Chris Kipiniak

My mom can’t wrap her mind around the fact that we have some rehearsals this week, during previews and before opening.”Why are you rehearsing?” she asks. Except for the fact that I’ve answered it a hundred times over the course of this tour, it’s not a terrible question. Argonautika’s been running for—what? Five months? 120 performances—give or take? Something like that. What could we possibly need to rehearse?

Well—I’ll have you know—quite a lot!

That’s a lie. But there is some stuff . . .Each theater is a bit different. When we transferred from Berkeley to Washington we were moving from a (roughly) 800 seat house, to an (even more roughly) 500 seat house. It’s (VERY roughly) the difference between calling someone to the phone from across a corn field or across a table. If you confuse the two, you will leave that poor telemarketer hanging on the line for a very long time because either the person you’re calling won’t hear you or they won’t care what you’re seeing because they’ll be too preoccupied with the question of why you are yelling at them.

Here at the McCarter we are in a massive theatre which seats—I believe—over a thousand people (that’s a rough estimate based on some eavesdropping I did on the director). It’s a beautiful but cavernous space. Because of the size, we are now trying to call to our friend—let’s call him/her the audience—through the Holland Tunnel. Now, whether you’re performing in a large theater or yelling at someone across state-lines, the thing to remember is that it’s not just about volume. Once the audience hears you, you have to get them to understand you. Larger theatrical spaces—and your longer under-water tunnels—tend to have difficult acoustics. The louder you yell, the more it echoes, and the less is understood.The problem is compounded by the fact that the set has no back. It’s a beautiful, wooden box . . . with no back. It really makes you feel like you’re on the Argo…but with no back. I don’t know if the real Argo had a back or not, but ours doesn’t. This box is set quite a bit forward from the back wall of the theater in order to give us an alley (less rough this time) the size of the set itself between the set and the wall which can be used for crosses and as a playing space. Great for picture, crappy for sound: the lack of a back wall means that our voices get trapped upstage of the set, unable to be reflected outward toward the audience. I might not have the physics right, but it’s true.

So, one of the things that we worked on was how do we need to calibrate our show in order to make it heard. It’s about sailors and it has adventures with monsters and there’s a part with drums and stuff, so it’s already loud. So we needed to rehearse in order to figure out how we could adjust our performances of certain scenes in order to make sure that our mellifluous voices make their way out to the audience most quickly and cleanly. The big question was HOW? HOW?! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HOW?????!!!!!

Just turn out. Turn your head a little so your mouth is facing the audience. That’s the secret.

Which is why we had the day off today! (Don’t tell my mom, though—she wanted me to mow the lawn or something…)

Posted by Chris Kipiniak, who plays “Castor” and others in McCarter Theatre’s Production of Argonautika.

Atley Loughridge

Sunday evening was our first preview. During the storm sequence, Boreus (God of Winds) and Athena (Goddess of War) fight in monstrous storm on the sea over whether or not the Argo will sail. During this scene I hang upside down and swing with the wind from the ship’s ropes. And last evening, while I was watching my cast mates roll back and forth on the boat like marbles, I felt a distinct sense of kinship.

It was not touching memories of hanging from the monkey bars that did it, or even the “theater is your family” thing that people always say. No—it was our set that started it.

You see our set is a box. It is a huge wooden shoebox minus the sides (so that the audience can look through the box to the back wall of the theatre). And we have these metal grates running along the floor, the two ends and the ceiling, where the side lighting shines through. So whether you are right side up or up side down, the set looks exactly the same.So I was thinking about that, while I was hanging upside down, about how our set sort of has these two worlds to it-a right side up world and an up side down world. And I thought to my self, most things have two worlds.

Like skateboarding. Lately my leading side has been wearing out, so I’ve started boarding “goofy” to strengthen my weaker side and give my leading side a break. If you’ve ever tried switching sides in a sport or instrument, you know that the skill of your good hand does not transfer to the other one. Turn the guitar upside down, throw the racket in the other hand, and it’s a whole new world. You’re back to square one.The same goes for characters. Generally plays introduce a character under normal circumstances. Then when the world of the play turns upside down, the other side of that character comes out—a process described as the character’s arc. (more…)

Photo by Kevin Berne

Have you seen Argonautika? What did you think? Do you agree with the newspaper reviews, or disagree? Favorite parts of the show? Things that weren’t to your taste? Post a “citizen response” or read what other people are saying by clicking on the “comments” link below. We can’t wait to hear what your responses!

Please try to make sure your responses don’t spoil the play for those who haven’t seen it yet (please don’t reveal the ending or anything that ought to be a surprise for the audience).

