SSC does *MND* at WU

Translation: the Seattle Shakespeare Company, as reported here earlier,
will perform A Midsummer Night's Dream at Whitworth University's Cowles Auditorium
on Saturday, May 8, at 7 pm. Tickets: $5.

Some comments from director George Mount of the SSC:

"We have been wanting to get our shows to the Spokane area for a few
years. When we developed or regional touring programs, Spokane was always
an area we hoped to book into. However, traveling that far can be costly
and we want to keep our performance fees as low as possible.
"This year, we used money from a grant from the National Endowment for the
Arts as part of their Shakespeare in American Communities initiative. With
their support, a lot of the cost to schools and community theaters (our
primary "customers" for these tours) is greatly reduced. So I arranged with
several high schools in the area to come out and perform. We'll be in your
area for about a week and a half with performances in places like Deer Park,
Ritzville, Colville and Wilbur."

(On May 5 at noon, they'll perform a show for local high school students at Whitworth, then return on May 8 at night for a general-public show.)

"The production has seven actors playing all the parts," says Mount. "Each actor plays at
least two other characters, and most play three. And their third character
is a puppet! I've focused on the fairy tale-like nature of Midsummer and
costumed the cast in a style reminiscent of Victorian-era children's
literature illustrations, like the work of Arthur Rackham. The characters
of Puck and the fairy attendants to Titania are played by near life-sized
puppets manipulated by the actors. It's a highly theatrical approach to the
show, yet also keeps it streamlined and simple for touring. As you guessed,
the show has to fit into the back of an SUV with the actors arriving in a
separate vehicle. And while children's literature was the inspiration, the
show, despite the puppets, isn't really a 'children's' show. It's a great
show for all ages. Younger audiences will like the puppets and the goofy
situations; older audiences will not feel "talked down to" and will still enjoy
all that Shakespeare has to offer.
"Well, not quite all that Shakespeare has to offer — we've reduced the
length of the show to about 90 minutes. But we didn't change the
language — except for a couple of muttered actor ad libs."

*Is He Dead?* preview and interview with Rick Hornor

Is He Dead?, a recently discovered comedy by Mark Twain, plays at Whitworth University on March 5-13.
Tickets: $8; $6, students and seniors. Call 777-3707.

A short preview will appear in the March 4 Inlander. But in the meantime, here's an e-mail exchange between Bobo and director Rick Hornor of Whitworth's theater department. (Once upon a time, back in 1990-97, they were colleagues.)

Bobo: David Ives, I've learned, cut from three acts to two, added some jokes, retained but revised some subplots, threw out some characters. Is that accurate? Can you tell where the changes are?
Rick Hornor: Your description of Ives's edits is accurate. When sitting down with the original and the revised, the changes are obvious but I doubt the audience will be able to say, “Oh, that was Twain and that was Ives.” Ives wrote, “In everything I did as an adapter, I took it as my job not to replace Twain but to complete his work, to do to the original what he himself would have done had he had 97 more years to think about it and few more plays under his belt. He turned out to be a superb collaborator. Except for the cigars, we got along just fine.” I think Ives did a wonderful job of tightening the play by streamlining the action and reducing the cast size. The original is clunky, which explains in part why Twain couldn’t get anyone to produce it.

Bobo: Do you have any rat-a-tat-tat, slam-bang door-slamming farce sequences that are especially demanding to stage?
Hornor: Twain loved and frequently attended melodramas and farces so yes, we’ve tried to incorporate acting styles and characterizations typical of classic melodrama and farce. More challenging for the actors than the physical doing of some of the antics is the timing. Comic timing is tough.

Bobo: Actors always say that comedy is harder to do than drama. Do you agree? What specifically is difficult about this comedy? And a man in drag for extended sequences -- doesn't that make your job easier?
Hornor: Yes, I agree comedy is generally harder to do well. What I think is funny is not necessarily what you think is funny. With farce, especially, we walk a narrow edge between funny and banal. Yes, Twain helps us out by keeping our leading man a leading woman and by employing disguise with a number of other characters.

