#alifeinthetheatre

[hainsworthy]

Day 5 Stalag 17. Set in an allied prisoner of war camp in WWII during a particularly brutal winter, it follows the trials of American POWs trying to survive, stay sane and escape the camp, while trying to figure out who has been informing to the Germans. This was a fun one. Casting 21 guys in a show might not seem like a big deal now, but it was a huge accomplishment in suburban 1987. Half the cast was the football team, so it broke down a lot of clique barriers. We had an all female crew, and one fine Sunday morning they literally kidnapped all of us and took us to Denny’s for Breakfast. I had just gotten home a few hours earlier because theatre had finally given me a social life, and had fallen asleep in my clothes, so I was ready to go. While it was truly an ensemble show, it was the first somewhat lead-ish part I had, only by the metric that it was the “William Holden” role. It also continued the trend of me getting beat up on stage. I also got punched in The Runner Stumbles. By a priest. In the first picture you can see the words AHH WARM taped to the ground to remind us all that outside was freezing and inside was warm and to act accordingly. On one of our four performances, those doors got jammed and we had to reblock the second act on the fly. Stalag, while having moments of levity, is the more serious source material for Hogan’s Heroes. #retrospective #stalag17 #1987 #glenbardeasthighschool #theatre #alifeinthetheatre #actorslife #performer (at Glenbard East High School) https://www.instagram.com/p/B363u-Lpo0b/?igshid=9tz1o5xab8s1

[directlywithlizzie]

Director’s Notebook: Miss Bennet - Christmas at Pemberley

Our patron saint of rom-coms, Jane Austen, depicted in an 1810 portrait by her sister, Cassandra.

Pride, Prejudice, and Christmas I was approached by Craig Willis about directing Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley sometime in early 2018 with the question: “Are you interested in directing a sequel to Pride and Prejudice by Lauren Gunderson for our holiday show? Jeanette will do the costumes.” Lauren Gunderson? Jane Austen? Holiday show? Jeanette? Check! Check! Check! Check! My response was an immediate and enthusiastic: “Hell yeah!”

Miss Bennet is my third Gunderson piece at OCT, having had the good fortune to direct Silent Sky and Revolutionists! in past seasons. I have nothing but positive feelings about both experiences. I truly enjoy Gunderson’s work, which in my experience is witty and thoughtful and melds well with my own comic sensibilities. I always enjoy directing for its various challenges regardless of the piece (I said “yes” to taking on Miss Bennet while in the dystopian throes of 1984). But there is a certain pleasure I get from working on something that I know will give people warm, fuzzy feelings and laughter. This is exactly what people (audiences, the cast, the production team) need in a time of year where it gets dark by 5:00 pm and we’re all slightly on edge with the various stresses of the upcoming holidays. Thus far, rehearsals have been a pleasure . . . getting to spend my evenings with a talented group of fun and charming people? Awesome! And just imagine how lovely that will be when they’re all decked out in gorgeous Regency attire!

Jane Austen: Her Blessed Lady of the Rom Com Miss Bennet is a rom-com in every sense of the word. While generally speaking, I don’t love this genre, there are good and bad examples of it and I have certainly directed my share of rom-coms. Miss Bennet happens to be a very good example of a modern rom-com. Here, Gunderson and her collaborator Margot Melcon have created story that satisfies the mechanics of the genre while capturing Jane Austen’s wit and style and offering a sensitive and nuanced exploration of friendship, family dynamics, and forgiveness. Yes, of course the lovers smooch in the end, but there is so much more to the story.

While rom-coms in their contemporary manifestation have a long history stretching back to the days of Classical Roman Comedy (or as I describe them to my Theatre History students: “A story of a dumb young girl and a dumb young boy who are too dumb to figure out how to get together without the intervention of their smarter and more interesting servants”) we owe a debt to Jane Austen and her keen eye for observing human foibles and revealing the humor in our struggles to understand each other.

