Danai Gurira in In the Continuum, photo by Craig Schwartz

Playwright Danai Gurira has been developing her newest play, Eclipsed at McCarter. She and Nikkole Salter read excerpts from the play in our first “IN-Festival,” and the play received its first reading at McCarter in last year’s IN-Festival.  This year, the play is the Spotlight Production for the IN-Festival, running from January 29-February 8.  For ticket information, click here.  In researching the play, which explores the effects of war on Liberian women, Danai traveled to Liberia through a TCG New Generations grant, which she applied for with McCarter Theatre. She came back with a journal of her experiences which we shared on the blog last year.  I thought it worth re-posting today, on the first day of rehearsals for the Spotlight Production of Eclipsed.

I arrived with a vague confidence that things were in place to accomplish my goals; transport was organized, contacts were aware of my arrival, accommodations were relatively in place. Mohammed who would be my trusty driver for my entire stay picked me up from the airport. The US embassy Public Affairs officer Meg had connected me to his boss. The US embassy officer in the same position in Pretoria South Africa who had brought us to perform In the Continuum there earlier that year connected me to her. I marvel at how constructively my web of connections in Liberia was weaved. I was connected and ready to go.

The city was frightful to the eye. I realized this was where Hollywood and popular media filmed their “Africa” footage, where things could not be more destroyed and dismal, services could not be more lacking, buildings could not be more decrepit, and people could not be poorer. The streets marveled me, they were so riddled with potholes navigating them completely disallowed one the ability to speed. I thought of my own country, Zimbabwe, and realized how advanced it was for an African nation, and lamented at how bad leadership could lead to what I saw before me. We are crumbling at the seams, and though it would take a great deal to get us to this point, we are descending dangerously. But Monrovia showed all the signs of a land recovering from the ravages of war. It was later described to me by Americans working on the ground as a shantytown and a refugee camp. It was designed for only one hundred thousand residents and now was the home to over a million. Much of this influx was due to war displacement and the process of urbanization, which has taken its course across the continent.

My work began with phone calls, once settled in the Cape Hotel, recommended by Meg as safe and sufficient, and very close to the US embassy (for whatever that was worth). My first meeting was set up with Juli, a Liberian woman of steel in my present estimation, she became my most important contact, she was connected to me once again by Meg, described as one of those phenomenal Liberian women who just make it happen despite it all. The description was an underrating; this woman was a true tour de force. She had fought for peace in the midst of a vicious war, risking her life on several occasions, returning to a war zone when the US government evacuated her (she has American born children) and negotiating with armed rebel fighters to disarm by promising to send them back to school. She presently heads her own non-profit: Crusaders for Peace, which functions in a multidimensional way to bring about needed development in the country. We met at the Royal Hotel and had a meal; she listened to my spiel, more specifics on who I was and what my hopes and goals were. She was blunt, telling me, ‘you sound white do you know that? I was sure I was coming to meet a white girl. When you approached me I thought you were just someone who knew me from somewhere else.” I made a quick mental note to self to blacken up my English tone, whatever that meant exactly I would figure out later. She was glad to hear what my mission was, but had one final concern, “How old are you?” I assured her I was older than I looked and when I stated I was on the verge of thirty her face relaxed with relief. From that moment on, we became colleagues. She was very keen to maximize my dramatic arts expertise, she utilized much theater for development in her various developmental campaigns and was horrified with the performances and created works of her dramatic team. “They need help. I can’t stand to look at the stuff they come up with.” She said she would bring in other aspiring artists and I could conduct a weeklong workshop. She then offered to set up interviews with women who survived the war, both in and outside of the capital. I later learned that Juli was also the Liberian Cultural Ambassador; meaning she represented Liberia globally on any cultural activity. She had just returned from South Africa where she attended Lucky Dube’s funeral (the African Bob Marley, gunned down in Johannesburg recently). She shared her struggle to gain financial backing to create a home for children, complete with a school and a community of a church, stores and other facilities. She invited me to come to her census workshop the next morning. I readily accepted. Her organization had won the government bid to spear head communications and education on the national census - happening in 2008, the first one since 1984 - before the country went into twenty years of on again, off again wars.