If you want to include a picture with your review, email it to me and I’ll make sure it gets attached.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre. Photo: Sofia Jean Gomez as “Athena” in McCarter Theatre’s production of Argonautika.

Stew and Daniel Breaker in Passing Strange, directed by Annie Dorsenphoto: Carol Rosegg

It’s time for another intern update! But this time, instead of talking about the many adventures and activities of McCarter’s current interns (exciting though they invariably are), today I am bringing news from some of the Ghosts of Interns Past. Although as you’ll discover by reading on, McCarter’s former interns are in fact alive and well and doing all sorts of exciting things.

The idea for this entry actually came from Artistic Director Emily Mann, who mentioned how fascinating it would be to compile a list of the current activities of previous interns to post on the blog. Since I have my own rather obvious reasons to be interested in the paths that past interns have tread after leaving McCarter’s hallowed halls, I eagerly sent out an e-mail to interns from as far back as the 1992-1993 season, asking for brief updates about what they are up to now. Their responses are posted below. Enjoy!

After my internship at McCarter, I went on to receive the Van Lier Fellowship at Second Stage Theatre (NYC) and an artist fellowship at New York Theatre Workshop. I served as an assistant director for Joe Calarco’s West End production of Shakespeare’s R&J and directed the UK tour. I also assistant directed Intimate Apparel at the Roundabout working with Daniel Sullivan. I sold a romantic comedy screenplay to Fox Searchlight with my British writing partners in 2007 after playwright/director Doug Wright generously introduced me to his agent. I fortuitously met Mr. Wright at McCarter Theatre while serving as assistant director on his play, Not Suitable For Children. I’m currently working on feature and television projects and am a writers’ assistant in the writers room on the hit TV show, Lost. I divide my time between LA and NY.
—Monica Henderson (Producing, 99-00)

For the past four years I have been the Producing Artistic Director of the Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington, Delaware. I sit on the board of directors of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, and I live in Wilmington with my husband, John Starmer, and our son, Charlie. One of my housemates from my internship at McCarter (John Dixon… I can’t believe it was fourteen years ago!) is my son’s godfather. I spent most of my years after my internship at McCarter in the Upper Midwest (Minneapolis/Milwaukee/Madison) and I’ve really enjoyed returning to the East Coast recently as part of the greater Philadelphia theater community.
—Anne Marie Cammarato (Directing, 93-94)

I am currently the Production Stage Manager for New York Harlem Theatre’s touring production of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. We tour in many different countries in Europe including France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, The Netherlands and Belgium. The tour has also been to two cities in Japan. We will be in Catanzaro, Italy at the beginning of March and then head to Munich for two weeks, Amsterdam for 6 weeks and Antwerp for two weeks.-
–Elizabeth Ashby Baldock (Stage Management 97-98)

I have moved to New York City to continue work as a Stage Manager. Since finishing my internship I have worked on a variety of theater (Opera, Ballet, Musical Theater, Off-Broadway, and New Works). Working in the city is tough but just like my time in Princeton I find each day to be challenging and fulfilling.
—Kathleen Munroe (Education Stage Management 06-07)

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Atley Loughridge

Princeton is a nice town. The last time I was here was seven years ago (boy does time fly!). I was looking at boarding schools, and Lawrenceville was on the list. The interviewer told me I was in. But he kept saying, “you’re a theater type, aren’t you?” And I was like, “I don’t like to be typed.” So I went to Andover instead. And left for home a year later, to do more theater.

I brought my little brother’s longboard to Princeton, and I’ve been having a great time boarding around your town. Two nights ago we got out of rehearsal early so I went out boarding, thinking like, “What am I gonna do? Where will I go? I don’t know anyone here.” But in the spirit of “anything can happen, anytime,” I went out anyway.

I met some townies across Palmer’s square. A couple of guys who looked younger than me but said they were my age. I didn’t say anything about it, even though one of them kept asking if I was an undercover cop. (The actor in me was flattered, thinking “what a range.”) But it says a lot about Princeton, too! Undercover cops?! Right between the little courtyard and J-crew? At 10pm on a Thursday night? I’d be lying if I didn’t say I feel pretty safe here.

So we all went to my little apartment to listen to some music and both of the guys had known the previous owners. They knew my place better than I did! They were telling me where outlets were, how to get to the washer and dryer…it was funny.

They were surprised I’d be so trusting, saying, “aren’t you afraid we’d rob you or something?” The thought never crossed my mind. Until they said it. But I wasn’t worried. I kind of like hanging out with strangers…always have.

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Chris Kipiniak

Don’t worry, there’s no fire. Of course you could be excused for thinking there was because of the way I typed “FIRE” in all caps and because of the designedly ear-splitting shriek of the fire alarm just above my head as I type this (which you can’t hear of course but trust me: My ears are split.). Some jerk set the fire alarm off.

