Sam Buntrock is the Resident Director at McCarter Theatre for the 2011-2012 season, and will be directing both Travesties and Are You There, McPhee? this spring. Artistic Programs Associate Erica Nagel sat down to ask him about his history with McCarter and what he’s looking forward to during his time here.

Erica Nagel: How did you initially become involved with McCarter?

Sam Buntrock: I directed an earlier incarnation of the Maltby-Shire-Weidman musical Take Flight in London at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2008, and Laura Stanzyck, who does the casting for McCarter, saw that production. The writers wanted to carry on development of the piece, and there was a history between the writers and [McCarter’s Artistic Director] Emily Mann. [McCarter’s Producing Director] Mara Isaacs pursued it passionately, we did a number of developmental readings, and it was produced at McCarter in 2010.

Sam Buntrock during rehearsals for McCarter’s production of Take Flight.
Photo by John Baer 

That’s one of the great assets of McCarter as a producing house – the sense of family, the sense of community within those walls. So, after Take Flight, Mara and I immediately began to talk about other potential projects. We settled on Stoppard’s Travesties, and I agreed to direct it at McCarter in the 2011-2012 season. Not long after that decision, I was directing a play at Manhattan Theatre Club, and [playwright] John Guare realized I was in New York. He had always assumed, as people do assume, that I only worked in London, because that’s where I’m from. Mara sent me John’s new play, Are You There, McPhee? and I had a very strong reaction to it. I fell in love with it immediately. So John and I met, and suddenly I was directing two plays this season at McCarter. Then the phone rang – and I remember taking the call and seeing it was Mara, and thinking, “Okay, well one of them is not going to happen.” And Mara said, “I have a third thing for you.” And I said, “Are you joking?” And she said, “We’d like to make you the director in residence for this coming season.” And I laughed and said, “Yes please.” So that’s how I come to take this position.

EN: What does the position of Resident Director mean in addition to directing these two plays?

SB: It means I am part of the artistic staff of the building. I’m not only involved in my own productions, but I’m also involved in the other projects that are being produced and developed at McCarter. I’m going to be living in Princeton during the two productions, so I’ll be in there from the first day of rehearsal for Travesties – Valentine’s Day, which is quite fitting, even though the play isn’t necessarily… well, every play in the world is a love story, you just have to find who’s in love with who, or what, or why – until the summer. As a freelance director, you float from place to place; you put a show into rehearsals and into a theater and then you leave. It’s very rare that you get to develop an ongoing, long-lasting relationship with the people responsible for those theaters in the long-term. And it’s those relationships that are extremely important to me at this moment in my life and career. People ask if I’m interested in running a building someday, and I’m not necessarily that interested at this point in my career, but the ability that this is giving me to be part of the running of the building, to be inside the creative process that takes place outside of the rehearsal room is extraordinary. When I first came out of college I landed a great job as the Resident Assistant Director at the Donmar Warehouse, and as a young, early-twenties director I was obsessed with what happens in the rehearsal room. All I was interested in at that point was how does so-and-so work in the room, how does so-and-so rehearse this play, that play. I wasn’t that interested in the bigger picture. And this feels a bit like I’ve gone back to that position again but in a much stronger capacity as a director in my own right. Now I’m able to experience the other aspects of the creative process. There’s the artistic element of my job, but there is so much of my job that is about management, and working with others that I, for one reason or another, was very shy of earlier in my days. I sound like I’m eighty – I’m actually only seventy six…

EN: You’re in fact younger than that by several decades! This season at McCarter you’ll be working on two plays by master playwrights of a much different generation. Do you have any thoughts on being labeled or thought of as a “young director”?