Bobo: Twain's humor got more bitter in his later years. Any trace of that here? I mean, isn't it about his feeling under-appreciated, and they won't really know what they've lost until I'm dead, etc.? Or is it mostly just silliness?
Hornor: Twain wrote this play while on a speaking tour in Europe to raise money because he couldn’t pay his bills with what he was making/not making in the U.S. At about the same time, the real Millet died and there was a bidding war between the U.S. and France for one of his paintings. Twain’s recurring admonition is initially spoken by Dutchy: “Vhat a fool vorld it is. Ven it haff a great Master, it don’t know it und let him shtarve. Und venn he is tead, zenn he is recognized! Zenn come ze riches! Und vhat can you do mit zese riches, being dead?” However, the plethora of jokes, eccentric characters, and physical comedy balance Twain’s declamations on the state of art and artists.

Bobo: Please describe the set.
Peter Hardie has designed a brilliant set. We are leaving the curtains open during the intermission to allow the audience to watch the magic of changing the poor artist’s studio of Act I into the elegant Parisian apartment of Act II.

Bobo: Will you use any Millet painting-facsimiles? [Twain's main character is loosely based on the French painter Jean-Francois Millet, 1814-75]

Hornor: Yes. The play references "The Angelus" and "The Gleaners" specifically. One of our art students who is also in the play, Giselle Stone, painted facsimiles for us.

****

Is He Dead? notes:

Bobo got to watch a costumed run-through this morning. 

19th-century art song. Vintage show posters with screaming headlines: "a brilliant effusion of comedy, caprice, mayonnaise and mirth ... Desperate Encounters! Exciting Denouement! ... a rip-roaring farce with thrills and laughter."

Corn-pone exposition. Melodramatic villain. National stereotypes: Irish clown with a brogue, German clown in lederhosen making Limburger cheese and "the wurst comes next" jokes. Stop-action, gaslight asides. The artist and his buddies comes up with a ruse to increase the value of his paintings -- but somebody's gonna have to put on the wig and balloon breasts. Odd to watch a comedy in a mostly empty auditorium: Where will the laughs occur?

more notes: 

http://theater.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/theater/reviews/10dead.html
Dec. 10, 2007 review by Ben Brantley

Spokane connection at two removes:
David Pittu, who played (Basil Thorpe/Claude Rivière/Charlie/the King of France) in this Lyceum production, starred in the musical spoof What's That Smell?
in which Spokane's own Max Kumangai-McGee (LC, Civic, CdA Summer, U of Mich., etc.) played a featured role

1898 play, much like Charley's Aunt (1892)
In 2002 -- 104 years later -- it was discovered in Twain's papers housed at U.C. Berkeley in 2002 -- in the back of a filing cabinet, untouched, in Twain's handwriting.
It was supposed to have been produced by Bram Stoker (as in Dracula).
It's set in Paris in 1846.
Yet apparently it was long known to scholars -- just, nobody did anything with it until Stanford's Shelley Fisher Fishkin fished it out of obscurity and got it staged.

Theater Mania interviews of cast, director, adapter (video):
http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/10-2007/mark-twain-dead-or-alive_11965.html

Elyse Sommer's Dec. '07 CurtainUp review (which quotes the title phrase):
http://www.curtainup.com/ishedead.html

good preview of a Dec. '08 production in Jacksonville, Fla.:
http://www.eujacksonville.com/story2.php?storyid=149

a National Review review, with some of the same photos and jokes as the other reviews:
http://article.nationalreview.com/348929/iis-he-deadi-is-alive/deroy-murdock

[Millet's The Gleaners, 1857, from pioneerwoman.com]

review of *The Illusion*

(seen Oct. 18 at Cowles Auditorium; remaining performances on Oct. 23-24)

[ Pierre Corneille, 1606-84 ]

The final twist in Tony Kushner’s adaptation of Corneille’s The Illusion (at Whitworth, Oct. 23-24) is so ingenious, so unexpected, that it drew gasps and delighted laughter.

A lawyer seeks out a magician for helping in conjuring visions of the lawyer’s long-lost son -- and we’re treated to four episodes from the son’s life. Except that the details are all off, distorted. The father’s confused: Why are the situations and characters in my son’s life sort of what I expected, but also terribly inconsistent?