That jerk is, of course, me. This is the second time I have done it. Today. How many times in the past…? I couldn’t begin to guess.

My favorite thing about being an actor on the road is getting put up. When you get hired to do a show out of town (”out” of the town where you live), you are usually housed somewhere for the run. The type of place depends on the theater: it can be anywhere from a scuffed college dorm, with bunk-beds and plastic-coated mattresses, to tastefully but soullessly decorated corporate cubes in lifeless business districts of big cities.

For actors, convenience is paramount, and the best apartment is always the one closest to the theater. If we could roll out of bed into the rehearsal hall we would. Sometimes we do…even if there’s a 15 minute walk.

Some people miss their homes or have trouble adjusting, but not me. It makes me feel very important to have to catch a plane, to land somewhere I’ve never been, to get a chance to explore new neighborhoods, and, generally, to be a stranger. I love living in a hotel and out of a suitcase. Søren, who plays Hercules in Argonautika, has a wife, a child, and a dog, and has told me he misses all of them. He misses home. Whatever, man. Not me. Though I will admit a strange place takes a bit of adjustment. Even the most adventurous of us will find ourselves confounded by reaching for, say, a spatula, and finding it isn’t where we expected it to be. Why isn’t it there? Well, why should it be? We didn’t organize the place. We aren’t home.

We just started tech for Argonautika here at McCarter yesterday, so I’m still getting used to my very nice, very spacious, and all amenitied-up room at a hotel not far from the theater that I checked into about 30 hours ago. Which is why I can’t find the spatula. We’re also in the midst of tech. That’s the time when all of the theatrical elements—the acting, direction, the lights, set, props, sound—start trying to march in concert. Usually, it’s the last week before performances. It’s deadline-driven and a notoriously long, grueling process. It’s when the show makes the awkward transition from rehearsal room to theater and when it’s decided whether the sound cue is called off the action or vice versa. Every scene takes a few tries. Everything has to be adjusted. Tempers tend to flare and people start getting short with each other. But, luckily this show, being a co-co-co-production with 112 some odd performances behind it, has had it pretty easy. Most of the problems had already been worked out and the exceptionally talented crew at McCarter has been able to adjust in record time. Which is why we got off a bit early tonight. Which is why I thought I’d make myself something to eat and decided on a salad with some chicken. Which is why I started heating up what I thought was a frying pan…

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Yesterday was the first night of tech and I am now even more excited about Argonautika than I was before. It is smart, sexy, funny, and just downright awesome. Tech was particularly fun because the actors have already done the show in two or three other cities. Usually in technical rehearsals, our production staff is explaining to the performers how everything works. In Argonautika tech, the actors get to show our staff how the various technical aspects need to happen. I have to say that it speeds things along rather nicely. We got through 39 pages last night (it is a 97 page script). I took two pictures (without stage lights) of what the set looks like in the Matthews Theater.

This Sunday night (March 16) at 7:30pm is our first preview, and for that performance only, all seats in the house are $15. And youth tickets (for those with a student ID) are $15 for the entire run.Oh right, and there are also free tickets. But you’ve got to work for them. Write an Argonautika-themed limerick or haiku and email it to Jon, our marketing manager. He’ll pick the best two and give the winners a pair of free tickets to Sunday’s preview. And maybe we’ll publish your poems on the blog. Aw, what the heck. You can write whatever kind of poem you want. I would enjoy a good Argonautika villanelle.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

Photo by Frank Wojciechowski

This is the sixth and final segment of our interview with Yehuda Hyman, writer and performer of IN-Festival Spotlight Production The Mad 7. Read the fifth segment here. The play is based on “The Seven Beggars,” a story by Hasidic Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and follows a character named Elliott as he encounters six storytellers from various regions of the world. Each one shares a mystical story through music and dance, propelling Elliott on a spiritual journey of self-discovery.In the following section, Yehuda discusses the play’s ending and its implications.

Well, we’ve been speaking for a long time and I don’t want to keep you, but I would love to address one final point, which is the fact that we don’t hear the final story—that it doesn’t end, that it’s not told. So, what is your take on that? What is the significance of that fact; what are we waiting for?

Well, there’s a couple of things. First of all, Rabbi Nachman was dying when he told this story. He died, what, three weeks after? It’s the last story he told. So he was definitely looking at his own death. And his work in this world, in this realm, what he was trying to accomplish. Maybe he felt that he wasn’t going to be able to accomplish it, in this realm. But I think he did have a—I mean I don’t think, I know, because he said it—he said that his teachings, his spirit, would grow stronger and stronger and stronger after his death.

