12L Production Blog--2nd Installment

Twelfth Labor Production Blog 2^nd Installment

Second Design Meeting, March 27, 2012

Tutto board members Ervin, Brock and Robinson drove to a house in near south Austin, the home where designers Natalie George and Ben Taylor Ridgeway reside.  Board member Pidge Smith was absent, having given birth three days previously.  We saw Tara Chill waiting for us out front and noted designer Ia Enstera’s old International Harvester vehicle, similar to a Blazer, parked on the street.  The meeting was held in this location because Natalie George was feeling under the weather and did not want to travel to another location.  We greeted Tara and walked into the living room. 

The living room, as would be expected in the home of designers, was filled with art and design appointments. I noticed three cabinet doors set in the wall over one of the couches, artfully arranged, which could have come only from the bizarre set of “Machinal,” produced in 2010 by Paper Chairs, another independent Austin theatre group.  Natalie lounged quietly on the couch beneath the arrangement, and Ben Taylor Ridgeway sat on a cushion at a glass-topped coffee table, sketching with colored pens. 

Ia Enstera walked in from the back porch and sparked ten minutes of chatting.  The pleasant talk created a low-key, relaxed atmosphere.  Artistic director Gary Jaffe walked in unannounced and called the meeting to order.  He reminded us that this meeting was to report the initial design concepts the designers were pondering.  By this time, the designers should have read the script, perhaps more than once, and have a pretty good knowledge of what the play is all about.  Director Jaffe added to these impressions with his own vision and imagery of the play.  He spoke in word pictures, embellishing his speech with many arm gestures.  Against this backdrop of imagery, he asked the designers to report their current ideas in turn.     

Ia Enstera had been spending her time viewing old documentaries of twentieth century Western life; she gave two titles: The Plow that Broke the Plains and Fight for Life.  She showed still images on her iPad and noted that people and homes of that time period had a home-made look and one of permanence, patched and repaired.  Throwaway culture came later. 

Further talk in the realm of the set and theater took a random course, with people asking questions of Enstera and adding impressions of their own.  The meeting fell into all-talk-at-once on the issue of seating and flats for the set.  Of course, nothing was resolved on those points. 

The talk of costumes, the design realm of Ben Taylor Ridgeway, turned naturally to the play’s characters, their motivations and personalities.  Director Jaffe led the discussion here, giving his ideas of who they are, based on his readings of the play.  Ben showed his sketches, small color renderings of each of the characters arranged in two lines on the page with a sunset landscape behind them. These were the sketches he had been working on when we had come in. His words to describe them were few, saying mostly that while most of the characters were members of the same family, their clothing was characteristic of them as individuals and that, as above, clothing had a sense of permanence: clean, repaired and maintained. Regarding the Hens, three female characters representing neighbors and townspeople, Ridgeway viewed them as country fops and caricatures.  Their costumes should accentuate their bodily differences.

Ben Taylor Ridgeway is young and a huge design talent.  He has significant experience in Texas and the East Coast, where he worked in the fashion industry and off-Broadway.  

In Austin, he is a B. Iden Payne award winner.  Overflowing with talent, Ben is the type who designs everything on him and around him—hair, accessories, T-shirt, shoes, magazines on the coffee table—thus his appearance is different every time one sees him.  He also says what he thinks, in the moment.  He did not let it pass that he was the only designer present who had actually prepared materials for presentation in the meeting—ignoring Enstera’s iPad images.  I was satisfied that I would never be bored in a design meeting.

Natalie George, not feeling well, talked slowly about lighting ideas.  She spoke, however, with keen awareness about integrating set and costume design areas by means of lighting.  Lighting can change a character’s demeanor by the light reflecting off the costume.  In this regard, some fabrics are better than others and must be chosen well to succeed in this task.  Also, the lighting design must resolve an important issue in this play.  How can lighting transform the set from dully realistic in Act I to Technicolor/surreal in acts II and III?  Natalie viewed this issue as the core of her effort in the lighting design. 