SB: I was just having this conversation with [scenic and costume designer] David Farley the other day. For the first time, I don’t feel like I’m in the kindergarten of the industry anymore. I feel like I’m probably in the…middle school? What we would call primary school (you Americans and your strange schooling!) I’m now really aware of a younger generation in the field, who I find exciting and terrifying in equal measure. After working as an assistant in my early twenties, I actually moved away from this art form for a while. I remember reading an interview with Simon McBurney, a director whose work I admired so greatly, and there was a picture of him and a caption that said something like “Simon McBurney: Hot Young Director, 39.” And I was in my early twenties, so of course at that point 39 felt like an octogenarian. I’d always been interested in animation. Alongside theatre it was my great passion as a child. My father was an art director, my mother a journalist. Pictures and words! So I developed a career for myself as a freelance animator and animation director. Because I knew that being so young in the theater business back then… it just felt like I was hitting my fist against doors and not getting through. I also wasn’t very good about “selling myself.” It just wasn’t something I was naturally comfortable with. I had – I still have, but it was much worse back then – a stammer, a stutter. And the idea that I’d need to go out every morning and hustle work just broke me out in a cold sweat, especially knowing that I’d be seen as so young, and that a director’s lifeblood is his ability to communicate. It felt like an insurmountable combination of circumstances. So to come back on the question, now I’m 36, I don’t feel young any more. Of course, I say that to someone like John Guare and I get a funny look. And I do feel very privileged to be getting to do this work at this point in my life. I think there’s a lot of distrust of younger directors. There’s this sort of preconceived notion that in order to be able to direct theater with insight and authority you have to be old enough to have that authority. And I immediately dismiss that notion because I don’t think of a director as an authority. I think of a director as a collaborator with others. I do guide the work home, but it’s not on my own.

EN: You mentioned David Farley, a long-time collaborator of yours who will be designing sets and costumes for both Travesties and Are You There, McPhee? Could you talk more about your history working with him?

SB: The running joke is that McCarter’s asked me to be Resident Director because they know if they ask me nicely I’ll bring David Farley along. David did Sunday in the Park with George with me; that was the first time we worked together. We’ve also done the current European tour of the Rocky Horror Show which…there’s no…I mean, it’s chalk and cheese between Sunday and Rocky Horror Show! He also designed Take Flight in London and at MCCarter, and he’s designing both Travesties and Mcphee with me. We just have this great, long relationship, this great vocabulary together. I’ve worked with a number of other designers here in the states now, and I’ve loved working with every single one of them, but there’s something particular about working with David that’s like…wearing a good old comfortable pair of shoes. No, that’s terrible! It’s just…there’s just something great about working together, especially with these two upcoming pieces which are very challenging in very particular ways. To take on one of these plays would be a challenge. To take on both of them could be a little daunting, but knowing that I have David on the creative team is a thrill.

Sam Buntrock during rehearsals for McCarter’s production of Take Flight.
Photo by John Baer  

EN: What excites you most about each of these upcoming productions?

SB: Well, Travesties is one of the great comedic masterpieces of the 20^th century. I am of the belief that it’s Stoppard’s greatest play. Put simply… it’s a memory play of events in 1917 remembered by a man in 1974, and not necessarily remembered correctly. And as with all of Tom’s plays, it contains extraordinary ruminations on life and art. But it does it in a way that is so boldly comedic. It’s like a play of ideas has smashed into a farce and they’re both competing for the stage. It’s a challenge in its scope, it’s a challenge tonally, and it makes such exceptional demands of its performers. But it’s one of those plays which is so theatrical and entertaining and moving. To get to do this play, which is so rarely produced because it’s such a challenge to do so, to do this play with this particular theater company is really exciting.

McPhee is a world premiere by John Guare. It is the work of a master playwright and it is… I actually don’t want to say too much about it other than: it’s hysterically funny, it’s dark, and it produces an emotional response in me that I haven’t had since really… it’s taken me by surprise. I’ve not reacted to material in this way since Sunday in the Park. One thing with this play, to reveal something of it, is that it tells the story of a man in his mid thirties. That time of life is a vital factor in it. So I feel a huge affinity to that. This piece…it captivates me. Again, it’s a challenge – I don’t want to say exactly why because I don’t want to spoil it – but it’s a real example of working at McCarter that we’re approaching this material as a team, with John very much at the center of the process. I couldn’t imagine being able to do the world premiere of this piece anywhere else but McCarter. From Emily to Mara to the whole artistic and production team – everyone in that building recognizes the immense potential of this play.

EN: Do you have a dream project?

SB: I’m actually a firm believer that you shouldn’t talk too much about your dreams, because if they don’t come true you’ve not let anyone else down! But yeah, I do have a number of dream projects, a number of things I’m developing or working on. I’d love to do another big musical at some point. But I’ve made a very distinct decision to concentrate on plays at the moment because that’s something I trained in. I studied Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama at Bristol University. I always had a passion for musicals but my training was with the classics. What you first do in New York defines you, and I had the great good fortune to direct a musical on Broadway, so for a while that defined the work I did. But I would love to do more Shakespeare; I just did Much Ado about Nothing with Michael Cumpsty and Kathryn Meisle at Two River Theatre Company, which was one of the most satisfying experiences of my career so far.