That’s why it’s so important not to strangle these stories. “You tell a story simply.” We prepare, we do our best, we do everything we can. But then when it comes to it we just tell it. Because the real finish to the story happens through the listener. It’s what they do with it.

And so in “The Seven Beggars,” it’s like story, story, story, story, story. But the real finish, the real end to the story is yet to happen. It’s something alchemical that will hopefully take place in the future. And hopefully what is being created in the theater that night is the possibility of something happening in the future. That’s what I really believe.

Posted by Elizabeth Edwards, Literary Intern at McCarter Theatre.

McCarter’s 2008 IN-Festival is over. Between The Mad 7 and the free events, 929 people attended this year’s IN-Festival (for the entire festival, there were only 76 seats that weren’t reserved). This feels extraordinary, even though an equally successful show in either of our two primary theaters might have sat upwards of 14 times that number. Without huge budgets or tons of advertising, our patrons showed their great desire to attend riskier, newer and often unfinished work. At one of the free events, I sat next to a young man in his 20’s who was attending McCarter for the very first time—and who said he’d like to come back and see something on the mainstage soon.

In general, I’m interested in what it means for a large institutional theater like McCarter to try to produce work on a smaller scale (and I mean that in terms of advertising, production values, salaries, etc). Jaime at Surplus (who attended this year’s IN-Festival to hear singer/songwriter Susan Werner) has a really interesting blog post about Lincoln Center Theater’s new program for emerging artists, LCT3. Jaime astutely identifies LCT3 as a close cousin to some of the efforts by other institutional theaters to form a space for the presentation of riskier work or emerging artists—such as Steppenwolf’s First Look Repertory Program or the Roundabout Theatre’s Roundabout Underground—although I believe she places too much emphasis on who had the idea first (as though we are just cribbing from each other) and not enough the cultural and historical trends that have influenced many theater companies at once to develop “third theaters” (I’m using that term instead of the term “second stage” because in each of these examples, and at McCarter, there already are at least two primary stages). Below, I’m going to explore some of these trends and some of the conversations that have been going on at not-for-profits, on the blogosphere and in bars across the country. In general, the analysis is about institutional theaters in general, I think McCarter is different than the average theater in a lot of key ways, which maybe I’ll get into in a future post. And just so we’re clear, this is all just my musings and ramblings, and doesn’t represent McCarter’s institutional musings and ramblings or the musings and ramblings of McCarter’s leadership.

Depending on whether or not the person you ask is a jerk, the Regional Theater Movement started with either Margo Jones in 1947, or Tyrone Guthrie in 1963 (I’ll let you guess which answer the jerk would give). In the 45-61 years since then, many of the regional theaters have grown tremendously. What was at the beginning of movement of scrappy theaters pulling themselves up by their bootstraps has become a map dominated by theatrical juggernauts like Center Theatre Group, the Goodman, the Guthrie, Arena Stage, A.R.T., etc. These theaters have gone from founder-driven theaters (with founders like Zelda Fichandler, Tyrone Guthrie, etc.) to “institutional theaters” that have a series of artistic directors but maintain a certain growth and trajectory despite these leadership shifts. My point is that 25 or even 15 years ago, America wasn’t dotted with behemoth theaters with hundreds of thousands of patrons. For backup to this point, check out last Sunday’s New York Times. This is a new model, the natural growth of the Regional Theater Movement.

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Last week, at the end of their run, the costume staff of The Shakespeare Theatre Company sorted all of their Argonautika costumes, sent them out for dry-cleaning and laundering, and boxed them up into 16 huge boxes to go on the trucks headed up to Princeton.

Yesterday, I stumbled into our wardrobe room where our costume shop staff was unpacking the boxes. That may not seem like such a big deal, so here is some perspective: there are 14 cast members, each plays between 1-6 characters and there are an average of 5-10 individual costume pieces per character. Each of those needs to be carefully unpacked, steamed, repaired (they just finished a long run!) and sorted so that when the actors arrive tomorrow, they are ready to go. It was a big job.

Along with the costumes are boxes of fabric swatches with the extra fabric that was used to make the costumes (in case it is needed for a repair or alteration) and the “costume bible,” a huge binder that archives the costumes for the entire production. The costume bible has a section for each costume, with the original sketch of the costume, a photograph of the actor in the costume, a list of all the pieces in the costume (from underwear to jewelry), fabric swatches and records of where each type of fabric was purchased, notes on the original fitting and a history of any repairs or alterations to the costume. When there is a question about whether it was Hera’s or Aphrodite’s 6-inch platform shoes that had the glitter on it, the costume bible is the place to go to figure it out.

And no, that wasn’t a hypothetical example.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre