The O'Neill Dilemma

Eugene O'Neill's father James was a famous actor. He played Macduff opposite Edwin Booth in Macbeth, and was a renowned Romeo (onstage and off). But he was best known for his role in The Count of Monte Cristo, a part he played regularly over more than forty years. It wasn't long before his popularity in the role became a trap. The San Francisco News Letter complained that his performance had "degenerated" from art to mere commerce. O'Neill tried to turn to other works - notably Julius Caesar - but when those flopped financially he found himself back in The Count to recoup his lost money. Thanks in large part to his son's retelling of the story, O'Neill's dilemma has become a warning trope to actors who repeat a role: This way lies artistic peril.

theatre KAPOW just completed its fifth production (in four years) of The Burial at Thebes, Seamus Heaney's adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone. Each year we remount our production for Saint Anselm College, as part of the College's Conversatio course for first-year students. The production helps us pay the bills for the rest of the season. Four of our company have appeared in the same roles in all five productions. Yet with some effort on all our parts, we have avoided the artistic peril.

This summer during our annual retreat at Chanticleer Gardens we dedicated five class sessions in what we called the Michael Chekhov Practicum to rehearsing just the first scene of Antigone, each day from a different starting point in the actor's art: psycho-physical center, quality of movement, atmosphere of place, expansion and contraction, rising and falling. Apart from the pure joy of exploring a great story, we learned that the first scene alone remains full of new possibilities for us. We haven't come close to plumbing the depths of the Antigone story.

A month later we began formal rehearsals for this latest production. The design and staging elements remain largely the same. But the four actors who were returning for the fifth time each found a newness in the work. Each of us had the experience of hearing or seeing something in a new way, and thus each of us could realize new relationships and possibilities. For me that was the result of a new starting point. If last year was all about what Chekhov called psychological gesture, this year began with the atmosphere of corruption, and the corruption of flesh and morals that runs through the play. That atmosphere generates an odor, an imagined sensation on the skin, and a visceral experience of corruption. That experience of the atmosphere led me to an enhanced understanding of Creon's action through the play. He's not only "saving the city;" this year he's purging the corruption, and again that action carries him from the beginning of the play to the very end. The experience of atmosphere led also to a new quality of movement - less flying this year, and more molding. And then to a new experience of psychological gesture that develops from expanding and contracting in the atmosphere. Purging is a kind of expansion; the defense against or retreat from corruption is a kind of contraction. And those new or refined gestures led further, to a new consideration of archetype. This year, Creon is not so much a king as he is a priest (who else has the work of saving the people or purging the corruption?). Antigone, in my mind, becomes a priestess, or nun, or sacrificial virgin. And thus we arrive - in fairly rapid fashion - at a deeper layering of the relationship between the two characters.

Of course we still encounter the usual troubles that plague almost every production in almost every company - too little time to rehearse, uncertainty about the receptivity of the young audience (which this year was superb), and so on. But the lesson of this year's remounting, and of all great plays, is that we never really "close" a production, or "put to bed" a great role. We've discovered that there's a lot of work left for us to explore in this story, and that as we continue to incorporate trainings with rehearsals we can avoid "the O'Neill Dilemma." Next year's Thebes won't be a mere repeating of the old chestnut for us, but the opportunity for our deepest artistic growth.

~Peter Josephson

How am I doing today?

Breathe.

Grounded closed yesterday, its initial run anyway. We got home after a 4-hour strike, I put the flight suit and boots away, shirt and socks into the laundry. I slept very, very soundly last night, which hasn’t been the case for the last two weeks. This morning I got up, and went through my full morning routine.

Read a chapter of Zen in the Art of Archery. Since the new year, I have started my day each day by reading 15 - 20 minutes of eastern philosophy, which has been incredibly calming and strength-building.

I spend a few minutes seeing off my husband and daughter as they head to work and school. 6 minutes of balance exercises. This six minutes every day is a great opportunity for me to check in with my body and my mind. How am I doing today? Am I steady? Am I grounded? I unroll my yoga mat, and stretch for 10 - 12 minutes. Breathe into those muscles, those joints, those hard-working tendons that need breath. Today was a return to planking in the morning. How am I doing? Do I feel strength and can I balance the tension and find relaxation?

