Yellow Wharf Maine

Still in Maine...this yellow wharf is absolutely a feast for the eyes and color palette

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Another Maine painting...Daddy's Shoulders

DMCP photos

As mentioned earlier, here are some photos from the production of Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, which ran from May 6 - 22. The production featured Jenny Strassburg as Jean, Alex Dittmer as Dwight and Gordon, Jeannie Hines as Hermia, Caitlin Glasgo as Carlotta and Robin Ng as Harriet.

empty set with hand-painted cell phone snippets floating like clouds

Jean in the cafe

Hermia's drunken confession

Carlotta's prompting to be beautiful

commiserating with Gordon's mother

Jean liked him better when he was dead

cell phone ballet

Dwight saves Jean

falling in love in the stationery store

 So that's it for season four. I realized toward the end of the season that 4 of the 5 productions were written by women. Certainly wasn't by design, but rather it reflects the current state of theatre in this country. I picked five scripts that I loved and four of them were written by women. It's about damned time that the theatre world caught up.

That being said, I have no idea what shows will comprise the fifth season - I'm not even sure there will be a fifth season. Like most small non-profit theatres, it remains a continual struggle to find the funds to remain open and active. I hope we'll be back.

- Bill

Dead Man's Cell Phone is open

It's been too long since I wrote or blogged or posted or whatever the hell this is. The season is winding down, and I think we're going out with a bang rather than a whimper. I know I took a huge chance by taking on a Sarah Ruhl play, for a number of reasons. Most people (i.e., the general public) don't know who the hell she is. People who work in the theatre know her work . . . and some are enchanted by it and others are turned off (or frightened?) by it. For the actor, her work is particularly challenging because she gives you very little to work with. She demands that an actor bring lots and lots to the table / rehearsal space. For the public, her work is challenging because she really stretches or completely ignores most dramatic conventions. If one demands verifiable reality from start to finish, she will certainly challenge one's perceptions. She's intimidating for a director because there are so many demands and so many wonderful opportunities for provoking news ways for the audience to watch. I really like what she calls her "Hopper moments," where a character is alone and still, seen almost as a piece of sculpture in a specific environment. As a director, I not only have to honor those moments, I have to find a way to celebrate them. I think the pedestal that Sarah places Aristotle on is a bit shorter than the one I use, but it's great fun to look at the world from her perspective.

Bringing Jenny Strassburg and Alex Dittmer up from New York to do this play was not only the right thing to do, it was a real gift. Wonderfully talented people, a joy to be around, people who bring fresh ideas and focused commitment to the work. When I'm creating the painting that is a play, it's great to have a deep and vibrant palette to work with.

One of the nicest surprises was the review that we got. (The review for the last production - Boston Marriage - was . . . ummm . . . stupid.) This one was not only very positive (that sure helps the phone activity) but intelligent and perceptive. Thanks to Nicola Smith for really getting it, and for writing about it so clearly.  Here's the review:

Shaker Bridge’s Exhilarating ‘Cell Phone’

by Nicola Smith

Valley News Staff Writer

Saturday, May 14, 2011

The playwright Sarah Ruhl, who has been awarded a MacArthur fellowship and twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in drama, is one of the most highly touted writers to come up in American theater in the last decade, and after seeing her comedy Dead Man’s Cell Phone in an exhilarating production at Shaker Bridge Theatre in Enfield, it’s not hard to see why.

Her writing is daring and inventive, and pushes at the boundaries of conventional dramaturgy. Sometimes she slips, but she slips in a way that commands your attention, because she’s tried to reshape your notion of what’s possible in a play. She’s not throwing out the dramatic arc entirely, the kind that says you go from Act I to Act III with certain obligations to be met at points A, B and C, but she’s certainly experimenting with it in a way that shifts your perceptions.

Samuel Beckett did this decades ago, as have other playwrights, so while Ruhl is not yet a game changer the way Beckett was - at least not with this play - she is clearly interested in the big questions of life and has the talent to grapple with them in ways that make you think. Even a few days after having seen the production, I’m still going over it in my mind, which isn’t always the case with plays.

Early on in the show, I confess to having felt fidgety. Where was Ruhl going with the play, and why did it seem so disjointed? Was she laying on the quirkiness too thick? Were the characters endearing in their eccentricity or merely annoying? Some of her observations about how technology seems to devour our lives and alter our behaviors are true, but aren’t particularly original at this point. But near the end of Act I and in Act II, Ruhl quickens the pace, the loose threads begin to draw together and she resolves doubts with a gratifying catharsis both comical and poignant.

