Hello from beautiful Tuscaloosa, Alabama! We just wrapped 9 days of the Druid City Opera Workshop, a young artist program for collegiate singers (BA, BM, MM, & DMA) at the School of Music at the University of Alabama. “Druid City,” as it's nicknamed, is a fast & furious version of the training singers within the University of Alabama Opera Theatre program receive during their time in school. Singers take classes throughout the week in role preparation, musical theatre dance, yoga for singers, acting, diction (This year at Druid City we had masterclasses in English, German, French, and Russian.), auditioning, and the business of singing. In the afternoons & evenings, the singers were in music and staging rehearsals with their coaches and directors in preparation for a final scenes program they put on at the end of the week. This week I've been here as a directing intern which essentially means I direct my two scenes ("High Adventure" from Disney's Aladdin and "The Prologue" from Appomattox by Philip Glass, quite the combo), serve as an assistant director for two scenes (Così fan tutte and Die Zauberflöte), serve as an audition class panelist, and observe the acting classes. There are only two directing interns, but we have our own meetings with the stage directors on the Druid City faculty who - in addition to leading directing roundtable discussions with us interns - serve as mentors for our directing scenes. Most of our discussions revolve around special problems in directing for the operatic stage and leading opera programs at colleges in which the Opera Director has to wear all the hats of production. All of our faculty here teach at their respective universities within their Schools of Music so it has been a joy hearing their personal experiences from a practical rather than theoretical standpoint. I've enjoyed being a part of this conversation now that I'm sitting on the other side of the table. I came from this program where we did almost everything ourselves. There were no stage managers or shop staff for our productions in my undergrad. Most of the designers we worked with took on our shows in addition to the workload they carried at Theatre & Dance and as such had to wok on our shows on their off hours. (Mad respect!) As a student within UAOT you were expected to help facilitate most aspects of the production. We built, begged, and borrowed and it has as a result made me fairly scrappy in the works I teach and direct. However, it's been a minute since I've been as immersed in the opera world as I've been this week so it has been a nice checking in again, this time with a year of my MFA under my belt. In this new Walden-esque return to nature, I feel like I (hopefully!) bring more know-how and suggestions to the table now. One of the issues my mentors and fellow intern frequently brought up was the DMA-Turned-College-Opera-Workshop Director. There are so many things thrown at these individuals coming out of DMA (Doctorate of Musical Arts) programs that they aren't always fully aware of and are expected to know how to teach when they take on Opera Workshop. Acting tends to be a big one. I knew this coming from a music undergrad, but it still irks me a bit because I feel like there is so much we as theatre educators can be doing to help out our operatic colleagues, but so infrequently does the inner-departmental conversation occur within academia. I've always wondered why that's the case. Isn't our goal to provide our students with the knowledge they need most to succeed? In both theatre and opera the goal is simple: tell the story. Therefore, I can't help but ask, what can we do to help one another out more? There has to be a better way of doing this on a grand scale. For those individuals and departments reaching across the aisle and sharing resources, BRAVA! You're showing your students true collaboration and respect for different forms, a valuable set of lessons. As an arts community, I think we owe one another that much. Anyway, I digress... When I go back to sing or direct or see operas, I am always super aware of how the singers are relating to the words that the librettist or lyricist wrote. As someone from the Mandy Law Hughes School of Directing who believes the playwright gives us everything we need, I'm always craving action based out of the words we are singing. Subtext be damned. Opera provides us with an odd conundrum because we have the music layered on top of everything we do, but we can't simply exist within the music emotionally. The bodies onstage must drive the story. However