Cambridge, MA

I am just wrapping up my second week in Cabridge, assistant directing BEST OF BOTH WORLDS at the American Repertory Theater. Is has been a whilrwhind! I find that assistant directing always takes over my life more than I expect, but this show is especially that way.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS is a new gospel and R&B musical based on Shakespeare's THE WINTERS TALE. The music is by Diedre Murray and the book and lyrics are by Randy Weiner and Diane Paulus, who is directing. The musical has a cast of nine including a child actor, a four-piece band, a big car on stage 20+ songs that -- along with the book, choreography, and staging -- are constantly evolving, so there is a lot of work for everyone involved.

The cast is made up of some AMAZING performers, many of whom are Broadway or opera veterans. Hearing them sing this music every day is thrilling. One song, sung by Jeannette Bayardelle, makes me cry every time I hear it-- to the point that it's hard for me to write down the blocking!

My duties in rehearsal encompass a lot of different tasks. In general, I try to anticipate Diane's needs, to offer creative ideas when she invites them, and to help stage management stay on top of organizing and tracking rewrites, new music, schedules, and all the other paperwork and details in the rehearsal room.

Heres a "day in the life" for me right now.

8am Check e-mail for rewrites that come from the authors overnight, and forward to stage management to start making a plan with them on how to implement the changes.

9am Walk to the rehearsal space in Harvard Square. It is a beautiful 20-minute walk among elegrant old brick homes with a canopy of red and yellow leaves overhead(see the photo above). It is truly the perfect change of scene from NYC, where I have been for the past five years.

9:30-11 Prep for the day alongside stage management or attend some kind of design/production meeting -- such as visiting the car in the scene shop to find out what kind of flexibility it has for staging.

11-2 Rehearsal. During music reherasal, I double-check the lyrics in the book against the lyrics in the score. This is also when I accomplish a lot of paperwork and script updates with stage management. It's also the time when I sometimes run scenes with the actors who are not needed for music reheearsal for a particular song.

During staging, I sit near Diane and the choreographer. I write down blocking, take notes down for Diane, and sometimes jump up to walk someone's role or whisper a quick message in the music director's ear. Diane is an incredible leader. She works very collaboratively, but make decisions quickly and effectively. She moves fast and demands great focus and creativity from the actors. Keeping up with her is an exciting challenge, and getting to occasionally be another set of hands or ears for her is a treat.

2-3 Lunch. Which means more organizational work with stage management, pow-wowing with our choreographer, composer, and/or music director, running errands to the theater, and hopefully, eating something!

3-7 More rehearsal.

7-8 Some days, pow-wow with Diane and dramaturg about possible script changes. And every day, meet with stage management to compare notes about changes and help plan the schedule for the next day.

9-11 Eat dinner and review notes on staging / update out-of-town members of the creative team about progress/changes/questions from rehearsal.

These are full days!

It can be exhausting, but now that I've in settled into Cambridge and am getting to know everybody, it's easy to stay energized, because I am genuinely excited about this show and am eager to see it put in front of audiences here. Diane's enthusiasm and seemingly boundless energy is also infectious; you almost can't help being passionate about the work we're doing as soon as you walk in the door at A.R.T.

So all's well on my front. Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope to write more soon.

(posted by Laura)

It's Opening Night!

Today, the new Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in the AT&T Performing Arts Center will officially be unveiled. The preview period for Kevin Moriarty's inaugural production of A Midsummer Night's Dream has been fairly epic. Preview audiences have been test subjects for both the play, and the building itself. While it is fairly simple to gauge whether or not a moment is clear and engaging via the audience response, figuring out the nooks and crannies of the building has proved far more tricky. Last night, we had a patron get locked into an elevator chamber for the duration of the play! The first clue that we had that anything was wrong was 911 showing up in the theatre lobby! But the entire company is absolutely engaged in the frantic drive over the finish line: light cues are being polished, special effects tweaked, and acting notes addressed. Tonight, the company will face the Dallas glitterati (audiences here sure know how to dress for the occasion), and tomorrow, the verdict will be delivered!

In the meantime, here are snapshots of the exterior of the brand new theatre, the first thing that audiences will see as they arrive.



Warmest congratulations to the DTC company of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on arriving at this moment.

(posted by Ed)

Dallas in Magic Hour

The City of Dallas is going through a very visible process of progress and development. Somewhat unusually for the times we are in, it is chock full of ambitious construction projects and new additions to its richly textured cityscape. I found myself in a reflective mood yesterday, going into one of our final previews and anticipating the biggest theatrical opening night in Dallas history tomorrow, and so I took a long walk during my dinner break. I found myself confronted by a city of changing colors during a vibrant sunset. It quite an emotional experience, which I realized was because it is also the magic hour of the production process, in which everyone is journeying toward the final destination of the play. Everyone connected to the production process is profoundly affected by a sense of endings, and new beginnings, and the vulnerability that this brings on often gives rise to hidden layers still buried under the surface of the text. It is a pregnant moment, full of possibility and expectation. It is how I will remember the city of Dallas.