I roll up my yoga mat, and bring up a guided vocal warm-up on my i-phone. I have been doing this vocal warm-up for almost six years now. In 2010, my husband pushed me to go to an actor training program. He researched summer programs and sent me the information on the Atlantic Acting School and said, “this is the one you need to go to.” He was right. I come back to the vocal work I learned there almost every day. I spend 10 minutes, 20 minutes or more if I have the time, breathing and generating sound. How I am doing today? Where am I feeling vibration? The warm up is different every day because I am different every day. Sometimes I spend my vocal time in the morning focused only on the breath, with very little sound. I am grateful for this time to breathe and nourish this very basic starting point for everything.

Make sure the water is heating up for my cup of tea.

I turn to another practice: speech. Working the muscles of my mouth. Tuning in to vibration and sound waking up the full range of my voice. Articulation, clear pronunciation, strength and freedom of movement to shape breath and sound to clearly communicate. How am I doing today? Am I here in this moment or just going through the motions? I spend about 16 or 17 minutes on this speech practice.

Brew a cup of green tea and let it steep.

Meditate 10 - 12 minutes. Breathe. How am I doing today? Am I here in this moment? Am I grounded?

Drink my green tea. Eat breakfast, face the day. Carry the work from the morning into the day.

I was terrified when theatre KAPOW chose to put Grounded into the season. There was a time I said, “Find someone else to do it. I won’t be able to do it.” 100 minutes on stage, just me. Lean into the uncomfortable, face the fear. I know that the only way I was able to do it was because of those daily practices. My voice did not give out, my body did not give out. Voice, speech, and most importantly breath.

I am grateful for those practices. I am grateful.

Breathe.

~Carey Cahoon

2016 Resolutions

It's that time of year: the gym is crowded, various diets and cleanses are all the rage. Everyone is "turning over a new leaf" for the new year. We thought about some things we'd like to be sure to do in 2016, and here's what we came up with:

1. Engage audiences in the process
Last season we began a series of special engagement opportunities with our donors and audience members. The process of creation is often very private, but theatre is a collaborative experience. The cycle of sharing, discussing, revising, sharing again and continuing the discussion is at the heart of the rehearsal process. We’d like to widen the circle of participants and provide a deeper experience for audience members in 2016.

2. Experience the work of other companies
Re-stocking the well is an essential part of creative life. Sometimes that means setting aside time to read a book or color in a coloring book. One source of great inspiration and fuel for the fire/desire to create good work is to see good work. Be it dance, theatre, music, or visual art, in 2016 we want to see good work and share it with others. We’ll plan a series of “field trips” to re-stock our well and inspire our creativity.

3. Train with visiting artists
Over the course of the past several years we have hosted visiting artists as part of the annual Artists’ Retreat at Chanticleer Gardens in Dunbarton and have twice hosted trainings led by visiting artists at our studio space in Manchester. In 2016, we seek to expand training opportunities in both locations. A commitment to rigorous training has been integral to tKAPOW’s work since the beginning, but we believe that a critical aspect of our future success will be learning more about different approaches to theatre making. With this in mind, tKAPOW will plan and schedule a series of pay-as-you-go training experiences for local theatre artists.

4. Provide artists with opportunities to expand their own training
As mentioned above, training is an important piece of tKAPOW’s identity. Something that we’d like to do in 2016 is to make funding available to allow artists who work with tKAPOW to take part in training with other companies or in complementary fields that we believe may benefit future tKAPOW productions. So, attend a theatre workshop, take lessons in a certain instrument, or practice circus skills as part of an aerial silks class, we hope we can help pay for it. We want to encourage our artists to gain skills that will add to future productions.

5. Incorporate music into our work more fully
Truthfully this is one of those resolutions that I put in the list every year. Working with Sandy on The Burial at Thebes and Dave on Macbeth really added a great deal of texture to those productions and we are excited to find other ways to integrate music more fully into future productions. With Raining Aluminum, the new piece that we are premiering in June 2016, we are collaborating with Cynthia MacLeod, a fiddler from PEI. It will be fascinating to see how Cynthia’s work on the soundscape for that piece influences the storytelling. I look forward to exploring ways that music can be used in new and perhaps unexpected ways to improve our work.

6. Expand our audience base by performing in new locations
In 2015, we were fortunate enough to perform in Manchester, Derry, Concord, and Portsmouth. Everywhere we went we met new people who truly enjoyed our work. In 2016, we are already scheduled to do a workshop in Boston and I look forward to finding new performance venues. In September, we met with a number of presenters from Canada about performing up there so who knows maybe we’ll be visiting Tim Horton’s instead of Dunks when we need a caffeine boost in the new year.