I feel like getting our young singers (and let's face it, a LOT of older singers) to fully utilize all of their acting mechanism to be a challenge. Perhaps it's opera's natural conservative nature (I thought we were wild and crazy in opera... until I met theatre people.), or our tendency towards musical academia, but I often find myself hungry for singers to take off the kid gloves and be a bit messier. The voice will follow. So how do we solve this issue? I'm curious as to how I as a director can help singers shape their world onstage by bringing all of the action from a character-based place that comes from the WORDS. As a fellow singer, I get it. I've been in their character shoes and I know they have an incredible amount of things to keep track of in performance between the voice and the conductor and the music, but ultimately I think everything we do has to come back to the text. We talk a lot about this in theatre since we as actors are in control of how we affect time and space vocally, but I see less of it in opera since the music dictates time and space of the musical line. As a byproduct of this, I see a lot of young singers simply existing in the music, playing emotion and varying repeating phrases for variety's sake. While this is obviously a gross generalization, I think that disconnect can oftentimes lead to a performance that feels stilted or disconnected from a sense of truthfulness (whatever truth even is). It's something I've been paying attention to throughout this process and something I want to keep communicating to my casts utilizing action-based terminology. On this final day I've been so pleased to see so many of our singers take up this challenge and roll with it. These singers are passionate and HUNGRY for the work. I know everyone is working exceptionally hard, but I have to give a special kudos to my Appomattox ladies who are taking my dramaturgical work and Brechtian gestus and blending it to their own understanding of these Civil War era women. My Aladdin men are bringing their own physical sensibilities to this crazy active and zany number. With less than nine days to put it all together, I wish I could continue our work for longer simply because they're delightful people and artists, but alas... TOI TOI TOI, all!
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Two years ago, I sat at a table in a room with rainbow carpeted walls, trying to convince two women that I, a then 22 year-old fresh-out-of-college grad could teach theatre to children. At the time, my resume was full of YAPs and college operas. My teaching resume was at best, minimal. As a former 5th grader who used to make her siblings perform elaborate and entirely unnecessary original Thanksgiving plays in our living room, I truly felt like children's theatre would be a perfect fit for me. I was hopeful this place with the carpeted walls could be a work home as I tried to figure out this next chapter of my life as an oddball artist with a journalism degree. I got more than I bargained for. In the best possible way. That fall, I joined the FPCT faculty as an outreach teaching artist. It was a big time learning experience. (Classroom management, y'all. It's an art.) Although my classes only lasted an hour after school, I wanted all of my students to look forward to class and present a fun final sharing, so that first year, I watched and took notes. That first year, I learned 1st-2nd graders like to dance. I made 100 different copies of the same script for approx. three different classes because I wanted each student to have exactly the same number of lines. I got frustrated when students would goof off and students would pull focus, but over time, I learned to manage those moments. I became deliriously happy when parents would come up to me after sharings and tell me, "I think my son or daughter may have found their thing." I crafted posters and bought improv books and taught "When I Grow Up" from Matilda 6 different times. My heart sank when a parent missed a final sharing because they didn't know about it and I didn't think to send home a final reminder. I learned to never assume, to always be polite and courteous, even when it isn't reciprocated. I cried after students brought tulips to Anna and I after a final sharing. I learned how to sign in to multiple different school districts while holding boxes of tiaras and wolf costumes. The former later took up a 2-year residency in my Nissan. (The tiaras are receiving a full stipend now.) I smiled when one class volunteered to forgo their spring break