(posted by Ed)

Looking to Thanksgiving

We're in the midst of previews for "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and I find myself looking forward to a little holiday. Thanksgiving is my favorite U.S. tradition. We have nothing like it in Indonesia, or in the U.K., the two countries in which I grew up. The theatre to me is like the Thanksgiving table - it provides an event around which friends and family (and strangers) can congregate and share in a basic, fundamental human activity. For me, making a feast and making a play are two not so different things. My directing mentor in grad school watched me cook dinner for him and told me that he had diagnosed everything he needed to understand about my directing from my cooking technique. I was not entirely sure what he meant at the time, but the comment stuck in my head and I can now see a clear relationship between how I cook and how I direct! I love to use the freshest produce from the farmer's markets, and love to explore how an unexpected combination of meats might interact with one another. I have my stock ingredients that go into everything - garlic, ginger, organic soy, truffle oil, palm sugar, organic chicken stock, cilantro, chives and habanero chilli peppers - but I tend to mix, blend and cook them into the meal in a different way each time. I cook to taste, and never with a recipe. The food is a form of Asian fusion soul food - a reflection of all the different cultures I've been exposed to. Recently, I've become very interested in cooking each individual component separately, and finally mixing them all into the final dish by hand. It makes the contribution of each different element very distinct, but still cohesively blends together. That philosophical transition is clearly reflected in how I am approaching the different elements of the design process for The Red Umbrella! I am excited to see how my exposure to the culinary pleasures of Dallas will influence my theatrical aesthetic!

Some dishes I've encountered and loved during my time in Dallas:

(posted by Ed)

hitting the press

Greetings from Addams Family tech in Chicago.

We had a major meet-the-press event yesterday at the Oriental. Here is one of the articles that came out of it (including a cool feature showing different incarnations of the Addams Family through the decades).

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/weiss/1838279,CST-FTR-Addams22.article#

Also in Addams Family news, sadly, Vic Mizzy, the original composer of the Addams Family theme (buh-buh-buh-bumb, snap-snap) passed away at 93.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-vic-mizzy20-2009oct20,0,1713293.story

-david

First Day of Tech

Tomorrow is our first day of tech in a brand new theatre in a newly opened building. And this is what it looks like:

(posted by Ed)

Thoughts on Chicago...

Why being in Chicago with the Addams Family is so special...

Chicago is my hometown. I lived in this area until I was 18, and then again in my early twenties as a freelance director. Now I am back, as a Drama League fellow on the Addams Family, which is currently in tech at the Oriental Theatre (and I do mean "currently": I am sitting in the theatre right now.) Being back here "on assignment" is wonderfully weird. I am here for the first time, and I am coming home. I have been keeping a mental list of these surprises and contradictions:

... From my fabulous 29th Floor company-provided studio apartment, I can see the RR Donnelly building and the Merchandise Mart, places I temped as a starving artist in Chicago ...

... Adams Street in downtown Chicago, named for our 2nd and 6th Presidents and the street on which my father has worked for 15 years, now seems to be missing a second "D".

... I left Chicago to be a Luce Scholar in Vietnam ... so is it a coincidence that I am back to work on a project in the ORIENTAL Theatre?

I'll keep thinking of more. In the meantime, I just feel grateful to be here, excited for the cast to arrive this weekend, and looking forward to the next few weeks working on my first pre-Bway musical.

More updates to come.

David

All About The Red Umbrella

Pre-production is officially in full swing on DirectorFest. I am directing The Red Umbrella, a short play written by my long-time collaborator and friend, Jason Williamson. This marks our tenth collaboration; we've worked together on a range of material from his original plays to reshapings of classic text to new adaptations of foreign plays. We enjoy working together because we share the fundamental philosophy that the stage should be a place for stories that have to be told theatrically. For us, this means heightened language, theatrical spectacle, and stories that don't confine themselves to the kitchen sink and reach beyond the stars. What we both embrace in our work is the inherent artifice of theatrical representation. We do not seek to duplicate "reality." Anne Bogart compares truth with the sun; in order to really look at it, one must look slightly to the side. That is what we hope to do in any project we realize.

The greatest pleasure out of working together so closely and so often is that we've developed a very close relationship. We've spent so many nights dreaming together that any opportunity to create a new piece is simply another chance to push each other to a place we've never been to. As Jason is fond of saying, the history of great collaborations in the theatre is the history of great friendship.

Above, Jason and I on New Year's Eve at a beach in North Carolina, right after an impromptu countdown midnight swim!