After the presentations, Director Jaffe reiterated the production design needs of the play.  He summarized sound design issues, saying acts I and IV have mostly wind sound effects and few music effects.  Acts II and III have many more music and sound cues.  He passed along Playwright Stevens’ phrase description of the music effects: “creepy memory music.”  Although Playwright Stevens has apparently prepared all the sound effects, Jaffe proposed retaining an Austin sound designer to troubleshoot issues with the sound effects when we receive them, saying the cast, several of whom have singing parts, would be more comfortable with such a person on hand during rehearsals.  No decision was made on the question, although a few names were proposed for the position.  The meeting ended on Director Jaffe calling for more detailed, slightly more concrete design plans, tentatively scheduled for April 24^th. 

Twelfth Labor Production Blog--1st Installment

Twelfth Labor Production Blog – 1^st Installment

This series of blogs will be posted periodically to record the creation of Tutto Theatre Company’s production of “The Twelfth Labor” by Leegrid Stevens.  The goal of the blog series is to form an eyewitness record of this new play by an emerging playwright, auspiciously produced by Tutto Theatre Company. 

A play production has an immense lead time requiring planning more than a year in advance.  To those involved, all the work seems like isolated points in interstellar space, seemingly disconnected but gradually coming together in time and space to become a living, breathing human experience named live theatre.  To those fascinated with this art form, the process of all the disconnected points coming together appears mysterious.  My blog will confront the mystery and pull out a few, but not all, of its secrets. 

As of this writing, March 17, 2012, the production has accomplished two milestones, the auditions/casting (January 7, 8 and 14, 2012) and the first production design meeting (February 20, 2012). The performance is scheduled for the first three weekends in August, 2012. 

Earlier, the production budget was built from Tutto Theatre Company’s City of Austin contract services matching grant for the 2011-2012 biennium.  The match was accomplished out of the proceeds from prior productions including Leegrid Stevens’ award-winning “The Dudleys! A Family Game,” donations and in-kind services.  These funds were secured largely before the selection of the play. “The Twelfth Labor” (12L) was of interest to Tutto Theatre Company because it is a new play.  Producing new, contemporary plays is a commitment stated explicitly in the mission statement of the company.  Tutto queried the possibility of producing 12L during the production of “The Dudleys! A Family Game.”  To the surprise of everyone, playwright Stevens stated his enthusiasm for a Tutto production of another of his works.  The deal was only closed, however, after a very long series of phone calls, e-mails, texts and face-to-face meetings in the spring and summer of 2011.  The finished deal was that Tutto Theatre Company would give the play its first full-scale production running for an industry standard three weekends, or twelve performances.  Artistic director Gary Jaffe would direct the play, and Erin Treadway would play the central character of Cleo, per the playwright’s wishes.  The dates of the play were only specified as sometime in the second half of 2012.  The venue of the performances would be sought by Tutto and it would be a locale that would meet the production requirements. 

The venue selection turned out to be a circuitous and involved process in its own right.  The board members and AD Jaffe phoned, e-mailed and texted as many theatres and performance spaces as they could recall, touching almost all of their collective theatre connections.  At that time, in the summer of 2011, MacCallum Fine Arts Academy in central Austin was finishing construction of their new, very large arts center.  They set a grand opening performance for September 30, 2011 on their state-of-the-art proscenium stage.  The Tutto board of directors and AD Jaffe turned out in force for the event and were highly impressed with the facility and the performances.  By a unanimous act of will, the board and AD Jaffe made contact with the director of the theatre division of MacCallum Fine Arts Academy, M. Scott Tatum.  The goal of this contact was to gain a space for 12L at the Macc.  The surprising aspect of the negotiations was that they became an extended game of media tag, just like dealing with the playwright and making contact with venue managers.  Nothing’s easy.  It was not until December, 2011 that Tatum agreed to a production of 12L at Macc.  The performance space would be a black box theatre near the arts center. 

With the venue secured, the 12L performance dates tumbled into place.  The show would premiere August 2 and run through the following two weekends, until August 19^, 2012. 

