POSTS FROM OUR PROCESS

It’s a busy season. We’ve opened our first show of the season, mounted our second workshop of the season, begun developmental dramaturgy for next season’s opener, Hellfire by Julia Fisher, and launched process rehearsals for The Nativity Variations. Additionally, I’m Tetris-ing work sessions with playwrights and actors across town and picking up gig-work here and there. Amid all this making, teaching, shaping, hustling, questioning, and discovering, one word keeps returning to me: trust.

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As a serial overthinker, developing and understanding a character at the root has always been difficult to me. So, I wanted to challenge myself to try a new approach when asked to visualize the world of the play, specifically Catharine’s experience, as part of the process for Suddenly Last Summer.

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Our upcoming production, Suddenly Last Summer, although written by Tennessee Williams in the 1950s, takes place in the late 1930s – so even when it premiered, it was a “period play,” i.e., a play that takes place in an earlier time period than the audience’s present. Period plays present a different sort of costuming challenge than do plays that take place in the present…

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One of my favorite exercises when directing is to figure out the point-of-view our production is going to take on a play or - in other terms - "what the heck is this play gonna be about?" Younger, more controlling version of me as a director used to do this alone at my desk, weeks before rehearsal began, and then would arrive with the whole thing typed out on Day One like Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandements as inspired by God. Older, in therapy, and much more collaborative, I now love the challenge of creating an environment in the rehearsal room that encourages everyone - actors, designers, stage management, our producer - to share their insights and observations about the play so that the resulting conceptual statement is owned by ALL of us, not just me.

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Honoring my inner child has always come easy to me. I rewatch High School Musical often, I still enjoy a cosmic brownie, and I have plans to complete a full miniature dollhouse. But underneath the silly things, I recognize a longstanding love for two things: stories and gathering. I was an avid reader and writer, always reading above my grade level and writing chapters on chapters of my action-sci-fi-fantasy series about a group of best friends that are fairy pop stars that defeat evil (unrelated, I loved K-Pop Demon Hunters.) I was also the kid starting clubs on the playground that always seemed to have a clear agenda, goals, and action items that I would organize my friends to carry out. So when last year I started a mobile drama bookshop with an accompanying play reading club… Let’s just say my parents were not surprised. 

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Jen Silverman’s play, Witch, had a lot to do with why I wrote Con. Witch is an elegant, 14-scene play about selling your soul to the devil and, more broadly, whether or not the world is worth saving. It’s the kind of left-leaning, liberal play that feels good during a Trump administration, though Silverman says little that’s overtly political. I played the titular character in Dobama’s production, and my castmates were all so incredibly talented, they were each rehearsing other shows when Witch closed. I felt like a slacker. So, I started writing a play inspired by Witch’s structure and style. 

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Auditions. I’ve been on both sides of the table. I’ve auditioned, and I’ve watched others audition. Neither role is easy. Directors have countless questions to answer and an overwhelming number of possibilities to consider. How do you know which actor belongs in which role? So far, I’d say it’s a lot like gardening.

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