The author of six full-length novels (two published posthumously), Austen was one of the first female authors to make a living as a writer. Her works have been cherished by generations of readers. In spite of her successes, the details of her biography are clouded with mystery and by an attempt on her family’s part to control her image after her death at the age of 41. For example, Jane had written over 3,000 letters to her sister Cassandra, but for some reason most of the letters were destroyed in 1843. What was Cassandra trying to hide? What scandal could be so offensive? We may never know. And much like with Shakespeare, we are left to speculate based on the works she left behind.

Austen, the daughter of an Anglican rector, lived between the worlds of the elite society of the English gentry and the lower classes. She was educated and afforded opportunities to express herself creatively to friends an family. But, her precarious financial situation limited the choice in suitors for herself and Cassandra. Neither sister married while both suffered bad luck in love. Cassandra’s fiance, Thomas Fowle, died of Yellow Fever and little is known about Jane’s relationship with Tom LeFroy other than it ended rather abruptly, likely upon the intervention of his family.

Given the rather disappointing romantic biographies of Jane and Cassandra, it seems logical she might retreat into her imagination and create unconventionally witty protagonists who, like the Austen sisters, possess little fortune, but unlike them, the Bennet and Dashwood sisters secure happy endings with loving (and often fabulously wealthy) husbands.

The 2005 film version of Pride and Prejudice directed by Joe Wright.

Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1813, is likely Austen’s most enduring and beloved novel having inspired multiple film, television, and theatrical adaptations. The story centers around Lizzy Bennet, the smart and lively second eldest sister in a family with five daughters, and her rocky road towards love and marriage to the enigmatic and wealthy Mr. Darcy. The world of Longbourn and Pemberley are populated with a vivid cast of characters including the insufferably tedious Mr. Collins, the long-suffering anxious Mrs. Bennet, and the beautiful snobbish Caroline Bingley. As Lizzy and Darcy navigate the complications of love and courtship in the rigidly-structured British aristocracy, Austen exposes the challenges young women face to lead happy and fulfilling lives when so few options are available.

Miss Bennet is set two years after the end of Pride and Prejudice. Lizzy and Mr. Darcy are happily married as are elder sister Jane and her beloved Charles Bingley. Considered unsuitable misfits by Caroline Bingley and the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh in the original story, Jane and Lizzy have triumphed over pomposity and become wives rich and handsome men. While Lizzy and Jane didn’t come to their happy endings easily, most of the objections to them were due to perceptions of their family. Mr. Bennet raised his daughters to have their own minds and do as they pleased without caring for what reputation such an unconventional upbringing might inspire among their peers. With little money to provide dowries for his daughters and their estate to be left to their male cousin, the Bennet sisters have little to bring to a marriage other than whatever charm they might possess. In the end, this is all well and good for Jane (considered the most beautiful and kind young woman in their community) and the confident and self-possessed Lizzy. But what of the three younger Bennet sisters?

As chronicled in the novel and further explored in Miss Bennet, Lydia’s flirtatious behavior sparks a scandal that may very well have destroyed what little good reputation the Bennet family had were it not for the secret intervention of Mr. Darcy. The other two sisters, Kitty and Mary, are among the least developed in the novel.

Jane Austen provides little information about middle sister, Mary, the romantic heroine of Miss Bennet. Unlike Lizzy and Jane who are both attractive in looks and personality, she is awkward and coarse. She is portrayed as bookish and dour, lacking in the social graces her older sisters possess. Younger sisters Lydia and Kitty are pretty and confident while Mary flounders in the middle, seemingly destined for the life of a spinster.

Gunderson and Melcon devise the plot for Miss Bennet based on a single line from Pride and Prejudice in which Lizzy writes home to her family: “Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.” The stage is set, as it were, revisiting seven characters from the original novel including the happily wed Lizzy and Darcy, the soon-to-be parents Charles and Jane, Lydia, Mary, and Lady Catherine’s sickly and awkward daughter Anne de Bourgh. A new character, Arthur de Bourgh, distant cousin to Darcy, joins the family for Christmas after recently inheriting the de Bourgh estate of Rosings. Will this newcomer and Mary find love and happiness or will their romance be thwarted before it has a chance to bloom? I think we all know the answer to that question. What makes Miss Bennet such a delightful piece of theatre is not the inevitable rom-com happy ending, but the further development of the quirky characters and nuanced relationships we are familiar with and the more contemporary lens through which they are viewed.

