July | 2011 | Intimate Excellent
by Simon Levy
Note: Being sick away from home is not recommended when you’re at the start of workshopping a new work. I finally took myself to George Washington University Hospital ER on Wednesday night to find out what was going on. Apparently my oxygen level was below normal and they were fearful I might have either a pulmonary embolism (blood clot) or pneumonia. After 5 hours of lying on a gurney, being put on a drip, having a battery of tests – while down the corridor a poor baby was hollering in pain and some inebriated woman was screaming, “I GOTTA GO HOME! I WANT TO GO HOME! I CAN’T STAY HERE!” over and over for nearly an hour – it was determined that I have a mild pneumonia in my right lung. They kept testing my oxygen level so they could decide whether to keep me overnight on oxygen and an antibiotic drip or send me back to my hotel with pills. Happily, I’m here with my antibiotics and slowly getting better.
It took us 2 days, Tuesday and Wednesday, to do our moment-to-moment work, discussing given circumstances, wants and needs, the dramatic actions, primary objectives, emotional life, the basics of the relationship between Henry and Joyce; throughout, the issue of “glass-ness” was always at the center of our discussions. (All the while I’m sitting there, shriveled up, hacking and hewing, feeling like crap, just trying to make it through and be a good creative partner.)
Because Amanda’s play can be done in a variety of styles – expressionistic, impressionistic, poetic realism, etc. – it’s really open to interpretation. I felt my primary job was to honor the ambiguities in the script while giving the actors specifics. It’s not the actor’s job to “act” theme or metaphor or lofty ideas or ambiguity. Actors act specifically. They have to know why they’re saying what they’re saying, what they want, what they’re trying to make happen in that moment, what’s the dramatic action. Fortunately, the two actors, Kim and Larry, are terrific collaborators. And Amanda became more of a verbal partner in the discourse, letting us know what her intentions were when we asked, but also being honest at times by saying she didn’t know, or that she was thinking of changing that.
Amanda Shank
She’s very calm in the room, attentive, taking copious notes, never judgmental, eager to soak up all the discussion. So the process was open and lively and remarkably in-depth. Along with Amanda, Miriam, our dramaturg, plus student dramaturgs and visiting dramaturgs and directors, and Laura, our asst. director, we accomplished a remarkable amount of work and got to the end of the play. Hundreds of questions were raised, some answered, some left for thought. Amanda went back to her hotel Wednesday night and promises to have rewrites for us today.
Kennedy Center lobby
Meanwhile, off in the depths of the Kennedy Center, five other plays are in process, and there have been short meetings for Playwrights and Dramaturgs, Playwrights and Directors, NNPN and Student Dramaturgs, a panel discussion on DC Writers and Writing in the Regions, and a reading of Randy Baker’s FORGOTTEN KINGDOMS (which I missed because I was feeling so lousy).
I’ve already earned a bit of notoriety because I’m the one sitting in rehearsals and wandering around the Kennedy Center with a blanket draped around me. Hey, every director needs their “look”!
Simon Levy is Producing Director/Dramaturg at the Fountain Theatre. He is attending the NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights Workshop in Washington, DC, directing a workshop version of THE GLASS MAN by Amanda Shank.
When Maude Gutman in Bakersfield Mist buys a painting at a thrift store for $3, she is convinced it is the “find of the century”: a lost masterpiece by Jackson Pollock. But who was Jackson Pollock?
“When I am in a painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.” – Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock was one of the most important painters of the 20th century and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life.
Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related car accident.
Today, his paintings are worth millions of dollars and on exhibit in major museums around the world. In 2000, Pollock was the subject of an Academy Award-winning film Pollock directed by and starring Ed Harris.
“Number 8” by Jackson Pollock
Pollock’s most famous paintings were made during the “drip period” between 1947 and 1950. He rocketed to popular status following an August 8, 1949 four-page spread in Life magazine that asked, “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” Those less enthralled or confused by Pollock’s splatter paintings dubbed the artist “Jack the dripper.”
At the peak of his fame, Pollock abruptly abandoned the drip style. Pollock’s work after 1951 was darker in color, including a collection painted in black on unprimed canvases. This was followed by a return to color, and he reintroduced figurative elements. During this period Pollock had moved to a more commercial gallery and there was great demand from collectors for new paintings. In response to the pressure from collectors for his paintings, along with deep personal frustration, his alcoholism deepened.
