Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
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May 1, 2012
Defining Dramaturgy…in Verse
We recently received what I would classify as an ode/limerick written in honor of Resident Dramaturg Drew Dir after he spoke at a book club event about Angels in America for one of my group leaders (a group leader meaning someone who coordinates purchasing 10 or more tickets at a time and receives what I would classify as an “awesome” discount on said tickets, but enough about that.)
I will not share the authorship of this poem, unless, of course, the poet would like to come forward, but I couldn’t pass up sharing it with our readers:
It’s only recently that I have heard
‘Bout the position of a Dramaturg.
But my suspicions proved true,
After listening to Drew
That to be one you must be a drama nerd.
Love it.
April 9, 2012
Wearing pants in Temple Square
When I was but a lowly student of the theatre in college, I studied the role of Harper Pitt for one of my most intense (and favorite) acting classes. In this class, appropriately entitled “Developing a Role,” each student picked a character in a play and delved as deeply as possible into the role through research, rehearsal, and performance.
Why am I telling you this, you ask?
Well, all this is to say that when I went to visit a friend who had moved to Salt Lake City after college, I literally couldn’t WAIT to visit Temple Square. Talk about researching for a role. I was going to get to experience Mormonism in Salt Lake first hand!
When I first arrived, I tried to get a sense from my friend of what it was like to live in a community with such a large Mormon presence. I didn’t learn much except that people in Salt Lake fall into two categories: LDS (latter day saints) and non-LDS. If you ever visit Salt Lake and want to fit in, use these terms freely and in abundance. My friend also shared with me that coffee shops played an important role in the non-LDS culture because coffee shops were by definition LDS-free (Mormon’s don’t believe in consuming caffeine).
Fortified by this knowledge, I made my way to Temple Square. Temple Square in Salt Lake City is basically the geographic heart of Mormonism. It is a place of pilgrimage for Mormons and one of the most popular tourist attractions in Salt Lake. Its grounds include “over twenty attractions” according to Utah.com including the Salt Lake Temple, the Tabernacle (home of, you guessed it, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir), the Family History Library, the Church History Library, the Church History Museum, the North Visitor’s Center, the South Visitor’s Center, the Joseph Smith Memorial Building…you get the idea.
I wandered around all day taking in the sights and reading the literature. I even saw the “Joseph Smith movie,” an hour-long piece presented in a massive amphitheater detailing the life, revelations, and death of Joseph Smith. When the movie finished, the lights came up on an interesting juxtaposition between a weeping Mormon couple that was seated in front of me and a large group of Japanese tourists filing loudly out of the theater. Temple Square is an interesting place.
As I meandered through the “attractions,” I did feel a strange, undeniable desire to see the inside of the Temple. It looms large in the center of the square and has a Rococo meets Brutalism meets Disney feel to it (they light it up quite colorfully at night). Non-LDS aren’t allowed inside, making the Temple a sort of “forbidden fruit” as it were. In addition to being intensely curious, I felt a sense that I was different from everyone there, but couldn’t figure out why. Everyone was very polite and maintained a friendly distance; I didn’t feel gawked at or unwelcome so why did I feel out of place? Then I realized it was because I was wearing pants. More specifically, I was a woman, and I was wearing pants. The only woman wearing pants.
It was a truly fascinating trip. I thought you might be interested to see some of the photos I took along the way:
A tourist-friendly map of Temple Square.
The Salt Lake Temple.
A sort of diorama display inside the South Visitor’s Center.
The inside of the Tabernacle.
Some displays from the Family History Museum.
The inside of the amphitheater for the Joseph Smith movie.
And one more just because it’s beautiful. This is from Antelope Island, national state park (and yes, I saw antelope).
April 5, 2012
10 Reasons Why Court Theatre is Doing Angels in America
Angels in America began its second week of previews last night, and so far, the most commonly asked question in our postshow discussions is: why did Court decide to do Angels in America—and why now? We think this is a valid question and wanted to address it. Here are ten reasons:
10. Angels in America is a classic play. Only twenty years after its premiere, it still has the test of time to face; nevertheless, Angels so completely rocked and re-oriented American theatre that we’re still feeling its aftershocks today. It’s all but guaranteed that critics one hundred years from now will identify Angels in America as a pivotal work of drama.