EN: How do you think your training in the classics serves you as you approach more contemporary work?

SB: It gave me a very strong understanding of the power of language and the importance of engaging the audience’s imagination. That is the most vital tool in the theater. We have all these tools at our disposal – we have actors, we have scenery, we have lights, we have sound – but actually the thing that has the most versatility and scope and range is the audience’s imagination. Training in the classics taught me that theatre should strive to be at all times theatrical – and that sounds like a truism, or an obvious statement – but what I mean is that theater should transcend and transport as opposed to just entertaining. It’s amazing how much you can communicate to an audience with so little. That’s one of the great lessons of my training.

Sam Buntrock with actors Jenn Colella and Michael Cumpsty during rehearsals for McCarter’s production of Take Flight. Photo by John Baer. 

EN: One last question. What makes McCarter a good artistic home?

SB: McCarter is a great artistic home because of the community within the building, but that community is a reflection of the audience community. Also, the wide and varied programming that occurs at McCarter, not only in the theater series but also the visiting work — it’s exceptional. It’s world-class. There’s no other way of defining it. And that level of excellence is again a reflection of the audience and the larger community that McCarter is serving. I think that’s exciting. I mean, just have a look at the season! Just have a look at the slate of work that’s on their stages this year. Across the board it’s varied, it’s daring, it’s entertaining – it’s all those things that you hope theater could be.

Posted by Amanda Coe, Digital Media Specialist at McCarter Theatre

When we began work on this design, the thing that we spoke about most clearly was that we needed to create the sense that The Poet has been summoned, finds an audience waiting for him, and begins to tell his story. When he discovers us, it should feel as if he doesn’t quite know where he is, nor perhaps how he got there, and it should feel as if he does not need anything but the muses and his suitcase to tell his story. Lisa Peterson’s very strong impulse was that The Poet should tell his story in a found space as opposed to a theatrical set.

 Empty theaters are magical places. An empty stage holds a particular expectant energy made of both the stories that have come before and the potential of the ones yet to come—in other words, an empty stage is a perfect place for this story to unfold. Of course, this production has specific scenic needs; most particularly, an upstage center entrance. When we created the design for the Seattle production, we created a very warm empty theater. We added all of the interesting things one finds stored in the corners backstage. It was a beautiful environment with lots of wonderful things to look at. Through that production, we discovered that the play might be better served if the stage felt haunted, bigger, potentially scarier, and that there should be nowhere to hide.

The Matthews stage at McCarter is one of the most beautiful empty theaters in the country. It felt almost criminal to alter it in any way, but we needed that upstage entrance, and it was too big a theater for one man to fill, even the remarkable Stephen Spinella. So, we have recreated the actual back wall of the theater, moved it downstage twelve feet and added the details that we needed. If we get it right, most folks won’t know that there is any set at all, and will wonder what in the world I have been doing with my time. We have revealed the original wooden floor of the theater to conjure the decks of the ships; the large upstage loading door that we added is meant to evoke the enormous scale of the Trojan walls; the exposed rigging of the theater (for those who can see it), the rigging of the ships; the lighting instruments stored along the upstage walls, the helmets of the hundreds of men who fought; and the loading dock itself, a haunted eerie dark little place upstage to worry about. The design is extremely subtle, but hopefully will allow the language and the remarkable performance to be front and center while quietly evoking the worlds of Troy.

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That’s not a typo. This entry is about a percussion instrument called, yes, a tongue drum. What does this have to do with An Iliad, you ask? Plenty. Music plays an integral role in director/playwright Lisa Peterson’s vision for this piece and before rehearsals even started I knew we were going to be working with composer Mark Bennett and double bassist Brian Ellingson on original music for the show. The bass is still at the center of much of the soundscape, but as we’ve been working Mark has introduced another instrument into the mix. I’ve never seen or heard anything like it. Here’s a quick clip…you’ll see what I mean:

Posted by Garrett Ayers, Directing Intern at McCarter Theatre

In the video below, Cheryl Mintz, McCarter Theatre’s Resident Stage Manager takes us inside the stage manager’s booth for McCarter Theatre’s annual production of A Christmas Carol, directed by Michael Unger. Learn about what a Stage Manager does and watch the show from Cheryl’s perspective in this short video. Stay tuned for more videos from A Christmas Carol!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Okay, not really.  Lighting a fire in a crowded theater would be dangerous.  Theaters are flammable.  So are crowds.  The whole thing would be a disaster.