7. Create a “bring-a-friend” program to introduce new audiences to our work
We know that our audience members are the best advocates for our work. We hear such lovely feedback following performances both in person and online. We want to find a way that you can share tKAPOW’s shows with a friend and get some benefit out of it. Whether that is a reduced ticket for yourself, a buy-one-get-one offer, or some kind of loyalty program, I don’t know yet, but we’d love your help in introducing more people to what we are doing.

8. Increase participation in Open Training
Just today, we fell down a YouTube hole of watching clips of Wheel of Impressions from The Tonight Show. Both the musical editions and the one with Kevin Spacey (which is a master class in vocal work itself, you should watch it) reminded me that training, training, training is so essential to creating good work. Training your ear, training your voice, training your mind, training your body: these are the tools of the craft. To excel at your craft, you need to train. It’s not about having great physical prowess or building incredible strength or inhuman flexibility. It’s about training your instrument to do what you need it to do when you need to do it, so that you can get out of your own way and be in the moment. In 2016, we will continue to share the trainings we practice, and new trainings that we find.

9. Research and learn more about the world in which we live and work, approaches to theatre creation, understanding of cultures with which we are unfamiliar.

At this time of year we often spend a lot of time reading. We read a lot of scripts, yes, but we also read about different training methodologies, philosophical texts, books on textual analysis, and the occasional book that seems unrelated to anything (Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World and I Am Malala are on the pile this year). It is part of tKAPOW’s mission to present great works of dramatic literature from across ages and cultures, but it never really feels like we have dug deep enough. The world is a big place and, the more we learn about different cultures, the more we understand the universality of the human experience. In 2016, we must travel more, read more, and meet more people who can help us tell the stories that need to be told.

10. Recommit to our aesthetic
We talk a lot about what makes a tKAPOW show a tKAPOW show and always end up back at the same place, aesthetic. So many great artists have contributed to shaping that aesthetic over the years and, in 2016, we will continue that work to define who we are as a company through the way that we produce work. Intimacy remains a key element of our aesthetic, as does accessing character through physicality, approaching all production elements artistically, and--I hope--endeavoring towards ingenuity. This is truly the work of a lifetime, an un-achievable resolution that will nonetheless remain forever a goal for this company, in 2016 and for many years to come.

Strings and Things, and the power of puppets

If you’ve spoken to me at all in the past couple of years, you probably have heard me go on about how I went to Italy to take part in the International Symposium for Directors that LaMaMa runs out of a renovated convent in Spoleto, Italy.   It was a magical experience as training so often is.  As an artist, I believe that there is no better gift you can give yourself than spending a couple of intensive weeks immersed in your craft.  Perhaps that’s a soapbox for another blog, or you could just go back and read Carey’s brilliant blog on the topic from a few years ago here.

Two of the artists that I had the privilege of working with at the symposium were Vit Horejs and Bonnie Stein from the Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre.  Prior to my experience in Italy, I had done very little work with puppets so I was excited-- if not mildly apprehensive --about what laid in store for me.  Vit and Bonnie are two of the most kind, gentle, and generous artists with whom I have ever worked.  I remember walking into the studio filled with marionettes of all different sizes (from very small 5” puppets to pretty tall 30” puppets).  We started class as we started so many classes that summer by doing a series of stretches.  I can honestly say that it only took about ten minutes attempting to manipulate the puppets before I realized why all that stretching was necessary.  Supporting the weight of a 30” puppet, while also manipulating him at least somewhat realistically, is incredibly difficult work.  Vit and Bonnie’s classes were 4 hours long so after class you could find all of the participants with dead arms and wrists and sore backs.

It wasn’t until the middle of the week, however, that I learned how mentally taxing the work could be.  Vit was developing a new marionette piece based on The Republic by Plato that was to premiere at LaMaMa in the fall (you can read the NY Times review here).  For the piece, Vit wanted to explore characters played by actors, by marionettes, and by shadows.  I have yet to experience anything as mind-blowing as trying to juggle not only my own movement and my marionette’s movement but also my shadow’s movement and my marionette’s shadow’s movement (hurts my heard just remembering it).  All of this, mind you, while incorporating text from Plato, not exactly Dick and Jane.  The classes were mentally and physically exhausting, but the rewards were great (I will never forget the eruption of applause from our group the first time one of our colleagues managed to get a marionette to turn a page in a book).  The class that I think I looked forward to the least ended up being the one with the most profound impact on me.  

