If you saw Thom Pain: based on nothing in October, you might recognize the show's needy nihilistic protagonist (or was it antagonist?) who managed to piss off legions of theatregoers in a play that I absolutely loved. Some people didn't: having this guy up in your face for over an hour making you question if your life is worth anything is a little challenging.
Anyway, Todd as Thom showed up and confronted David as to why his show wasn't getting a repeat in the next season. He led the board members in a call and response session and then suggested a Thom Pain Christmas show. (brilliant!) I laughed so hard I was almost crying. I am already mentally writing the script for An Existential Holiday. Think it could sell? Don't worry, it's not actually going to happen. This holiday season we'll be spreading the holiday cheer with a John Denver retrospective called Back Home Again.
The rest of the (real) preview performances were pretty awesome. Twelfth Night, which we're opening the season with, is going to be really fun and dark. David called it "Shakespeare's farewell to comedy," meaning it has great wit and some of his best clowns hamming it up, but also some deeper, biting looks at love.
I was especially excited to see a reading from The Breach, a new play in response to Hurricane Katrina. The play was very uniquely written by three different playwrights and weaves together three stories that each touch on a different aspect of the disaster, but in a very personal, yet highly theatrical way. I wasn't sure from reading the script how it would play live, but I think it's going to be fascinating, touching, and ultimately a piece that will inspire a lot of conversation.
The three playwrights are also here this week for a workshop of the piece. At the meeting, they talked for a bit about the process, describing it as a marriage. Like all marriages, sometimes it's really hard, said the youngest of the playwrights, recent Yale School of Drama MFA grad Tarell McCraney. "Sometimes I don't want to be married to Joe Sutton," he said. (Sutton, by the way, wrote Voir Dire. The third playwright is Catherine Filloux.
The way the piece came together is fascinating, but in the interest of blog length (and the fact that I am three minutes away from lunch), I will save that for another posting.
And the sun appears to be making a comeback. Off I go into it.
Showing posts with label Thom Pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thom Pain. Show all posts
Peep Show
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Labels:
David Esbjornson,
Shakespeare,
The Breach,
Thom Pain,
Todd Jefferson Moore,
Twelfth Night
Wednesday night I stuck around for the annual board meeting that includes a few preview performances from next season's plays. The highlight of the night for me was when, during Artistic Director David Esbjornson's speech about the successes of this season, Todd Jefferson Moore entered looking a lot like this:
Breathing
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Labels:
arts,
Braden Abraham,
Leo K. Seattle,
Marya Sea Kaminski,
Rachel Corrie,
theater,
Thom Pain
From Joanna Horowitz, Communications Department
Exhale. That's sort of the general feeling around here. We opened My Name is Rachel Corrie last night after a media storm (front page of the Seattle Times anyone?), controversy, anger, elation...and that's just from the promotion side. As you can read from Marya's gorgeous blogs below, the artistic process has also been exhausting, wonderful, scary. Now the production can fly on its own. That's not to say the work is done—from our end we'll be constantly dialoguing with the audience, making sure the work remains the focus of any controversy—but the piece can really have room to breathe now.
I saw the show on Tuesday, the final preview. I felt like I was holding my breath the whole time. I was caught up in Rachel's words, in Marya's pitch-perfect, vibrant portrayal, in every nuance and turn-of-phrase that she and director Braden Abraham overturned. The play is truly a journey and by the end I was a little shell-shocked. I stood with the audience in an ovation and it was then that I started crying. I let out the breath I was holding and the play finally really seeped into my blood. Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about it, talking about, which seems to be common impulse. The lobby stayed packed for a quite a while afterwards as audience members shared with each other their thoughts about the story.