I will explore the themes and characterizations in the next post! For now . . . I need to get ready for rehearsal!

[allthingsrad]

On the menu for tonight’s read-through, slow cooked rosemary lamb! #inthekitchen #yum #alifeinthetheatre #foodeatingthetheatre

[projectshakespearia]

Two Gentlemen of Verona: The World of the Play Part I

Sedona Garcia, Forest Gilpin, Kyle Stockdall, and Stuart Ashenbrenner rehearsing in the Quad.

Introduction And just like THAT another year has passed and we’re diving in head-long for Bard in the Quad 2017. We face a new set of challenges, and as always, an energetic cast is at the ready to bring to life a story of lovers, clowns, and many misunderstandings.

The selection process for this summer’s title began with one of our first faculty meetings in the Fall of 2016. There were several new faces around the table including our new Technical Director, Chad Rodgers, acting instructor, Nate Bush, and Don Naggiar, now in the role of Scenic/Lighting Designer and instructor. While Bard is not a part of our regular season, it is consistently one of OSU Theatre’s most popular productions. Chalk it up to the unique atmosphere or the a general “Shakespeare obsession” among Corvallis audiences, but Bard remains a beloved fixture on campus twelve years on.

As what has perhaps become part of our tradition, I seem to kick off the selection process by floating the idea of staging a tragedy. The last one we did was Julius Caesar in 2012, and while I have a vision of some day presenting a lush and sexy version of Antony and Cleopatra on the steps of the Memorial Union, I ultimately decided that 2017 wasn’t yet the right time. The other tempting title was The Tempest. I have a grand and magical vision for that production, but didn’t feel I had the right available actor to take on the meaty role of Prospero, and therefore, went back to the drawing board of a crowd-pleasing romantic comedy. Our production history includes Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Comedy of Errors, and two productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There are only so many comedies in Shakespeare’s canon, and even fewer “great” comedies. Quite frankly, we’re running out of viable titles. Although titles such as The Merchant of Venice or Measure for Measure are technically “comedies,” they are problematic in our venue due to a lack of overt physical action and other thematic issues that are difficult to work out while maintaining the breezy and fun experience we want to offer our audiences.

Ultimately it came down to wanting to do a show that hadn’t yet been staged in the Quad and one that offered a variety of comic possibilities. Two Gentlemen of Verona is by no means a “perfect” play, but while out on one of my runs in the middle of winter, it clicked: Two Gents = Wild West Melodrama. The play and characters are ridiculous and the broadly physical style is well-suited to the cartoonish personalities that populate Verona and Milan. It didn’t all come in one moment, but over the weeks/months between devising Upward-Beating Heart and casting Two Gents my concept solidified into a cohesive vision.

In this first post about The World of the Play, I’m going to discuss the concept and some of the reasoning behind the choices. In next week’s blog, I will delve into the text and the play a little more deeply and write about some of the choices I made in adapting the script for the concept.

Shakespeare’s “Worst” Play When I began my dramaturgical research for Two Gents I ran into a frequent statement from high-minded Shakespeare critics that this was one of the Bard’s earliest plays (likely his first) and, therefore, one of his “worst” plays. Keep in mind, we’re talking about the greatest English language dramatist . . . so “worst” is a relative term. This is the work of a developing writer and while the plot lines and characters are not all entirely developed, there are moments of charm and hints of comic genius to come in the boldness of cross-dressing Julia, the clownish antics of Launce, or the besotted foolishness of the scheming and inept Proteus.

