Theatre as a Universal Language

Some of my favorite theatrical experiences as an audience member have been shows performed in languages other than English. As I've discussed in a previous blog, Teatr Zar, a Polish company that performed at Charlestown Working Theater a few years ago, put on one of the best pieces I've ever seen. I've been fortunate enough to see shows in Italian, French, Farsi, and ASL (which I'll grant included lots of English). In all of these cases, the power of the performances have had the ability to transcend the language barrier. It takes a special performer to bridge the gap of understanding, but when they are able to do so the results are profound. I suppose this is a reality with which opera fans are quite familiar.


As I write this, I'm on a plane back from Italy where I have spent the last 9 days in residence at LaMaMa Umbria International. I was last in Italy in 2013 for LaMaMa's Directors' Symposium. This time I was in Italy directing an original, one-woman piece entitled Bea and Me. The piece was written and performed by Marybeth Berry, a friend I met during the 2013 symposium. The show explores Marybeth's personal life story dealing with domestic abuse at the hands of her husband who died of cancer. As a means of unlocking this story, Marybeth wrote the piece as a conversation with Beatrice Herford an early 20th century monologist widely recognized as a pioneer of solo performance. The play deals with complex themes and features an equally complex format. We spent most of our time in Italy refining the script so as to improve flow, timing, and message. The piece was performed twice at Cantiere Oberdan, the host venue for the LaMaMa Spoleto Open.

About mid-week, one of the organizers of the LaMaMa program asked us how we were going to address the language issue for Italian audiences. Honestly we were so heavily involved in script edits and staging rehearsals that we hadn't really considered that at all. I reached out to an Italian friend of mine for help, but with time so short, the decision was made to just present the piece in English. We figured that if nothing else, the playwrights currently working at LaMaMa (a group of about 12) would come to the show and the language would not be a problem for them.

Friday night, the night of the first performance, came and we only had four people in the audiences, all Italians (some with very limited English). I gave my curtain speech and had the first in my lifetime experience of having to pause while it was translated for the audience. Marybeth pressed forward with her piece and the audience was absolutely enthralled. As a side note, I've never seen an actress embrace having an audience to play for as much as Marybeth did that night. Her story burst forth from her as if it just needed to be released. The performance reached its end, the lights dimmed, and our little Italian audience absolutely went nuts. They clapped and clapped and then clapped some more. It was clear that while they may not have understood all of the language (or Marybeth's crazy accent which is two parts South Carolina drawl with one part Rhode Island speed), but they were moved. They were moved because Marybeth was moved. The emotional tension in the room was evident and it needed no translation.

Here I am,somewhere over southern France and I find myself contemplating what lessons from this experience I can take with me to my work at home. tKAPOW has always been committed to producing the very best of dramatic literature and that commitment will not change any time soon. What I believe I will continue to explore as a director, however, is performance that is highly expressive and storytelling propelled by strong imagery. I will challenge my actors to consider those audiences members who may not be able to rely on understanding of the language alone. I hope that this approach will help us create productions capable of transcending language all together.

~ Matt Cahoon

Finding the familiar and facing the fear

Recently, theatre KAPOW was asked to collaborate with the NH Philharmonic on a program they were doing called Shakespeare Lives! The show featured pieces of classical music by some of the best composers of all time, including Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, and Verdi. The pieces all had one thing in common: they were all inspired by the plays of William Shakespeare. tKAPOW was asked to read some selections of text throughout the concert. Peter, Carey, and Olivia provided the audience with wonderful context for the pieces of music and it was a really amazing concert. While sitting there watching the show, I was struck by a couple of things. First, I was surprised by how much of the music I recognized though I was previously unaware of its connection to the bard (Mendelssohn’s Wedding March from A Midsummer Night’s Dream being the best example). Second, I found it incredible that so many pillars of classical music were inspired by the works of Shakespeare. What does it say about how great the work of an artist is when Tchaikovsky is inspired by it?

The opportunity to take part in this concert was particularly synchronistic as we are currently working on our first foray into Shakespeare in the mounting of Macbeth. Approaching any Shakespearean text, but perhaps more Macbeth than any other, you have the feeling of treading on hallowed ground. This is a work that has inspired (and terrified) generations throughout the world. One of the things that can be intimidating about this play is that you encounter one of the most iconic lines of text ever written at each turn of the page. Upon first reading, or first re-reading after a long time, it’s easy to have an experience similar to the one I had listening to those famous pieces of music. You come across a line and think “Ah, so that’s where that is from.” I find it fascinating that so much of Shakespeare’s language has transcended the plays in which it was first written. His quotes, in many cases, are more popular than his plays (Perhaps we should change the marketing for the show to read “Come see an actor deliver the famous ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ speech!”). When you study this play closely, you find not only those famous lines but a number of sayings that have taken root as part of our common parlance. Without Macbeth, we’d have no “be-all and end-all,” no “one fell swoop,” no “sorry sight,” and, perhaps most tragically, no “Knock, knock! Who’s there?” It’s obviously no secret that Shakespeare was a great wordsmith, but it’s the way he brings the language together in such an incredibly efficient and compact way that makes Macbeth stand apart from so many great plays.

