membership. When I received notice of the planned Smith-Kron-Jones-Daisy discussion about developing and performing solo work, I immediately reserved a seat. All of these performers have entranced me on stage or on film on represented by scripts they have written for others, so my fandom was invoked. In addition, the topic of the one person play (multiple character or not) with its special challenges of crafting dramatic situation and arc and drive has long fascinated me personally and professionally. A 2010 blog post reflecting some of these ruminations during (still ongoing) collaborative work on a one woman show about makeup artist Dorothy Ponedel provides some of professional connection that merges with personal interest.

So this evening, I settle into the comfortable 2nd floor main performance space at Playwrights Horizons surrounded by DG members and their guests, am welcomed by Gary Garrison of the Guild (who provides short questions to mark chapters in our journey), and these brilliant invested theatre artists take us on a ride.  I’ll provide some themes and rich quotations.

Read more: click here

© Martha Wade Steketee (January 4, 2012)

Original posting on Steketee’s blog Urban Excavations at urbanexcavations.com.

Frank X and David Sweeney in Arden Theatre Co’s Peter Pan

Tips for Running Effective Post Shows for Young Audiences (ages 3-11 edition)

by Sally Ollove

When thinking about post show discussions for young audiences, it’s easy to assume that they should run similarly to those for adults with only the sophistication of questions differing. That’s what I did when I ran my first one after a production of The Secret Garden. As dramaturg on a production of Peter Pan done by the Arden Theatre, I observed a well-oiled children’s post show machine. A lot of what they did worked really well, and when I went on to design or advise for other companies, I used my Peter Pan  experience as a baseline as I experimented a little bit with the formula. I’ve found that post show discussions for young audiences are one of the best ways to introduce kids to the craft of theatre, expand their understanding of what is involved in a production, and contribute to an overall great experience that hopefully keeps them coming back!

I’ve found the following tips handy—some are traditional attributes of adult post shows that also work with kids, and others might not be so obvious to those used to mature audiences.

1. Do not release kids’ attention until you are done. The most effective way to handle this that I have seen is to consider the talkback part of the show.  Whereas it’s common practice to let audiences have a chance to leave or take care of human needs in between curtain call and discussion, I’ve found trying to get back the attention of kids once they think the show is over is like trying to climb a mountain. Start the talkback right away. One variation that has worked, however, is if your audience is reasonably sized, letting the kids gather at the front of the stage allows them to see things up close and personal—especially great if you’re demonstrating puppets. However, you will lose a good section of the audience in the transition.
2. Consider letting a cast member run the talk back instead of yourself. I know this one is tough for dramaturgs used to interacting with audiences. But the truth is: kids form a relationship with the actors and characters. They feel like they know them. Asking questions in front of a lot of people can be scary—especially for the youngest ones. Add a stranger into the mix, and some might be too intimidated. Generally the most approachable or warmest person in the cast is a great choice. For Gas & Electric Arts’ production of Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, our moderator played the mother in the show and kids just fell in love with her—it made it very easy for them to ask questions.
3. Each cast member should introduce themselves by naming the character they played and their real name. The younger ones in particular have a hard time separating actor from character. The more this can be re-iterated, the better, as understanding this basic idea is crucial to understanding the art form. At the same time, don’t be a jerk about it and completely ruin the magic. An example: I worked on a production of Peter Pan. In the post-show, a very concerned child wanted to know where Captain Hook’s mother was. The quick-thinking actor responded “Well, I don’t know, but I think she’s probably not too far away, and Captain Hook probably writes to her a lot.” This preserved the idea that Captain Hook was a person who had a real identity that could be called up, and maybe a life offstage. He then continued: “My name is Frank, and my mother lives in New Jersey.” This highlights the difference between the actor and the character without forcing the idea that Captain Hook is not a real person on them.
4. Each cast member should pick one or two things they are an “expert” on so everyone gets to talk. This one also happens in adult talkbacks, so probably doesn’t need explanation. It just makes things easier. It’s a little trickier when a cast member moderates because they are often put in the position of being asked a question that pertains to their character or action, but as much as they can toss things back to other cast members, the better.
5. The moderator should repeat every question. This one also often happens in adult talkbacks, but kids aren’t always great about editing their questions in their head, so some much needed clarity can come from repetition.
6. Kids don’t always have a question when they raise their hands. Sometimes, it’s just nice to be called on. Sometimes they’ll come up with one on the spot, other times the moderator will have to make something out of a bunch of nothing.
7. The more you can credit the designer or crew member by name, the better. Kids, especially the young ones again, have a tendency to think the actors did everything they see including building the set and making the costumes. The more the actors who are answering can identify a designer AND USE THEIR NAME, the easier the concept of a costume designer is to grasp. A costume designer can be a tough concept for someone who doesn’t really know how their own clothes get in their closet. “These clothes were made for us by Mary. We call Mary the costume designer, because she decided what we would wear and how we would look” carries a little more weight. In some cases, I’ve seen offstage crew used very effectively to demonstrate a stagecraft technique from the show (trapdoors and quick changes are popular). This not only shows the tech behind the illusion, but also shows the kids that there are people involved backstage who they might not have seen onstage.
8. Fairness is really important. This means making sure to pick from all sections of the audience and not picking the same child twice if there are others with raised hands.
9. Give warning when time is running out and you are only taking one or two more questions. One thing the Arden does is have this person be a cast member other than the moderator. I’m not sure this is necessary, but it does mean the moderator doesn’t have to keep track of time in the midst of everything else.
10. Keep it short. They have been sitting for a long time. 15 minutes is ample. But, I would recommend asking the actors to stick around for about 5 more minutes if they can so kids who didn’t get picked can ask questions if they want. This relates back to that fairness thing.
11. Enjoy! How often do you get asked your favorite color at a post show?