After Pollock’s death at age 44, his widow, Lee Krasner, managed his estate and ensured that Pollock’s reputation remained strong despite changing art-world trends. They are buried together in New York. The public can visit the The Pollock House & Studio on Long Island.
by Carolyn & Bud Rorman
It’s been 8 years since our introduction to the Fountain Theatre. We heard about To Be Young, Gifted and Black and put it on our list of “must see’s” as Bud’s cousin, Robert Nemiroff, had produced this play adapted from the works of Lorraine Hansberry Nemiroff. Of course, we were thrilled with Bobby’s play and have made the trek from So. Orange County to Hollywood ever since.
We were especially excited when another Fountain hit, Exits and Entrances, showed up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. And since we just happened to be there, we had to see it again.
We’ll continue attending the Fountain Theatre until we are no longer able to drive. Hopefully that will be a long while.
by Simon Levy
The Kennedy Center, Washington DC
(July 25) First rehearsal today from 2:30-6:30 in Rehearsal Room 2 somewhere in the bowels of the KennedyCenter. The place is so huge and full of twisting, interlocking corridors and multiple floors, you need a guide to take you to your location. And, because of security, you have to have a special badge to even be in the building, but only employees with special key cards can get you into certain corridors. (The one good thing about the badge is you get 10% off in the KC Cafe and 15% off in the gift shop!)
The creative team gathered around the horseshoe arrangement of tables and the day began with introductions. Besides myself and Amanda Shank, the author of THE GLASS MAN, the team consists of: Miriam Weisfeld, dramaturg from Woolly Mammoth Theatre here in DC; actors Lawrence (Larry) Redmond and Kimberly (Kim) Schraf; Dody DiSanto, movement specialist; Laura Garza, asst. director; Susan and Heather, student dramaturgs; Sandy Shiner, roving observer from Victory Gardens in Chicago; and David Goldman, founder of NNPN and this program.
Amanda Shank
We read thru the play, which took approximately 70 minutes, took a break, and spent the better part of the rest of our time discussing “glass-ness.” Amanda’s play is about a man made of glass who shatters at the end. The wide-ranging discussion covered everything from: Is he literally made of glass? Is it metaphor? A poetic device? Is he a product of his wife’s imagination? Does she “break” him to achieve emancipation? Does he drive her to it as a means of suicide? What is glass, its properties? If he’s glass then what “material” is his wife? And on and on.
Amanda wanted to hear the team’s thoughts and impressions before revealing her intentions. At one point, Dody got the actors on their feet to experiment with what it means to physically be glass. For the wife we played with the idea of her being soft, protective, like a pillow stuffed with cotton. How do these materials interact? What does it look like? A wonderful discovery process, both pragmatically and thematically.
Within all of the various ideas and points of view, I kept bringing the team back to intentions and objectives, wants and needs and emotional life, contrast and conflict. Not to answer anything – certainly not on the first day – but to raise questions. To put up as many question balloons in the room as possible. Why is today different than any other day? Why does Henry want to “go off to war?” Does Joyce purposefully hug her husband to death? Why have they lived together in isolation so long? Is the outside world of mud real, imagined, stylistic? What is the nature of their love and relationship? Where are the power shifts? Ad infinitum.
It was a stimulating round table of idea sharing… and Amanda took copious notes. Ultimately, we are there for her, to bring our collective experience and expertise into the room to help her hear, develop and answer questions about her play. She told us a few things, but today was about the team’s instinctual, virginal thoughts. Tomorrow we’ll dig into Amanda’s intentions and the moment-to-moment work with the actors.
The collective brain trust is a wondrous thing to behold.
Afterwards, most of us attended a reading of WHALES, a new play by Bob Bartlett, part of the DC Area Writers’ Showcase presented by NNPN.
Ironically, the heat index in DC has been over a 100 degrees since I’ve been here, but it’s 55 degrees in the building. There’s some scientific reason for keeping it that cool, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. We all sat around bundled up like we’re in Alaska.
I’m bringing a blanket tomorrow!
Simon Levy is Producing Director/Dramaturg of the Fountain Theatre
Karen Kondazian
Karen Kondazian has starred in the Fountain productions of Master Class (2004) and the Tennessee Williams classics The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (2007), The Night of the Iguana (2001) and Orpheus Descending (1996). She’s now written her first novel, The Whip.