Auditions were held January 7 and 8, 2012 in the old theatre auditorium at Macc.  The auditions were a combination of open calls and requested appearances.  Callbacks took place on the following Saturday, the 14^th.  The whole process was arduous.  Auditions and callbacks by themselves surely justify hour-by-hour descriptive blogs to give the least sense of this essential component of the playmaking process.  It suffices here to state that AD Jaffe considered the readings and all the actors’ performances in excruciating detail.  Phone calls and social media blasts occupied the entire weekend, well past the scheduled afternoons.  The result, gained by this arcane divination called auditions, was an impressive and complete cast. I’ll have much more on the cast members in later blogs. 

 The final getting-the-ball-rolling event was the first production design meeting held in the Macc black box on February 20, 2012.  Board members Matt Ervin, Daniel Brock and David Robinson met with Director Jaffe, Stage Manager Tara Chill, Set Designer Ia Enstera, Lighting Designer Natalie George and Costume Designer Ben Taylor Ridgeway.  The meeting was strictly an introductory meeting between the staff and the designers.  The discussion was almost exclusively a chat session, as all the designers know each other and have worked together on several previous productions.  The only takeaway from the meeting was the agreement to show initial design concepts at the next production meeting on March 27^th. 

Upon leaving the meeting, I felt that the vastly separated points were somehow less disconnected, that the stars were beginning to align, almost imperceptibly. The premiere was slightly less than six months away, and we had started the process more than a year in advance.    

Theatre Night with Dr. Dave--Cabaret

Cabaret

By Kander and Ebb

Produced by McCallum Fine Arts Academy, Royale Court Players

McCallum Arts Center, Austin

March 4, 2012

Macademy produced Kander and Ebb’s renowned “Cabaret” in their new arts center and made of it a giant party, a song festival, a design exhibition and homage to the powerful artists who staged this show in the past.  Perhaps the essential stroke of genius in this play is Kander and Ebb’s setting of it in Berlin, 1931/1932, drawn from Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories.  The potential themes on which a production could touch in “Cabaret” range from libertinism, to sexual and religious liberation/oppression to the rise of fascism.  Touching on too many of them, depending on one’s resources, can give a production of “Cabaret” the feeling of a play at war with itself (What are you, “Cabaret?”  Are you a historical romance, an anthology piece on club life, a musical revue, a screed on Nazis or all of these?)  The Royale Court Players in their youthful enthusiasm succumbed to the play’s temptations and tried a little too much, giving us a two hour and forty minute show with one 15-minute intermission.  The attempt, however, was laudable, verging on glorious.  At the end, the audience was happy and cheering as it rushed out to the restrooms.

 

The show was well designed from top to bottom, and primary credit for its success starts with directors Courtney Wissinger and M. Scott Tatum.  All of the design elements seemed well coordinated.  Mr. Tatum’s scenic design was especially facilitating.  To depict the famous Kit-Kat Club in Berlin, Tatum built two wide pillars upstage.  Between them stretched a curtain for center entrances and behind which the club band performed all the musical numbers.  A low platform for all the dances and singing extended center stage in front of the curtain and pillars.  Stage left and stage right held the club seating and dining tables.  Cast members depicting patrons and staff remained there throughout the play, performing and creating tableaux vivant.  These human forms, in concert with costumes, styling and lighting, formed images strikingly similar to photographs of European clubs of the 1930s.  This aspect was perhaps the most spectacular element in evoking the excitement of the setting and time.  The highly textured pillar surfaces caught and interacted with the various lighting sets to harmonize and in part control the emotionality of each scene.  The only notable flaw in the design was the second story windows, which were openings on a dressing room and the Master of Ceremonies’ garrett, stage right and stage left, respectively.  The windows were frontally angled to the stage below them, but acutely angled to the house.  I sat on the aisle seat house left (the theater has two aisles dividing the house in thirds and no aisles on the row ends at the walls) and I saw the stage right window scene at an extremely acute angle.  No one to my left saw the scene at all.  I estimate a quarter of the audience had no sight line at all on this scene.  The corresponding situation pertained in the stage left window scene.  The design staff had months to address this elementary, glaring problem.  ‘Nuff said. 