The Red Umbrella is a love story between an Everyman and Death, who he meets on the beach as a young boy. Death prophesies that he will see a red umbrella at the moment of his dying. He journeys through life on a quest for the red umbrella that may reunite him with his beloved. The play is a whimsical, sad, funny fairy-tale; I hope to capture both the absurdity of the picture of the world it paints as well as the profound truths it contains in telling the story of a mortal man who reconciles himself to both fate and mortality. In the preliminary design conversations, I've asked designers not to consider any part of this world literally. I would like to find a way to create a visual language for the play that is rooted in poetic metaphor, without deviating so far away from a recognizable reality that the characters become ungrounded.

Below, some pictures of productions that Jason and I have worked on together:

Above, Agnes the preacher's wife is haunted by the Hawk in our adaptation of Ibsen's Brand.

Above is a Sea God comes ashore to romance a mute nymph in Jason's play Ether Steeds.

Below, our most recent collaboration, an original adaptation of Schiller's Don Carlos. This scene sees Crown Prince Carlos importune his father King Philip for leadership of Spain's army.

(posted by Ed)

Wining and Dining

In non rehearsal room news, I have been enjoying exploring the culinary delights of Dallas. Remarkably untouched by the recession, Dallas is overflowing with a plethora of restaurants, bars, delis and markets. DTC Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty takes pains to encourage a communal culture around him, which means we have been taken on a culinary tour of the city over the meals that the artistic team has shared. I am a big believer that community is one of the precious gifts of the theatremaking process, so discovering this tradition has been one of the more joyous aspects of this assistantship. Sitting down to break bread together means that you continuously foster and affirm a sense of family, and it determines that everyone starts and ends their days on the same page. Thank goodness the guest artist apartments at DTC has a fully-equipped gym (and a fully-equipped gym staff ...).

Below, three prize-winning dishes from different eateries around town, ranging from the fancy schmancy to the downright hearty:

Smoked veal in a red wine reduction, served with potato two ways: custard filled potato pastry, and a hearty chive mash.

Spinach salad with smoked chicken, French blue cheese, caramelized onions, sweet pear slices, candied pecan nuts and a completely intoxicating maple vinaigrette. I ate one at the restaurant, and ordered one to take home!

Grilled meatloaf, served with fresh kernel corn and baked squash with onions and garlic, and a pitch-perfect heirloom tomato sauce. This is the dish I'll dream of late at night after I've left Dallas!

(posted by Ed)

Back to Acting

A moment of intense deja vu today! With a Dallas-centric cast of professionals and students, rehearsal conflicts have been a fact of life in the "Midsummer" process, although they have not been a burden thanks to the heroic efforts of stage manager extraordinaire Melissa Daroff. But, it does mean that I am falling frequently prey to that ultimate assistant director hazard: substituting for the missing actor in rehearsal and then catching them up afterwards with what they've missed. So far, I have essayed the parts of Duke Theseus, Amazon Hippolyta, wronged mother Egeus, knavish Puck and lover Lysander. But most often, I've been playing the spunky Hermia, which is a role I once played (as part of an all-male company I belonged to in my teens)! The lines and memories have been coming back in a flood, and I am once again reminded that you can never know what might come in useful at a later date!

Above, myself as Hermia, with Associate Artist Lee Trull's Lysander.

(posted by Ed)

In the midst of "Midsummer"

We're about half-way through "Midsummer," and have completed the initial draft of the play. All entrances and exits have been determined, and main playing spaces defined. The company cannot move into their new theatre (see pics from previous posts!) until tech, so we are simulating a multi-level groundplan in a one-level rehearsal room.

Try miming this without the ledge, or the pipe to hold onto!

Director Kevin Moriarty is making a conscious effort toward utilizing the entirety of the stage, backstage and the house in an effort to consecrate the whole building through this inaugural production, so there is a lot of humorous miming of going up and down ladders and sitting on top of each other going on in rehearsal!

Above, three actors seem to be occupying the same corner of the rehearsal room. In reality, they are on three different levels of the theatre. Tech is going to be fun!

Kevin has smartly chosen not to have any doubling, which means that he can be staging the Lovers while the voice and text coach prepares the Royals and the choreographer works with the Fairies and I review the Mechanicals. Four rooms on the go all the time!

(posted by Ed)

DirectorFest Line-Up Announced!

Mark Dec. 10 - 13 in your calendars now! DirectorFest is coming, and it will feature (not necessarily in this order!):

"The Lover" by Harold Pinter

directed by Laura Savia

"Roberta Laughs" by Bekah Brunstetter (premiere)

directed by David F. Chapman

"The Coupling Heuristic" by Lauren Feldman (premiere)

directed by Mike Donahue

"The Red Umbrella" by Jason Williamson (premiere)

directed by Ed Iskandar

See you there!

(posted by Ed)