Theater on the Fringes

Last month Playbill ran an article on theater groups raising money for their projects through Kickstarter. One example was Old Sound Room, a troupe comprised of current and former Yale School of Drama students. In June, the group’s inaugural production, Old Sound Room Lear, played for 9 performances in Harlem. The show presented an interesting mix of Shakespeare's King Lear—significantly condensed in running time, shorn of many characters and combining others—and contemporary theater touches, such as movement, musical interludes, and the voices of interviewees at the Lilian Booth Home for retired actors. OSR Lear placed front and center the story of Lear as a tale of aging, of the aged coming to terms with their changed status—loss of youth—and with the freshness of the next generation, compelled by ideas of its own. If that doesn’t quite sound like the play you remember, that’s the point. Old Sound Room side-stepped the tragic aspects of the play in an effort to find something more upbeat.

YSD students gain great training in how to speak Shakespeare, so that element of the show was strong—King Lear being one of the greatest plays ever written, of course—and they also undergo immense challenges of compression in what are called “Shakespeare Quartets” where an extremely scaled-down cast of four or five tackles one of the Bard’s plays in intensive workshop productions. Such skills served OSR in good stead in their version of Lear.

Special mention should be made of Brian Wiles as Lear—head shaved for the occasion like a sort of sinister Daddy Warbucks; his rages were in-keeping with a Lear not mad so much as vain with an old man’s self-regard that added pathos to the performance. The scene on the heath in the storm was particularly memorable with Wiles bound by several ropes he tugged this way and that, making scary lunges at the nearby audience. As the evil sisters, Goneril and Regen, Elia Monte-Brown and Adina Verson, respectively, managed to find some good in the girls, as daughters beset by an unruly and uncooperative elder who has “ever but slenderly known himself.” It was easy to picture the offspring of aged Baby Boomers joining forces against the spoiled brats their parents have become, with Sophie von Haselberg's Fool a kind of doting stepchild.

Fisher Neal, as Kent, engaged Lear from time to time with lively argument, and Laura Gragtmans gave an affecting aura to Cordelia who combined with the role of Edgar—Gloucester’s good son—and ended alive by her father’s side. Here, with no Gloucester in the cast, Lear endured the blinding that befalls the latter, ending his days in peace with his faithful daughter, à la Oedipus, blinded and beggared at Colonus. The condensation of the play created a more recuperative evening, but it made of Edmund (Dan O’Brien) a more toothless villain such as is found in Shakespeare’s comedies. O’Brien did a nice turn as the discontented upstart, unmatched, here, with any good brother to "gall his kibe."

In some ways, the effect was a bit like watching half the play, but OSR found a way to extend their chosen theme by enacting the interviewees from the Booth retirement home. This turned out to be one of my favorite features, as the cast was uniformly entertaining in their staging of aged actors and actresses commenting on Lear and recounting what the process of maturing has meant for them. The movement segments were less clearly apropos, though they made for some swift transitions, while other touches—such as Gragtmans’ very eerie rendition of “There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly”—added striking interludes.

So, what’s next for the group? According to Adina Verson, she and OSR Lear’s director, Michael McQuilken, have put together a show called Machine Makes Man which they are preparing to launch in the Amsterdam Fringe Festival under the umbrella of OSR. The Festival is smaller than some—such as New York’s—and is more selective, with the participants put up for the duration of their 6 performances. The show received input from the other OSR members, and there is talk of trying to get the piece installed within an alliance of 9 to 10 different Fringe Festivals in Europe and South Africa, which would give the group a base on a touring circuit. There’s hope too that MMM will find its way to New York, perhaps as early as the fall.

Machine Makes Man is based on the idea of “the singularity” as espoused in the writings of Ray Kurzweil, wherein technological advances overtake the human species’ ability to process them. In other words, living in the future will require “enhanced humans” who have developed beyond “an outdated homo sapien,” to use Ray Davies’ line. In the not-too-distant future, a married couple face the ramifications of enhancing themselves. Specifically, the husband has opted to become “a cloud of energy” and the wife pays a visit to the company responsible for the technology to complain, which sets off a flashback about how the couple got to that point.

Kurzweil, now the head of engineering at Google, has been a major player in the development of technologies with strong human interface, such as translating between languages and the text-to-speech synthesizer, and argues for mankind's improvement through technology. Taking its cue from how transgender characters are portrayed in our culture, Machine Makes Man aims to dramatize the condition of the “transhuman”—an idea Kurzweil sees as key to the future.

