In the Red and Brown Water. Photo by Rich Termine.

Have you seen In the Red and Brown Water (Part I of The Brother/Sister Plays).  What did you think?  Did you think it was the bee’s knees?  Do you agree with the newspaper reviews, or disagree? Favorite parts of the show? Things that weren’t to your taste?  Are you coming back to see Part II?

Post an “audience response” or read what other people are saying by clicking on the “comments” link below. We can’t wait to hear what you think!

I’ve not been sleeping, again, and when sleeping dreaming.

It always happens when working In the Red and Brown Water because somehow we’ve worked to keep the piece in the formation in which it came: dream like sad and sweet, powerful and delicate. I must tell you I am aware of how exhausting it can be to hold that world up, to live in it, to explore it. One must open the door to it and hold it up and walk around in it. Its kind of like being a little kid who throws up a great sheet into the air, then runs underneath it to see who else is underneath and continues to hold it up tarp like with one hand so you can see find your way through. I am sure that didn’t make much sense. But what doesn’t make sense are the feelings that this play draws up.
Ton upon tons of complicated questions the play asks in direct and indirect ways.

It is no secret that I wrote this play for my sister (s). I have one biological sister, the youngest in my immediate family. A strong and courageous woman who has in her mere 21 years in this world seen some dark days. And the other sister, my mother. Who passed away from AIDS-related complications in 2003. And as heartbreaking and sometimes devastating the process of my mother’s death was, sometimes I cannot get over the even more sometimes heartbreaking and uplifting life of my sister.

As a young girl she was there when my mother became most ill and took over as woman of the house. She worked her way through High School keeping grades and life up as my mother’s health fell deeper into non-repair and my younger brother ran in and out of trouble along with the health of her stepfather also falling apart. Two ill parents, a brother who was in trouble with the law, another who was miles away in school, for of all things the theater, and here is this… this baby trying to grow into a woman in a world that has been scientifically proven to be harshest to women but women of color even more. So what does she do? She holds on. She holds her head up; she remains faithful in the Lord above and keeps her nose to the grind. My mother died and she put the funeral together, respectable simple and silent she was… Her stepfather, the only man she knew as father died, and she respected his wishes and carried out his will. She then went to college and paid the bills by working. I helped her out when I can/could but still she did it by herself, does it by herself. She makes it to her last year in College about to graduate and she gets into a car accident, she hits another car. The woman in the car is pregnant. And because of the stress of the accident, not the impact, the woman in the car loses her child.

I am so sorry for the loss and so is my sister. She is devastated she calls me and says as a woman she doesn’t know how to feel about this terrible accident. She wasn’t drinking, she doesn’t do drugs, she just lost control of her car on a turn, and an accident she had made another woman lose her child. She tells me she will have to live with that. I am floored at her honesty and bravery for saying this. She calls me later that week and says she’s being arrested by the police in her hometown. She tells me they are attempting to charge her with feticide. I drop to the ground and cry. I cannot believe the heavens can be this hard on one soul. Is’t possible! But my sister is strong and faithful… she keeps her head to the sky and her feet on the ground. I go down to bail her out of jail. She’s obviously shaken but not bowed. The court won’t drop the charges and in fact place my sister on house arrest and a bracelet around her ankle, like the rapper TI who was found with machine guns, a court believed my sister needed to be tracked. Myself, members of my sister’s Church and her pastor, plead with her attorney to let the judge know that my sister is within months of graduating school and if she stops now she may never be able to rectify and finish. They concede and allow her for 4 months to only go to school, work and church while she awaits this trial that the court still is planning. My sister, God in Heaven, she says good! This will keep me focused on the most important things. INCREDIBLE. I watch as the world hands her the sourest lemons instead of gold and somehow, sometimes with no sugar and little water I watch her make lemonade.