We are in tech week for the show and that means that we are within just a few days of sharing our work with audiences. We do so with an understanding that this production is one in a long line of productions that trace their way all the way back to the tip of Shakespeare’s quill. tKAPOW’s production uses only three actors to play all the roles in the play. We did this not to try to “do something new” (when it comes to Macbeth, everything new has already been done), but to place emphasis on the story. Our production features three storytellers aware of their place in the storytelling process. They take on their roles in view of the audience using just a few simple props and actively include the audience in the telling (don’t worry, you won’t be asked to murder anyone). While a big cast outfitted in period Scottish costumes playing on a realistically painted castle set may be nice, we opt instead to bring you a production with a little less “sound and fury.” What you’ll see is three actors at the top of their game sharing one of the greatest stories ever told. We can only hope that our production will inspire the next great symphony.

Photo by Matthew Lomanno

~ Matt Cahoon

Instant Acting and Kismet

Just add water...and a script, a director, a castmate, copious amounts of coffee.... a couple of slices of pizza won’t hurt.

Walking into the kickoff meeting of the 2014 24 Hour Play Festival, I really had no idea what to expect, but I thought I did. I knew there would be about 30 people there. I knew that five playwrights and five directors would be paired up by the luck of the draw and that the rest of us would be assigned to a cast by lottery.  But I did not know the sweet moments of kismet, or the confidence in my ability to work fast….really fast, and pretty well.  I’m hooked.

I knew two people in the room, Debera Lund and Olivia Dodd, a director and an actor with whom I’d just worked for a week last month. I secretly hoped I’d work with Deb, because I liked her process and didn’t get to work with her nearly long enough. The first playwright, Patrick Cleary got to pick a card from the “director” group. He drew Debera. After the other playwrights randomly chose their directors, they got to pick their cast size. Patrick drew a cast of two.

Then, Debera was the first director to “cast” the show by blindly picking cards with the actors’ pictures on them. Suddenly, the picking-teams-in-gym-class feeling washed over me. I thought, “Please don’t let me be the last kid picked. Please don’t let me be the last kid picked”, until I realized that having a card with your face on it picked at random is more like being part of a card trick than being chosen (or not) for a dodgeball team. Debera picked my card first. Hooray! First kismet moment. By the end of the evening, our team included Patrick, Deb, myself, and a young actress named Jasmine Roth, who also happened to be one of the playwrights for the Festival.

The playwrights then chose a prompt in the form of an image or a quote. Our prompt was a picture of the M. C. Escher elephant. He chose a genre: Drama. There were a few minutes for the four of us to get together. When I meet new people, I fight an urge to talk. It is my job to make everyone in the group comfortable. Or uncomfortable, as the case may be. Even when it’s not. Somehow, I blurted out something about having a wicker table in the shape of an elephant. Because, you know, elephant is sort of random. It seemed like a team-building statement. Well, guess what? It kind of was. Because Patrick said he sometimes likes to approach things literally, and what did the elephant table look like, exactly? So I described it. Second kismet moment.

After the kickoff, the actors and directors got to go home to re-convene in the morning. The playwrights were challenged to write a play before 7:00 AM, while the rest of us slept. Although, I am not sure sleep is an accurate description. My mind was “on” all night. Would I get there in time? Would I be able to get my son to his cross-country team breakfast at approximately the same time I had to be at the theatre? Who was going to braid my daughter’s hair for her own theatrical performance that night? Would John, my husband, encounter any crazy theatre-dad issues he was unprepared for? Would everyone have enough to eat? (That last question is always there...I am probably the reincarnation of somebody’s zaftig ethnic grandmother….but I digress).