Mary Tuomanen, David Blatt, and Waddles in Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins

Sally Ollove’s most recent children’s theatre role was as dramaturg for Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins at Gas and Electric Arts

Conceived and Directed by Lisa Jo Epstein

Adapted by Jacqueline Goldfinger from the book by Eric Kimmel

Music by Gregg Mervine of West Philadelphia Orchestra

Puppetry by Martina Plag

Performers: David Blatt, Mary Kay Tuomanen, Lorna Howley, Leila Ghaznazi and John Greenbaum

“I’ve been warned that I’ve only seen the most progressive audience when it comes to Hilton Head Island–the kind of audience that will buy tickets for a whole weekend of staged readings in the middle of a tropical storm.”

by Katie Rasor

It was a wiltingly humid South Carolina morning  last August as I waited to give one of my collaborators a ride to rehearsal during the whirlwind weekend of staged readings that is the annual Hilton Head Island New Play Festival. “Yeah, I’m in New York” he said into a cell phone, giving me a friendly nod as he came out of the house. I was looking around the car for alligators and poisonous snakes that, according to the local news, Hurricane Irene had driven out of the marshes and into local neighborhoods, and I thought he might be confused. Didn’t he see the palm trees? Hadn’t he been privy to our days of panicked debate, pouring over weather maps and questioning whether Irene would force us to cancel the very festival we were off to rehearse? Do his producers in New York habitually crawl around under cars looking for copperheads?

Then I remembered: that pervasive notion that if it isn’t happening in New York, Chicago, or LA, it’s not worth doing. I’m not saying that my collaborator felt that way; I’m saying that enough people DO feel that way that it was easier to lie than to argue the artistic merits of spending a weekend creating theater in the South.

The blame for this does not lay entirely on any one group of people. Anyone who has tried to stage Angels in America outside a major city knows that all too often, less urban audiences tend to have a lower tolerance for strong language, controversial issues, and the avant garde. So it is understandable that those trying to create cutting-edge work tend to write for the most flexible, open-minded audiences to the exclusion of all others. Yet, after years of work created without the regional audiences in mind, its unsurprising that some audiences have begun to perceive the work coming out of New York as hostile, or at best, indifferent to them. They then complain about anything outside their comfort zone, in turn only driving playwrights further from them, and the cycle continues.

