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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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.

Rick Foucheux, Rebecca Brooksher and Tom Story in Twelfth Night. Photo by T.Charles Erickson.

So the reviews of Twelfth night are starting to come in, and so far, they’re great!

New Jersey’s Star-Ledger reported:
“Rebecca Taichman’s production of Shakespeare’s gender-bending comedy is beautiful, intelligent, funny and moving. She’s taken a play that was born great, has achieved greatness, and thrust it onto the McCarter stage with results that are — here’s that word again — great.”

CurtainUp.com declared:
“Every now and then there is that rare confluence of conception, acting, directing, design, stage craft and in this instance music (a small orchestra provides song support and lovely incidental music) marks a production as sheer bliss… A co-production between McCarter and D.C.’s The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Taichman has addressed the play’s outrageously convoluted plotting and re-considered the bountiful mix of tomfoolery and romance from a distinctly sensual, sexual, and psychologically inverted perspective. But don’t worry, as it is suitable for the whole family.”

So 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? 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!

Rebecca Brooksher and Veanne Cox in Twelfth Night. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

If you’ve seen any of the images related to McCarter Theatre’s production of Twelfth Night, you’ve noticed that there is a bit of a rose theme going on.  One of the ways in which that manifests itself in the production is the several thousand dollars worth of fabric rose petals which, by the end of the play, end up all over the stage floor, getting danced on, rolled on, and otherwise generally trampled.

In general, we don’t like for our props and set pieces to get dirty and bedraggled throughout the run of a production, nor do our actors like having dirty rose petals dropped on their heads.  On the other hand, our current economic climate doesn’t leave us in a position to buy several barrels of fresh fabric rose petals every night.  So what’s a theater to do?

The crafty (and inventive) production staff devised the perfect solution to this budding problem.  They created a flower-spinner: a giant, motorized mesh tube, which tumbles the flowers for several hours between performances, letting the dust, grit and other detritus fall out between the mesh, and leaving only the fresh and clean faux-flora.  The spinner, which lives in our “trap room” is about 12 feet long and 3 feet high—between performances, it is filled to the brim with petals and spins away.

The flower-cleaning machine

It turns out that that this isn’t the first time the production staff has had to figure out ways to clean uncleanable objects, or separate enormous masses of unlikely props.  After each performance of Wintertime, the staff had to separate enormous quantities of snow from tiny plastic soldiers and three different sizes of cork.  The solution to that problem involved a very similar tumbler and a big fan that blew lighter objects further away than the heavier ones.  During another production, the staff had to find a way to get confetti out of pebbles.  They went to the store and bought the weakest vacuum they could find, then punched holes in the tubes until the suction was so weak that it would only pick up the confetti, and would leave the pebbles alone.  Clever, huh?

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Navigating Twelfth Night

In order to help audience members grapple with the relationships in Twelfth Night, Graphic Designer Danny Garber and Web Designer Dimple Parmer have collaborated to create this new online feature: “Navigating Twelfth Night,” which uses costume designer Miranda Hoffman’s designs and sketches to map out the relationships in Twelfth Night.

Click the image above to visit our Audience Resource Guide and enjoy this new interactive feature. If you find this resource helpful, throw us a comment by clicking on “comments” below!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Every spring, the DC artistic community celebrates theatrical excellence with the Helen Hayes Awards—it’s like the Tony Awards for Washington, DC-area theatre. This spring marks the 25th anniversary of the awards, and we’re ecstatic to see that this year’s nominations includes The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of Twelfth Night, a co-production with McCarter. The McCarter production begins previews on March 10; click here for tickets.

Nominations for Twelfth Night include:
Outstanding Resident Play
Outstanding Direction, Resident Play-Rebecca Bayla Taichman
Outstanding Costume Design, Resident Production-Miranda Hoffman
Outstanding Supporting Actress, Resident Play-Nancy Robinette
Outstanding Supporting Actor, Resident Play-Floyd King
Outstanding Supporting Actor, Resident Play-Tom Story
Outstanding Ensemble, Resident Play

Congratulations also to Brian Tyree Henry for his nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor, Non-Resident Production, for Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size at Studio Theatre. Henry will be performing in McCarter’s upcoming production of McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays.

Click here for a full list of nominees.

Winners of the Helen Hayes Awards will be announced in a ceremony on April 13. Congratulations to our colleagues at The Shakespeare Theatre Company and to all of the nominees!

Posted by Patrick McKelvey, Literary Intern at McCarter Theatre.

Were you hoping to get some culture in your life this year?  Had you been wondering how you could get the inside scoop on how some of the nation’s top theater-makers work?  Wanna learn more about Twelfth Night or The Brother/Sister Plays before you go to see them?  Well now’s your chance.