plans to practice their play in the Madison Public Library so they didn't have to miss theatre class over spring break. I explained their parents would probably be sad if they had to go to Disney without them. I moved out of classrooms and libraries and gyms at the drop of a hat due to book fairs and faculty meetings. Me and my students (grades K-6) transformed everything from a portables to computer labs into stages. Enter January 2016. Our department got a brand new addition in the form of Education Director, Candice Cooper. As our first summer camp season rolled along and I taught/directed with a fellow teaching artist, my confidence in the classroom grew. There was something in the air that summer. New curriculum. New staff. New beginnings. At the end of summer camp 2015, I hit a major roadblock. My plans to attend graduate school changed at the last minute due to finances. I felt crushed and terrified. I had previously told Fantasy I was leaving, so I wasn't on the roster to teach in the fall. School was out of the question, and I needed a full-time gig. 35+ job applications later, for everything from selling shoes to teaching theatre in West Virginia farm territory, I finally got a bite on an apprenticeship up north. In late August, I met with my two bosses at Fantasy over lunch to supposedly talk about the gig. Over that lunch, they offered me the position of Outreach and Education Coordinator. They were willing to fight for me. I was shocked and completely over the moon. This was an incredible chance. I loved teaching for Fantasy, and they made it clear that would continue into this next year. Enter year two. My time as the Education and Outreach Coordinator feels like four years and yet no time at all as I sit here writing this. I could write a full novel on my time "in the corner," but it would be impossible to do all of it justice, so instead all I will say is, thank you. Thank you, Karen & Candice for making me a part of your team. Thank you for showing me that true leadership isn't forcing and bullying someone into accepting your vision, but rather building people up, forming relationships built on a two-way trust street, maintaining high and exacting standards, but adjusting your sails when the winds don't quite blow your way. Thank you for caring more about our families and students than our own egos. You lead with integrity, joy, and class. You both inspire me to be a better leader and educator every day. To my fellow teaching artists, thank you for sharing your passion and enthusiasm for arts education with our families. I'm proud to have been a member of such an all-star team. In the classroom, after work, in productions, your hearts and professionalism shine. I'll miss you, but look forward to seeing the art you and your students will create. Students, I will miss you. Each and every one of you has left your spirit on my heart these past two years. Thank you for imagining a different world with me, even if it was only for an hour (or six, s/o summer camp!) a day for a few weeks. Thank you for your big hearts, kindness, and work ethic. To my teens, thank you for delving deep, for allowing yourselves to be vulnerable and trusting I had your back. Regardless of where life takes you, I hope the skills you utilized in the classroom and onstage help you shine. I hope our time together has opened your eyes to people unlike yourselves. I'm entrusting you with the great responsibility of not judging others and allowing yourselves to imagine what life and perspective looks like in other's shoes. This job isn't easy, but it's essential, especially since the older generations tend to frequently forget how to empathize with others. We need you to remind us. As for your voice, let it ring. Be humble, caring, and kind, but know your place in the here and now is valuable. YOU are valuable and you have the ability to affect change. Believe in yourself. I believe in you. FPCT, my heart will always bleed purple, orange, and green. Thank you for letting me be a part of your family, in the Academy and on the mainstage. Thank you for being a place where I could be an artist, an educator, and even a mermaid princess. I hope to make you proud in Texas.
1, 2, 3, let the magic continue... until we meet again. The past two weekends have been like a Walden-esque return to nature for me at our rehearsals for Romeo & Juliet. We removed ourselves from the stage, set up shop in a completely different location, and began to focus solely on digging into the physical and spacial relationships between our characters.