And what of the future of OSR? The group has been learning the ropes of being an up-and-coming DIY theater group—which means writing grants and applying for non-profit status—and, because the group’s first show followed hard upon the group’s founding, OSR has still to hash-out what kind of company they want to be. Clearly, the main design is for collaborative theater, though it may be that various theatrical outings may join beneath the OSR banner so long as some of the members are at its core. There are further plans to workshop Lear, though it can’t be done for the same kind of venue due to the “showcase code”—which means that something more in-depth and definite is likely to emerge by and by that is very like Lear and yet not.

For now, the 12 members of OSR have dispersed their divers ways—some returning as students to YSD productions in the fall—to meet again anon.

A New Theatrical Group Debuts

Ever wonder what students in the Yale School of Drama do in the off-season? One answer is: form new theatrical groups. One such new group, Old Sound Room, was recently formed by two current students, Elia Monte-Brown and Dan O’Brien. The troupe consists of 3 other current students and 7 recent YSD grads. OSR’s inaugural production, Old Sound Room Lear begins this weekend, June 14th, and will run till the 23rd.

According to Adina Verson, a co-founder and a performer in the first show, the idea for OSR grew out of the interest in keeping YSD collaborations going after graduation. Verson also mentioned that some of the recent grads had wanted to work with some of their underclassmen and hadn't had many opportunities during their time at YSD. The creativity and talent of the group is assured, but how did the first production idea come about?

For various reasons, the idea of basing the show on Shakespeare was in the cards from early on, but the approach developed through themes the group wanted to explore, particularly inter-generational obligations of seniors to juniors, and vice versa, in our society. Shakespeare’s King Lear, of course, dramatizes the chaos that ensues when a king retires too soon, little suspecting how irrelevant a man becomes once stripped of his former title and duties. His daughters, who have little sympathy for his plight, take on the burden of reigning while also having to care for Lear in his erratic fancies. Verson and her colleagues sought out tenants of retirement homes who would share their views of the aging process and the challenges faced by those who have, like Lear, given up their occupations and duties in retirement. Fortunately, OSR gained the cooperation of the Lillian Booth Assisted Living Facility, which meant that the interviews were conducted with retired actors, from ages 75 to 90.

For Verson and her colleagues, the issue of “responsibility across generations” guided their discussions, trying to assess the younger generation’s obligation to the elder, and the elder’s duties toward the younger, as all families find themselves dealing with the aging of a generation that is long-lived and, as Baby Boomers, never were ones to give up their youth easily. The material from the interviews is scattered throughout the show, along with dance and expressive movement and musical interludes, to highlight the themes of Lear for our current times. The show should be “both a conversation and a confrontation with the separate worlds” that different generations tend to inhabit. By reaching out to retired or semi-retired actors, OSR pondered their own futures as well as the past of persons like themselves, still living in the light of the work they did, still dreaming of roles they would love to play.

Verson says that an impetus behind the innovative approach to the text was the tendency, as YSD students, to rework classics in a more contemporary theatrical idiom, coupled with the challenge of a young troupe—most of them under thirty—taking on the great canonical play of elderly tragedy. Another criteria for the production is that all members have an equal say in the performance, and, though three of the twelve-member group are unavailable to participate in the inaugural production, the show was arrived at democratically.

Michael McQuilken, the only member of the troupe trained as a director at YSD—his original play Jib, featuring his own songs and score, was his thesis show in 2011—directs OSR Lear, but, according to Verson, the role of Artistic Director means, for McQuilken, that he be an “enabler of all voices” in the group, making sure that all are represented in the final work.

Those who have followed YSD shows of the last few years—including work at the Yale Cabaret—will be familiar with most of the troupe already. Brian Wiles, William DeMerritt, Fisher Neal, and Adina Verson all acted in Louisa Proske’s thesis production of Cymbeline in 2010; Ashton Heyl, Dan O'Brien, Sophie von Haselberg, and Carmen Zilles performed in Ethan Heard’s thesis production of Sunday in the Park with George last fall, and O’Brien and Zilles played the title roles in Romeo and Juliet in the spring; Laura Gragtmans played Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra in 2012, and Elia Monte-Brown acted in Richard II this past spring; Neal, Verson and DeMerritt were also featured in Lileana Blain-Cruz’s thesis production of Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights in 2010.

For OSR, this show is only the beginning.  The group raised over $24,000 through Kickstarter to fund a living wage for the actors during the show's run, which will be performed in a donated space.  Future options may include finding a permanent home such as the Yale Cabaret enjoys, or to work within site-specific spaces for different productions.  While the next production is uncertain, what is certain is that OSR Lear promises to be a thoughtful and skillful performance of particular interest to fans of YSD shows.