In a play that’s all about acting and metatheatrical in the extreme, the Whitworth student actors are all engaging. (Sorry, away from my program just now.) Diana Trotter directs so as to keep the sometimes exaggerated rhetoric of Corneille’s original in check, leavening it with jokes and undercutting the sentimentality. Peter Hardie designed the cave-interior set, complete with unexpected features that  certainly help in the special effects department.

For those who love acting and meditating about artifice -- and who like comedy mixed with bits of seriousness -- I’d recommend seeing this show. It appeals to theater types, and it’s not frequently done.

But there are two problem areas. First,.the four episodes ought to be been trimmed: Corneille tends to set up a situation and then elaborate it at length. We get that the idealistic young lover is head-over-heels for the lovely ingenue, and we get that later on, he must be frustrated when reduced to acting as a servant and submitted to men who are clearly his inferior. There’s a through-line, but it’s vague and wispy -- and yet the through-line is the payoff. Bobo’s mind wandered a bit: Now the son has learned to be contrite about his dalliances, and the father and the wizard are still standing around as spectators, and the emotional point of each scene, taken separately, tends to become clear -- and then yammered about at length.

Again, the Whitworth actors were spritely, energetic, engaging. But the scenes didn’t contain enough reversals. 

The second problem area is Leonard Oakland’s performance as Pridamant, the aged lawyer-father. (Full disclosure: It pains me to say this, because Leonard and I taught in the same department from 1990-97, and because he is a wonderfully warm person, gifted teacher, valued colleague and just a swell bon vivant.) But much of his performance is wooden and unconvincing. (There are moments, especially when Pridamant gets to express sarcasm or disappointment in his son’s adventures.) But Leonard is also called upon to express anguish and fear. A lot of his line readings were whiny, hesitant, not fully felt.

None of this should be taken as intending to dissuade playgoers from choosing this  production. And it was especially touching to hear that Trotter wanted Oakland in her cast because, after 43 years of teaching at Whitworth, he has justly earned at paternal image around campus. I mean, the students who get to act with Leonard Oakland are enjoying a real privilege.

But being learned, compassionate, twitchy, wise, eccentric, passionate -- all of which Leonard is -- does not necessarily equate with acting ability. The same lecture-hall talent for being presentational (in delivering a lecture) does not enrich an actor’s interiority. Leonard’s gangly, glasses-on-the-forehead exuberance behind the lectern detracts here from his depiction of Pridamant, who is emotionally distant, disoriented, exasperated, anguished.

Director Diana M. Trotter on Whitworth’s *The Illusion*

at Whitworth’s Cowles Auditorium, 300 W. Hawthorne Rd., on Fridays-Saturdays, Oct. 16-17 and Oct. 23-24, at 8 pm; also on Sunday, Oct. 18, at 2 pm. Tickets: $7; $5, students and seniors. Call 777-3707. Or go here.

Bobo’s Q&A with director Diana Trotter of Whitworth’s Theater Arts department and (at the end) with Leonard Oakland of Whitworth’s English department (and of Movies 101 and the Sunday-morning classical music show on KPBX) — a mashup of three e-mail exchanges:

In 1988, Tony Kushner revised Pierre Corneille’s 1636 play, L’Illusion Comique. He has added scenes, modernized the language (removed all those Alexandrine couplets) and more. 

Bobo:  I read it years ago and hated it, and all I know is: It's about regrets, false memories, the old man wishing he'd been a better parent, alternate realities, and so on. But I’m excited to see it onstage.
Professor Trotter:  Wow! I love it! But I do find as with all Kushner’s plays, that it doesn’t give itself up on the first reading — his plays get better and better for me each time I read them. I think he’s deceptively brilliant. And I personally love his ironic sense of comedy that pokes through even the most tragic of moments.

Why should we pay attention to some dumb 300-year-old French play?
Because Kushner has made it very relevant to a contemporary audience by highlighting what is not only timeless, but transforming it into a contemporary setting. The play challenges our clichés and assumptions, our dreams and ideals, by revealing that life isn’t a fairy tale and things are not always what they seem — which to me seems very contemporary. Yet there is still tremendous hope and power in his play. It’s a play that strikes me as refreshingly truthful and honest — ironic, given its title and theme. Ah! I love Kushner!
I’ve wanted to do this play for years – I think it’s probably one of the most challenging pieces I’ve ever done. I find it funny, poignant, joyous, tragic, and ultimately redemptive — but not an easy, pat redemption. Rather, it’s a redemption that comes from pain and growth as we learn to see ourselves as we truly are.