The action of the play roared across this set.  The story of the Kit-Kat Club on New Year’s Eve 1931 and into 1932 is familiar to theatre- and movie-goers alike.  The story dances through its many themes, all in lace and feathers, and easily escapes becoming merely the story of the romance between club singer Sally Bowles, played by Annamarie Kasper, and American writer Clifford Bradshaw, played by Connor Barr.  The dynamo of the show is actually the Master of Ceremonies, played by John James Busa in the role immortalized by Joel Grey.  Director Wissinger and Mr. Busa addressed the high standard and dominating image of Grey’s characterization wisely by seeking another dynamic.  Their efforts were successful.  Busa’s Master of Ceremonies combined the punk and goth esthetics, with a flavor of the vampiric.  Busa’s Master of Ceremonies was snide, dominating, darkly threatening, seductive and sarcastic.  In the end, too, he was tragic and suffering.  He borrowed nothing from and owed nothing to Joel Grey.  Delightful work, Mr. Busa. 

Driving the action of the play in dance were the Kit-Kat Girls.  The choreography was inventive, the credit given to Bazie Adamez, but it had the look of collaboration.  It did not fail to excite.  The Kit-Kat Girls are minor gems in musical theatre.  Their heraldic colors are red, black and sequins.  They all have back-stories, especially Rosie, Frenchy and Texas, and this gives them a whiff of mystery.  Brennan Martinez as Texas conveyed by her immense stage presence both the naughty-naughty boldness and the mystery. 

Well into Act II most of the tears have fallen to the stage and washed away the blood.  The reprise of the title song is a solo by Sally Bowles, and as written it is a testament of irony that will stand the test of time.  Sally takes the stage in a floor-length gown, still sequined, but this time instead of sparkling red or black, it has only the cool gray tones of black-and-white television static.  As she sings, the patrons and staff leave the club one-by-one until it is empty; leaving Sally with the loneliness she fears most.  And although the voice still releases the power of the song, the singer does not quite achieve the irony expressible by a worldly wise character just beginning to feel the corrosion of too much gin and repeated self-destructive choices.  I wanted to sense the tears forming inside Sally Bowles, but I could not.  Someday this performer, Annamarie Kasper, will convey such feelings with ease, and her career is to be followed with anticipation (she has been cast in Tutto Theatre Co.’s production of The Twelfth Labor, slated for August, 2012).  For now, the song symbolizes clearly Germany’s own headlong pitch into the abyss. 

Clifford Bradshaw seems to have stepped out of the play with no worse than two black eyes and saddening experience.  The last lines of the play are his, and they keep the tone of tragic romance and ruin built throughout the play.  The lines as written seem peculiarly awkward, but as Connor Barr delivers them flat and straight they gain immense impact:  “There was a Cabaret, and there was a Master of Ceremonies…and there was a city called Berlin, in a country called Germany…and it was the end of the world….and I was dancing with Sally Bowles.  And we were both fast asleep.”* 

*Quote drawn from Dir. Wissinger’s Director’s Notes.  

Theatre Night with Dr. Dave--A Jigglewatts Jubilee

A Jigglewatts Jubilee

Produced by Jigglewatts Burlesque Co.

29^th St. Ballroom, Austin

February 24, 2012

I have been wanting to write this blog for a long time.  I have been a fan of members of the Jigglewatts burlesque troupe since before they were Jigglewatts.  They tour nationally now, and occasionally overseas, So tonight’s show (actually two performances--at 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.) was somewhat of a rarefying opportunity to see them in Austin.  So I reserved a VIP table and showed up at the venue with time to spare.

OK, stop You.  I didn’t go to a strip show or to a “gentlemen’s club.”  The Jigglewatts perform a new and rising form of alternative performance that I call New Burlesque.   It borrows from your grandmother’s vaudeville burlesque, yes, but it also adds to that certain new forms such as rock music, an emphasis on costuming, acting, dance and social  networking.  The short intro is that in New Burlesque they never fall out of their pasties and G-strings, although there have been legendary accidents.  More on New Burlesque later.  You’ll have to dig up the legendary accidents for yourself. 