Thematically, Two Gents gets at one of Shakespeare’s most enduing themes: love makes fools of us all. From Romeo to Orlando to Benedict to Orsino, Shakespeare frequently pokes fun at the conventions of courtship, the inconstancy of men, and the power of love. While the love stories between the pairs of lovers in Two Gents are problematic, they are inherently funny and do dig into deeper truths about the lengths to which some go in the name of romantic pursuits.

Proteus (Kyle Stockdall) meets his best friend’s love interest, Sylvia (Sedona Garcia) for the first time.

The plot of Two Gents begins with the relationship between Proteus and Valentine. While Valentine is ready to leave small-town Verona to seek his fortune in Milan, serving in the court of the Duke, Proteus is resolved to stay behind for the sake of his relationship with Julia. Valentine chides Proteus for his foolishness:

Love is your master, for he masters you: And he that is so yoked by a fool, Methinks should not be chronicled for wise.

Proteus admits that Julia has “metamorphosed” him into one that will leave his friends, neglect his studies, and mope around “heart sick in thought.” And thus, Valentine leaves his friend behind to better opportunities.

The tables quickly turn, however, when several scenes later we see Valentine, now consumed with his own love for Sylvia, the witty and sophisticated daughter of the Duke. Valentine, too, has been transformed, as is pointed out by his servant Speed, into one frequently exhibiting the behaviors he so chided Proteus for having. The relationship between Valentine and Sylvia is complicated by the fact that her father wishes her to marry a foolish fop named Thurio. This is even further complicated when Proteus arrives in Milan and finds himself immediately drawn to Sylvia. (Got that?)

Even in our early rehearsals, it’s hard not to completely write Proteus off as a cad, more than that later. But implausibly brash behavior is one of the key factors that led me to this conceptual approach in the first place.

Melodrama in the Theatre There are two major classifications of theatre. It is either presentational or representational. Representational theatre attempts to represent “real life” in some way. This requires a naturalistic acting style and characters that are somehow psychologically motivated to grow or change. Consider plays such as Death of a Salesmen or A Doll’s House. These chestnuts of the modern stage want audiences to feel as if they are peeking into the living room windows of ordinary families simply behaving.

Presentational plays, on the other hand, have a more distinct style and are in no way attempting to show “real life” on stage. Consider the conventions of musical theatre or Japanese Noh theatre which embrace the theatrical, the symbolic, and the suggestive. Melodrama falls into this presentational category and is well-suited to our outdoor venue.

Melodrama lives in a world of comic archetypes or stock characters. Villains wear black hats and twist their mustaches while reveling in their wicked plots that are unmotivated by any internal psychological impulse. Villains do evil things because that’s what they do. Heroes are similarly reactive and jump from one emotional high point to the next. In many ways, this is the world that Shakespeare presents in Two Gentlemen of Verona, one where Proteus can be deeply in love with Julia one moment and Sylvia the next. A world where he can be completely dedicated to his dearest friend until the very moment he hatches an overly-complicated plot to have Valentine banished so that he can steal away his girlfriend. For the most part, when directing Shakespeare, I try to embrace the madness rather than attempt to “fix” it. Melodrama in this case is an appropriate playground to poke fun at love and lovers.

In addition, I found a lot of inspiration in imagery of the Wild West, in particular, cartoons from my childhood depicting comic exaggerations of Western icons. I grew up on a steady diet of Disney and Loony Tunes and probably my first introduction to the “Wild West” was the image of Yosemite Sam,

I mean . . . right?

The hot-tempered, tiny-footed gunslinger is all bark and no bite, terrorizing the Wild West in his attempt to . . . defeat Bugs Bunny? I’m not entirely sure of his motivations, but he does parody the swaggering cowboy character in a way that seemed fitting for this production. Other iconic characters such as Pecos Bill and Slue-Foot Sue come quickly to mind when I think of the Wild West.

I don’t think cartoons can get away with characters smoking anymore.