What is your novel about?
The Whip is inspired by the true story of Charlotte “Charley” Parkhurst (1812 – 1879). Charlotte lived 30 years of her extraordinary life as a man. She became a renowned stagecoach driver for Wells Fargo during the California gold rush. One of her many exploits was the killing of the famous outlaw Sugarfoot, when he tried to rob her stagecoach one too many times.
As a young woman, she fell in love and eventually lived with a black man and had his child. He was hung, her baby killed and she was raped by one of the killers. The destruction of her family drove her out west to California during the gold rush, dressed as a man, to track the murderer. She had many adventures and a secret love affair. She also lived with a housekeeper, who fell in love with her, not realizing she was a woman. Charlotte Parkhurst was the first woman to vote in America (as a man!). Her grave lies in Watsonville, California.
Why did you write this book?
Well, I now realize that to write a novel, perhaps you have to have that special quality of being an obsessive masochist. The endless research…(even to the point of having to ascertain if a certain word was used in that particular time period)… going to bed at 4 am, living on carbs and caffeine, gaining 10 pounds in the process… and finally, 17 drafts later I was still wondering if I should do another draft.
Actually, my curiosity drove me to write the book. I mean, by all accounts, no one figured out her ‘secret’ until her death. That she was able to keep and maintain that secret fascinated me and was the main reason I was inspired to write the story in the first place… to try and figure out the answers to all those weird questions I had. Like how did she go to the bathroom with all those macho stagecoach drivers constantly around her? What happened when she would have her period? How did she handle the isolated loneliness and lack of human intimacy? Why did she put on men’s clothes in the first place? Why did she go out to California on the grueling journey around Cape Horn from Rhode Island?
I had so many questions it drove me crazy… so I put pen to yellow legal pad and started to write.
That eventually led me to fictionalize the rest of her life around the facts that are known. The Whip is simply my account of how I imagined this extraordinary woman took to men’s clothes and went out west on her own… eventually to find great fame as a stagecoach driver, in a time when women had very few options. The choices were… to be a wife, a prostitute, maybe run a boarding house or teach, if you had the money or education. That was it… to be a free spirited woman meant you took up the oldest profession or you starved. Continue reading
by Deborah Lawlor
Cristina Hall
I am thrilled with the very special Forever Flamenco coming up this Sunday, July 24 at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre. This show features a singer, Jose Cortes, and a dancer, Cristina Hall, who are both new to Forever Flamenco and to LA audiences.
Cristina, a native of San Francisco has been living, dancing and teaching in Spain for the last 7 years. Jose is a Gypsy cantaor (singer) from Almoria, Spain, who has just recently relocated to San Francisco. I am delighted and proud to welcome these two accomplished and respected artists to the stage at Barnsdall, and to the growing talent pool of flamenco professionals in California.
Jose Cortes
The ace guitarists for this show are Antonio Triana and Benjamin Woods, with hot percussion by Joey Heredia. In addition to Cristina Hall, the dancers are the powerful Ricardo Chavez (I would nickname him El Guapo, “the handsome one”!), lovely Arleen Hurtado and the intensely expressive Briseyda Zarate. A show not to be missed!
Deborah Lawlor
Deborah Lawlor is the Producing Artistic Director of the Fountain Theatre, and creator/producer of Forever Flamenco.
Simon Levy
Fountain Producing Director/Dramaturg Simon Levy flies off to Washington DC this weekend to direct one of the projects for the NNPN MFA Playwrights’ Workshop held annually at The Kennedy Center.
Since 2006, the National New Play Network (of which the Fountain is a member) has presented a week-long summer workshop for recent plays of merit written by qualified MFA students. The program is presented annually in conjunction with the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival and Stanford University’s National Center for New Plays, and pairs the selected writers with NNPN directors and freelance dramaturgs to provide them with a unique professional development opportunity and links to Network theaters.
The Workshop now links to more than 70 MFA programs across the country, and scripts developed at there have gone on to productions at NNPN member theaters (Broadsword, Green Whales, and Afterlife among them) as well as nationally-recognized companies like the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville/Humana Festival and the Roundabout Theatre Company. Featured writers often find their work represented later at the National Showcase of New Plays and the Continued Life of New Plays program. And five of the thirty-four alumni of the Workshop have gone on to Residencies with member theaters. The program thus serves as an ideal entry point to the new-play pipeline NNPN has tried to create for writers of promise entering the profession.