Paxton Whitehead and Jon Patrick Walker in She Stoops to Conquer. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

So what do you do when the designer (the illustrious David Korins) designs a set that features a big old fireplace in a big old country mansion?  Okay, the best thing to do is to build a propane fire.  Propane fires tend to get hot and burn down sets, so you should make sure you build your set out of fireproof materials-things like concrete and heavy duty sheet rock.  Also, you’ll need a very very friendly local Fire Marshall.  And maybe some fire extinguishers on hand, just to be safe.  If you don’t the time, money, or structural integrity in your stage floor to hold up all that concrete, then the next best thing is to have some of McCarter’s ingenious electricians (like Paul Kilsdonk and Todd Loyd) build you a home-made electric fireplace from materials they happen to have in stock.  That’s what we did.

Paul and Todd started by thinking about all the places in a fireplace that generate light.  There’s the ember bed below the logs (which is probably glowing red and orange), there are the logs themselves (which probably have some embers on them that are similarly colored), there are the flames (which flicker red, yellow, orange and blue), and then there is the light that all this casts on the fire box around it (the chimney is probably glowing, etc).  All of these elements are probably flickering a bit and subtly changing colors, so you’ll need a lot of electrical channels to pull this off-the fireplace in She Stoops to Conquer uses about 20.

Here’s how they did it:

(more…)

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.

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.

Directing/Producing Intern Sarah Wansley has done it again, with another short McCarter video–this time about the process of taping out the floor for the rehearsals of A Christmas Carol. The video combines a time-lapse film of the floor taping process with interviews of Stage Manager Hannah Woodward and Supervising Stage Manager Cheryl Mintz. I hope you enjoy!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Ming Cho Lee

Calling A Christmas Carol Set Designer Ming Cho Lee a prolific and talented theater artist is a bit of an understatement. Born in Shanghai, Ming originally moved to the States in 1949 to study art at Occidental College in L.A.. After falling in love with theater and receiving an M.F.A. in design from U.C.L.A., Ming’s career skyrocketed when he became an apprentice to designer Jo Mielzner. Only six years later Ming designed his first Broadway show, The Moon Besieged. Since then, Ming has designed over 20 Broadway shows including Mother Courage and her Children, King Lear, The Glass Menagerie and For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf and worked with McCarter’s own Emily Mann on the Broadway production of her play, Execution of Justice. Interestingly, Ming’s designs have often received critical and popular acclaim even when the shows themselves did not: Ming often jokes that he has “more Broadway flops than anyone!” With such an illustrious career, one may wonder how McCarter was lucky enough to snatch him up for A Christmas Carol. As McCarter Resident Stage Manager (and resident Christmas Carol expert) Cheryl Mintz tells the story, Ming was thrilled to design A Christmas Carol because despite the abundance of Christmas Carols across the country, no one had ever asked him before!

Ming’s set, which had its debut at McCarter over a decade ago, lives in four 48-foot trailers parked outside of the McCarter Shops during the off-season. Each year the Production department spends four whirlwind days loading in the set before A Christmas Carol technical rehearsals begin; the first two days of load-in alone require 35 people working from 8am to 10pm. Check out Adam’s blog from last year about the intense installation process. The set has four motorized units: Scrooge’s Bedroom, the Counting House, the Cratchit’s table, and Fred’s piano. There are also 14 scenic elements that fly in or out and 34 speakers throughout the theater. When the Counting House unit was originally built by a scene shop in Philadelphia, it weighed approximately 6,000 pounds. A few years ago the McCarter scene shop rebuilt the top of the unit with lighter material and shed 1,000 of those pounds. Loading the set is only the beginning of the Production department’s work—it takes 16 crew members to run the show each night.