This is something we’re trying to combat at the Hilton Head Island New Play Festival. We speculate (however naively) that part of the reason the American South as a whole doesn’t seem to value the arts is that it does not have enough opportunity to actually experience them. We think that perhaps there are people out there that would find theater interesting—indeed revolutionary—if they had the option to see something besides Cats or whatever Broadway three-hander won the Tony four years ago. Maybe there are people who love Cats that would also enjoy something new. I can’t speak for the entire South, but I can say that for the audience of South Carolina Repertory Company, this is absolutely true.
When Nick Newell came to me with the idea of doing a New Play Festival in the South Carolina Lowcountry, he focused on one particular selling point: the audience. SCRC’s audience is smart, unpretentious, quick to laugh and even quicker to tell you what they think. In short, they are a director of new play development’s dream. At our inaugural festival in 2010, they proved this beyond any of our expectations. They laughed through Stacia St. Owen’s edgy exploration of race, gender, and war in Catholic Girl Gun Club, they called for a full production of Bryce Wissel’s dark non-linear comedy Ephemera, which is set in space and features a love-struck robot and Creationist ape-man, and gasped and rolled with laughter as James Rasheed’s catty couples go for the jugular in The Baristas. So in 2011, we decided to drive right in again, trusting the audience to give us feedback that they alone could provide.

The weekend kicked off with O Walter, My Walter by Brooklyn-based playwright Elena Zucker. This absurdist piece based loosely on the 2007 scandal at Walter Reed veterans’ hospital and exploring the treatment of veterans, had already won NYU’s Goldberg Prize and been very well received at a concert reading. Elena was steadily making rewrites when the script fell into my hands. What on earth could we offer her in South Carolina that she wasn’t already getting in New York? An audience full of veterans. South Carolina is home to a large population of former soldiers, and who better to weigh in on this issue than the veterans themselves and their families? That being said, it was a bit of a gamble. The play does not shy away from blood-chilling displays of cruelty and corruption, it explores the concept of sexuality as a weapon, and it features dazzling expressionistic sequences. I was sure that this would be about 80% of the audience’s first experience with this style of theater. Impressively, the audience rose to the challenge and during the talkback was eager to focus, not on what they didn’t understand, but what they did: the treatment of veterans. Their feedback was mind-blowing. Many there had actually spent time at Walter Reed and felt that Elena’s stylistic choice to name all the male characters Walter captured the anonymity soldiers experience lying in seemingly endless rows in a hospital ward, as well as the namelessness of being just another piece of bureaucratic paperwork. A retired military surgeon even piped in with a thorough diagnosis of a roadside bomb-specific head injury based on a character’s abstract monologue. The talkback ended with a woman’s loudly applauded suggestion that this piece be presented at a veteran’s hospital.

The weekend closed on Sunday with Los Angeles playwright Steve Harper’s Urban Rabbit Chronicles, a dark foray into magical realism set in Manhattan. It is a sophisticated piece and he is a particularly experienced and accomplished playwright. I would venture to guess that it was most audience members’ first exposure to this kind of drama. They were game. They rolled with unsettling, strange plot twists and actually “oohed” with horrified delight at a sinister sex scene right before intermission that I, bracing myself in the lighting booth, was sure would offend them. Despite all my big talk, I had underestimated them.

Saturday night posed a very different kind of challenge. We featured Durham-based playwright Marshall Botvinick’s Beckett in Jackson –the story of a wealthy Jackson, Mississippi couple who decide to write a play based on the work of Samuel Beckett (despite never having read his plays). This piece fascinated me from the moment it popped up on my computer screen because it performs a tightrope act between esoteric Samuel Beckett jokes and allusions, and comedy based on the foibles, quirks, and customs of the American South. Marshall had gotten feedback that this dichotomy could not possibly work onstage: Those that got the Beckett jokes would be put off by the characters’ broad comedy, and the people who enjoyed the Southern humor would be alienated by the Beckett jokes, which they surely would not follow. Personally, I caught the Beckett allusions and found the characters in the piece to be not only hilarious, but quite accurate. I suspected that the criticism Marshall received says more about the critic than the play. The critic was so focused on what he believed the audience wouldn’t know, he failed to recognize where he himself was inexperienced: in the culture and customs of people in what is so often written off as “the Bible belt.” In any case, I wanted to test that theory on the SCRC audience, who would definitely know the South, if not Beckett. After a laughter-filled reading, the audience (by a show of hands) admitted that they had little experience with the works of Samuel Beckett.