Simon has been teamed with Amanda Shank from CalArts and her play, The Glass Man, and dramaturg Miriam Weisfeld from Woolly Mammoth.
“Amanda’s play is a delicate (couldn’t resist the pun) play about the relationship between a man made of glass, and his wife, on what will become his last day of life”, says Simon. “Exploring ‘glass-ness’ with the actors and the team, and what it means theatrically, metaphorically, literally, poetically, thematically promises to be great fun. It’s wonderful that NNPN and the Kennedy Center provide this kind of in-depth support for MFA playwrights from around the country, and it’s an honor to have been selected as one of the directors. If you hear the sound of breaking glass….”
This year’s full roster:
2011 MFA PLAYWRIGHTS WORKSHOP
THE FRIENDSHIP OF HER THIGHS by Martyna Majok, Yale
Directed by Cynthia Levin, Unicorn Theater (Kansas City, MO)
GLASS MAN by Amanda Shank, CalArts
Directed by Simon Levy, Fountain Theatre (Los Angeles, CA)
STATIC by Tom Horan, UT Austin
Directed by Tina Parker, Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas, TX)
TRUE PLACES by Walt McGough, Boston University
Directed by Lisa Adler, Horizon Theatre Company (Atlanta, GA)
URBAN RETREAT by A Zell Williams, NYU
Directed by Andi Dymond, Victory Gardens (Chicago, IL)
VANISHING ACT by RN Healey, Carnegie-Mellon
Directed by Patrick Flick, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre (Orlando, FL)
Plus the Kendeda Winner, THE FAIRTYALE LIVES OF RUSSIAN GIRLS by Meg Miroshnik (Yale)
Sandy Martin in “A House Not Meant to Stand”
Actress Sandy Martin blew audiences away with her performance as Bella in the recent Fountain production of Tennessee Williams’ A House Not Meant to Stand. StageandCinema hailed it as “a career-transforming performance”, exclaiming “Sandy Martin’s great performance does for Bella McCorkle what one imagines Laurette Taylor did for Amanda Wingfield. What she is doing doesn’t even look like acting. What higher compliment can one pay an actor?”
We totally agree. And so did other critics and audiences who were mesmerized by her performance throughout the acclaimed run at the Fountain earlier this year.
Sandy has also been busy as a voice-actress, reprising her role as Grandma for the new animated TV series version of Napoleon Dynamite.
Based on the 2004 hit film, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is an animated series on FOX TV that follows the continuing adventures of America’s most awesome awkward teenager and his quirky family and friends as they struggle to navigate small-town life in rural Idaho. The original cast from the film will voice their characters in the series, and many new characters will be added along the way. The animated series is set to air early 2012.
Grandma (Sandy’s character) is second from left.
Sandy will be at COMIC-CON on July 20th for publicity for the new animated series. Sandy’s excited and looking forward to appearing at Comic-Con. As she exclaims: “Grandma meets Spidey!”
Aria Alpert
We all know and love Aria Alpert from her acclaimed performance (Ovation Award nomination, Best Actress) as scientist Rosalind Franklin in the 2009 Fountain west coast premiere of Photograph 51. Exciting news to share: she’s having a baby!
Since Photo 51, Aria did some travelling. “I ate and blogged my way through Italy,” she says. “And very unexpectedly fell in love with Chris, the creative director/photographer of the blog I wrote for during my trip. We met over freaking video chat! When I got back to NYC he flew to meet me in person and well, that was last August and now we are happy as can be and…baby makes three!”
Along the way she did a guest star on Law and Order SVU and dabbled in directing some one-act plays down in the east village in NY. She loved directing and wants to do more. Right now she is doing a Larry Moss master class acting workshop.
Aria in “Photograph 51”
She is moving back to LA “for now”. Doing some writing and collaborating with Chris on a cookbook. “I am doing the writing and recipes and he is taking the pictures”.
“All is well with the pregnancy. These days I am eating and sleeping and growing … growing… growing! My life in this past year has been filled with delicious unexpected delightful yummy adventures… and it still goes ….. on and on!”