How will you stage it to reflect the play’s dreaminess?
We’re still talking about the design, but the set is really cool with lots of scrims to help us with theater magic. I would like to use as much theater magic as we’re able to come up with in our severely limited facility… Lighting and soundscape will be big factors, I imagine.

What kinds of changes did Kushner make?
For me, the really significant aspect of what Kushner has done is that he’s taken a very conventional romance/adventure and explored what’s beneath it. He’s taken two- dimensional, stereotypical characters common in 17th-century French drama and played with what would happen if they turned out to be real human beings with flaws. What’s beyond happily-ever-after? What motivates behavior that we just take for granted in an adventure? What happens if the hero loses the duel?
Kushner’s use of language is beautiful, rich and full of powerful imagery – but without the opaqueness of Corneille’s 17th-century verse. He also has his trademark sensibility of ironic humor — sometimes smacking us out of a false sentiment with a splash of cold water, as it were. Yet he also never shies away from deep genuine sentiment. I find this play heartbreakingly beautiful and poignant. His other characteristic is his ambiguity: When I teach this play, the students are always split over whether the ending is hopeful or bleak.

What are the play’s themes?
The cost of genuine love, the price and pain of redemption, the power of the arts and of the intangible “illusions” of life such as love, faith, hope, transcendence.

What's the funniest line or episode from the play? (Don't give away any spoilers — but I'm afraid people might think it's all very heavy and intellectual.)
It’s so not heavy and intellectual — it’s a comedy, albeit an ironic one, with surprising poignancy and depth. There’s a Don Quixote-type character who is hilarious. And a fight between two rivals who are too young to know how to fight that’s also really funny. The other fights are exciting and scary!

Why does the magician show the old man his son in three differing and varied scenarios? What's the point of introducing all the confusion?
Well, now, there’s the question! I’m not telling because that would be a spoiler.

What's been the biggest surprise in rehearsals so far?
How challenging this play is. But then, I really wasn’t surprised by that. The actors have to play characters who are the same but also different in each of the three scenarios. They have to grow up and mature as the scenes get more complex — it’s not easy!



Anything else?
Leonard Oakland is playing the role of the father who comes seeking information about his rebellious son — I’m really excited about that! He’s really talented and has such a strong wonderful presence as the father. Plus his role as a mentor to so many students at Whitworth makes him doubly resonant as the father figure at odds with his child.


Bobo’s e-mail exchange with Leonard Oakland:
Bobo:  What are Pridamant's two best and two worst traits? (I don't have a script. I keep reading that he has his faults and virtues — but what are they?)
Professor Oakland:  He is a granite-hearted, vain and rich lawyer who drove out his son years ago. He is ashamed to be visiting a sorcerer for news of his son, but he can’t stop thinking about him, now that he is facing death.
He is not a man of many evident virtues or kindnesses, he lacks self-knowledge (always a dead give-away), but he is shocked into tears (his first ever) by the visions of his son provided by the sorcerer.

In slogging through rehearsals, do you have newfound respect for actors? In what sense?
I have a huge respect for actors (my daughter has been one much of her life, though not at present). I also have a renewed respect for the ability of 20-year olds to memorize lines quickly. The students are all off-book, but I am not despite going over and over my speeches. When actors are working well, they convey a brilliance it is almost hard to watch up close, when I am on the stage. And they have apparently endless energy (even in flu season).

Has the father/son dynamic in the play at all affected your father/son dynamic in real life?
Not at all. I have always been brutal to my children to prepare them for the world, so Pridamant is merely typecasting.

[ photo: from a Feb. 2005 production of The Illusion at the University of South Carolina; see more photos here ]

You need a docent

...to lead you through Brooke Kiener's inventive production of Tina Howe's *Museum* at Whitworth. Only tonight and Saturday at 8 pm. But arrive early: You'll be escorted by a guy in a beret or an intense German postmodern woman past actual art to linger in front of "installations" that mock the pretentiousness of so much modern art. (The brief "tours" start around 7:15 pm.)