I remember these characters as bright, optimistic, and easily identifiable - all in line with the tone I wanted to take in developing this show. I see this production as casual and family-friendly. Perhaps a little reminiscent of the madcap melodramas we would see at the Golden Horse Shoe Revue at Disneyland.

Another reason we chose this concept with this production was a necessity of one of our physical limitations this year. The Memorial Union is getting a face-lift this summer and the facades of the plinths are being repaired making them inaccessible for our performers. Rather that have elements of the architecture that we couldn’t use, I decided to stage the production at the center of the Quad with the MU as a grand back-drop. The center is a little smaller and much closer to the audience. I wouldn’t exactly call the center an “intimate space,” but without the steps to use for dramatic entrances, the world is a little closer and more casual. Melodrama lends itself to direct audience address (maybe even interaction) and stylistically will help us tell a fast-paced and physical story in a way that makes sense in the space.

The statement I made to the designers in approaching the concept was, “Imagine that this is a group of actors putting on a place in a barn.” This way we can get away with goofy low-budget special effects, rustic music, and a lighthearted atmosphere.

We are beginning our fourth week of rehearsal today (hard to believe) and things are coming along. I’ll give a rehearsal update and some background about the script itself in my next entry.

For now . . . it’s time to head to the Quad!

[its-all-the-rage-blog]

Supervising the student directed show. Kicking up my feet while someone else directs a show.... #teachablemoments #alifeinthetheatre (Taken with instagram)

[hainsworthy]

I have done more shows with these barrels than I have with any living performer, at this point. #alifeinthetheatre (at Lifeline Theatre) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgQcjpgjiS_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[hainsworthy]

11 Swing Choir. There sure were a lot of talented people in this group. And me. Because you may not know this about me, but I CANNOT sing. This is the only evidence that I was in Swing Choir my senior year. The day the yearbook photo was taken, it was done right before we left for a performance first thing in the morning and I was late because I missed the bus. So they took the photo without me. And I didn’t even get a “Not Pictured” like Beaver in Veronica Mars. And that’s okay. Honestly I have no idea how I got in this. I had a lot of friends in it, and I was in regular choir my senior year. I remember I had to audition with Neil Diamond’s Hello Again, which strangely enough is right in my wheelhouse and I can almost do an impression of to get through. The group outfit was short sleeve white henleys and acid watch jeans for the guys and white henleys and skirts for the girl. It was a dark time for the rebellion. We spent a lot of time on Somewhere Out There from An American Tail. And a Beatles medley with A LOT of crisp diction. #swingchoir #1988 #notpictured #helloagain #neildiamond #glenbardeasthighschool #alifeinthetheatre #actorslife #performer (at Glenbard East High School) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4KR6YCJ9Jx/?igshid=uyt0gevryn6q

[hainsworthy]

Day 10 The Odd Couple (Female Version). The final show of my senior year of High School we did The Odd Couple (Female Version), the gender swapped revision of his 1965 play. Instead of Felix and Oscar playing cards, it’s Flo and Olive playing Trivial Pursuit. Because why would women like playing cards? (I know). And instead of the Pigeon Sisters there were the Costazuela brothers, Manolo and Jesus, from Barcelona who lived upstairs. I played Manolo. (I know) Two comedies in a row! I hope I enjoyed it. Because it would be a while. The other important thing about this show (to me) is it is my one and only foray into scenic design. I took a scenic design class my last semester of Senior Year, and we all had to design three shows. Mine were The Rainmaker, Bus Stop (I wish I still had those, you move 30+ years in a lifetime and you lose a lot of shit) and then we all had to come up with a design for the spring show, and they would select one for the actual production. And they selected mine! It was a fun show to be a supporting player on. That moustache though. Obviously a glue on. For some reason the moustache, she is a recurring theme. The real ones - now those - those will haunt me. #theoddcouple #theoddcouplefemaleversion #1988 #glenbardeasthighschool #neilsimon #manolocostazuela #iknow #theatre #alifeinthetheatre #actorslife #performer (at Glenbard East High School) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4IJWQDpcen/?igshid=3osg1e8mwcum

