In this video, David Thompson (who wrote the adaptation of A Christmas Carol that we use at McCarter) discusses his collaboration with director Michael Unger.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

OMG.

Can I say it again?  OMG.

Fetch Clay, Make Man playwright Will Power—on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report.  And he totally holds his own.  You must see it.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

In this video, David Thompson (who wrote the adaptation of A Christmas Carol that we use at McCarter) discusses how the story stays fresh every year.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

I just received this blog submission from Jean Hanff Korelitz, a fantastic writer and also one of the parents of a member of our Young Ensemble for A Christmas Carol—and I thought it would be a great addition to the blog.  Got a comment?  Just click the “comments” link at the bottom of the article!
—Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate

A (JEWISH) CHRISTMAS CAROL

By Jean Hanff Korelitz

This is my ten year old son’s second year in A Christmas Carol’s young ensemble, where he is soon to portray a much put upon young delivery boy who hauls a massive turkey to the Cratchit family at the end of act two.

Having a kid in a show with a three week run means that you get to watch the show in question many, many times, but I never get tired of A Christmas Carol. The fact is, I’ve always loved Dickens’ story. When I was my son’s age, I routinely viewed every available version on television, from Albert Finney’s Scrooge (still my personal favorite) to the much maligned Mr. Magoo version, and I have continued to reread the novella itself every year. My devotion may be a bit strange, given that I’m Jewish and all, but there’s something about this story of magic and personal transformation, so expertly leavened with real sadness and real euphoria, that always sort of called out to me.

Besides, I figured something out about A Christmas Carol, that ultimate Christmas story, that indispensable part of the Christmas season from Princeton to Timbuktu. A Christmas Carol is…wait for it…don’t laugh…really a Jewish story.

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Last year, we sat down with David Thompson (who wrote the adaptation of A Christmas Carol that McCarter has been using) to discuss the play and how he adapted Dickens’ novella into what has become a favorite holiday-season entertainment throughout the entire region.

Does it feel like it’s too early for us to be talking about A Christmas Carol?  In most places, the holiday season doesn’t start until after Thanksgiving.  Right?  But here at McCarter, we started rehearsals for A Christmas Carol in early November.  So in one half of our building, it feels like Christmas Eve every day!  So help us get into the mood—share your own favorite holiday stories and memories by posting them in the comments below (click on “comments” to get started).

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

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.

Tarell Alvin McCraney, playwright of The Brother/Sister Plays. Photo by Greg Funnell.

The Frustrating Part, I think that always has been, in rehearsal,
you see actors and directors creating these moments with the
words, beautiful, delicate and fresh; You say to them, ‘do it again.’ and its
gone never to be seen again. Until of course there is another one
beautiful and fresh, different in its shape, tenor, but beautiful like
those before. How do you say’ keep digging, keep hitting different
wells and reservoirs in the world of the play. Keep discovering but not
just in rehearsal now and always… Because these thrilling moments
will be equally thrilling if not more so for us the audience.
But that’s a hard place to be naturally, we are asking professionals
to dwell in the place of ‘I don’t know’. People are trying to learn lines, memorize rhythms,
orient themselves to which play they are in and I’m wishing, asking
challenging them to throw themselves in fully now before the
know the play like the back of their hands and see what
they already know about the play, the lines, the worlds, the
story instinctively.

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

Before rehearsals began, McCarter Literary manager Carrie Hughes spoke with playwright Danai Gurira about her inspiration for Eclipsed.

What inspired you to write Eclipsed?

I’ve always had a passion for telling African women’s stories.  I feel like it’s a very underexplored area.  Being an African woman, having grown up and been raised around African women, but having lived half my life in the west, I’ve always been curious as to why our stories aren’t more told.  So I’ve taken it on myself to do whatever I can do to contribute to a cannon of work that is kind of thin.  That’s the reason I tend to generally veer toward African women’s stories.

It was really an image that struck me concerning Liberian women and war.  I was rehearsing another play in my final year of grad school at NYU and my director showed me a NY Times article that had a picture of the Liberian woman rebel fighter, Black Diamond. She’s quite well known at this point and her corps of women was quite feared during the Liberian war.  I became very intrigued and marveled at these women and how rarely we hear and see the stories of women and war and their role therein, specifically African women.  We always hear about African war, but we never really hear about women and how they navigate and survive a war terrain. So that spurred my interest and it went from there.

You were talking about the photo that inspired you.  Can you talk about that a little bit, what it looked like?

It was basically a bunch of women, Black Diamond and her army of women, who were member of the women’s fighting core of LURD, which was a faction of the rebel fighters. They were all standing there beautifully, very funkily clad, in jeans and slinky tops and berets and their hair was all well done, and they all had AK-47s slung over their shoulders and very steely glares as they looked in to the camera. I honestly had never seen such an image of African women in my life, so it was really the image that got me completely enthralled.

Now your first play, In the Continuum, also dealt with African women, but you performed in it as well as writing it.  With Eclipsed you’re just the playwright-it’s the first play you’ve written where you’re just the playwright.  How do you think your background as an actress and as someone who has written for yourself affects you as you sit down to write a play where you’re just going to be a playwright?

I think it gives me a very specific type of empathy that affects what I’m putting in people’s mouths. I want to give them things to play with that are interesting, that have depth, things that have action, that give life to a character.  I don’t want to put too much burden on an actor, but I want them to have something fun to play, something very challenging.  As an actor, I want to be challenged and have some rich strong material to deal with.  I realize I’ve been working that way with Eclipsed, trying to create work that gives actors a lot to do, especially actors who I feel are rarely given a lot do.

And by that you mean African-American women, especially young African-American women?

Women of African diaspora.  I love to employ women of the diaspora.

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