My sister turns 22 on May 5, three days after she graduates from Fort Valley University in GA and 4 days after the play that I wrote and dedicated to her opens in Princeton, NJ.  And though I love the play and want to be there for opening… I’ve got to go down to Georgia not just to see graduation but also to say hello to the woman who inspires me to be better everyday.

So in rehearsal sometimes it is hard to sit in rehearsal and not think about how unfair these situations seem. And how I’ve watched this little gap- toothed-girl put on her work boots, put on her high heart and love still, live still, in times when I wanna fall and catch a knee she’s standing strong forging ahead. A hero. She is. And I say to all of us, if not for my sister, the many sisters who don’t make it to graduation, those who can’t quite and for those who do, our exhaustion and exploration is the best thank you and ‘we hear you’ and ‘we love you’ … that we can give… that I can give.

So I say to you today and the next time and the next: Here is IN THE RED AND BROWN WATER Dedicated to my sister (s).
tarell

Posted by Tarell Alvin McCraney, playwright of The Brother/Sister Plays.

Backstage at McCarter Theatre. Photo by Kristina Plucinsky.

On Saturday, March 28, McCarter donors were treated to a backstage tour of Twelfth Night.  Very well conceived and presented, the tour added to the pleasure for those of us who witnessed the performance, and for the few on the tour who were yet to attend the show, the appetite was whetted.

The morning began with an introduction from Tom Muza, General Manager, who provided a brief history of McCarter and background on the production.  The show was co-produced with the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, where it originated and then moved to McCarter.

Tom handed the group to Alison Cote, the Production Stage Manager, who provided insight into how an elaborate staging appears so seamless to the audience.  From her seat at a “tech table” set up in the house, she told us of the little tricks she uses to run the show, among them signal lights controlled from her panel.  These cue musicians, actors and, frankly, just about everything that we take for granted.  During the course of the show, Alison’s voice is audible throughout the backstage area but inaudible to the audience.  What struck me most was the coordination involved in each performance.  It is easy to assume the actors walk on stage and say their lines; clearly there is much more involved than simply memorizing and speaking words written on a page.  I wish Alison had more time to speak, she was so fascinating and, I suspect, had more secrets to divulge, but time was of the essence and we moved onto the stage itself.

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The ever-engaging Tarell Alvin McCraney (playwright of The Brother/Sister Plays) recently spoke at a Live at the Library event at the Princeton Public Library, talking about his influences, his life, and the three remarkable plays that comprise The Brother/Sister Plays: In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size, and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet.  For my money, these videos should be essential watching for anyone who plans on attending either of these three plays.  Tarell is brilliant, funny, passionate, moving and deeply thoughtful.  You can scroll between the 14 videos by clicking on the arrows at either side of the viewer.  If you’d like to know more about Tarell or The Brother/Sister Plays, please visit our Trilogy Website.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.  Videos filmed by Patrick McKelvey and edited by Erin Breznitsky.

The Brother/Sister Plays Website Designed by Dimple Parmar

After months of planning, I’m thrilled to say that we’ve finally launched the website for The Brother/Sister Plays, which you can visit at www.mccarter.org/tarell.  We’ll be adding new content regularly, including streaming video and audio, press links, and additional feature articles on the plays, the production, and the playwright (Tarell Alvin McCraney).

Here at McCarter, new play development takes many forms.  As a new play nears production, part of its development path is about building an audience for the work.  Often, this takes two different forms: marketing (persuading audience members to purchase tickets); and audience development (preparing the audience for the production, so that they can enjoy it as fully as possible).  For us, audience development is multi-faceted and can include a wide range of activities, programs, and publications that will help contextualize the production and guide an audience’s expectations and understanding of the work.  Of course, audience development and marketing go hand-in-hand; if the marketing materials prepare an audience for a laugh-a-minute comedy, they’ll be disappointed by a beautiful, quiet and sentimental memory play, and the converse is true as well.