So, it is with tremendous excitement that I announce that Vit and Bonnie will be the featured guest artists during theatre KAPOW’s Artists’ Retreat this July at Chanticleer Gardens in Dunbarton.  They will be bringing some marionettes for us to work play with (I have to admit that I think I am as excited about being reunited with some of my old wooden friends as I am about seeing Vit and Bonnie) and will be working with tKAPOW on object manipulation for a new project that we are developing over the course of the 2015-2016 season (stay tuned!).  This year’s retreat will be July 12th-18th (yes, earlier than in years’ past) and in addition to Vit and Bonnie’s workshops we are planning on a line-up of really fabulous classes throughout the week.  I will spend my spring dreaming of the lush gardens and grounds of Chanticleer Gardens and looking forward to the day when I can bring one of my marionette friends on a kayak ride around the pond.  I really hope that you will set aside some time this summer to come out and immerse yourself in some wonderful work.

- Matt Cahoon

Exquisite Clutter in a New Space

I want to lead the Victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.

-Freddie Mercury

Were he still alive, I think Freddie Mercury would appreciate theatre KAPOW. He would love the work, certainly (clearly the man had a flair for the dramatic), but I’m sure he’d also appreciate our “exquisite clutter.” For seven years now, tKAPOW has been accumulating stuff. I’m reminded of Peter’s performance this past weekend in our most recent production, Russian Roulette and Parisian Poker, when his character, Ivan Ivanovich, in describing the perils of summer life in the country exclaims, “Have you ever tried to make a single package out of twenty bottles of beer and a bicycle?” Well, I ask you, have you ever considered what it’s like to fill your attic and basement with two settee sets, 38 chairs, and five speedos (little known fact: one of the guys in Penelope actually had a back-up speedo)? Not to mention the masks from Agamemnon/Thebes, the leotards from The Birds, the garden arches from Is She His Wife?, the prosthetic leg from Buried Child, the cast iron stove from Hedda Gabler, the yoga ball from Circle Mirror Transformation, the hoof pick from Desdemona, and hundreds of other costumes, props, and set pieces (some of which have yet to have their tKAPOW debut). Well, I am so happy to announce that all of that stuff has vacated the premises on Orange Street and has found a new home at tKAPOW’s studio and storage space at 52 Garvins Falls Road in Concord. This is a momentous occasion for the small company that started in our living room.

While our own daughter is only in middle school, it kind of feels like our tKAPOW child has moved off to college and taken the contents of his room with him. The space in Concord is really special and we hope it will serve the needs of tKAPOW for many years to come.  In addition to gaining over 1,200 square feet of storage for all the clutter we have accumulated over the years, we are converting one of the rooms into a 1,000 square foot studio space that will give tKAPOW dedicated rehearsal space for the first time in our history. But -- and this is important -- have no fear, while our stuff may be going off to Concord, we are still very much committed to the audiences we have built in and around Derry and Manchester. We do have some plans in the works to expand our programming north and east of our current home base, but all of our mainstage shows will still be at either the Stockbridge Theatre or the Derry Opera House next season.

The Concord space offers us more freedom and more flexibility.  First, it frees up space in the Cahoon household, and second, it allows us the luxury of longer rehearsal blocks, ready access to rehearsal props and furniture, and the ability to work with new artists. Sometime in the near future (perhaps when it is a little warmer outside) we’ll invite everyone up to see the new space and to dream alongside us about what this space might mean for the future of tKAPOW. It will also be a great opportunity to see all the items we have collected over the years and maybe to relive some favorite tKAPOW moments. This big move would not be possible without the support of all of our audiences and donors. This support of tKAPOW over the years has been encouraging and inspiring and without it we would not be the company that we are today.

Moving forward, there will be even more ways to be involved in what’s happening at tKAPOW. As we get comfortable in our new space, I know that we’ll need help sorting and cataloguing props and costumes, painting the walls of the studio, installing track lighting and other such housekeeping that we never really had to worry about before. Please let me know if you are willing to share your talents and time to kick off this new phase in tKAPOW’s history in the best way possible. I’ll promise you that you’ll get to experience Freddie Mercury’s Victorian life when you find yourself surrounded by seven years of tKAPOW’s “exquisite clutter.”

-Matt Cahoon