A few weeks ago, I met up with Pete McCabe (dramaturg at HERE Arts Center as well as writer/director/actor) at the recording studio/office of WPS1, P.S. 1’s radio station, which happens to be located inside a detention center building in downtown Manhattan. Seriously I walked past this building about 5 times because I honestly did not think that there would be any radio station in this building. I really wanted to take pictures, but I didn’t have my camera that day.
But behold, if you take the elevator all the way up to the top floor and take a flight of stairs, there is a whole entire floor of recording studios. Lucy Simanjuntak was our recording engineer, and Pete interviewed me about oph3lia for about 45 minutes.
The interview is available on-line now, and it is in the broadcast rotation already! I can’t bear to listen to it (I might die of utter embarrassment) but here it is.
Sorry for the gap. I moved into a new apartment and then left town for the first weekend of May. Actually I was in rural Oregon, where the ground shook with electricity.
That was the view outside our rehearsal space. (more about it here)
It was a beautiful place — but very strange to leave oph3lia for a few days. Working on this play is like working on three different plays — it’s kind of crazy that way. We’re at a difficult point now where everything must converge.
From a recent rehearsal, in the school girls’ section, the internal plot points (school girls’ frustration and desire to escape/Mr. Pratt drilling Cissy/Ms. Warren & Principal Geary’s love affair) swirl out into a physical sequence.
Jy gets some air there.
Stacey the stage manager has been so remarkably cool throughout. Here she is, writing down blocking!!!
At least, I think it’s blocking! Honestly I don’t know how she is able to describe what the actors are doing as stage directions. Then again, only she can read her handwriting so it may be some kind of secret advanced code.
I like to use a lot of different kinds of warm-ups at the beginning of rehearsals, mostly physical. I tend to do a lot of yoga-influenced stuff because I think it helps the actors renew their attention to their bodies, and also make them aware of their breath. It’s almost a cliche, but it still amazes me to think about breath: how it is a vital, necessary function of the human body, and yet it can be controlled by the human will/mind. Unlike many other physiological mechanisms that operate without our conscious effort (heartbeat, blood flow, cell regeneration, digestive processes) we can exert control (to a certain, even great extent) over our breath. Because of this, many practices (yogic, performance techniques, and otherwise) look to the breath as a key to the connection between body and mind (spirit and matter, rational and emotional). I have always been intrigued at dance performances to what extent breath is visible. In Suzuki, breath is “the actors’ secret.” And there is something so immediate about hearing people breathe — you can sense someone’s emotional state in their breath.
Last Tuesday was a singing day, so I wanted to give the actors a breathing exercise. I had them all lie down with their heads on each others’ bellies.
Then, starting with Mark who was at the bottom of this head-to-belly pile, they pass a deep breath on to each other, one by one. It’s a pretty elementary exercise, but a good way to build awareness of your breath in your belly when you got someone’s 10 pound noggin on it.
After breaths, they passed laughs and cries down. It was difficult to discern which laughs were part of the exercise and which were genuine after a while.
You know who is AWESOME? Joan Jubett, that’s who. Do you know her? She is this amazing actress who went to Columbia for MFA in acting, I think the same year as Connie. Everyone who knows her and her work raves about how incredible she is. I knew her peripherally for years, and then got to know her better over the last year or so.
Anyway when I sent out casting notices for oph3lia a few months back, I was shocked when she expressed interest in participating. She ended up having an immovable schedule conflict during the run of the show, so instead she’s come on board as “Assistant Director.” I put that in quotes because, really, I’ve never had an assistant director before, and probably wouldn’t have thought of trying to get one, or asking anyone I knew and respect to fill that position. But I can’t tell you how great it’s been to have her in the room! Someone clear-headed, intelligent, passionate, and who innately understands how to make theater.
On Sunday I asked Joan to review the schoolgirl dance on DVD so she could teach it to everyone. I knew that the old cast would kind of remember it but I thought it would help to have someone jog their memory.
Well this was one of the best ideas ever, because, it turns out, Joan is like Dance Captain Supreme, Queen of Choreography. “I’m not a dancer” she kept saying, but then she’d plow through all the movement sequences. She was able to teach the whole dance to the girls in one day.
Here she is in the green shirt in front.
And that is the butt shot.
Here they are doing “the robot.” Joan had very specific philosophies about this dance. Ask her about it some time. Laura pulled out the C-3PO. Fricking hysterical.
I don’t know what they took but I swear to god the school girls were high tonight. It was actually a great evening, and the ensemble is beginning to really gel and blossom in a way that (I am embarrassed to admit) sometimes makes me tear up. Anyway, during a kind of physical improvisation session today, the girls are started choking, gagging, retching, dying and reviving, in a really like exaggerated grotesque “28 Days Later” kind of way, as Joan put it. The photos of that didn’t really turn out, so I settle on these:
Connie, nonplussed, is having a moment with the audience.
So there’s going to be this wall, a rolling wall, which is one of the highlights of the set. It’s being built right now, but we’ve already been setting some scenes without it. To try to get some idea of how the wall will be manipulated to change the space and obscure/reveal scenes (as well as be a projection surface) we used a very sad folding table in its stead. Sad because the actual wall is supposed to be 12 or 13 feet wide and about 4 feet tall. And the table is, well, a table. It did make for a pretty fun/ny rehearsal though.
Beginning.
Laura is disgusted. (above)
Hana is late. There are three more people hiding behind the table there. Ha ha ha.
See?
Ivana Catanese came to rehearsal too, to assist with the Castellano porteños accent.
Calling all fabulous Asian actresses!! I am looking to fill the role of Cissy in the upcoming production of oph3lia. I am auditioning people THIS SUNDAY April 13 from 10am - 2pm. If interested please submit your headshot & resume. Character description: CISSY. Schoolgirl. Asian (preferably East Asian, but not Japanese or Filipina) Must have authentic Asian accent when speaking English, great physicality, and STRONG and unique singing voice. Must work well in ensemble.
Show is rehearsing NOW, and opens at HERE Arts Center June 11 - July 2.
Today was the second day of school girl rehearsals. I’ve been having the actors really invest in recalling what they were like at age 15, and also recalling pivotal events/times in their adolescence when they were taken out of context.
Today we had a more physical exploration of how they related to others and themselves at that age, which is where these photos are from:
Later we added “adult” characters to the mix — Dawn as the teacher and Jorge as the principal of the school. There was a moment during one of the physical sessions that I found really moving — I don’t really even know what the event was at that moment, but somehow I really started to see the actors as they might have been at 15, and that age of extreme vulnerability, excitement, self-consciousness, energy. It’s silly but amazing nonetheless to think about every person and the sequence of events that brought them into being in this world at this time, and all the things that happen to a person that shape who they are. It reminds me to take more care — something you do to someone else might be a forgettable event to you, but might affect the other person deeply. And vice versa of course.