Suddenly I felt myself back in Stacy's acting class (God, I miss those days!) at UAOT and all the anticipation that came with it. Am I going to get this method? Will I allow myself to accept it? Can I let go of my preconceived notions and just play? Who here is judging me? What are they seeing that I'm not? Once we can silent these mumbling naysayers, we can begin to dig in and open up ourselves to action and more importantly, a sense of freedom onstage. Our director, Dr. Hugh Long, spent a week this past summer working with Jane Brody on a technique she's exploring called "Super Scenes" which allows actors to explore characterization and physicality through archetypes and neuroscience. (Don't panic. I was scared at first too.) I've only just been introduced to the world of Super Scenes, so my explanation is elementary at best, but from my understanding and the work we've done these past few weekends, it's essentially "physical Meisner" with borrowed elements from Viewpoints (Y'all, I haven't spent this much time "on the grid" since Dwanye's dance class during GLOS and it was GLORIOUS!), Suzuki, archetypes, and The Hero's Journey (a roadmap to every story ever told, by scholar Joseph Campbell). This technique, or almost lack thereof, allows actors the freedom to be theatrical and honest all at the same time. The basic momentum several different actions: push, pull, hold, & stop propel actors through scenes. I was super jazzed when I was first told we were going to work on this because WHEN do you ever get the chance to work on technique like this outside of academia? I've had the immense pleasure of working with several different FABULOUS theatre companies since undergrad whom I've loved dearly, but our focus was always pretty clear, put on a play. Know what you're saying, block it, perform it. Done. All the nitty gritty push-pull, actor-to-actor relationships are something you're expected to bring to the table and grow organically (hopefully!) during the rehearsal process. Very rarely do you have the time to step back and say, okay lets explore this relationship. What do I want from this person and what do they want from me? Ignore the words, the costuming, all the added ingredients. What is the sole base of what is happening in the scene? All the rest is gravy. It would take me 11 hours to go through a detailed description of all the exercises we explored over the two weekends, but I do want to share some of the thought process that stuck with me. If you've studied Meisner or Viewpoints, I think you'll find this thought process familiar. Be honest. Feel me in this space. Look at me. Allow me to feel YOU in this space. Take the loss. Celebrate the win. This is a play about ME and this is MY poster! (Okay, so that last one was a you-had-to-be there moment. :) Early on in this rehearsal process I was constantly reminded not to be too "Disney princess-y" when it came to my characterization of Juliet. I studied her in high school and college and certainly had immense respect for her, but I needed to figure out how to bring her off the pedestal we always see her on. I know I needed to find the angst and the nerve in this character. A breakthrough moment came when we were exploring the moment Juliet stands up for herself when she meets Paris in the Friar's cell and has that little passive aggressive confrontation with him. When we did the Super Scene work on this scene, I let myself get pushed around too much. I felt like I was being chased the entire time & I was. Guess what though? I was letting it happen. I was letting the Friar and Paris have too much of a say. After we stopped the scene, our director brought this to my attention when he reminded me, "Find your POWER." At first I was flustered. How much power does this 13 year-old dingbat really have? He was right though. Juliet's resolve doesn't manifest itself in a physical confrontation, but it's there all the same after everything she loves come crashing down - Romeo's banishment and the crushing edict her parents issue after she refuses to marry Paris. Her resolve to rewrite her own story has to come across in that sheer do not mess with me focus. To illustrate this point in an exercise, Hugh got up and told me to make him change direction as he simultaneously tried to force me into a corner of the space. It was frustrating at the time, but I was ultimately grateful for the challenge. I needed that anger and that desperation. Discovering Juliet within the bounds of this production has been a constant journey which I'm sure will only continue throughout the rehearsal and performance process. For now, I'm just incredibly thankful for this conservatory-type work. I've already brought elements of it into my own acting classes - awesome awesome stuff! XO, Lo Life is weird. If you had told me a year ago that I'd be getting ready to play Juliet (Yeah, THAT Juliet.) in a few short months I would have thought you were CRAZY. I've never really even entertained the idea of it being a possibility of it happening. Never mind the fact that I'm 23 (I'll be 24 by curtain) and Juliet is 13, a fact that's referenced FREQUENTLY throughout the play. Is it crazy to have a complex about this? Probably.