Ming designed the set with a forced perspective, so that the units look deeper than they actually are. The outside of Scrooge’s house (which flies in), for example, has 11 vanishing points (this is when parallel lines appear to converge to simulate depth - check out Wikipedia for a demonstration). The original drawing was so detailed, the McCarter scene shop chose to print out the drawing actual size and build it from that. Ming’s use of perspective is also evident in the city backdrops, which feature St. Paul’s dome. He used a stock image of London from WWII as his source and broke the image into three parts for three separate drops. If you look closely, you can see what appear to be dirty piles of snow near the bottoms of the buildings—in the source image, these mounds were actually piles of debris from bombings during the war. Every year, audience members comment that the set appears to slant to one side. Have no fear, the McCarter scene shop did not accidentally create the next leaning tower of Pisa, Ming actually designed nearly everything in the set to slant in order to represent Scrooge’s skewed view of the world. Thanks to Chris Nelson (technical director), Steve Howe (stage supervisor) and Bill Kirby (sound engineer) for the fun facts about the production! Study up and you’ll do well on the upcoming A Christmas Carol trivia quiz!

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

Cheryl Mintz

Five things I am especially enjoying this, my 15^th year, as the Supervising Stage Manager for McCarter Theatre’s A Christmas Carol:

1] Dermot Crowley: I have probably watched every scene of the play either rehearsed or performed over 800 times (imagine watching the same film 800 times?), but Dermot is forcing me to listen all over again.  With his fresh interpretation and the delivery of dialogue in a new way.  I thought I had heard the words every way possible, but Dermot has found new ways to make me to laugh and touch my soul.  There is one moment in the first office scene that with only a well-placed pause, Dermot lands a specific moment in a totally new way.  I can’t believe no other prior Scrooge has thought of doing it that way!

2] James Ludwig:  Having played Fred and the Undertaker from 2000-2003, he was whisked off to Broadway, where he spent 4 years with Spamalot before returning this year as Bob Cratchit.  Jimmy is a company leader, our AEA deputy, and loves being back at McCarter so much.  He brings so much joy with him every time he walks through our rehearsal hall doors.  It is a pleasure watching him navigate Cratchit, and he is so good with the children.  He mentioned at our first read-through how, though being in a successful Broadway run is amazing, he always thought of and missed being at McCarter for A Christmas Carol during the holidays.  It seems that every actor who is a part of this production takes something very special in their heart away with them.

3] Anne O’Sullivan: Back for her 7^th year as Mrs. Fezziwig, Mrs. Stocks and the Laundress after taking last season off, Anne has the most extensive woman’s role, and if you don’t see her onstage, you can bet she is changing her costume somewhere in the wings.  Anne walked in this year with her inspiring love of life.  Anne has had the same Palmer Square apartment during all her appearances at McCarter, which is better known as her “love shack” where she has had wonderful holiday memories with her husband over the years!

4] The Young Ensemble: Never in my 15 years have we seen such a large turnover in our Young Ensemble of 14 local children.  With 10 new children, it has kept all of us on our toes re-experiencing the process as we lead the children through it.  Danny Hallowell is back for his 6^th year in the company at the ripe old age of 10!  What a pleasure to have watched him progress from 3 seasons as Tiny Tim, one season as the Beggar Boy (as he was too big to play Tim and too young for the other boys roles), last year landing the scene perfectly as Turkey Boy and now in his touching portrayal of Boy Scrooge.  I am especially looking forward to Kalyn Altmeyer (Martha Cratchit) achieving her 100^th performance in the production, a milestone that an actor can reach in their 4^th year with the production.

5] Our Director Michael Unger: Michael and I have collaborated for 11 years heading up McCarter’s production of A Christmas Carol.  (And celebrating the birth and watching the growing up of our respective children.)  I love my yearly call to Michael in August announcing that it is Christmas Carol time as we set up and plan for the Young Ensemble auditions.  I love seeing his face when he walks into the rehearsal room for First Rehearsal and the space is transformed, especially for his production.  I love making the journey with him as he guides the new and alumni company members through the rehearsal process and then I wait for yet another new and creative idea pop out of his brain.  I love how he lets me set the schedule and then directs whatever I put in front of him each day!  I love collaborating with Michael!

Posted by Cheryl Mintz, Resident Stage Manager at McCarter Theatre and Supervising Stage Manager of A Christmas Carol.