Today marked the first day of registration for classes at the Princeton Adult School, a local non-profit that offers classes for adult residents of Princeton and its neighboring communities.  One of the neatest courses they are offering is “Curtain Calls: Theatre Now,” a behind the scenes lecture/discussion series (Thursdays from 8-9pm, beginning February 19) that covers a wide variety of intriguing topics.  Below is the list of speakers and topics:

Feb. 19: The Twelfth Night Variations: Shakespeare on the Contemporary Stage
MICHAEL CADDEN, Director of the Program in Theater and Dance, Princeton University

Feb. 26: 21st-Century Gilbert and Sullivan: The Momentum of Parody
CAROLYN WILLIAMS, Victorian specialist and Director of Writers House at Rutgers University

March 5: Making Musicals: Creating, Developing and Producing New Musical Theater
MARA ISAACS, Producing Director at McCarter Theater
TAMSEN WOLFF, specialist in modern and contemporary drama, English Department, Princeton University

March 12: Women and Theater, Politics and Pleasure
JILL DOLAN, Professor of English, also Theater & Dance in the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University
STACY WOLF, Associate Professor of Theater & Dance in the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University

March 19: A Conversation with Emily Mann and Tarell Alvin McCraney
EMILY MANN, Artistic Director, McCarter Theater, and playwright.
TARELL ALVIN McCRANEY, Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and playwright-in-residence at McCarter Theater, which is staging his new work, The Brother/Sister Plays

March 26: New Plays: Creating, Developing and Producing New Drama
TAMSEN WOLFF and MARA ISAACS - (see above, March 5)

April 2: NO LECTURE

April 9: NO LECTURE

April 16: Theatrical Costume Design
ANITA YAVICH, costume designer, Metropolitan Opera and the New York Shakespeare Festival, OBIE award 2006

The Washington Post’s Nelson Pressley did a great feature story on Twelfth Night director Rebecca Taichman during the Shakespeare Theatre of DC leg of the play’s journey.  Many of my colleagues have been able to get down to DC to see the production, they say it’s marvelous.  I’m hoping to post a review round-up of the DC reviews later this week.  But until then, I thought this Washington Post article might be worth sharing.

For Rebecca Taichman, Ambition Comes in Stages

By Nelson Pressley
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, December 8, 2008; Page C01

Let’s say you’re running one of the fancy new theaters that have popped up in Washington lately. You’re working on a bigger stage. You need a director with vision to fill it.

Maybe you’ve called Rebecca Bayla Taichman.

Woolly Mammoth used Taichman for Sarah Ruhl’s “The Clean House” and “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” when the troupe’s high-ceilinged new digs opened a few seasons ago. Arena Stage called on Taichman last spring for “The Mystery of Irma Vep” as the company adjusted to temporary quarters in Crystal City. And now Taichman has assembled “Twelfth Night” in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Hall, the 774-seat venue that’s in its second season.

“It’s a huge palette,” Taichman says of the Harman. “Just crossing the stage takes a long time. But I sort of think of it like a moving painting, and this feels like the canvas is operatic-sized.” She laughs: “And that gets my juices going.”

Woolly artistic director Howard Shalwitz says, “I think a visual imagination for all the elements of design is what many people consider her greatest strength.”

Taichman’s “Twelfth Night” is keyed by images of ice and giant roses in a setting designed by Riccardo Hernandez; she’s also creating a prologue for the show, and using a live five-piece band and original music by longtime collaborator Martin Desjardins. The concept came to Taichman in a dream — a dream of a design meeting, which seems to speak volumes about her measured, saturated approach to making pictures on the stage.

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As usual, the Shakespeare Theatre Company continues to provide really extraordinary digital content to support the education and cultivation of their audience.  Since we’re co-producing Twelfth Night with them this year, I hope that we will be able to take advantage of some of their unique digital ventures to share you our audiences as well.  Below, you can find a video of Rebecca Taichman (Twelfth Night director) that they recently posted on their YouTube page.  Enjoy!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Edwin Austin Abbey’s 1899 painting “O Mistress Mine,” inspired by Twelfth Night.

The fourth show of our Theater Season, William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, runs from March 8 to March 29 in the Matthews Theatre. This production, co-produced with the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., will be directed by Rebecca Taichman. It’s been four seasons since McCarter produced a Shakespeare play (the last being A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2005), and we’re all kinds of excited for this production. It’s a little ways off, so you’ll hear lots about the wonders to be found in Ms. Taichman’s production here in the months to come; meanwhile, there’s a lot to love about the history of this play.

If you’ve seen different works by Shakespeare, there’s a few patterns and tricks that start to emerge. He was a fan of high seas adventure, sometimes involving pirates and/or shipwrecks (Hamlet; The Tempest); he successfully mined mistaken identity and identical twins to comedic effect (The Comedy of Errors); he astutely noted the abilities of a clown or fool to say truths more serious characters could not (King Lear); he understood the humor to be found when loud characters and alcohol combine (A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2); he liberally indulged in the use of cross-dressed characters (As You Like It; Cymbeline; The Merchant of Venice; The Merry Wives of Windsor; A Midsummer Night’s Dream…okay, he really liked to use that one). These, and quite a few more, were staples of Shakespeare’s storytelling toolbox.

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