Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
Rehearsal
Page 1 of 4 pages 1 2 3 > Last »
March 2, 2010
Cave of Illusions
Like the pictures Drew posted below show, The Illusion takes place in a Magician’s cave. In the center of the cave on a great slab, the Magician Alcandre conjures a representation of life for his customer Pridamant. It’s been difficult when working on this play not to think of one of the most famous caves in the history of Philosophy: Plato’s Allegory of the cave from The Republic. In this Plato equates the difference between the truth and what we perceive, with a person chained in a cave able only to see shadows on a wall. Without giving too much away, it’s certain that the images that Alcandre creates in his cave are not the truth - they are a representation. Still, they have much to teach Pridamant as you can see when we open. And opening is scarily close!
Check out the Allegory of the Cave in Allan Bloom’s translation below, and be sure to check back for more updates as we go into Technical rehearsals this weekend!
February 18, 2010
A View from the Room
Our first week of rehearsals for The Illusion has come to an end and we’re already headlong into our second. It’s easy at this point to start worrying only about how far we have to go, but it’s worthwhile to see where we’ve been already.
The first rehearsal was fantastic. The rehearsal hall was packed with members of the cast, design team, Court Staff, board members, and students of a remarkably unique class being taught at the University this quarter. (More on that later.)
After introductions and design presentations, like the costume designs Drew posted below, we got right down into reading. Let me say, this cast is fantastic, and the show is complicated and rich. Tony Kushner’s adaptation is an adaptation in the strongest sense. He has taken the outline and some themes from Corneille’s original and has created an entirely new piece informed and inspired by another but possessing a complete life of its own.
Appropriately for any play named The Illusion, the show is full of all sorts of delightful visual tricks that Charlie and our amazing band of designers have cooked up, but what’s consistently exciting about the piece is the extent to which these delights are balanced with a play full of poetry and ideas, rooted in the past, but in dialogue with the present. It’s a real thrill to be a part of this show, keep checking back here for more updates throughout our process!
January 8, 2010
The Year of Magical Thinking Rehearsals
Welcome to Court Theatre’s blog, Open Rehearsal! I’m Artistic Director Charlie Newell, and I’ll be chronicling my rehearsal process of The Year of Magical Thinking all the way up through our first preview on January 14 and beyond. The process for this upcoming show has been so unusual and personally challenging that I thought it worthwhile to share it here.
The Year of Magical Thinking is Joan Didion’s dramatic adaptation of her own memoir. It is a moving but piercingly honest account of the death of her husband, John, and the year of disorientation that followed. The play also chronicles the death of Didion’s daughter, Quintana, less than two years later. Written for only a single actor, it is an Everest of dramatic writing.
Despite the unexpected pleasure of getting my wisdom teeth removed last month, Mary Beth Fisher and I began rehearsal on The Year of Magical Thinking in early December and continued all the way up to our holiday break. Because this play is written for only one actor, our rehearsals have been more flexible, though not less focused. Mary Beth and I are free to test-drive new ideas, thoughts, and instincts about Joan Didion’s text as they crop up, and the dead ends we discover are equally important to the breakthroughs. A constant concern of ours, of course, is to modulate the tone of the piece. We face two pitfalls: on the one hand, sentimentality, and on the other, cold detachment. Every day, like frontier surveyors, we discover a little bit more of the emotional truth of the text.
This week we finished up our time in the rehearsal hall with a full-blown run-through of the show for our design team, and I’m thrilled with how far the piece has come. Today we move into the theater to begin tech, but even as my immediate attention turns to lights and sound and space, I still haven’t completed my work with Mary Beth. Just this week the two of us discovered a new understanding of the last third of the show, and I’m eager to try out our new ideas!
May 5, 2009
It’s Time for Tech Rehearsals
Seemingly mere moments after my last blog post, The Piano Lesson team now find ourselves deep into the tech process. We’ve moved from the rehearsal space to our Abelson auditorium and are enjoying setting up shop in the space. It’s wonderful to be in the theatre, on the set, and to actually physically move in. Our props artist, Lara Musard, is filling cupboards and stocking Doaker’s pantry. Set designer Keith Pitts is contemplating tablecloths, sound designer Nick Keenon is choosing our sound palette, while lighting designer Richard Norwood is trying different hues to showcase the performers, props, Christine Pascual’s rich costumes, and to indicate Sutter’s ghost.
It feels like a particularly ripe time to be producing August Wilson, given that he is in the news so much right now with several articles on the choice of Bartlett Sher to direct Joe Turner’s Come and Gone on Broadway. Last week, Director Ron OJ Parson, Marketing Director Adam Thurman, and myself attended a lively debate hosted by the Bronzeville Arts group the Tofu Chitlin’ Circuit with the subject ‘Should White Directors Direct August Wilson Plays?’ Ron and Adam were among the panelists, and after almost three hours the group was still engrossed in a passionate and heated conversation that continues.
Back in Hyde Park, it is wonderful to work with this group of artists, many of whom knew August Wilson. On the first day of rehearsal the cast sat down to discuss their experiences with Wilson and his plays. A selection of this conversation will appear in the program; a full transcript appears here:
http://www.courttheatre.org/season/article/cast_crew_roundtable_august_wilson/
We have our first preview on Thursday, May 7. We will have post performance conversations following every preview performance and look forward to talking with you. See you soon!
-Kate Bredeson, Resident Dramaturg
April 19, 2009
The First Week of Rehearsal
The first week of The Piano Lesson has been exhilarating. We started on our first day with a read through of the play, followed by a conversation with the cast and director Ron OJ Parson about their previous experiences with August Wilson. Our cast is composed of people who grew up performing in Wilson plays, and of some for whom this is their first Wilson production. This is my first Wilson as well, and I am excited to learn from the Wilson experts in this cast—many of whom knew and worked with the playwright himself. Our inaugural day conversation was quite inspiring and our rehearsals have been high-energy, passionate, and raw as we explore the complex family history and relationships in the play.
From a dramaturgical standpoint, my assistant Christopher Shea and I have enjoyed a veritable feast of historical research. The Piano Lesson is the third play chronologically in the Century Cycle, and it takes place in 1936. Before rehearsals began we did a great deal of inquiry into the Hill District in Pittsburgh (where Wilson lived and set nine of the ten Century Cycle plays), the playwright, stories of African American migration north following the Civil War, and the exchange rates of the money values quoted in the play (the piano of the title was clearly worth quite a lot of cash!) Since rehearsals started, we’ve been presented with other exciting projects— identifying the Yellow Dog railroad line and learning its significance, delving into the horrors of the notorious Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi, and exploring the call-and-response songs common at Parchman and in railroad work in the era of the play.
We look forward to our continuing explorations over the next few weeks. Ron has assembled an extraordinary cast and we are all excited about this journey.
-Kate Bredeson, Resident Dramaturg
