Mike here – it’s been about a week since we got back from the retreat, and we’re in the thick of our fall fellowship! So much has happened already, and the rest is in full swing – David and Laura have done a great job detailing much of what we’ve been doing, so I’ll just fill in a few things along the way –
For me, Drama League has been my way to move to New York – I went straight from college to grad school, and since graduating from Yale in 2008, I’ve been living on a Fulbright in Berlin, seeing over 130 productions, observing rehearsals at all of the major state theatres, and developing my own work. After a summer at Williamstown, I finally moved to NYC the day before we began Wonder Week! (Well, technically I just a week ago moved into my apartment in Carrol Gardens, where we’re still painting and building dining room tables out of floor boards from barns being dismantled in upstate New York – for the first week of Drama League, Ed and I were roomies at the Pod on East 51st, living in bunk beds with our own flat screen TV’s!).
Wonder Week was jam packed with meetings and shows, and as someone who’s been away from New York ‘til now, one of the most important parts of the fall fellowship – a few highlights were meeting with the SDC, and with agent Val Day – coming out of grad school, I had a lot of questions about working with agents & our union, when to get an agent / when to join the union etc., and it was great to have an opportunity to speak with people who could really advise us. Also: being introduced to New Dramatists – what an amazing place! Though I’ve just moved into my new apartment, I can’t wait to *actually* move into the library at New Dramatists to start reading plays! During Wonder Week we also saw some really exciting productions, met with Drama League alums, directors / producers / artistic directors, and (another highlight) sat in on a put-in rehearsal for BILLY ELLIOT!
After Wonder Week we piled into our cars and drove to the Berkshires (to a farm, Stump Sprouts!) for our retreat. With a great group of actors, director Davis McCallum, and playwright David Adjmi, we pitched Arthur Miller plays (mine: ALL MY SONS, which Davis is actually directing later this year at PlayMakers), directed monologues (I worked on two from AS YOU LIKE IT, one of which we staged in a bathroom, with an Orlando who was forced by his brother to de-clog a toilet with his bare hands following a raucous party the night before) – and we staged two scenes from David Adjmi’s MARIE ANTOINETTE (for sure, the highlight of the retreat!).
The site of my Drama League scene!
I think Stump Sprouts allowed us to do a kind of work we could not have accomplished had we just been in the city for a few days, working in a studio, living in our separate homes, and constantly plagued by cell phones and internet – there’s something about living and eating together, away from all the distractions, with just each other and the work, that creates a kind of ensemble, trust, focus and sheer willingness to take risks that is just invaluable – not to mention the opportunity to stage David’s wonderful writing on top of tractors and running through fields in the middle of the night! As a director who’s especially interested in creating “events”, in working with environment, in constantly exploring, and in playing with the relationship between audience and actor, the chance to really stage scenes moving across landscapes and in and out of buildings was thrilling. (Thanks in no small part to David’s incredible generosity, and all of the invaluable feedback from David, Davis & Roger!). In short, the retreat was an opportunity to work in a safe space the likes of which I haven’t had since grad school – and it was a much-needed chance to see the work of my fellow fellows!! All three – most. talented. All three very different, but clear, strong and exciting work! It’d be great to have even more time to play together, but I’m thankful for the time we did have and look forward to sharing our work with one another again this December!
Indeed, Drama League has given me a community of directors in New York who are all at similar places in their careers, but with vastly different interests, perspectives, and paths. Directing can sometimes be isolating, and it can be hard to find a community of other directors who are willing to really talk through things – and in Drama League, I’ve found three directors whose opinions and insights I value and trust – not to mention three people who are great to hang out with! (I think it was our first night of Wonder Week, when our board member Harry Neyens and his partner Jim Kilpatric most generously hosted us for dinner at Bobby Flay’s restaurant that we realized our similar love of food – and knew that we would all be fast (and foodie) friends!).
And so last night we had our first of what I hope will be many dinner parties. I had just finished auditions for a new show by Erica Lipez I’m putting up in the city later this month and was in the midst of casting decisions, and in addition to the fantastic food (Ed made a delicious chicken sausage & lamb curry, and an amazing gluten-free fresh blueberry bread pudding!), it was great to have a group of directors with whom I could discuss pros and cons of various casting dilemmas.
And – last night, the first major round of paper work for NICHOLAS NICKLEBY arrived in my inbox, so it’s time to really start up on my fall assistantship at full! I’ll be headed to PlayMakers in North Carolina for more or less all of October and November to assist Joe Haj and Tom Quittance on a 6.5 hour adaptation of NN – the script’s about 400 pages long, the novel nearly 800, we’ve a cast of 25, and we’ll have at least two if not three rehearsal rooms running simultaneously (Joe & Tom will be co-directing the ENTIRE show) – so it’ll be big! And I can’t wait – I had a wonderful conversation with Joe and Tom over the summer about the show, and the way they want to work on it – they’re both very process-oriented, which I love, and I already know this will be a great, once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience! Right now, I’m about to start going through the script with the complete casting breakdown to figure out who can possibly understudy what…!
Otherwise, we’re just a few short days away from selecting our one acts for DirectorFest (more on this to come for sure, but basically, we each direct a 20 to 30 minute piece with 3 actors – we each work with a casting director, we’ve a team of designers, and Drama League rents out an off-Broadway theatre for us!). I’ve got a few scripts I’m looking at, very different from one another, with different sets of challenges – but I’m excited about them all (just had a reading of one last week)!
Off to Boston tomorrow to audition/cast a show I’m doing this winter with the A.R.T. Institute / Harvard, and I’m taking my NICHOLAS NICKLEBY script, novel and paper work, and my DirectorFest scripts, all in hand – so – more soon!
Cheers,
Mike
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