CategoriesLatest Articles
Archives
|
Archive for October, 2007Happy Halloween!!
|
||||||||||
 |
Happy Halloween!
This spooky pumpkin (get it? it’s the facade of the Matthews Theatre!) was carved by Jon Pellow, one of McCarter’s multi-talented stage carpenters. Make sure you swing by the theater to see all the other pumpkins!
See also:
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
 |
Last night, McCarter staff and family members gathered in the spookily decorated scene shop (imagine every skull and scary mask ever created for a McCarter production decorating the tables) for an evening of food, fun, and pumpkin carving. Members of McCarter departments who often work very different schedules were able to mingle and scoop out pumpkin guts together in festive unity. (As in this photo of Colleen Verbus, Heather Klein, and Heather Biehl–interns in, respectively, Marketing, Stage Management, and Company Management.) The designs ranged from the highly intricate to the cleverly inventive (I guess it’s not a newsflash that we have a lot of creative people working here). There was even a snowman made out of three pumpkins stacked on top of one another. Over thirty pumpkins were carved in all, and at the end of the night we lit them with candles and dimmed the lights to view them in all their flickering glory. Quite a sight! The finished products are now on display in front of the Matthews Theater and box office, so come check them out!
Posted by Elizabeth Edwards, Literary Intern at McCarter Theatre.
 Tyne Daly, who plays Mother |
This is Part III (of IV) of McCarter Artistic Director Emily Mann’s interview with Playwright Edward Albee. Click here for Part I and here for Part II. In the last installment, Albee had been telling Mann about the new draft of the play that he had just completed. The conversation continued:
————-
Emily Mann: Um, the mother. Can we just talk about her a little bit?
Edward Albee: Sure.
Mann: She interests me, you write the most complicated and interesting women. And she’s another one of your large characters.
Albee: She’s a tank, she batters her way through everything.
Mann: Yeah, yeah.
Albee: She’s convinced she’s right about everything.
Mann: I know. I actually like her a lot. I know she’s impossible…
Albee: Yes, right.
Mann: …but she really loves her sons.
Albee: Yes, of course.
Mann: And they, oddly, love her… Tell me, though, about this father. Did she know him long enough to truly be missing him, does she live for him to return, does she know that he won’t return, or do we not know?
Albee: No, we must remember it is not she who says he’s going to return.
 |
Okay, I know it isn’t McCarter specific, but I am writing this post on the train back to Princeton after seeing Mary Zimmerman’s exquisite Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera, and I just have to gush! How cool is it that I get to work at a theater that hires Mary Zimmerman to direct our shows?!?
Unless you have been living under a rock, you have surely seen the haunting images from this production plastered on Met advertising on subways, magazines, and the New York Times. Diva Natalie Dessay’s face, mascara streaming, in front of a pure white background with barren trees. I was a bit worried that the production wouldn’t live up to the publicity. Fortunately, my concerns proved entirely unfounded.
So I had never seen Lucia before, although I am familiar with Donizetti’s music. Mary’s production was clear, beautiful, and moving. Mary easily avoided the potential pitfalls presented by this score (for instance, in one scene a family’s sworn enemy bursts into an engagement celebration - and before they take any action, Donizetti has a superb, though lengthy, sextet - Mary’s staging overcomes this by having five of those characters frozen as they pose for a portrait). Although I did not get to see Natalie Dessay’s interpretation, soprano Annick Massis’ highly physical Lucia conveyed the subtleties of her increasing mania even to the upper mezzanines (my $15 dollar seat was in the third-to-last row of the hall). The costumes, in a cleverly restricted color palette, were stunning and the sets (and yes, there were several) were glorious. And how many operas have a 15 minute mad scene (okay, a few of them… But still!)?
So you should make every effort to see this show. The Met has a variety of discount ticket options, especially if you don’t mind sitting far from the stage (or standing). You can also catch the show in one of its high-definition simulcasts (i.e. very far from the stage…). Of course, if you can’t make it, you can still catch Mary’s work on Argonautika. But dude, why settle for one, when you can have both?