Looking around the 29^th St. Ballroom I saw an alternative crowd of hipsters, street people, artists, retired go-go- girls, industrial workers, a few Goths (getting old and gray now), the leather crowd, in short, the demimonde.  Jigglewatts aficionados all.  The acreage of tattooed flesh was so great that it truly became urban camouflage.  This is not mine, OK, I’ve heard it before, but it is certainly true.  These are the people who have unfettered imaginations and are ruled by their dreams, not the boss’s punch-clock.  They pay for having minds and talents by working behind retail counters and in repair shops their entire lives.  Management does not like or promote them, and they scrape together a living in one postindustrial slough or another. Altogether they form a vast underground tribe 

The Jigglewatts speak eloquently to them in their performances, and tonight was no exception.  Emcee Jade Esteban Estrada held the crowd from first to last dressed all in black with black platform sneakers with polished steel toe shields.  His pink feather boa accented everything and signaled his preferences—about which he was vocal throughout in a series of hilarious standup routines between the dancers’ performances.  He also wisely pushed the Jigglewatts’ marketing strategy of advertising their shows by way of social media. 

The Jigglewatts, with their guest Ruby Lamb, were polished and spectacular.  They truly turn up the erotic heat in their dances.  They chew off their gloves and stockings with expertness and seeming ease.  They and all New Burlesque troupes place great emphasis on costume.  The Jigglewatts invariably began their solo dances in floor-length gowns covered in brocades, feathers and lace and, I kid you not, precisely matching spike heels.  All the gowns have strategically placed snaps and Velcro for timed-release exposure.  But the gowns also have one emergency costume ejection zipper.  One zip and the whole gown falls to the floor!  How do they do it?  Now we are at the lingerie layer, and it just goes on and on. 

The Jigglewatts reputation is growing, and they have high rankings in the burlesque world to show for it.  Coco Lectric is ranked seventh in the world currently, and Ruby Joule follows her at No. 27.  The ranking organization is based in Britain and has a great time compiling its statistics.  Pearl Luxe is an accomplished tap dancer and has choreographed a lengthy performance number complete with sequined top hat, cane and “Puttn’ on the Ritz.”  Jolie Ampere Goodnight and Ruby Joule each sing melodic torch songs in their numbers.  Ruby wrote hers, Jolie perhaps so, I am not sure.  They each have beautiful, clear voices.  Ruby, in particular, sings every phrase in her song of attraction and rejection as a line in a story, and keeps the audience in the palm of her hand.  Her style reminds me of David Bowie, the Thin White Duke, and his performance style of living every line of his songs through his dance and gestures.

Goldie Candela and Ruby Lamb have erotic bodies and expert timing of every wink and wiggle.  Ruby Lamb has a fascination with skin art and a certain almost-vulpine look that makes one want to submit to her bite. 

The New Burlesque and its adherents in the underground are part of a social trend in my belief, but one far less overtly political than the Occupy movement.  The Jigglewatts and New Burlesque make a multitude of symbolic displays to the diverse elements of the tribe.  The eroticism is the carrier wave of the symbolic tide and serves to provide some unity within the group.  This world of symbolic display is greatly akin to Victor Turner’s concept and book title The Forest of Symbols.  Semiotics, verbal communication and visual communication fill up our everyday perceptions and minds in a sometimes-literal rainforest of symbols.  Deep, deep within that forest the tribe gathers.  There, the Jigglewatts are the silhouetted figures dancing around a great bonfire.  The fire can be nothing more or less than desire, and with the dancers’ every gesture and glance the flames vault higher. Sparks drift from the fire and light upon the tribe’s fever dreams, hallucinations and unfulfilled longings.  This is the Jigglewatts’ blessing on the tribe, that everyone’s imagination is unsullied by the gritty world in which they find themselves, that there is more.  Go forward.  