As a singer first and foremost, my performance background has always been tightly defined, lyric mezzo-soprano (with "a belt" if we're talkin' MT Land). Translation: I'm the plucky best friend (sometimes literally)/3-scene maid/old lady/occasional whore/PANTS ROLE. The fach system rules opera so there isn't a whole lot of freedom as far as repertoire goes. The most famous R + J adaptations in the opera rep are Gounod's Romeo et Juliette and Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Both feature sopranos as Juliet. Before this production, I was far more familiar with the character arcs of Stephano, a somewhat superfluous character in Gounod's adaptation that doesn't even exist in Shakespeare's text & Romeo in the bel canto rep - also a pants role. Bellini's Romeo is a kick-butt role, one that requires incredible energy and sensitivity as an actress, but it's a far different physical capacity and headspace than playing a female character. Both of these operas take considerable liberties with Shakespeare's story, but that's to be expected as one can tell from the vast disparities between the film versions that exist. This role comes with a lot of expectations because everyone has an idea of who this character is. As I'm delving into this script, I'm trying to find pieces of myself in her. It's certainly interesting looking at this play at this point in my life compared to the past two times I've delved into it. I remember reading the play and watching the Zefferelli and Baz Luhrmann films in 9th grade and the only thing I really solidly remembering is all the sexual innuendo and jokes that were pointed out to us. I feel like that, plus learning the time span in which the story takes place, put me off the play. I think I really learned to appreciate it when I studied it in college in my EN333 Shakespeare class. The class was an English class, but our professor had a deep appreciation for the stage (We all went to see Othello that spring.) and that coupled with her completeness and thoroughness in our leading our readings, really helped me appreciate the play in its Elizabethan frame of mind. Romeo as the Petrachaen lover, Juliet as the grounding force in the balcony scene, the analogies to books (Lady Capulet telling Juliet about Paris) and rewriting stories, the list could go on and on. I saw Romeo as a much flightier although equally passionate character. The stress put on Juliet seemed so far greater. She was bound by far more conventions as a woman than Romeo was by a man. Pressure from her family controlled her and ultimately she commits the more violent of the suicides (stabbing vs. poison). Plus we have the Prince's final line where Shakespeare lists Juliet first: "Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." That's powerful and interesting stuff! This is a young woman with an incredible amount of heart and in a sense, a unique sense of strength. I'm curious to dive into her mind and bring her to life here in North Alabama. It’s very rarely that I feel like a rehearsal process flies by, but in the case of Rocket City Shakespeare’s Richard III, I definitely feel that way. It's hard to believe we open exactly one week from today. In honor of these upcoming performances (August 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, & 15) I wanted to share my character sketches (Thanks Paul Houghtaling for instilling this practice into my bones!!) of my two more talkative characters, Queen Elizabeth & Richmond, with you lovelies. Obviously, ladies first… Elizabeth Woodville was the medieval definition of femininity. Unlike many women of her time, she used her femininity to rise to remarkable heights. As a commoner, widow, and mother of two young boys, she married the young York king, Edward IV, in a secret ceremony. (Girl...) No one is quite sure how they got together, but one legend has her meeting him under an oak tree to supposedly ask him to return her dower lands from her first marriage to her. (I think we can all agree, nothing is sexier than land disputes.) When Elizabeth was crowned queen, she quickly went about marrying off her own extensive family to the most prominent landowners in England. After all, it would have looked pathetic if the queen’s family remained simple country squires after such an impressive rise to power. Country shabby chic wasn’t popular on Pinterest in 1440. During all of this, her husband's army killed a few prominent lords, including the Earl of Warwick, a man known as "The Kingmaker," the old Lancastrian King Henry VI who most likely had a stroke he never recovered from, & his own brother George, the Duke of Clarence (Turns out you totally can't hire a sorcerer to foretell your brother's death and plot with the King of France to steal his throne and expect him to be cool with it.). At some point during all of THIS Sturm und Drang, she and her husband had a cool 12 children. #Blessed If you’re historically inclined, Elizabeth Woodville is the maternal grandmother of Henry VIII, the great-grandmother of King Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I (Perhaps you’ve heard of her?), and the great-great-grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots. Through her daughter, Elizabeth of York, she is the ancestor of every English monarch since Henry