[hainsworthy]

Day 9 CW: The final picture depicts a moment from the play. But it could be triggering. The Foreigner, by Larry Shue. I loved doing this show. It was comedy. I have had few opportunities to do outright comedy over the years, so I still look back fondly on this one. I was playing an incredibly bad guy, which would be my comfort zone for the next 30 years. A bunch of racist pieces of sh!t got their come-uppance. Sandi Zielinski came to see it to adjudicate it, and because of that I ended up going to ISU (I was a terrible procrastinator when it came to college, didn’t even take my ACT until December of my senior year, and then only reason I would get into ISU was because the theatre department took me) and the rest of my life happened. I was already familiar with the show since my brother had performed it at College of DuPage months earlier. I still remember certain lines to this day, even though I haven’t looked at the script since 1988. Of course the character I played was, as stated previously a racist piece of sh!t, so there is a picture of me in a Klan robe in the year book. That’s weird. #theforeigner #larryshue #1988 #glenbardeasthighschool #owenmusser #thebeescomesdown #badguy #theatre #alifeinthetheatre #actorslife #performer (at Glenbard East High School) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4FRNEDJpIK/?igshid=12behkmtjfelw

[hainsworthy]

Day 8 Oklahoma! The first of several musicals I should have never been a part of. Because you may not know this about me (everyone knows this about me) I CANNOT sing. But it’s high school and much like any military offensive, you need bodies to throw at the problem. Somehow I actually had a character name because I had such memorable lines like “Let’s take ‘em to the station in Curly’s surrey, and WE’LL be the ho’ses!” (see photo) and after Judd tries to stab Curly, flies through the air, impales himself on his own knife, leaking blood into the earth, “Is he just stunned?” But I did learn to “dance” and still remember some of the tap steps to “Everything is up to date in Kansas City”. I was originally going to audition for the role of Ali Hakim (I know) who had one patter song that I could have Rex Harrison’ed my way through, but capital H HUBRIS overtook me and I thought, Curly. AND I FAILED MISERABLY. And thus, Slim. A lesson I would keep learning for another twenty years, people expect lead characters in musicals to be able to sing. But it was a fun show to do with a lot of people from different walks of high school life who I may not otherwise have met. And the leads who did get cast were all wonderful. You can also see the unfortunate mullet left over from the summer. These pictures were taken the Sunday before our first performance, and I got my haircut immediately after this rehearsal. #oklahoma #rodgers&hammerstein #1987 #slim #thefarmerandthecowmanshouldbefriends #poorjudisdaid #icannotsing #glenbardeasthighschool #theatre #alifeinthetheatre #actorslife #performer #mullett (at Glenbard East High School) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4CqptXp3EO/?igshid=1ll7tkhfeeo9m

[hainsworthy]

Day 7 E/R. Not to be confused with ER. Although there was also a (short lived) tv series based on this play. It’s the story of an eventful night in a Chicago emergency room. This was a show I did at College of DuPage over the summer between my Junior and Senior years of High School. The summer of 1987. The McAninch Arts Center was smell the fresh paint new, and I believe it was the Buffalo Theatre Ensemble’s first year in residence there. But this show was with CODs summer student program. Can’t even remember how I heard about the audition. I got to play with the “adults”. My part, Eddie the punk rocker, was small, but so was most everyone else’s. But it was a fun show to do. Now that I’m older I regret not going for the full mohawk at the time. Would also have saved me from an unfortunate mullet afterwards. What’s really strange is that 3 years later I would wear almost exactly the same costume in different play at a different school. #retrospective #themcaninchartscenter #collegeofdupage #1987 #eddiethepunkrocker #fauxhawk #leatherstrapsforashirt #theatre #alifeinthetheatre #actorslife #performer (at McAninch Arts Center at College of DuPage) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4ABTmvJ8E1/?igshid=txcbi7enh4c2

[hainsworthy]