9. The United States still needs political theatre. Angels in America showed critics and audiences that a play could take an ambitious intellectual and political point of view (modeled by Bertolt Brecht) without sacrificing the pathos of the American family/relationship drama (modeled by Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams). Twenty years later (with the exception of plays like Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit or Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Book of Mormon), mainstream drama continues to avoid political content, especially when it’s on Broadway.
8. The United States still needs progressivism. Tony Kushner doesn’t pretend to be a neutral commentator; Angels in America is a full-throated argument in favor of progressive politics as the shortest path to equal rights for Americans of every race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. As the states drag their feet on gay marriage, lawmakers attempt to erode the gains of the feminist movement, and the Supreme Court grants personhood to corporations, Prior Walter’s assertion that “We will be citizens” is just as relevant a call-to-arms as it was twenty years ago. Plus:
7. It’s a presidential election year--so you can register to vote and do something about it.
6. The 1980s are back—with a vengeance. Ronald Reagan remains a powerful American totem, and political issues like the social safety net, national defense spending, federal funding for the arts, and a woman’s right to choose continue to be re-litigated in congress. Forget nostalgia: in so many ways, American politics and culture never left the 80s.
5. AIDS hasn’t gone away. The affected demographic has shifted to children and teenagers, low income individuals, and African Americans—and that’s just in the United States. AIDS is a pandemic, there’s still no cure, and living with AIDS is an expensive lifestyle that not everyone can afford. Every nine and a half minutes, someone in the United States is infected with HIV.
4. Angels in America has become an important history lesson for the next generation. I grew up in the 1990s, and received my fair share of public school education about the HIV virus and how to prevent it. What I didn’t learn about was how Washington ignored the AIDS crisis for years (President Reagan never publicly addressed the crisis until 1987), and how that silence allowed tens of thousands disenfranchised individuals—especially homosexual men—to die. Those lessons I learned from Angels in America, which captures what it felt like to live during the crisis as only a great work of art can do.
3. Court Theatre’s intimate space is the perfect stage for Angels in America. In a larger theatre, Angels can sometimes feel overblown, but in Court’s 250-seat house, Angels in America can be staged as the nimble, intimate play it was intended to be. If you saw Angels in America on Broadway or at the Royal George, Court’s production will be a revelation to you.
2. Staging Angels in America is a challenge—and we love challenges. The play is seven hours long; it contains fifty-nine scenes that demand multiple locations, dozens of costume changes, rain and snow, blood scenes, sex scenes, a Mormon museum exhibit, a flaming book that explodes out of the ground, a ladder that ascends to heaven, and a flying angel. At Court Theatre, we’ve broken new technical ground to make this play happen; that’s exciting for us, and we think our audiences will feel the same way.
1. Charlie Newell and Tony Kushner, together again. After Court Theatre’s tremendous success in producing Caroline, or Change and The Illusion, we realized that the literary fireworks of Tony Kushner’s prose were just as well-matched to the sensibilities of Artistic Director Charlie Newell as the words of Tom Stoppard and Molière. When Kushner and Newell sat down to plan their third collaboration, Kushner was emphatic: he was eager to see Angels in America receive the kind of intimate, intelligent production that Court is known for.
How could we possibly say no?
March 29, 2012
Literary Recipe for Tony Kushner’s Angel
The character of the Angel in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America is a unique dramatic creation that borrows from a host of theological, historical, and cultural inspirations.