For a world premiere like The Brother/Sister Plays, audience development is of even greater importance—because the play is new and the writer relatively unheard of to the general public, a theater cannot count on any received knowledge of the play, the work or the writer.  For The Brother/Sister Plays, we’re pulling out all the stops.  Our audience development initiatives on this project include:

• The Trilogy website (www.mccarter.org/tarell)
• Community Events (we held our first one on March 24th, and another one last night at the Princeton Public Library).
• A letter from our Artistic Director to our current ticket buyers (going into the mail this week).
• A lobby display in the Berlind Theater Lobby.
• A statement from Tarell in the playbill for The Brother/Sister Plays.
• This blog.
• A “Coming Next” article about Tarell in the playbill for Twelfth Night.
• A series of interviews with local and national press.
• YouTube videos about the trilogy.
• A video trailer (coming soon!)
• A series of conversations that surround the plays (Dialogue on Drama and post-show discussions).
• A set of discussions celebrating the “marathon days,” when you can see all three plays at once.

So I urge you to visit our Trilogy website—a lot of us here at the theater have worked really hard to make it possible, and I think you’ll find a lot of interesting material there.

What do you think?   Have a comment?  Post it below by clicking on the “Comments” link!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

The day many McCarter community members have long awaited has finally come: Tarell has moved to Nassau Street and rehearsals are underway for the world premiere of his The Brother/Sister Plays. The first few days in the rehearsal process has been, admittedly, a little overwhelming. We started out the first day of rehearsal with a business meeting run by our Resident Stage Manager, Cheryl Mintz. As Cheryl went over the usual information: schedule, contact sheet, Equity guidelines, it quickly became clear that this process is like no other that the cast or artistic team has experienced. With three shows opening in repertory under the direction of two different directors, the schedule for the next few months is daunting to say the least. By the time In the Red and Brown Water opens, we will already be starting technical rehearsal for Brothers Size and Marcus, so the actors will be rehearsing 2 plays during the day and performing a third at night - and all this without understudies!

We were all a bit dazed by the end of the meeting, but after a read-through of In the Red and Brown Water, Tina Landau, the director, decided to jump right in. Tina talked about how the most important part of In the Red and Brown Water for her is truly creating an ensemble. In this non-traditional piece, all of the actors play a pantheon of gods (derived from the Yoruba spiritual tradition) who weave in and out of the story they are telling together. In order to start building that feeling of a community of storytellers and create a common vocabulary, Tina launched the actors into an intense introduction to Viewpoints, a technique for movement and improvisation Tina developed along with director and mentor Anne Bogart. Originally based on a set of “viewpoints” choreographers use in creating a dance, the training Tina works with separates movement into 10 distinct qualities (eg. tempo, direction, shape, etc.). Taking the simple movement of running, for example, one can play with extremes of tempo: how does running look, for example, if one goes very very fast? And if one goes as slow as it is possible to go and still call it movement? Within the tempos one can also vary the size and fluidity of the run. It is fascinating how the different “runs” tells an entirely different story.

As we went through these improvisations, Tina introduced a really great term way for us to express when some gesture or movement seems really appropriate to our show. Apparently on the set of Miami Vice, there was one person whose job was to communicate between the literary, design and production departments to make sure the show ended up as a complete world. Rather than having to explain every decision, they could simply say “That’s Vice!” or “That’s not Vice!” We’ve now introduced this term to our rehearsal process, so whenever something works really well the whole room explodes with calls of “Vice!!!” and then we know all the collaborators are on the same page!

Posted by Sarah Wansley, Directing/Producing Intern at McCarter Theatre.

As part of the rehearsal process, The Brothers Size became “The Sisters Size,” just for a day. Robert (the director) asked three of the actresses from our nine-player ensemble to assume roles of the male actors. Although some of them had not read the play, it was amazing to see the actresses quickly discern who their characters were. It was intriguing to watch these ladies, who had not seen the men in action, make some of the same artistic choices the actors had made in rehearsal. Tarell has often said that the text will guide, it does.