See also:
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
 Photo by T. Charles Erickson |
Update- The quiz is now CLOSED. You missed it
Just what you’ve been waiting for–a chance to prove how attentive you were while watching Tartuffe, and to win a fabulous prize in the process! Answer the following 10 questions as best you can, and e-mail your answers to literary@mccarter.org. The first person to answer all 10 questions correctly (or the person who has answered the most questions correctly by November 15) will receive two free tickets to see Faith Prince’s late-nite cabaret concert on December 15th. See end of post for contest details and QUIZ ANSWERS.
(Hint: Take a look at the Character Profiles and Who’s Who page in our Education Resource Guide to refresh your memory of the different characters in the play.)
1. The character oh-so-skillfully portrayed by Gingy the dog is named:
a) Chloe
b) Flipote
c) Fifi
d) Mathilde
2. Which of the following characters does not at some point in the play hide and eavesdrop on a conversation between several other characters?
a) Elmire
b) Orgon
c) Damis
d) Dorine
3. What is Orgon finally driven to do in response to Dorine’s meddling in his conversation with Mariane about wedding Tartuffe?
a) He strikes Dorine.
b) He goes for a walk to soothe his nerves.
c) He banishes Dorine from the household.
d) He makes Tartuffe his only son and heir.
 Photo by T. Charles Erickson |
Over the course of the last week I’ve had the opportunity to speak with many Tartuffe audience members both informally and at post-show discussions. Here are a few of the great questions that they have asked about this production of Tartuffe, and here are some of the answers that the actors and I have given. If you have more questions, feel free to e-mail them to me and I will post them–along with their answers–on the blog.
Q: I loved being able to see the actors’ faces up close thanks to Alex Eaton’s video work and the large projection screens on the set—but I wonder what that is like for the actors. How does having the camera in the room affect the actors’ performances?
A: We often think of the art of acting as being divided in two: acting for the stage and acting for the screen. Because the smallest facial expressions and gestures are visible in a close-up camera shot, acting styles for film and television tend to be more subtle and understated than stage acting. Because an actor’s expressions and emotions as performed on stage must reach the farthest reaches of the orchestra and the highest points of the balcony, acting for the stage tends to be more heightened—louder and larger. The actors in Tartuffe act for the stage. Regardless of the presence of the camera and projection screens, they work to make their voices heard and their emotions felt by each and every one of the 1000+ audience members in the
 Photo by T. Charles Erickson |
This is Part II (of IV) of McCarter Artistic Director Emily Mann’s interview with Playwright Edward Albee. Click here for Part I. When we last left this pair, Mann had asked Albee about when he started working on Me, Myself & I and what had prompted it. The conversation continued:
———————————–
Emily Mann: Um, let’s see, what else should we talk about? The tone of the play…
Edward Albee: Mm-hm. So, anyway, let’s finish the first bit… I don’t really know. Oh, I know what I do—I write them to find out why I’m writing them.
Mann: Of course.
Albee: And if anybody, while I’m writing a play, asks me, “what’s it about?”—I hate that question. There are only two answers. One is “two hours,” or “shut up, he explained.” Wonderful remark, by, uh, who was the writer? I’ll think of his name in a minute… I thought that was such a wonderful use of “explained.”
Mann: Who is that? You don’t know who that is?
Albee: I think it was Ring Lardner. Or Ring Lardner Jr., but I think it was the original Ring Lardner. “Shut up, he explained.” It’s lovely.
Mann: Liz McCann once said to me, “Edward gave me a book called Intellectual Vaudeville. I couldn’t read it, because it was too hard to read.” I said, “Well, it’s a great title,” and she said, “Yeah, you should ask him why he gave it to me.”
Albee: I don’t remember doing that.
Mann: You don’t remember doing that?
Albee: No.
Mann: So the term Intellectual Vaudeville is not…
Albee: And I gave her a book to read entitled Intellectual Vaudeville?
Mann: Yeah.
Albee: I must read it. (more…)
 Photo by T. Charles Erickson |
Yes, it is true. We are only 49 days away from the opening night of A Christmas Carol. This year should prove to be a particularly thrilling and exciting one for A Christmas Carol. We’ve still got the glorious Ming Cho Lee sets (although it definitely seems like the sets are looking a bit lopsided lately…), the athletic Rob Ashford choreography and the gorgeous Jess Goldstein costumes, but this season’s production has also got a really jazzy and fresh addition: a new Scrooge.
You may remember James A. Stephens from his nuanced turn as Petey, the cornflake-eating boarding house proprietor in last season’s production of The Birthday Party. Well, he has just agreed to be this year’s Ebeneezer Scrooge in McCarter’s production of A Christmas Carol (yes, you heard it here, on the blog, first). This seasoned theatrical veteran is really cool, and we are all totally excited to see his fresh take on this mammoth part.
I have always loved A Christmas Carol. It is such a wonderfully simple story: faced with a set of spirits who show him his past, present, and future, curmudgeonly Ebeneezer Scrooge discovers that the only obstacles to his happiness are his own actions, and–as a result of this realization–Scrooge decides to treat others with kindness. To me, the spareness of this story is what makes A Christmas Carol so robust and moving every year. This is a big, important story with a huge heart, which Dickens tells with an extraordinary clarity and precision. I, for one, can’t wait to see what James makes of it!
See also:
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre. Photo: James A. Stephens and Barbara Bryne in McCarter Theatre’s production of The Birthday Party.
 Photo by T. Charles Erickson |
I popped in to the post-show discussion after last night’s performance of Tartuffe, at which a small crowd of audience members stuck around to ask questions of the actors about various aspects of the performance process. Here is Alison Cote (Production Stage Manager)’s summary of the discussion, straight from her performance report:
“We had a really wonderful post show discussion. Only 43 patrons were able to stay but they were a very smart group with insights and interesting questions. The discussion first focused on the convention of using video in the show [how it developed over time; what moments translated well on video; how does it affect the actors onstage etc]. The discussion then moved on to the topic of the rhyming text [how the actors approach it and how it translates to the audience], and then moved to an analysis about the use of both period and contemporary costumes. Marisol moderated and Zach, Michael, Sally, Daniel T., Andy and Alex participated.”
What I enjoyed (this is Elizabeth again) was that the discussion transcended a mere Q&A session, as actors and audience members engaged in back-and-forth conversation about what they got out of Daniel’s choices with regard to set, video, and costumes. We heard several different interpretations of the function of the mixed periods in the costumes: serving to distinguish the family from the “outsiders,” indicating which of the characters are still trapped in a world of pretension and posing and which have broken free, or highlighting the intrusion of this play’s themes and situations into our modern political circumstances. I think that’s one of the strengths of Daniel Fish’s creative vision–the way it allows such a myriad of different, equally fascinating interpretations of any single element in the production.
See also:
Posted by Elizabeth Edwards, Literary Intern at McCarter Theatre.
 |
This is a picture of one of the two “green rooms” in the Matthews Theater (there is also one in the Berlind). The green room is where actors can chill out, relax, and prepare before they go onstage. Each actor gets dressed in his or her dressing room, and can always go back there between scenes, but they can also use the green room as a more communal environment. During A Christmas Carol, one of the two green rooms in the Matthews is for everyone, and the other one is off-limits to the young ensemble (so you can have some rest without being poked in the eyeball by an eight-year-old - not that any of our eight-year-olds would do that).
The green room has a audio monitor that provides the sound from the stage and acts as a loudspeaker for any of the stage manager’s announcements (as in: “places for act II”). Because we are very spiffy, our green room also has a video monitor of the stage, so you can watch the action. The green rooms also have soda machines, tea and coffee, and occasionally food from our volunteers!
Nobody quite knows how green rooms got their name. There are many theories, including types of makeups actors used to use, the color of limelight, specific historical backstage rooms, or the presence of shrubbery and plants backstage in Renaissance theaters. If you know of another theory, post it as a comment!
See also:
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
|
|
|