This is another thing I love about regional audiences: they feel no need to lie. Their reactions are honest and instinctual. They have nothing to prove. They don’t pretend to like something for fear of seeming unsophisticated.

Marshall could not have gotten this kind of feedback in New York or Boston (where I live and work most of the year); either the audience would already know Beckett, making it impossible to test whether or not the Beckett jokes are layered enough not to alienate those who don’t get them, or they’d lie about it. Similarly, Steve had already gotten feedback in private readings in L.A. Here was a fresh public audience ready to weigh in—one with no concept of what is trendy or “in” right now. In the same way, Elena may be able to get exceptional stylistic feedback on O Walter in New York, but chances are, to hear from a large sampling of the actual people she’s writing about, she’ll have to leave the island and seek responses outside the places where “important theater” is happening. And so she did. Should O Walter ever make its way back down to Hilton Head Island, I suspect that it will be greeted with open minds and arms, because the audience will now feel ownership in it. I like to imagine (again, maybe naively) that if we as theater artists reach out to regional audiences and invite them into the conversation at the ground level of a piece’s development, they will begin to see theater not as a coastal invasion, but as an exploration and discussion of ideas in which they too can take part.

It will not always be easy. SCRC’s Associate Producer Blake White definitely fielded some negative feedback after the festival—the most forceful of which expressed the fear that the regular season would become unrecognizable to patrons. Our audience was also aided by skillful and careful consideration by three directors very familiar with this particular crowd: Jim Stark, Chip Egan, and Nick Newell—all of whom tailored the style of the readings to the needs of the audience as well as the demands of the text. The collective talent of the cast and the quality of our playwrights’ work certainly didn’t hurt matters either. That being said, the audience showed up—sold the place out actually—ready for whatever came their way.

I’ve been warned that I’ve only seen the most progressive audience when it comes to Hilton Head Island–the kind of audience that will buy tickets for a whole weekend of staged readings in the middle of a tropical storm. It remains to be seen whether this weekend’s worth of enthusiasm translates to solid ticket sales for a full production. I have just returned to South Carolina, where we’re staging the first full production of The Baristas, the first draft of which was so well-received at the festival in 2010. It has gotten edgier in subsequent drafts, and its three-week run will need a bigger turnout to sell out than a three-day festival does. Rehearsals begin January 5. I’ll let you know how it goes.

(L-R) David Dower and Polly Carl in conversation at the CUNY Graduate Center, December 5, 2011. Image by Martha Wade Steketee.

• “I built a career by creating the rooms I want to live in and insisting that I have a soul.” (Polly Carl)

Speaking as much with each other (bouncing ideas off each other let us say) as with the energized theatre folks in the audience at the Martin Segal Theatre this Monday evening, David Dower and Polly Carl of Arena Stage share their infectious enthusiasm for the future of playwriting and institutional theatre-making and strategies of building theatre communities in the digital age.  Each has been performer or director or theatre maker in several cities across the country (San Francisco, Minneapolis and Chicago to name a few) and are now both located at Arena Stage in Washington DC — where Dower is Associate Artistic Director and Carl directs the American Voices New Play Institute housed there.  As Dower often states of the DC-resident Arena and repeats this evening “This is not a national theatre but a regional theater that happens to be located in the nation’s capital.”  This actors’ theatre is morphing into a playwrights’ theatre with the assistance of these two professionals and the Institute they are building with a small resident staff and a growing series of overlapping communities who feel some stake in its success.

Moderator and host Frank Hentschker asks just a few questions to get things going, then watches and listens along with the rest of us to the articulate and enthused pair.

Read More: click here.

© Martha Wade Steketee (December 7, 2011)

Original posting on Steketee’s blog Urban Excavations at urbanexcavations.com.

by Amy Jensen

For me, stage directions have been the literary equivalent of butlers; unless they seem out of line, I don’t really pay attention to them. That changed, however, after I saw The Complete & Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O’Neill Vol. 1 Early Plays/Lost Plays by the New York Neo-Futurists. I met with director and adaptor Christopher Loar to talk about his research and creative process surrounding this American theatre icon, and I fully intended to write about that for the blog.  However… my mind just kept coming back to stage directions. What was it about them that the Neo-Futurists had hit upon; what were the stage directions doing for them? What could stage directions suggest that subsequent volumes may have to offer?