Day 3 This was the first thing I ever wrote. A skit for the 6th grade talent show. It was a hypnosis goes wrong kind of deal. Performed it in a gymnasium full of kids. And it went over well. The confidence it took for this particular 11 year old kid to sign up, write something, talk two friends into doing it with me, rehearse it and perform it in front of hundreds of kids belies what the next four years of my life would be. Whatever confidence I had seemed to evaporate overnight. I honestly don’t have a lot of day to day memories over the next four years. Just a lot of unhappiness and misery. I was so angry all the time and I was miserable and miserable to be around. But I never got into trouble. I internalized it to the point of almost making myself invisible. I was in a dark and ugly place. So theatre changed my life for the better, in some ways it probably saved my life. That’s part of what this deep dive is about. Because it’s been my privilege to have never been part of a show that was a total loss. I mean, I have been in some terrible T E R R I B L E shows, but I was always fortunate enough to be in the trenches with some good people. Life would never become perfect, and I would go through a mountain range of emotional issues (still hiking thank you very much) but I’ve been fortunate that theatre has always been my saving grace. #retrospective #1982 #sixthgradetalentshow #hypnotist #mrsriley #alifeinthetheatre #actorslife #performer (at ReskinElementarySchool) https://www.instagram.com/p/B32Ca55JUEF/?igshid=1f5xw24yeabjt

[hainsworthy]

Day 2 So this is the first play I ever did, the first memorize your lines, set and costumes performing in front of an audience in the evening outside of school hours play. 4th Grade. The Runaway Presents. Mrs. Hurry Up is preparing for her Christmas Party for her friends Ol’ Pal and Bess Friend, when her gifts decide to do a runner. The gift encounter several strangers, Movie Ticket Seller, Pizza Man and Delivery Man, all of whom were played by me. I was placed inside an upside refrigerator box, that had a Christmas tree painted on one side and then the other three sides were painted to look like the various businesses I represented. So I would rotate the box from inside and change costumes and then pop up for my lines. And now that I think about it, this show was perfect training for life in Chicago Non-Equity theatre. I even provided my own costumes. #retrospective #40years #reskinelementary #therunawaypresents #quickchangeartist #4thgrade #MrsZaluga #alifeinthetheatre #actorslife #performer (at ReskinElementarySchool) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3zjbA4J8oA/?igshid=1iwo4tjpy9qzt

[directlywithlizzie]

Director’s Notebook: Sense and Sensibility

Let the research begin!

The Journey to Jane

After spending a delightful autumn with the Bennet sisters staging Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley for Oregon Contemporary Theatre, I’m looking forward to Spring with the Dashwoods. Prior to these projects I had fairly limited experience with Jane Austen’s novels. I’m a embarrassed to admit now, I was for a long time reluctant to read them, echoing the extremely sexist sentiment expressed by some of my male friends and fellow English majors in college, “I’m not interested in trivial stories about women tittering about the house gossiping about marriage.” No, no! I wanted to read serious literature in college, the works of Shakespeare and Chaucer and Milton! For a long time I was under the delusion propagated by some in academic circles that there was “Literature” and then there were a number of literary subcategories by authors other than White Cis-Gendered and Male to be studied in specialized elective topics courses.  The capital “L” GREAT LITERATURE was canonized because it was assumed to be capital “U” UNIVERSAL while everything else, while perhaps possessing literary merit, was somehow less-than. Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf might get a passing nod in a British Literature survey course, but Kazuo Ishiguro or Zadie Smith? Forget it! Because if, God-forbid, too many white women or people of color became required reading, it would come at the cost of some poor dead, white male author . . . and then where would we be?