The premise is this: A young woman sitting in a care is annoyed by the incessant ringing of the cell phone of the man sitting at the table next to her, and asks him politely to answer it. He doesn’t respond and the phone keeps ringing. As you can surmise from the title, the man is dead and can’t answer the phone. But it’s what the young woman, Jean, does next that rockets the audience into a weirder, pixillated sphere. She answers the phone. 

That in itself isn’t so extraordinary. Who hasn’t walked by a public telephone booth (back in the days when there were telephone booths that people stepped into to make a call), heard the phone ringing for no apparent reason and answered it - or been tempted to - just to see who was on the other end, and what the caller wanted? It’s one thing, as a stranger, to briefly interject yourself into somebody else’s drama. But it’s quite another to then take messages for the dead man, named Gordon, meet his family and pretend that you worked for him, which is what Jean does.

She’s a compulsive fabulist, unable or unwilling to stop telling tales about a man she never knew, partly, we sense, because she is lonely and also because she, in a way, has taken on the dead man’s identity, inherited his life - and so, she thinks, his obligations. But there’s the pickle, or the horns of the dilemma. What if the man Jean has invented for herself, and, it turns out, for his family, bears no resemblance to the real Gordon? Jean’s Gordon is sentimental, dedicated and thoughtful. But in reality, Gordon was amoral, crass and opportunistic. Unwittingly, Jean has set into motion a chain of events that do not, safe to say, go as anticipated. But whose fault is that? Gordon, because he lived a life less than pure? Or Jean, who couldn’t resist playing the chivalrous knight? Or is this just the way life goes?

Bill Coons, the director of the play and of Shaker Bridge Theatre, has done a terrific job of confidently juggling all the comedic balls in the air. He keeps the audience just enough off balance to unsettle them, which is what theater ought to do. Coons always picks interesting material, and he’s to be commended for bringing new works and newer playwrights to the attention of Upper Valley audiences.

He has assembled a strong cast here. First and foremost is Jenny Strassburg, who plays Jean as a sweet, addled, slightly crazy do-gooder. She’s always a second away from being exposed as a fraud, but has enough wits about her to recover her footing in time. Because Strassburg is able to convey the utmost sincerity, even when bringing out statements that strain credulity, she’s able to make the unbelievable believable and funny at the same time.

Jeannie Hines, playing Gordon’s widow, Hermia, is neurotic and controlled, until she lets loose in a glorious drunk scene in Act II. Robin Ng, playing Gordon’s mother, with a wig that makes her look a little like John Adams in one of his presidential portraits, is imperious, demanding and as nutty as the rest of them. Caitlin Glasgo, who plays a woman once involved with Gordon, and another woman who expects to profit from his business, holds her own against Strassburg’s Jean.

Alex Dittmer, in the dual role of Gordon and Gordon’s brother Dwight, who falls for Jean, is deft at playing the two sides of the fraternal coin, and is particularly fine in the monologue that opens the second act, when Gordon tells the audience who he really is. This is Gordon’s moment, and I think it’s also when Ruhl puts the audience on notice that here’s a theatrical voice to be reckoned with.

The uncertainties of Act I, the halting communications and miscommunications and the pointedly surreal characters now begin to make dramatic sense. Dittmer has the mannerisms and speech of a self-obsessed, self-important thug down pat: Is it a coincidence that he reminded me of the long, unsavory parade of self-justifying Wall Street bankers who appeared on TV during and after the economic collapse of the fall of 2008?

Ruhl wrote the play well before the events of that fall - and it’s possible she was thinking more of American wars than American avarice - but she seems to have uncannily anticipated the atmosphere of corruption, the frenzied, unbridled consumption and the self-delusional thinking that made the last decade a virtual replay of the Gilded Age, only with Blackberries.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone continues at Shaker Bridge Theatre in Enfield through May 22.

I'll be taking some production shots during this last weekend of the show, and I'll post them soon. If you haven't seen this one yet, take a chance.

- Bill

April 11, 2011

It's been a while . . . Boston Marriage closed over a week ago, so I guess it's time to put up some photos from the production. Here goes -

Anna and Claire imagining "Susan" baking a pie

Anna tells Claire she's romanticizing the mating instinct

Anna thinks Catherine should go home to Ireland

Catherine demonstrating a carnal balance posture

Claire standing vigil for her lost love

Anna fears being rebuked or arrested

Catherine with a particularly unhelpful observation

So the period of working with these wonderful actors has ended, but next week begins work on another play, with more wonderful actors.