But these questions—they seem to be, well, obvious. A stage direction’s a stage direction’s a stage direction.  Still, my curiosity led me to pulling out Patrice Pavis’ Dictionary of Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis and turning to the section on stage directions. I was half afraid there wouldn’t be a definition, or that it would be something like:

Stage directions:

a) oui, c’est banal, mais cette banal Americaine a demandé, qu’est-ce qu’on peux faire: notes separated (either by italics or indentation) from  the dialogue; they indicate a character’s actions or emotions, and (ostensibly) are not meant to be read aloud

b) a stage direction’s a stage direction’s a stage direction.

Luckily, there was more to it than that. For all of their everydayness, stage directions shed light not only on individual style but have a key role in theatre history and the evolution of character, and continue to assist (or hinder) our ability to capture the human spirit in an already ephemeral medium.

A World and a Play Without Stage Directions?

Before jumping into the different components of stage directions, I have to first mention the assumption that great plays have few, if any, stage directions. Like Shakespeare, great playwrights write great dialogue that contains all necessary information. And like Shakespeare, great playwrights don’t write long stage directions. In fact, they might not write them at all; that may be the work of editors or stage managers (case in point: “exit pursued by a bear”). Most importantly, great playwrights leave interpretation open to directors and actors.

So when contemporary theatre artists read playwrights, even great ones, who wrote lengthy stage directions, this assumption is bound to affect how the playwright is viewed. Loar, as he wrote in the program notes, surmised that O’Neill was a “paranoid” writer for whom stage directions were “an insurance policy of sorts against anyone screwing with his plays; it was as if he wrote them in fear of unworthy actors and directors.”

Stage Directions as Literal Action

Assumptions aside, the majority of plays use stage directions to record entrances and exits. Most plays also use them to show action. Corneille felt that it was right for playwrights to “mark in the margin the same actions which do not warrant his burdening his verses with them.” Over the years and styles of plays, the dialogue-to-stage-directions ratio ranges from dialogue-centric drawing-room plays (Wilde) to action-centric mime plays (Handke and Beckett).

The Neo-Futurists are all about action. As stated by founder Greg Allen, they seek “to present actual life on stage by creating a world in the theater which has no pretense or illusion.” Neo-Futurists don’t pretend to be someone else, and they don’t pretend to be doing something they aren’t; “all tasks are actual challenges.” Vol. 1 follows a perfect format for the company: a narrator gives the stage directions to the actors, transforming all of the stage directions into tasks.

Allen also writes that there is “no need to ‘act’ tired as you enter the stage with an empty suitcase. Fill it up with rocks, run around the block three times. You’ll be tired.”  If that sounds literal, interpretations often are in Vol. 1. How do you do half of a whisper? “Whis.” An actor literally “sniffs a scandal.” When the audience is told “there is an interval of three minutes in which the theatre remains darkened,” yes, the company and audience spend a full 3 minutes in darkness before continuing. Vol. 1’s literalism, as well as the ensemble’s excellent timing, is kinetic.

Stage Directions and the Narrative Voice

But there’s more to stage directions than action or paranoia. According to Pavis, starting with eighteenth and nineteenth century writers such as Marivaux, Diderot, and Beaumarchais, “dramatic writing is no longer self-sufficient; it needs a mise-en-scene that authors endeavor to provide through their stage directions.” Why? Characters were increasingly “socially marked individuals,” and in order to capture “the character’s interiority and the mood of the stage,” stage directions had to change. Pavis notes that “this information is so precise and subtle that it requires a narrative voice. Here theatre approaches the novel, and curiously enough it is just when it aims to be believable, objective, ‘dramatic’ and naturalistic that it falls into psychological description and resorts to a descriptive or narrative approach.”

Although the practice of theatre making has changed since Beaumarchais, contemporary playwrights still use a narrative voice in stage directions. Take, for example, this stage direction from Angels in America: “Harper is having a pill-induced hallucination. She has these from time to time. For some reason, Prior has appeared in this one. Or Harper has appeared in Prior’s dream. It is bewildering.” Clearly, this is more than just an action. Tony Kushner isn’t just handing out information neutrally—and, really, would he ever? It isn’t dictatorial or prescriptive; in fact, as he seems to enjoy undermining the assumed clarity of the stage direction. That’s what I expect of Kushner. That’s a narrative voice.

It may seem a bit of a disappointment to develop a narrative voice in stage directions that is then never heard, since stage directions are not read aloud in performances. They’re only heard in staged readings  or productions with a narrator. That makes giving stage directions voice and center stage all the most novel for the Neo-Futurists.

Stage Directions and Psychological Description

To be fair, O’Neill’s stage directions weren’t that far from descriptions of emotions as they were described by scientists like Darwin or studied by psychologists like William James, which Eric Bentley records in The Life of the Drama.  However, to contemporary audiences they come across as histrionic and requiring close-up shots to show just how their “nostrils dilate” and or to catch as an actress “flushes red.” O’Neill was particularly impassioned in writing about eyes: “wild with feverish eyes,” “expressive eyes,” “intelligent eyes,” “eyes staring from sockets,” eyes in which “a light of a dawning madness is dancing in,” and “she has large eyes which she attempts to keep always mysterious and brooding”—and, ah, how the Neo-Futurists have fun interpreting that.

The impossibility of completing a stage direction is comedic, particularly when an actress struggles to be “an American girl suffering from delusions of being a Russian heroine,” or an actor has decide how to “get ready to crush her with the weight of his eloquence.” And when combining a literal interpretation with O’Neill’s psychological description and attempts to sum up a character and his or her motivations, the Neo-Futurists’ hit comic payload. I won’t reveal how Neo-Futurists accomplish the task of flushing red—you deserve to see it.

 Volume 2 and Beyond

And see it you may! Loar initially hoped to do all 52 of O’Neill’s plays. Now, focusing on plays that fit the Fair Use law aka those written pre-1923, they’re considering only doing 32. Loar, however, is undaunted, and plans for Volume 2 are underway. Loar argues that a benefit to seeing the body of O’Neill’s works (particularly in condensed versions) is that audiences are able to quickly recognize reoccurring traits and themes, particularly significant themes in later plays. Loar plans on exploiting these repetitions as well. Since several characters in multiple plays engage in the same actions, he plans on using these actions as “portals” in which a character crosses from one play to another where the same action would have just occurred.

Volume 1 is almost entirely a comedy. The ensemble experimented with incorporating serious plays in it, but the plays were cut in order to keep a unified style and tone. Volume 2, Loar relates, will have plays in which serious actions take place. But for a company that does not “play characters” or “manufacture emotions” or “pretend to be somebody else,” can stage directions be anything more than comedic?

In one of his best-known early pieces, Bound East for Cardiff (1914), a man keeps vigil over his dying friend. The Neo-Futurists literally interpreted the actions, without any pretence to create a character or to manufacture emotions. All of this fit the Neo-Futurist aesthetic and principles. The result? It was considered by reviewers one of the least successful parts of the production.

That said, undoubtedly if Loar set out to create a serious play, he and the ensemble would have made entirely different choices in setting up and interpreting the stage directions in that scene. Perhaps they would have chosen not to be so literal, or not to focus on psychological descriptions or draw out the melodrama. Perhaps they would have given more gravitas to the narrative voice by creating stillness on stage. Perhaps I’m limiting tragedy to fiction.  But if upcoming volumes are serious, will stage directions be enough?

I hope that we all get to see.

*If you took a theatre history or play analysis class, did you cover stage directions much in your theatre studies? Please comment below.

THE COMPLETE & CONDENSED STAGE DIRECTIONS OF EUGENE O’NEILL, VOLUME 1

Early Plays/Lost Plays

Text by Eugene O’Neill, adapted and directed by Christopher Loar; sets and props by Cara Francis; lighting by Chris Cullen; sound by Mr. Loar; stage manager, Christine Cullen; general manager, Mikell Kober. Presented by the New York Neo-Futurists. At the Kraine Theater, 85 East Fourth Street, East Village; nynf.org. Through Oct. 1. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. World premiere.

With Danny Burnam, Brendan Donaldson, Cara Francis, Connor Kalista, Jacquelyn Landgraf, Erica Livingston and Lauren Sharpe.