It wasn’t until graduate school that I found feminism and began to discover how patriarchy and white supremacy permeated even the most liberal spaces of society. (I know . . . right?) At one point, an old white, male tenured professor gave the grad students a list of several hundred capital “G” Great Plays “every theatre graduate student must read” before even considering a career in academia. The list was (unsurprisingly) white and male. The only female playwrights that appeared were Aphra Behn and Lorraine Hansberry and the only people of color were Luis Valdez, August Wilson, and (again) Lorraine Hansberry. I argued in a small seminar course with said Old White Tenured Professor about the need to open up the canon, that if we weren’t actively working to do this . . . then who would? Students would never know about Catherine Trotter, Margaret Cavendish, Hrosvitha, George C. Wolfe, Suzan-Lori Parks, Cherrie Moraga, and Lynn Nottage to name a few. He smiled in that kindly patronizing Old White Tenured Professor way and said, “Sure, we should read these authors, but does that mean we don’t read Shakespeare anymore?”

In my mid-twenties, I discovered how my education and life experience, for all its privilege, had deprived me of perspectives not fixed in white-maleness. In literature, pop culture, and life experience, my existence was always as other, always on the fringes of what the mainstream considered to be some idea of “Universal” humanity. My girlhood icons were so limited: Princess Leia and Tela were rare females amidst a sea of men on quests to save the galaxy. I came to consume and mimic the male comic voices of Monty Python, 90s era Saturday Night Live where women were generally dismissed or entirely absent. I reveled in “boy’s club” humor that lampooned women as frivolous, stupid, or slutty. I took pride in the fact that most of my friends were male, that I was “one of the guys” and took the comment “you write like a man,” as the greatest possible compliment. My literary heroes were Holden Caulfield and Benjamin Bradock. Looking back, I see a young girl whose tastes and interests were shaped by patriarchal assumptions that women simply matter less. At the time I would proudly say something like, “Well, if they were good enough, then they would have made it!” Good enough by what standard? I never thought to ask that question. I was always a voracious reader and I could have found Jane Austen and the Brontes on my own . . . but people don’t know what they don’t know. And what I “knew” then, reinforced in and outside the classroom, was that my time was better spent admiring Joseph Heller than Louisa May Alcott.

And all that time . . . Jane Austen had been waiting for me with something I would have loved all along. In 2009, I directed Arcadia, my first Main Stage production at Oregon State University. Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play captured my imagination during a high school trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Arcadia wasn’t the first play I ever saw or was affected by, but it was the first play that truly gave me pause to say: Theatre can do that!?! In some ways Arcadia influenced me to pursue a career in theatre. The script is incredibly witty, smart, and romantic . . . and the setting in a late 18th century English country estate and precious heroine makes it all the more appealing!

Here in 2019 I get to revisit many of the same themes and the visual aesthetic I had the pleasure of exploring ten years ago. Sense and Sensibility and Arcadia are, of course, stylistically two very different plays, but they do share similar themes of status, social class, and clever young women struggling with their roles in “polite society” of the 1790s. Young Thomasina, the math prodigy at the center of Arcadia, possesses wit and imagination well beyond her years and cloistered experience as the only daughter of Lord and Lady Croom. Thomasina shows little interest in fulfilling her duty to “marry well,” and instead pours her passion and energy into her studies and her tutor and friend, Septimus Hodge. Thomasina, like many Jane Austen heroines, exists within her society as an outsider-insider, a misfit within the upper-crust. Like Lizzy Bennet or Emma Woodhouse, she possesses her own mind and asserts her agency, however unlike them, Thomasina meets a tragic fate while Austen’s characters experience unambiguously happily-ever-afters. Thomasina Coverly has been one of my favorite characters in all of literature since I was fifteen years old, long before I knew anything about her literary predecessors. In a roundabout way, she was my gateway into appreciating the worlds of Pemberley or Barton Park. Without knowing it, I adored Jane Austen before having actually read any Jane Austen.

More to come as the process gets underway!

[allthingsrad]

Post-rehearsal dinner. Udon noodles with kimchi and farm-fresh egg! #oregonlove #lifeonthetinyfarm #dinneryum #alifeinthetheatre

[allthingsrad]

One-Act Festival closing performance. I think we're all ready for a nap. These kids. #alifeinthetheatre #osutheatre