8:00 AM. On time. And Deb is already here. And there are scripts on the table for us to read. And there’s coffee! And a wifi password! Oh, this has already surpassed my expectations.  Jasmine arrives. Patrick is having some well-earned sleep. To me he has become an elusive fairy-godfather who worked through the night to deliver us an incredibly crafted play to bring to life. The script is entitled “Possession”. And, yes, it does involve an elephant-shaped wicker table. And the conflict between two women, a hoarder and her well-intentioned family member, at odds over the inherent value of stuff. And whether the table is, in fact, a table, or an elephant sculpture. I read it. I love it. It’s 10 pages (not, 17, thank you Patrick!). It’s about people I’m related to. You see, I have the I-break-at-yard-sales gene. (That’s a thing, right?)  I fight that gene tooth and nail, but I have it. Third kismet moment.  

In the script there’s a squabble over an opal ring. An opal ring, really?  Fourth kismet moment.

And we began. In spite of having Debera Lund as our director, I was certain this would have to be a day of blocking and memorizing. How can you possibly find the depth and soul of a character whose ink is barely dry in 10 hours? How can you create a backstory and undercurrents to the character relationships before lunch with a story that has just been read for the first time. Well, you can. You SO can! And, all of a sudden, I recalled days of working summer theatre twenty years ago….when ten days seemed more than sufficient to work on a full-length musical and fill a 1,300 seat house for two weekends.  It’s called total immersion. We had a day. But we had that WHOLE day. There was no world outside to attend to. Yes, we took breaks. Yes, we ate lunch. But those were the moments when the things we worked on took the time to seep into our limbic centers. There were no distractions. No one needed us to make their lunches. No one needed a ride to a friend’s house. No one needed to take over the kitchen with three friends to make cupcake sans recipe. And not a single person brought mud potion into the rehearsal room and accidentally spilled it.

We blocked. We formed relationships between the characters beyond the story at hand. We got to know these two women Patrick created literally overnight out of a prompt and a commitment. Debera was there to share her metaphors, to guide us, to push us to change up our approach, and change it back, and find the sweet spot. She calls it “whiplash” directing. I call it brilliant.

Jasmine and I got to know each other pretty well, in an “I’m-sorry-I-have-to-grab-you-and-throw-you-on-this-pile-of-hoarded-stuff” sort of a way. (The director made me do it.) In spite of the fact that she was up most of the night writing a play for another team, she was good. She was quick. She was a lot of fun to work with. My character was sort of obviously nuts. Her character was more difficult, I thought, walking a fine line between being a supportive and loving family member and just having-it-up-to-HERE already!

We teched at five. Our show opened at 7:30. First up. And we did it. We formed characters out of Patrick’s well-placed words on a page and adrenalin and coffee and water and trust and thought and repetition. Fifth kismet moment. And I want to do it again.

~ Deirdre Hickok Bridge

Cats and Cats and Cats

Driving from Massachusetts to New Hampshire Friday evening, my girlfriend and I started joking about the sort of play I'd end up writing for Theatre KAPOW's 24-Hour Play Festival. 

"Maybe it'll be all cats," I said.

"How would that even work?"

"Like, adult cats have to tell their kittens that they're all famous Internet memes. It's my play Going Viral but with cats. I could just change a few words and be in bed by ten. Call it Going Meowral."

"Going Feral," she joked.

Fast-forward to the part of the evening where I randomly select my prompt, and what is it...?

This. Only this.

Tempted as I was to pen the genre-shattering (and, let's be honest, award-winning) Going Meowral/Going Feral, I decided to use this prompt to write something new. But what?

The playwright Chas Belov gave me some great advice: Have your actors improvise a bit and write your play around that. While I didn't end up transcribing their improvisations (maybe I should have! they were really funny), what I observed did help to inform my brainstorming process. 

I noticed that Kelly Litt was very, very good at physical comedy. He's a tall dude and can really impose himself in hilarious ways. Ben Bagley, I thought, would make a great straight man: earnest but also funny. Jackie Marcoux told me that she'd never done comedy, but in the two scenes they improvised she was really funny, though in a different way than the two boys.

So what to write with all of this?

Kelly and Ben had similar comedic sensibilities and played really well off of each other. Jackie's comedy was more understated, and I knew if I didn't give her character significant power in the scene I risked losing her voice. 

And then I had to include the line "You did what?!" And something about seeing yourself as more than you are. Or just cats. It wasn't too late for just cats, right?

I don't want to spoil the surprise of what I ended up writing, but I will tell you this:

• Kelly is responsible for an Oprah Magazine reference that may or may not make it into the production.
• I started writing around 9:30pm and finished the first draft around 1:18 am. It clocked in at eleven pages. As I wrote to a friend on Facebook (because there was much Facebooking throughout this process): The only muse I've ever known is a gun pointed at my head. (Or a ticking clock. Whichever.)
• I was told that both Ben and Kelly could sing and play the guitar. Ben also knew how to play a tiny coconut-shaped piano. All of them were proficient in stage combat. I could have done amazing things with this, but I used none of it. (Except maybe the guitar. We'll see.)
• The director, Jamileh Jemison, said that she finds dead bodies to be a source of great hilarity. I was unable to include a dead body in the script, unfortunately. But I did call the police, and they agreed that I was right to be concerned...