Things were off to a good start, Juli was going to organize interviews, I was going to conduct workshops and I would work with other contacts to find more potential interviews.

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Dear Microsoft Word:

I’m a simple man. I don’t ask for much. Many moons ago, when I was but a wee dramaturg, I mindlessly accepted that many of the words I wanted to type—not the least of which, my last name—were unrecognizable to you. In an act of faith, I moved on from the acute sense of unacceptance, right-click on the infamous red squiggles which underlined my words of choice, and in an act of defiance, clicked “ignore.” By the time I got to college, I grew braver still, skipping past “Ignore” on the drop down menu and added words to the Microsoft Word dictionary. I accepted for a long while that the words I typed were beyond your recognition. “My language is just too academic,” I assured myself.

But today is the day the right-clicking and ignoring stops.

“Why,” you ask? What could bring a reasonable intern such as myself, a lover of language, to such an adamant refusal? The outrage began when my colleague, Directing/Producing intern Sarah Wansley, dropped off an article on “Shavian Style” for our Mrs. Warren’s Profession Audience Resource Guide with our Literary Manager, Carrie Hughes. As an introduction to her article, Sarah observed that besides “Shakespearean,” “Shavian” is the only adjectival form of a playwright’s name that Microsoft Word recognizes.

Impressed and amused by Sarah’s discovery, Carrie shared this information with my officemate, Producing Associate Adam Immerwahr, and me. Ever the skeptic, Adam opens up a blank document in Microsoft Word and begins challenging Sarah’s claim. “Pinteresque!” he exclaims while typing furiously, only to be defeated within seconds when the red squiggly line, the ultimate sign of failure, appears upon his screen. From our respective desks, Carrie and I wrack our brains for playwrights with well-established names and sufficiently distinct styles to warrant such recognition. “Wildean!” I shout as I reach for our list of classic playwrights, determined to find at least one more, while Adam, turned to the Greeks. “Sophoclean?” Fail. “Euripidean?” Fail. “Aristophanean?” Fail. We move on. “Pirandellan.” “Marlovian.” “Sondheimesque.” Fail. Fail. Fail. “Brechtian!” I declare triumphantly before turning to Adam and Carrie, eager to have them affirm my discovery. But no. Fail. I brush it off. What should I expect from a program that doesn’t even recognize verfremdungseffekt?

Distraught but relatively unscathed, I look up to the shelves next to my desk which hold archival binders for plays previously produced at McCarter. Then, I see it, there out of the corner of my eye, A Seagull in the Hamptons, Emily Mann’s adaptation of Anton Chekov’s play: “Chekhovian!” The suspense is almost unbearable (is Adam typing slower than before?) but then…yes! Chekhovian is the third, and, it seems, final adjectival form of a playwright’s name your program accepts. Victory!

Or is it?

What kind of world do we live in where only three playwrights are deemed worthy of their own adjective? Not Brecht? Not Sondheim? Not August Wilson? Not a single writer who isn’t white, male, and, at the time of this blog entry, less than 148 years old? Not a world I want to live in, Microsoft. Not a world I want to live in.

And thus, the right-clicking continues, name by name, eagerly awaiting the day I can type “Aphrabehnian,” “Wassersteinian,” “Zimmermanic,” or “Vogelian” without so much as a second thought.

Impatiently yours,

Patrick McKelvey

Literary Intern
McCarter Theatre

Emily Mann and Lanford Wilson on the set of Talley’s Folly, photo by T. Charles Erickson.

On the heels of BD Wong’s recent Downstage Center interview, Talley’s Folly playwright Lanford Wilson just recorded his own American Theatre Wing “Downstage Center” interview for a podcast and for XM Satellite Radio.

In the interview, Lanford discusses the creation of his famed “Talley trilogy,” including Fifth of July, which stemmed in part from his equating an Eskimo folk tale with the war in Vietnam, and Talley’s Folly, and how it grew out of an acting suggestion made to one of the original cast members of Fifth of July. He also talks about his original aspirations of being an artist, with writing being simply something to fall back on; his move from Chicago to New York and his introduction to Off-Broadway’s famed Caffe Cino in the mid-60s; the genesis of his landmark plays Balm in Gilead and The Hot L Baltimore; how he came to write Burn This to break away from his growing reputation as a “suburban” playwright and as the antithesis of Talley’s Folly; and whether we’ll be seeing new plays from him any time soon. Links to the audio feed of the interview and a downloadable podcast version are below. Enjoy!

From Talley’s Folly. Original air date - October 17, 2008 Running Time - 60:07.

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Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

McCarter Literary Manager Carrie Hughes recently conducted an interview with Skip Kennon, composer of Herringbone. Here are some excerpts of their conversation:

CH: How did you get involved in this project?

SK: Many years ago Ken Marsolais and Colleen Dewhurst held an option on a small musical of mine. They also held an option on Tom Cone’s one-act play Herringbone and proposed to Tom that he make a musical of it. When Tom said let’s pursue the idea, Ken and Colleen approached me and asked me if I was interested in doing the score. After I read it, I said I’m crazy enough to do the music but I’m not crazy enough to do the lyrics—but I know someone who is. I proposed the lyric writer Ellen Fitzhugh and we auditioned for Tom and the rest is history. By the way, Tom’s play only got us to the Hollywood segment, the rest of the story was arrived at through collaboration and of course Tom’s approval—with a few of the older characters and scenes dropped along the way.

CH: What makes the story of Herringbone good material for a musical?

SK: Characters who have big wants and great needs and big obstacles to achieving them and getting them met. Also lots of events and ups and downs. One arc plays, movies, or stories usually don’t make good musicals because you need twists and turns to create new situations to write a varied score.

CH: Can you talk about the challenges and rewards of orchestrating a piece for only three instruments?

SK: Herringbone is a musical in the form of an act. Acts are usually performed with piano, bass and drums and sometimes small bands. Colleen and Ken promised me that after the first production of Herringbone at the St. Nicholas Theatre in Chicago I could have a trio.

At St. Nick’s we only had piano—there was no room for anything else. Too bad, because bass adds a bottom and a buoyancy and percussion adds groove and drive. And all three together sound like a classy act like at the Algonquin or the Carlisle. To me, piano alone sounds like a rehearsal—not a performance—and it looks like the producers are cheap. I didn’t get my trio at the New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons. It was a tiny stage and again there was no room. And I believe the lukewarm critical response to the score at Playwrights was reflected in that incompleteness. The last three productions I’ve seen of the show have used the trio and the score really came alive. “Orchestrating” is too high falutin’ a word for what I did. I just added the drums that were always in my head when I was writing the music and wrote out the bass part that is inherent in the piano score which doesn’t change in either the solo or trio version.

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McCarter Literary Manager Carrie Hughes recently conducted an interview with Ellen Fitzhugh, lyricist for Herringbone. Here are some excerpts of their conversation:

CH: How did you get involved with Herringbone?

EF: I’d just moved to New York from Los Angeles and met up with Skip, whom I’d known from the L. A. BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. He said he’d been offered a one-man play for musicalizing and asked if I’d be interested in reading it to see if I wanted to write the lyrics.

CH: What were your first impressions of the piece?

EF: As I was reading Tom’s play, I recognized almost immediately that it was like nothing else in theater. I’d stop reading intermittently and pace around, mumbling to myself, “Nobody else gets to do this… nobody… nobody but me gets to do this….”

CH: As a lyricist, how do you collaborate with the book writer (and composer) on creating characters?

EF: The Herringbone characters were already created, but to weave them through an adventure which would now be told in song as well as book has required innumerable hours… weeks… years?… of intense discussion, role-playing, insistence, compromise, faltering, discovery, moodiness, congratulations and just about every conceivable kind of creative interaction.

Herringbone wasn’t unique in being developed through this sort of collaborative heaven/hell, but it was unique in that each creative participant seemed “possessed” by the desire to come up with something even more theatrically outrageous than any of the rest of the crew could imagine.

Initially, these sessions often involved not only Tom, Skip and me, but our original director and choreographer, Ben Levit and Ted Pappas, respectively. Soon, our actor, David Rounds, was a contributing force, as well. That’s a lot of “Yeah, well wait’ll ya hear THIS idea!” going on, and from quite diverse perspectives.

(more…)

McCarter Literary Manager Carrie Hughes recently conducted an interview with Tom Cone, bookwriter for Herringbone. They discussed the origins of the story, the development of the musical, and some of Tom’s insights into the project. Here are some excerpts of their conversation:

CH: The idea for Herringbone is such an original story. Can you talk a little bit about how you got the idea?

TC: I’m embarrassed to say it was simply I was sitting in my bathtub and I thought of the first line of the play and that was it.

CH: And from there it just flowed?

I wrote the play in about a week. It then had a history before it evolved into what you’re producing at McCarter. It premiered as a one-act play in 1975 in Vancouver, BC and went on to represent British Columbia at the cultural Olympics in Montreal, even though it was a play about America. It had had a television special with the CBC TV; it went on a national tour as a one-act play and it ended up at the Olympics. When it was there I realized that I didn’t want a one-man play, I really felt I could get more out of what I was trying to say.

I really wanted to write a play as a kind of a gift to the United States from my vantage point, having been a draft dodger and having lived here [in Canada] for the first eight years before amnesty. The vantage point of being here gave me the feel of a terrible compromise, almost like a tragic compromise that I think that we all have to deal with either personally or politically. So I wrote this tragedy for this kid. I have my own background: I was a child actor in Miami, Florida, going to theater school and being in plays for about 12 years and really being under the thumb of some demonic directors.

I really felt that it was best to write it as one person performing 10 roles. Then when I decided, after it had had this tour and been performed at the Olympics, to make it into a full length piece, I wanted it through composed as opposed to just inserting anecdotal music of some period. Some people like to couch the play in a kind of vaudeville context, but I disagree with that. I think that even though its history is attached to vaudeville, you would never see the kind of act [that Herringbone is performing] in vaudeville. Ironically, the closest thing [to our play] that occurred I didn’t know about until, I think, the production at Playwrights Horizon. The actor David Rounds was doing research and found—it was so bizarre—a little article on Ethel Barrymore having performed multiple roles on vaudeville circuits as a nine year old. So she was performing little 10 and 15 minute plays and that seemed to work for me historically. But the idea that Herringbone was just cheap jokes and it was based on certain rhythms or physical comedy, I wasn’t interested in that, so I played against the genre.

(more…)

So finally all of the “Live at the Library” videos from A Seagull in the Hamptons are in one place—check out the player below to watch all 6 video excerpts of the event with star Maria Tucci and director/adapter Emily Mann.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Emily Mann, McCarter’s Artistic Director and Playwright in Residence, recently sat down with Princeton News Network’s Todd Reichart to discuss her work as adaptor/director of A Seagull in the Hamptons. The video is embedded below. Enjoy!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Live at the Princeton Public Library, Emily Mann and Maria Tucci talk about how Emily’s adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull differs from the original, and how it has stayed the same. There are a bunch of other videos from the library event, which you can find on McCarter’s YouTube channel. Post your comments below by clicking on “comments.”

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Another YouTube video from “Live at the Library”—Emily Mann discusses why she decided to modernize Chekhov’s “The Seagull” and turn it into “A Seagull in the Hamptons.”

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.