For me, I was most caught up in the passion that Rachel had to make a change in the world. I know I've written about it before, but it's what is the most striking to me. I talked to my friend Diane afterwards, and we both shared this sentiment that the play makes us feel so sheltered, so spoiled, so ineffective. Yes, we are working at a theatre that is producing art that is encouraging people to talk about really important things. I don't want to discount that. But both of us feel like how can we possibly ever truly understand the privilege we have without being faced with people who don't have it? Rachel Corrie talks a lot about that in the play, the idea that we must leave our comfort zone to try to understand humanity. Of course, that's really the goal of art, isn’t it? To help us understand or at least consider our place in the world? But I have to commend Rachel for leaving the comfort of a privileged life to try to figure out what she could do—as an artist and just as a human—to make a difference. Maybe it wasn't the right choice to make, but she made one.
This is one of the first pieces I've seen at the Rep where I really didn't feel like there was a wall between the art and me. This isn't a criticism of the theatre I've seen here in the past—I work here because of the caliber of plays we produce and their ability to spark dialogue. It's just a testament to the acting and direction of My Name is Rachel Corrie, to the willingness of Marya to completely open herself up to the audience and let us into her world, Rachel’s world. We are on the journey with her, in her bedroom, in her head. This play gets under your fingernails, in your mouth in a way I have only experienced in small, intimate theaters. And even though the Leo K. isn't tiny and I was sitting in the back row, I felt the immediacy. This isn't an in-your-face confrontation like Thom Pain (which I also loved, though the style was off-putting to some). This is Marya/Rachel taking your hand and saying, "Let me show you something." It's an indescribable feeling.
Exhale. That's sort of the general feeling around here. We opened My Name is Rachel Corrie last night after a media storm (front page of the Seattle Times anyone?), controversy, anger, elation...and that's just from the promotion side. As you can read from Marya's gorgeous blogs below, the artistic process has also been exhausting, wonderful, scary. Now the production can fly on its own. That's not to say the work is done—from our end we'll be constantly dialoguing with the audience, making sure the work remains the focus of any controversy—but the piece can really have room to breathe now.
I saw the show on Tuesday, the final preview. I felt like I was holding my breath the whole time. I was caught up in Rachel's words, in Marya's pitch-perfect, vibrant portrayal, in every nuance and turn-of-phrase that she and director Braden Abraham overturned. The play is truly a journey and by the end I was a little shell-shocked. I stood with the audience in an ovation and it was then that I started crying. I let out the breath I was holding and the play finally really seeped into my blood. Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about it, talking about, which seems to be common impulse. The lobby stayed packed for a quite a while afterwards as audience members shared with each other their thoughts about the story.
For me, I was most caught up in the passion that Rachel had to make a change in the world. I know I've written about it before, but it's what is the most striking to me. I talked to my friend Diane afterwards, and we both shared this sentiment that the play makes us feel so sheltered, so spoiled, so ineffective. Yes, we are working at a theatre that is producing art that is encouraging people to talk about really important things. I don't want to discount that. But both of us feel like how can we possibly ever truly understand the privilege we have without being faced with people who don't have it? Rachel Corrie talks a lot about that in the play, the idea that we must leave our comfort zone to try to understand humanity. Of course, that's really the goal of art, isn’t it? To help us understand or at least consider our place in the world? But I have to commend Rachel for leaving the comfort of a privileged life to try to figure out what she could do—as an artist and just as a human—to make a difference. Maybe it wasn't the right choice to make, but she made one.
This is one of the first pieces I've seen at the Rep where I really didn't feel like there was a wall between the art and me. This isn't a criticism of the theatre I've seen here in the past—I work here because of the caliber of plays we produce and their ability to spark dialogue. It's just a testament to the acting and direction of My Name is Rachel Corrie, to the willingness of Marya to completely open herself up to the audience and let us into her world, Rachel’s world. We are on the journey with her, in her bedroom, in her head. This play gets under your fingernails, in your mouth in a way I have only experienced in small, intimate theaters. And even though the Leo K. isn't tiny and I was sitting in the back row, I felt the immediacy. This isn't an in-your-face confrontation like Thom Pain (which I also loved, though the style was off-putting to some). This is Marya/Rachel taking your hand and saying, "Let me show you something." It's an indescribable feeling.
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