Photo: Nancy Wegard for the New York Times

I always get a kick out of pointing my web browser to The New York Times Online and seeing familiar faces. This morning, the Gray Lady published a fantastic feature on the collaboration between Emily Mann and Edward Albee on Me, Myself & I.

The article comes on the heels of this one from the Princeton Packet. And this one from the Star-Ledger. And this one from the Trenton Times. The neat thing about reading each of these articles is that you can see how each newsroom has decided to take a totally different approach in their “preview articles.” One talks about Emily and Edward’s collaboration, another talks about Edward-the-teacher, another interviews Tyne Daly, etc.

Either way, they all agree that Me, Myself & I is one of the most thrilling events this season in the New York area. Based on the extraordinary audience response to opening night on Friday (my hands were sore from the clapping), I would have to agree.

Advice: If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, now is the time to do so. Actually, that’s not true; three months ago was the time to do so! But it’s not too late (yet), so snatch up those few remaining tickets while they last. Performances are starting to fill up very quickly, and if you delay too long you may miss your chance.

Update: Read yet another preview article (Variety) here.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Photo by T. Charles Erickson

After a week and a half of previews (during which time the actors rehearse during the day and perform at night), opening night for Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I is finally here. I’ve now seen it many times, and I’m excited to see it again tonight. It is rare to find a piece you can happily sit through over and over again, but because Albee’s language is so brilliant, every time I listen I get a deeper understanding of what the play is trying to do.

For me, this play has become a play about language, and the way that we allow words to define us. If I say we are twins, does that mean we are? What if I say that my brother and I are not brothers anymore? What is brotherhood except for a set of words? And what happens when words fail, when they are misunderstood, or have the wrong meaning? What happens when characters are denied words?

I can’t wait to see the show again tonight and further develop my understanding of Albee’s stance on language. And I can’t wait for the party after opening!!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre. Photo: Brian Murray as “Dr.” in McCarter Theatre’s production of Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I.

Argonautika at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

Now that the Shakespeare Theatre Company is getting ready for their leg of the Argonautika co-production, they have lots of fun goodies on their website. I really recommend the Mary Zimmerman Podcast that they put up a few weeks ago. I put it on my iPhone and listened to it while I was doing laundry. Is that too much information?

They also have some neat production photos up on their blog, and I’m sure that there will be some other content up there soon. It is kinda wild how many not-for-profit theaters have embraced the web (and web 2.0 technologies like Yelp, Twitter, Flickr, and Del.icio.us). I subscribe to several theater’s blogs, including Huntington, Steppenwolf, and SDC. I don’t know who (if anyone) has yet really examined whether these digital ventures are having any substantive effect on patron participation (as ticket buyers, volunteers, donors, advocates, etc.). At least for this blog, it may still be too early to tell, but if you’re a frequent blog reader, shoot me an e-mail or drop a comment to let me know who you are, how you found the blog, why you read it, and whether or not it has changed your relationship to McCarter in any way. I’m really curious to know who is out there!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

This is Part II of McCarter’s look back at what some of the artists from 2007 are up to now. Click here for Part I.

Stick Fly
In just a few weeks, Stick Fly playwright Lydia R. Diamond will open her newest world premiere, Harriet Jacobs, at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. The play is based on the life of Harriet Jacobs, author of the book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This play, which opens February 8, is part of the Steppenwolf for Young Adults series. Lydia’s adaptation of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye has been receiving productions around the country, and was recently listed as one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s top ten theater events of 2007. The list also includes Argonautika, which recently ended its run at Berkeley Rep. Stick Fly was also recorded by L.A. Theatre Works, and will soon be available for ordering on their website.

Tartuffe
Tartuffe transferred to Yale Rep, in New Haven, Connecticut and ran through the month of December. it only just ended on December 22, so there hasn’t been all that much time for the various artists of the show to start new projects. The big news, however, is that actress Sally Wingert is slated to lead the cast of Wendy Wasserstein’s Third at The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Many of our audience members will remember Sally for her utterly fabulous turn as Dorine, the saucy maid who sees through all of Tartuffe’s cons. Sally is one of the great stars of the Twin Cities, and The Guthrie is one of the finest theaters in the nation (and where McCarter’s Artistic Director Emily Mann did some of her earliest work). There’s a great video of Sally talking about Third here.

A Christmas Carol
Since closing McCarter’s production of A Christmas Carol, director Michael Unger has started his next venture, directing The Happy Time at Arlington Virginia’s Signature Theatre. The Happy Time is an unfortunately forgotten musical by Kander and Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret, Curtains, etc.). It originally starred Robert Goulet, and sadly its claim to fame is that it was the first Broadway musical to close having recorded a net loss of over a million dollar. Nevertheless, the score is quite tuneful, and Signature, a theater that has recently won great acclaim for its productions of Sondheim musicals, is producing it as part of a Kander and Ebb celebration. Unger is in excellent company; the other festival directors are Eric Schaeffer (Signature’s Artistic Director) and Frank Galati, two time Tony Award-winning director of musicals and classics, and an Associate Director at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. The Happy Time runs April 1-June 1, 2008.

Let us know what you think! Post a comment below by clicking on the “comments” link.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

photo by T. Charles Erickson

Carol Rocamora, who interviewed Edward Albee for the American Theater magazine article, also sat down with Edward and Emily Mann at the Princeton Library (before the “Live at the Library” event) for a brief recorded chit-chat, which is available as a podcast download from McCarter Online. You can listen to it on your computer, or download it, drag it into iTunes, and listen to it on you iPod. It starts and ends somewhat abruptly, so heads up. Download it here.

Have fun!Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Cindy Boone is McCarter’s Art Director. With the assistance of Graphic Designer Danny Garber, Cindy is responsible for the layout and design of all printed McCarter material, from advertisements to programs. Cindy’s specific responsibilities often include poster designs (I’ve included several samples of her designs with this post) and the McCarter News, which gets mailed out to thousands of patrons. With equal skills in artistry and technology, Cindy’s work sets the tone of each play, giving the audience a visual hint at what to expect when they walk into the theater. I asked her seven questions:

What’s your hometown?
Hightstown, NJ

What do you like most about being an art director?
The opportunity to be creative, the challenge that each play presents to create a representation in a single image that will entice, interest and spur the curiosity of the audience.

What’s on your iPod (or CD player, etc.)?
I like everything from blues to Metal, so my iPod may have anything from Keb Mo to T.O.N.

What do you love about Princeton?
The convenience of everything within walking distance, and the beautiful campus.

If you were trapped on a desert island, and could only take one book, what would it be and why?
I doubt I could choose just one. I love to read but am quickly bored. I would more than likely choose a very thick one if I were to be stuck on a desert island, so I could use the pages for other purposes (like kindling.) Hey, survival first.

What was the first play you ever saw?
The first play I ever saw was A Christmas Carol.

What is your favorite thing so far about working at McCarter?
The people and friendly, casual environment. (And that Tommy brings his dogs in to visit!)

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

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 last year’s “IN-Festival,” and the play will receive its first reading at McCarter on March 6, 2007. 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 I will be sharing excerpts from on the blog. Below is Part I:

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.

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Edward Albee is quite clearly the celebrity du jour in Princeton, with lots of press all over the place as he prepares for not just Me, Myself & I but also a slew of other upcoming projects.

He is now featured on the cover of “American Theatre,” a magazine published by Theatre Communications Group. Inside, there is a quite lengthy interview with him conducted by Carol Rocamora, all about his process and work. It is a really terrific read, and I highly recommend it. You can read it on the web.

My favorite Albee quote from the interview: “Audience taste is in part due to what producers are willing to produce and what critics believe that audiences want. This has led to a gradual lessening of the importance and power of the theatre. It has become basically an escapist engagement. Look at Broadway—now there are just a few straight plays and the rest are musicals. I’m convinced that if we’re lucky, we’ll get two good serious worthwhile plays a season, but because of cost it makes cowards out of people. In 1962 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? cost $42,000 to mount and tickets were $7 each. In 2005 it cost more than $1.5 million to produce the same play. Now it’s about trying to do what is safe and easily satisfying instead of what is valuable. It all has to do with commerce. The best work doesn’t get to Broadway more often than not. When Dick Barr bought the rights to The Zoo Story in 1959 and produced the play Off Broadway, he said: “I produce plays because they should be seen.” He never suggested I should alter anything for commercial reasons. Of course, he went broke…”

US 1 has also published an interesting preview article about Edward Albee, which you can read here.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Did a very exciting run of the show last night for an invited audience; after all, it’s hard to work on a comedy without an audience—last night’s audience was the boost that we needed to be sure. After 20 hours of sitting here in the dark by ourselves, it was nice to have fresh eyes and ears to see and hear the show thru. They were great.

As a result of last night’s run and what we learned in front of the audience, today’s rehearsal is about further tightening, doing some cuts in the script and a very exciting move of a scene into another scene.

As far as both lighting and sound goes, we’re in great shape—Ken Posner’s (the lighting designer) work is gorgeous as usual. Most of the questions I needed to get answered have been, but it was an interesting road to the answers.

See, I started the weekend’s onstage-rehearsals with a particular sound for the clangs that both Emily and I liked very much, BUT when viewing the whole show together, lo and behold it turns out that after many repetitions of the sound it slowly starts to remind you of what I can only call a postmodern boxing bell…it was simply too musical and for the clangs to imply a boxing bell in the show is NOT the right idea. The last thing you need is THAT subtext in the show. So back to the drawing board I went and I dug back into the samples I recorded and landed on something in the right tone and pitch but less musical. More accidental sounding.

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As we enter the new year, I thought it might be fun to look at where last year’s McCarter artists are now. With hundreds of playwrights, directors, designers, actors and technicians employed every year, a single blog post can only hope to scratch the surface (hmm, maybe this should be a recurring feature?). Here is what a few of the artists from 2007 are up to:

Lookingglass Alice
Lookingglass Theatre Company is about to remount their production of Hephaestus: A Greek Mythology Circus Tale, co-created and co-directed by Tony Hernandez, who appeared in Lookingglass Alice last season at McCarter. If you have a trip planned to Chicago, performances begin January 9. Get your tickets here. Of course, Argonautika, which McCarter is co-producing this year with Berkeley Rep and the Shakespeare Theater of DC also premiered at Lookingglass, so you can still get your Lookingglass fix without having to travel too far.

Radio Golf
After a successful Broadway run (including 4 Tony Award nominations), the cast of Radio Golf all finally headed their separate ways. But you can catch cast-member Tonya Pinkins in the Disney movie Enchanted, where she plays Phoebe Banks (the divorcing couple in Robert’s office on whom Giselle works her magic). It’s a nice big part, I must say! Actually, I really adored this movie—it isn’t the sort of thing I usually get into, but it was so sweet and romantic that I kinda just melted when I watched it. Plus, it brought back all these childhood memories of wonderful Disney films. It was kinda great, and it was fun to see a familiar face!!

Mrs. Packard
Mrs. Packard set designer Eugene Lee is currently quite well-represented in New York City, with set designs for both Wicked and the recently opened Broadway revival of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming (interestingly enough, Eugene also designed McCarter’s most recent Pinter production: The Birthday Party). In addition to Eugene, the creative team for The Homecoming also includes many other McCarter artists, including costume designer Jess Goldstein, lighting designer Kenneth Posner and fight choreographer Rick Sordelet. The New York Times review of this production started with the sentence: “First of all, it really is that good.” I guess that means you should see it.

Click on “Comments” to leave your comments below. Stay tuned for Part II.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.