Old Sound Room Lear June 14th- 23rd, 2013: 14th & 15th @ 8pm 16th @ 2pm & 8pm 20th and 21st @ 8pm 22nd at 2pm & 8pm 23rd @ 2pm

General Seating: $18 Under 30/Over 65: $10

HUB Studios 165 Lenox Ave, btwn 118th and 119th 2/3 train to 116th

www.oldsoundroom.com

A Night at the Theater

We sometimes forget how much Shakespeare was a fantasist.  The ghost in Hamlet, the witches and apparitions in Macbeth have become so familiar as to be normal.  Even odd bits of “grand Guignol” style bloodletting—Gloucester’s eyes, anyone?—rarely meet with the shock we might otherwise experience if not somewhat inured by Shakespeare’s sublime reputation.  If we think about it, we might recall that his plays were considered extremely indecorous by the leading lights of eras much less heteroclite in their tastes than ours.  Thus one of the delights of a Romance like Cymbeline, in current production at the Yale School of Drama, is that it reminds us how bizarre and baroque the Bard can be. Because Cymbeline doesn’t get staged as often as the better-known plays, we can still be surprised by it.  It’s a play with a sprawling cast that keeps us guessing about whose story this really is; it gives us lots of set-ups and exposition that seem to have subtitles saying “wait for it!” as it works out a wondrously interlinked plot with no real center; and it’s a play with moments of either comic or icky—or both—melodrama, like Imogen waking from another one of those Juliet-death-trance potions to find herself, she believes, beside the corpse of her love, Posthumus, only the body is headless, so how’s a girl to be sure? Its very oddity makes it quite a good play for YSD as it presents many instances for the team, led by third-year director Louisa Proske, to create effects as erratic as the play itself.

Start with the visually arresting costumes by Nikki Delhomme: rich and classy for the court figures; they situate the characters in some old European film of easy elegance, like Rules of the Game, for instance, and that’s not a bad comparison for the levels of society we encounter in this play; for there are also the bumpkins (who are really royalty), shirtless and perpetually wrassling, and there’s Imogen looking as though she’s imprisoned by her ballooning skirts—until she dons a traveling-coat, looking like Helena Bonham-Carter in A Room with a View setting off on an adventure.  There are also soldiers about who look sort of WWI era, and there’s the sumptuous jacket of the foolish fop Cloten that could grace Liberace, and, finally, our romantic hero Posthumus’ simple man threads—think Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant when he really has to play self-effacing; and don’t forget the scene in a sauna where the guys—lots of prime male flesh on view in this show—hang about in towels, talk women, make a wager on Iachimo seducing Imogen.

Light (Solomon Weisbard) and sound (Palmer Hefferan and Michaël Attias) are also very busy in this production.  Set on the backstage at the University Theater (Meredith B. Ries, scenic design) the trappings of theatrical spectacle are all about us—and they become a part of the play when the lights scaffolds descend to stage level for lighting effects and to create visual chaos during the war scene.  There are also some great uses of music and sound—sometimes a schmaltzy tune will start up, or little tinkling bells make us feel we’re not quite in the normal world, or unnerving crescendoes of drums and metallic sounds add eerieness and drama.  The play has a lot to get through and in lieu of the usual Shakespearean pleasures—great soul-searching soliloquies, highly romantic badinage, verbal jousts, clownish antics—has to find its magic where it can.  As, for instance, having a first grader (Rachel Miller) play the part of Jupiter, in the totally wigged-out deus ex machina moment that almost tips into Disney.  For macabre contrast, there’s that headless corpse rising feet first into the vault.

In the cast, special mention: Lucas Dixon as the giddy Cloten, a true sop who gets to strut and fret in fine style; Brian Wiles as the cunning Iachimo—his glittering eyes and smug look when tricking Posthumus into believing he seduced Imogen are truly villainous; Miriam A. Hyman, all dressed-up up for evil and deliciously duplicitous as The Queen; Tim Brown, as attendant Cornelius, who gets a great laugh when clarifying a bit of business in the endless denoument; Michael Place as a fussily priggish Pisanio; Robert Grant as the dour and limping Cymbeline, doomed to be a bit clueless when so much is going on when he’s not around; Joshua Bermudez as agile Guiderius, who shrugs off decapitating Cloten as easily as the play does; as the lovers who prove true Adina Verson (Imogen) and Fisher Neal (Posthumus) declaim the super-declamatory verse—there are lots of “you gods!” moments—but provide here and there more subtle touches: Verson taking aim with her needle at Posthumus’s ship fading on the horizon; Neal as a spotlighted captive looking on death as proper justice.

The play finishes up with a recognition scene to end all recognition scenes—here it has the feel of the Shakespearean equivalent of the Marx Brothers’ shipboard cabin scene in A Night at the Opera: “I had a feeling you were going to show up.”  All’s well that ends well, and this Cymbeline certainly does.