Bobo's away from his notes now and has spent all week slaving over next week's Best Of issue for The Inlander, but ... here goes. He really wants to recommend this show, kicks himself for not posting here sooner.
Only 200 admitted per performance; stadium-style seating, so you're staring at others who are staring at the art and you. Causes intense self-awareness. 19 actors play 40 roles -- therefore, you're not likely to see this 1976 script performed anytime soon anywhere other than in college or community theaters. And this production is, in many ways, a model of what a college show should be.
There are long patches in the script and the acting that are too broad and over-elaborated or over-acted, but ... it's an exceptional theatrical experience. No plot, just a pastiche (or is that panache, or paradigm?**) of linked vignettes involving the oddballs who hang out on the last day of an avant-garde art exhibit.
Kiener managed to collaborate on a large scale with Whitworth's art dept., whose students created the white paintings (!) and dummies on a clothesline (so evocative of the human predicament, in a post-post-modern way, don't you know?) along with another dozen collage-sculptures, all of which become, at various points, hilariously focal within the show.
Two gay men pontificate about art, the front of their hips preceding them into the space by several seconds as they prance about. Photographers and angry young sketch artists. Wealthy ladies who lunch (and gossip about art). Lunatics. Giggling schoolgirls. Tasteless Texans. More than I can even remember just now. The pace and the comedy are maintained well.
It may add up to a "Huh?" experience for some, but I think the comedy nicely balanced the thrust of all the pre-show manuevering, which gets us questioning, "What IS my relationship to art? Why DO we sort of assume that all art must be approached with great seriousness? When did the experts' insistence of art's need to have political meaning begin to outweigh simple, visceral pleasure of color and beauty?"
Thanks to all at Whitworth for bringing a provocative, funny, cleverly staged show to our area.

You need a docent

http://www.daraseitzman.com/images/shows/museum/pc.jpg
...to lead you through Brooke Kiener's inventive production of Tina Howe's *Museum* at Whitworth. Only tonight and Saturday at 8 pm. But arrive early: You'll be escorted by a guy in a beret or an intense German postmodern woman past actual art to linger in front of "installations" that mock the pretentiousness of so much modern art. (The brief "tours" start around 7:15 pm.)

Bobo's away from his notes now and has spent all week slaving over next week's Best Of issue for The Inlander, but ... here goes. He really wants to recommend this show, kicks himself for not posting here sooner.
Only 200 admitted per performance; stadium-style seating, so you're staring at others who are staring at the art and you. Causes intense self-awareness. 19 actors play 40 roles -- therefore, you're not likely to see this 1976 script performed anytime soon anywhere other than in college or community theaters. And this production is, in many ways, a model of what a college show should be.
There are long patches in the script and the acting that are too broad and over-elaborated or over-acted, but ... it's an exceptional theatrical experience. No plot, just a pastiche (or is that panache, or paradigm?**) of linked vignettes involving the oddballs who hang out on the last day of an avant-garde art exhibit.
Kiener managed to collaborate on a large scale with Whitworth's art dept., whose students created the white paintings (!) and dummies on a clothesline (so evocative of the human predicament, in a post-post-modern way, don't you know?) along with another dozen collage-sculptures, all of which become, at various points, hilariously focal within the show.
Two gay men pontificate about art, the front of their hips preceding them into the space by several seconds as they prance about. Photographers and angry young sketch artists. Wealthy ladies who lunch (and gossip about art). Lunatics. Giggling schoolgirls. Tasteless Texans. More than I can even remember just now. The pace and the comedy are maintained well.
It may add up to a "Huh?" experience for some, but I think the comedy nicely balanced the thrust of all the pre-show manuevering, which gets us questioning, "What IS my relationship to art? Why DO we sort of assume that all art must be approached with great seriousness? When did the experts' insistence of art's need to have political meaning begin to outweigh simple, visceral pleasure of color and beauty?
Thanks to all at Whitworth for bringing

(** in-joke for those who've seen the show)