One of the most interesting observations of having women read a play about men is that it somehow changes the play. Naturally among women, there seems to be an acceptable intimacy. Every since I can remember the girls have always gone to the bathroom in groups, the guys—not so much. Straight women often help groom other straight women, but with men it’s different. There seems to be imaginary circles of separation that prevent men from physically forming the same bonds as women. Why does it seem that men can’t be among themselves with the same familiarity that women share among women? This very subject came up in rehearsal and others of the room spoke of how boys in foreign nations hold hands with other boys as demonstrating their friendship in open streets. Why is it so taboo for men to be openly affectionate with each other, not specifically among gay lovers, but among heterosexual friends as well? It’s amazing how the moment guys stand a little too close (and aren’t playing a sport), an alarm resounds signaling their sexuality. Among groups of women closely occupying the same space, thinking seems to be a bit more liberal.

The Brothers Size, however, is not about women, it’s about men, and that makes a difference, even in staging. Simply place two men an inch too close and the mind quickly questions their sexuality. I wonder why…

Posted by Anthony Sanford, Jr., Directing/Producing Intern at McCarter Theatre.

Today, Tarell returned to rehearsals after being away for a couple of days, and unfortunately he came after we were officially done. But there was a wonderful marketing reception and “presentation” of a scene from The Brothers Size.  Tarell introduced the scene and the actors performed with scripts in their hands and it went quite well.  One of the actors had to call for lines and even stopped find the right page and I loved seeing that because it reminded the invited audience of the rehearsal process. Many of them, I’m sure, have never been in an actual rehearsal and to watch how attentive they were even when an actor corrected himself or stopped was quite fascinating.

One should never underestimate the thrill and danger of live performance even in a rehearsal hall.  The moment the audience came into the room I felt, quite frankly, that our sacred space had been invaded, because as a director you really cringe at the thought of someone seeing your work in progress, but when the slight hiccup of an actors losing his place happened, I was instantly and oddly relieved.  It was such a joy to watch the audience WATCH Theater develop before their eyes and still have them “get it”.  The discussion afterwards, led by Tarell, was insightful and full of positive feedback. This was more than comforting because Tarell and I had both laughed about which scene we should present because we knew as we put it there would be “church-going folk” in the seats.  The scene, the actors, the playwright and the audience itself rose grandly to the occasion and made me feel all over again that I was very lucky and blessed to be allowed to participated in this process of presenting such an exciting and challenging new voice to the American Theater.

Posted by Robert O’Hara, Director of The Brothers Size and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet at McCarter Theatre.

About a month ago, while still conducting casting callbacks for The Brother/Sister Plays, the directors (Robert O’Hara and Tina Landau) and playwright (Tarell Alvin McCraney) had a meeting with set designer James Schuette and lighting designer Jane Cox to discuss the plays and see the latest design plans.  One of the challenges in producing a trilogy is that the set has to function for three plays.   The two directors each worked separately with James in discussing their design concepts for the three plays, and he brought all the ideas together into one set that transforms for each play, which he presented at the meeting in February.

McCarter Producing Director Mara Isaacs took some pictures, which we’re sharing with you so that you can get a sneak peak at the collaborators’ ideas and a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their process.

James Schuette presents his model to (l to r) Jane Cox, Robert O’Hara, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Tina Landau.

The model for In the Red and Brown Water.

James Schuette shows Tina Landau some of his visual research for The Brothers Size.

The model, transformed for The Brothers Size.

(l to r) Anthony Sanford (directing intern), Tina Landau, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Jane Cox, Robert O’Hara, and James Schuette.

The model, transformed for Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet All photos by Mara Isaacs

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Director Rebecca Taichman visited the Princeton Public Library for a discussion about Twelfth Night, moderated by McCarter Director of Education, Christopher T. Parks. These videos were shot and edited by Erin Breznitsky, and I think give you a really great sense of how Rebecca created this extraordinary and visually stunning production.  Click the arrows on the side of the video to switch between clips, there are eleven in all!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.