In any case, it's mostly out of my hands now. I can't wait to see what Jamileh and the actors do with it!

—Brandon M. Crose

www.brandoncrose.com

24 Hours, and... go!

Driving around Pinkerton in the dark tonight looking for the Stockbridge Theater was a bit of a metaphoric representation of the challenge of the 24 Hour Play Festival. As I came in through the back entrance, I thought I knew what I was doing. I had spent four years of my life studying at this institution, and never once did I get lost on campus, but tonight was the first time I had used this entrance since the Academy building had been built, and I almost missed the turn.

I have been heavily involved with theatre for the past decade, and this 24 Hour concept is completely throwing me for a loop and knocking me completely (well, almost) out of my comfort zone. I'm the type of director that loves to spend months with a script, tearing it apart, putting it back together, and figuring it out from every angle. I look forward to getting to know my actors on a personal level over the first few weeks of rehearsal so I can figure out the best way to use them. And I like to have time to let things sit, sleep on decisions, and fix my mistakes. Going into tonight, while I knew I would be attempting to battle the familiar beast of directing, I will be doing it in a very unfamiliar way, much like trying to navigate the back lot of Pinkerton Academy.

I was one of the first participants to arrive in the black box tonight. As they other directors, playwrights, and actors began to filter into the room, the tension began to rise. The nervous energy was at an all time high. I was a little at ease, as I had convinced my good friend, and sometimes co-collaborator, Jacob Randlett to be one of the actors for the festival. It was nice having a familiar face in the room, and I figured it would be cool to see him directed by someone else for once (him having been in 4 of the 8 things I have directed.) Once all of then 30-something people had taken their seats, the instructional period began. I was half listening. I also had sudden random doubtful thoughts that oft plague any artist. "What if my playwright has a really jarring style?" "What if my actors don't like me?" "What if I oversleep tomorrow?" and so on and so on. My mind was distracted when we went on a tour of the space, so I quickly was able to stop thinking about these things. But all these things came back to me, and I'm sure others as well, once we all re-entered the black box.

The table in the center of the black box had a large amount of what appeared to be "24 Hour Play Festival" playing cards, which turned out to be the head shots for the directors, playwrights, and actors, as well as the prompts for the shows. The playwrights head shots were turned over, and each one was called up to turn over a director card. After the first four went, and I hadn't been turned over, we all knew who was last. Me. I had met my playwright, Jasmine Roth, once before, as she had auditioned for me, but that was the end of my knowledge of her. I look forward to getting to know her work over the next 20 hours. After that, the directors were instructed to flip over the next set of cards: the number of cast members. The directors were just told to have at it, and we each grabbed a card. I got 4, the largest number possible. Fitting four actors into a 15 minute piece will be incredibly difficult, but I embrace the challenge.



Then the fun part: turning over the actor cards. The directors and playwrights took turns flipping cards as needed. The first card I flipped over made me laugh and curse, as I flipped over Jacob's head shot. I love and hate the fact that I drew him. It saves me time of having to "figure him out" but I also wanted to get away from my comfort zone, but I digress. We did get a nice extra challenge, as when we drew our genre card. Comedy. The only two options were comedy or drama, but comedy will be a good challenge, as Jasmine shared that she has only written deep drama before. My other three actors (Mitch Fortier, Sarah Dunn, and Finley Smith) all have various backgrounds, experiences, and special skills, and they should create a very eclectic ensemble. The next card drawn was our prompt, in which we were given the Anais Nin quote "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Very thought-provoking, especially for a comedy. The final card drawn was a line of dialog that will have to appear in all five pieces: "You did what?!" After taking twenty minutes to share a little bit about ourselves with each other. We all broke for the night.

I feel... good. Tomorrow will be all about directing from the gut. No drawn out analyzing, no note taking, no research, no hours of ensemble building, just directing. I've been debating trying to draw up a less abstract plan but I don't think that will be any good. I'm just gonna go in there tomorrow, eat breakfast with my cast, read the script, and just let my artistic side flow free.

"You'll never be a success if you fear failure" - Paul Heyman. My motto in life, my motto for this project. Let's rock and roll!

- Dan Pelletier