Ingredients:
1 cup Book of Genesis, Chapter 32
1 cup Book of Revelations
1/3 cup William Blake
1/3 cup John Milton
1 whole Joseph Smith, trimmed
2 tsp. “The Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges
3 tbsp Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History”
1/2 cup Italian Renaissance, grated
dash of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, to taste
dash of Percy Shelley, to taste
1 flying rig
Mix Book of Genesis story about Jacob wrestling an angel (“I will not let thee go, except thou bless me!”) with Book of Revelations apocalypticism; gradually stir in Italian Renaissance aesthetic traditions of winged angels derived from medieval Catholic theology. Add John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Wiliam Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, depending on your allergies. Allow to set at room temperature; preheat oven to 375 degrees. Stuff angel mixture inside Joseph Smith’s origin story of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, in which the Angel Moroni instructs him to dig up an ancient gold-plated book of scripture and translate it with peep-stones. In a small bowl, mix Borges’ short story about the infinite Hebrew letter Aleph, Benjamin’s essay on the Angel of History that is propelled backwards by a storm called progress, and a dash of Percy Shelley (“Hell is a city much like London” / “Heaven is a place much like San Francisco”) and Star Trek (“protomatter”) for oblique allusion. Spread on top of Joseph Smith, then bake until golden brown, about seven-and-a-half hours (with intermissions). Truss Angel in one Peter Pan-style flying rig breaking through the ceiling of a New York City apartment. Enjoy!
Rembrandt 1659
Eugene Delcroix 1861
Alexander Leloir 1865
Leon Bonnat 1876
Gustav Moreau 1878
Paul Gaugin 1888
Marc Chagall 1963
March 21, 2012
Notes on the Set for Angels
It’s the first day of technical rehearsals for Angels in America, and everyone’s settled in for a marathon two weeks of tech leading up to final dress and previews. As Geoff Packard (Joe) and Heidi Kettenring (Harper) figure out how to navigate a narrow second-story platform with side lights in their eyes, I’m sitting in the back of the theatre soaking in John Culbert’s scenic design. Though I’ve been looking at the set model for six months now, it’s always fascinating to experience the real thing in Court’s intimate, idiosyncratic theatre; it’s a similar thrill to encountering a piece of sculpture for the first time.
Any set for Angels in America needs versatility to represent several different locations in quick succession. Often this results in a set that’s been watered down to be a kind of staging platform for tables, chairs, and beds to be wheeled on and off, but John’s set manages to hold its own integrity as an evocative piece of design. It’s capable of summoning a number of different feelings and impressions, either intentionally or unintentionally:
- It feels like a Greek theater, with a permanent altarpiece in the center that seems ritualistic but can be used practically as well (you could play the Oresteia in this space or, for that matter, all of Shakespeare’s plays—it is classical in its formal neutrality).
-It’s also a modern urban setting; the thick grid of beams on the back wall seem to extend upwards twenty stories past the ceiling of the theater. There are no diagonals or curves in this space, only boxes: everything is man-made. They look like little apartments or rooms, or maybe the long city blocks on the New York City grid.
-While the ruins of San Francisco following the 1904 earthquake were an explicit inspiration for the back wall, the first image that comes to my mind is the World Trade Center—the association isn’t overwhelming but it’s there—I acknowledge it and move on.
-The space is designed so that characters and stories can be rotated and reconfigured like a Rubik’s cube: Prior is rotated next to Harper, then next to Louis, who is rotated next to Joe, who is rotated next to Roy, who is rotated next to Harper. Blue green red white red blue blue green. Like the island of Manhattan, strangers are forced together, then forced apart. Prior’s line: “People come and go so quickly here.” When I get up to go, they’re trying to make Michael Pogue (as Mr. Lies) disappear (no really: disappear.)
-The space is designed to trap light. Keith Parham’s lighting design doesn’t light the set so much as it tries to escape from within it: negotiating corners, adapting to crevices, filling whatever space it can find in cold, stately columns of light. The light breathes from within the ribs of the set.
-The set captures the uneasy relationship between public and private space, which is a condition I associate with New York. Personal space is guaranteed in Chicago, a natural right; in New York, personal space is always negotiated, traded, engineered. I’m somewhat paraphrasing a comment made by Tony Kushner when he was here, though he was relating it to the vowel pronunciations of Midwesterns versus New Yorkers.