Theatre Night with Dr. Dave--Woodwork

“Woodwork, A Collection of Hank Schwemmer Plays”

Produced by Paper Chairs

Delta Millworks, 5^th and Springdale Rd.,  Austin

February 23^rd, 2012

“Woodwork” is another production taking place in a warehouse, this time the huge Delta Millworks factory at 5^th St. and Springdale Road in east Austin.  Again I say “Aah, east Austin.”  The place by its very existence gives the theatre world extremely rich settings and imagery, seemingly without end.  The setting could not be more apt for presenting this dense, colorful and fantastically textured collection of six one-acts by Austin playwright Hank Schwemmer.  The place was well-designed and prepared when the seating (no paper chairs) was set out around the space.  I complimented scenic designer and director Lisa Laratta (one of four directors of these plays) that she had even designed in the sweet, aromatic wood fragrance that permeates the place.  She said, “Yeah, that and the popcorn smell—it can’t be all one thing, you know.” 

Likewise the plays performed.  Schwemmer has made his career to date in writing one-act plays for Hyde Park Theatre’s Fronterafest.  This gives most of his work a one-act structure to meet the requirements of the theatre festival.  All similarities end there.  “The Oracle Game” followed theatre students playing the training exercise of telling a story one word at a time each.  As the cadences of the one-word-at-a-time stories took on a hypnotic sound and feel, the play snapped into Ouija Board-style spirit possession, and the characters spoke not their own words anymore but the prophetic words of some Other, specifically the descriptions of the Beasts surrounding the Throne of the Most High in the Revelation of St. John the Divine.  “Ballet for Dog and Red-Haired Girl” followed this immediately, performed exquisitely by Zac Crofford and Emily Tindall as the Dog and Red-Haired Girl, respectively.  It is beyond description—no spoiler here, but the floppy-eared dog is not what he seems.  And so the entire show went for two hours that seemed like thirty minutes.  “The Situation As It Stands” was a scream and a half, and “Woodwork” was a surprisingly layered tale of heartbreak and finding one’s father and healing in the old man’s woodworking shop.  The term “woodwork” will forever take on new levels of meaning after this play.

Recognition for all the people responsible for the high quality of this evening of performance lies well beyond the limits of the blog.  There are many standouts.  I can only mention Natalie George, who designed the lighting that worked so brilliantly for every piece.  Alternative spaces never come with lighting grids designed in, as in professional theatres.  Ms. George built and cabled a makeshift grid into the wooden ceiling joists and rafters of the warehouse, with marvelous results.  The Master Electrician was David Higgins. 

Not everything was perfect, however.  The program (the British spell this word “programme” to distinguish it) was of the unfortunate let’s-use-every-font-on-the-menu variety, with typically chaotic results.  That and the small types rendered some lists illegible; don’t ask me the names of the running crew, for example, and about half of the folks receiving special thanks.  Another issue, not Paper Chairs’ responsibility, lies in the category of facts gone astray.  The preview article about Schwemmer by Robert Faires in the February 24, 2012 edition of the Austin Chronicle stated (p. 32), “After he saw Paper Chairs’ production of Black Snow, he says ‘I wanted to party with these guys.’”  Tutto Theatre Company produced Black Snow before Paper Chairs was in existence, and probably for the first time ever in Austin, Texas.  Since then, Paper Chairs has not produced Black Snow in any form, including readings, workshops or full productions.  The confusion in the reference above lies in the fact that several of the theatre artists involved in the Tutto production of Black Snow went on to found Paper Chairs much later.  Full disclosure, I am, then and now, the secretary of the Board of Directors of Tutto Theatre Company, and this is a source of bias.  But by virtue of this same bias I am also certain of these facts, and I have fond, fond memories of everyone involved in Black Snow. 

Paper Chairs is a company that creates repeatedly on the extraordinary efforts of many theatre artists who obviously enjoy working together.  This rare situation cries out for Paper Chairs to become a repertory company.  Its ardent supporters can then find their creative fulfillment together, and the rest of us can enjoy the results.  I await the next from these inventive minds and talents.