VIII and every Scottish monarch since James V of Scotland. NBD, right? Because I’m a history nerd and can only write so many cover letters before my eyes start to cross, I’ve jumped into researching her life over the past few months. Under the guise of research and character development, I read anything about the Rivers family & the War of the Roses I could get my hands on & indulged in a little bit of silliness via the entire The White Queen STARZ series. It's fictional, but inspired by actual events. My favorite power couple, Margaret Beauford & Lord Stanley make a strong appearance (Shakespeare sadly glosses over them in his story.) & Max Irons plays a beautiful King Edward IV until Hair & Makeup decide to have him in a beard at the end. All of this (fluff & non) has been helpful in forming this character, but at the end of the day, I have to play Elizabeth as truthful to the woman Shakespeare brought to life on the page. His Queen is decidedly different from the actual woman (or at least from what I can infer having never met her), but one fact holds true, she’s pretty damn extraordinary. I think the Queen’s strength is often looked over because of how much she laments throughout the play. Sista-friend has some world class meltdowns, but hey – her beloved husband dies, her brother and son are beheaded, her heirs become “The Princes in the Tower,” she has to send one son away to Henry Tudor’s ragtag court… Need I continue? She’d have to be a psychopath not to dissolve, & yet I don’t think she ever completely loses herself to her grief. She comes close, but she manages to really pull some strength through her anger and loss in the behemoth that is Act 4, Scene 4. In the 6th longest scene in Shakespeare’s canon, Richard tries to convince Elizabeth to let him marry his niece, her daughter, Elizabeth of York. It's eerily reminiscent of the fiery Act I, Scene 2 where Richard convinces Lady Anne to marry him. At this point, his wife Anne has succumbed to illness. Bless her heart. Richard spends more time wheedling and cajoling Queen Elizabeth than he does any other person in the play, male or female. Clearly, Shakespeare’s Queen has nerve. The dynamic between these two players vacillates between dismissive, sarcastic, furious, and placating. My favorite moment in the entire scene comes after Richard’s "Look, what is done cannot be now amended" monologue when Elizabeth counters with, “What were I best to say? Her father’s brother would be her lord?” Richard is an oratory powerhouse working at the top of his game, and yet she still refutes him. Plus, woman or not, disagreeing with the man you suspect may have signed your children's death warrants is pretty badass. One of my biggest beefs with Elizabeth was reconciling the decision she makes at the end of Act 4 to the woman I viewed her as. Why does she agree to go and get her daughter for Richard? Is she exhausted? Does Richard break her down with his “honey words?” This is the last thing we see Queen Elizabeth do, but it's not the last we hear of her daughter. We know Elizabeth of York ends up marrying Richmond (and having a psychopath son in King Henry VIII if you're still trackin'). So what gives? I tend to follow the lead of director Mandy Hughes on the general rule of "No Subtext in Shakespeare," so I believe we can infer from the text everything we need to know. Elizabeth Woodville isn't 100% truthful in what she tells Richard. Lets break it down, shall we? Queen Elizabeth is a political beast. She knows the game and ultimately she plays it well enough to end up on the winning side (or at least the most winning you can be after your sons are killed by your brother-in-law). Who, besides Lord Stanley, can say that at the end of Richard III? She knows going in to 4.4 that the king is going to get what he wants. He always does. She as much as says so in her first appearance when she tells Richard it's the king who suspects he's been lying to him, not her. Elizabeth Woodville would have known this political system as a Queen and as a subject, just as Shakespeare himself would have. "Shall I forget myself to be myself?" she asks. "Yet thou didst kill my children," she reminds herself. "I go. Write to me very shortly and you shall understand from me her mind," she concludes. I think she agrees to Richard's demands because she's done fighting with him. It's ultimately as simple as that. Fight or flight. She still doesn't give up complete control when she acquiesces to his request. There is to be no direct communication between Richard and Elizabeth of York. It all goes through the Queen. Subtle, but important. Is she tired? Sure. Does she want her daughter to marry him? No. Can we imagine reasonably without getting all subtext-y woo-woo that she probably peaces out of Act 4 to write a few letters to the "enemy" Richmond's camp to explore all her options? Maybe. Probably. In real life, yeah, most definitely. Elizabeth Woodville puts up an impressive fight for her dynasty, one that would end with the death of the childless Queen Elizabeth I, eleven years after Richard III was estimated to have been written. Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba… |
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May 2017
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