Diana Trotter on *The Cradle Will Rock* at Whitworth

(photo: Marc Blitzstein at the piano; undated, possibly from c. 1937)
at Cowles Auditorium
Thursday, Oct. 9 (dress rehearsal), Fridays-Saturdays, Oct. 10-11 and 17-18, at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, Oct. 12, at 2 pm
$7; $5, students
Call 777-3707

from Wikipedia:
*The Cradle Will Rock* is a 1937 musical by Marc Blitzstein. Originally a part of the Federal Theatre Project, it was directed by Orson Welles, and produced by John Houseman.
The musical is a Brechtian allegory of corruption and corporate greed. Set in "Steeltown, USA", it follows the efforts of Larry Foreman to unionize and otherwise combat wicked businessman Mr. Mister. Blitzstein portrays a whole panoply of societal figures: Mr. Mister's vicious, outwardly genteel philanthropic wife and spoiled children, sell-out artists, poor shopkeepers, immigrant families, a faithless priest, and an endearing prostitute named Moll. The piece is almost entirely sung-through, giving it many operatic qualities, although Blitzstein (as he often did, even in his full-blown operas) included popular song styles of the time.

See the Oct. 9 Inlander, p. 40, for Tammy Marshall's article on the show

** Bobo: Honestly, were you attracted to doing the show even before Tim Robbins’ ’99 movie?
Diana Trotter, professor of theater arts, Whitworth University: I was always interested in the show because I of course had read about it, and was very curious about what it looked and sounded like. When I saw the movie and saw the re-enactment of some of the scenes and heard the music, I fell in love with it. It’s been on my short list of “must-do” plays for a few years now. I love that big presentation style, I love the music, and of course I love the political and social commentary.

** Musically, what’s the most complex moment in the show, the most difficult to stage?
Trotter: A lot of the music is very challenging — one of the most complex aspects is that even the dialogue is underscored and thus has to be in rhythm with the music, and some of those places are really tricky. In the final scene, there is a montage of overlapping singing and dialogue that was a bear to put together — both musically and in terms of staging.

[ Bobo sez: There's a kind of surprise ending to Trotter's staging of *Cradle* -- He wishes he could give it away, but has been sworn to secrecy. Let's just say that Blitzstein's power-to-the-people theme will be embodied by the staging at one point. ]

** Whitworth students tend to be upper-middle-class (and not working class) and conservative (not liberal). Doesn’t that affect the students’ receptiveness to a show like this? And hasn’t this wealthy/conservative bias only GROWN in the 15 years you’ve been there?
Trotter: I think the bias has grown, although in just these past couple of years I have seen a shift in the other direction among the students. There is a lot more concern about the environment and other social causes on campus then there used to be. I think the Murdock grant (five years, $5 million) really changed the climate here — a lot more intentional emphasis on social justice, civic engagement, community-based programming. It’s made a difference. I also think that the very fact that our students come from a particular social and economic background makes this play very important from an educational standpoint, because they don’t know about the history of labor or of unions. They don’t know much about the Federal Theatre Project (until they take Theatre History). But because they’ve been involved with this show, they know more about those issues than they used to. And we’ve talked a lot about how these issues are once again becoming critical as we move in to this global economy with job outsourcing and endless reductions in the very benefits they were fighting for in the 1930s. As the market has crashed and we witness this incredible economic catastrophe, the issues raised in the play become even more interesting to them. As for students NOT in the play, many freshman seminar sections are requiring attendance. And we have a high school audience of more than 700 coming next Thursday morning for our reduced-rate school production.

** You have smart students there, but I bet there were jaw-dropping things that they DIDN’T know about the Depression (setting aside Welles, Houseman, the WPA, unions, etc.) Any examples you care to share?
Trotter: They didn’t realize that most of the benefits we take for granted didn’t exist in those days: worker’s comp, minimum wage, 40-hour work week, anti-discrimination, at-will firings, etc. They also didn’t know about the violence perpetrated by the companies and the government on the workers. I sent them news articles about some of the strikes back in the 1930s, and they were stunned by what they read. At this age, they have an innate sense of fairness and are easily outraged by what they see as injustice once they know about it.

** And as Trotter notes, the 1937 production of *The Cradle Will Rock* represents the only time in American history when the government sent armed guards to keep a play from being performed.