Big announcement. Jim Handy (for a variety of reasons beyond his control) won't be able to come to Shaker Bridge to do our scheduled production of The Drawer Boy.  The last several weeks have been a crazy and frenetic re-shuffling. I've decided to do a production of Sarah Ruhl's wonderful play, Dead Man's Cell Phone. It is both funnier and more touching than you can imagine. The two leads will be played by a couple of actors I cast in New York a few weeks ago, and the others in the production will be familiar to much of our audience.

Here's the scoop on the play: Jean spends her free-time reading at coffeehouses whilst the world hums and haws around her.  One day, however, while engrossed in a book, a man next to her refuses to answer his cellphone.  After repeatedly admonishing the man to answer his phone, Jean ventures over to his table, and discovers the stunning reason why the phone was not answered – the man is dead.  As this morbid realization overtakes her, the cellphone again begins to ring; Jean answers it.  So starts the beginning of Jean’s madcap, surreal and at times frustrating journey as created by playwright Sarah Ruhl  – a journey that steamrolls Jean from a dinner with the family of the dead guy (Gordon), a tryst with Gordon’s brother Dwight, separate outings with Gordon’s wife and mistress, a zany afterlife detour, and culminating with a tumultuous rendezvous with underworld dealers of body-organ smuggling.  Whew!


Jean will be played by Jenny Strassburg:

and Gordon (and his brother Dwight!) will feature Alex Dittmer:

The rest of the cast will feature Robin Ng as Gordon's mother, Jeannie Hines as his wife and Caitlin Glasgo as "the other woman." We're all excited to get going on this one, and you'll be able to begin watching the fruits of our labor on May 6, when the production opens. 


Here we go! See you soon,
Bill

Boston Marriage - the review

Yesterday the Valley News published their review of our production. I'm embarrassed for them. I wrote a response, but couldn't decide if I wanted to post it. I thought I'd give myself a full day to cool down and reflect. I'm cool and reflective and posting my response.

* * * * * 

A review of Boston Marriage was in the paper this morning, and it’s a positive one. Positive, but moronic. It reads like a high school book report, whose author has simply ripped off most of it from wikipedia. It’s a “snapshot of the lives of three women.” That is, among other things, a totally meaningless statement. But that pales in comparison to the assertion that the play is about a lesbian relationship. Sure, in the same way that Hamlet is “about” the divine right of kings or Long Day’s Journey is “about” drug use. Please. Next time, Valley News, send someone who has actually graduated from high school.

Almost all of the review (and I use the term very loosely) is a plot synopsis. Thanks for giving away the dramatically surprising elements that we want the audience to discover for themselves. Perhaps it’s a good way to fill up a column when one has nothing either original or perceptive to say. 

“Catherine . . . provides a bit of comic relief.” Comic relief from what, the constant eruptions of laughter coming from the audience? Anyone who uses the term “comic relief” in a review is holding up a flag that says “I may not know anything about the theatre, but I read a play once in high school English class.” 

I’m still trying to figure out why it’s important to point out that this play was written in the “pre 9/11 age.” Is it because female relationships were so extraordinary way back then? My God, that was twelve years ago! He should have read the program. “Today, a story about a love affair between two women seems almost quaint.” What? So a story about heterosexual relationships would be what - prehistoric? What’s your point?

The fact that he spends one entire sentence talking about the remarkable actors in this production, and does so with the perception of someone who once saw an elementary school Christmas production, is of little consequence. Because he does point out that the play has a “subtext.” Let me point out something that may be of use in any further theatre criticism that you do (God help us) - all plays have “subtext.”  And then I’m still trying to figure out what he means by calling the production “sparse.” He never explains it, and so since it’s an apparently trivial observation I’ll ignore it.

I know I can’t ask for someone with the requisite knowledge of theatre, of acting, of human interaction and the nature of story-telling - but I would like to ask for someone who has been to a play before.

I hope you’ll all be able to see this wonderful production. The acting is amazing and the script is simply a work of genius.

BOSTON MARRIAGE is open

It's been a while since I posted anything here. (I've been kind of busy getting this show up.)  But we're open now, and the audiences are blown away by the show. I've been hearing things like "best acting I've ever seen in this area" and "my cheeks hurt from laughing." People are really impressed and moved by the work these three women are doing, but no one is more impressed with them than I am. It has been an absolute joy to create this wonderful thing with them.

Caitlin, Brandy, Alexis during rehearsal

Weekend work - gold and black lacquer

Finished set

We're going into the second weekend of performances, and I'll post some production shots soon.

And I'll have another thing to post - an announcement is coming.

- Bill