William  Shakespeare’s Cymbeline Directed by Louisa Proske Yale School of Drama

December 10 to 16, 2011

Thank You

Gertrude Stein’s Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights began life as a libretto for an opera, never scored.  It’s now a theater-piece that invites avant enthusiasts to try their hand at staging its signal interplays for voice and chorus.  Robert Wilson did it, in 1992, and this week YSD directing student Lileana Blain-Cruz, with a dream cast and production team, has tackled it as her thesis piece. Fitting, since the play itself seems to articulate Stein’s thesis about theater, which is that, as dramaturg Sunder Ganglani quotes in the program, our emotions while watching it are either behind or ahead of the play we are watching.  Our experience, in other words, is ours, and the play has its own experience, and from those two experiences comes the story.  Of course, to say “our” experience is to suggest there is some common experience of art, but that’s exactly what Stein interrogates.

And nothing asks this question better than theater because in no other form are we, the audience, and they, the performers, together in space and time and actively so.

Dr. Faustus, as audiences of Marlowe know, made a pact with the devil—twenty-four years of supernatural power in exchange for loss of his immortal soul—but he also, due to his powers, was able to court Helen, wife of Menelaus, lover of Paris, prize of the Trojan war, and, as readers of Goethe know, seduced and abandoned a girl called both Margarete and Gretchen.

The “Faust myth” has insinuated its themes into literature and entertainment at various levels, from any hubristic use of knowledge, to any purposeful invocation of demonic powers, to various registers of “all is vanity” or “all is transcendence.”  Stein’s Faustus seems to participate in the Promethean view of knowledge: like Edison, he gave us the lightbulb, but at what cost?

Fanciful enough, but Stein’s intention seems also to be a reworking of the myth to give a different status to Faustus’ paramour, here combined to form a figure called Marguerite Ida and Helena Anabel (played, often in tandem, by Adina Verson and Alexandra Trow, two actresses who also played, in tandem and separately, two of the three parts of Salome in Blain-Cruz’s Yale Cabaret version of Wilde’s play last year).  Speaking broadly, one can say that this figure—whatever we may determine her to “represent”—is finally ascendant and Faustus (enacted by William DeMeritt, though voiced at times by the entire company) is eclipsed.

In other words, unlike in Goethe’s Faust, MI+HA isn’t inclined to save him, and, unlike Goethe’s or Marlowe’s version, Faustus seems fully resigned to going to hell.  What the final state of MI+HA is is harder to say, denuded as she is of her grand Statue of Liberty style trappings and, for a time at least, trapped in a kind of lockstep flight-and-fight-and-dance routine with the somewhat enigmatic Man from Overseas (Seamus Mulcahy in a great coat and creepy halfmask).

All of which is to bother about plot and why bother.  The strengths of this production, as must be the case for any production of this play, are in the staging, the music, the voicing.  All along the way the YSD production is a winner.

The choral mouthing of lines creates aural textures—it’s fascinating to try to determine who all is speaking when lines are heard—that bring out wonderfully the epigrammic, nursery rhymey, enigmatic, incantatory, bumper-stickery, poetic, comic, repetitive quality of the text.  An example of all those things in one that bit me in the ear: “What difference does it make to you if you do what you do.”  This said by a Boy (Jillian Taylor) who spoke and comported himself like an androgynous escapee from a Nickelodeon TV studio.

Stein’s gift for contrapuntal verbal explorations is unmatched, and this company makes the most of it.

The music—a range of solemn to robotic to campy to martial to Felliniesque (at one of my favorite parts)—by Adrian Knight adds much to the proceedings, indeed, helps define the action, as do the vocals by Taylor, Verson, DeMeritt and others;

the varied effects with lights—neon, and bulbs, and lazers, and sparklers (Masha Tsimring, Lighting);

the impressive use of levels and grounds in the staging: a stage within a wasteland, including dirt and taxidermied forest fauna (Adam Rigg, Scenic), and two grand cast-iron stairways, one a spiral, that Country Woman with the Sickle (Hallie Cooper-Novack, the other member of the Salome trio) uses to remarkable comic effect;

the syncopated movements and deliveries by Mephisto (Chris Henry and Lupita Nyong’o, both looking suitably devilish in devilish suits—Jayoung Yoon, costumes), and by Little Boy and Girl (Trow and Cooper-Novack, wearing blonde moptops and addressing “Mr. Viper”—whether Faustus or Mephisto is not always clear—as though he were Daddy Warbucks);

and finally, in long, flowing white hair for fur, Fisher Neal as The Dog who always says Thank You, and whose inclusion in the proceedings seems key for whatever the play means to mean.

If the play is the thing the thing is to play and YSD's production plays this play all the way just a little ahead.

Getrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz

Yale School of Drama October 25-29, 2011