Macbeth Out!

This is the last post from me. We closed Saturday. Closing weekend had full houses, multiple curtain calls, and lots of old friends in the audience. Joan (the director) was there on closing night and I think very impressed to see how the show had grown.

One of my highlights for the night was during our strike, when Leontyne needed to move the truck across the street, after having been parked in by a minivan and a motorcycle right in front of the nightclub. It was about five minutes of total chaos, and I directed traffic!

All in all playing Macbeth was a tremendous learning experience. I know so much more now about playing characters with status and power, and the nuance required to play a character who grows and changes as the protagonist of a story. It's been fun to blog as well.

Thanks for reading this. Visit the website for info on the 2009 season. www.womanswill.org.

Macbeth out.

Road Trip!

We've packed up and said goodbye to the Retail Theater, and Ben and Jerry and Tony too.

Highlights of the weekend - 3 packed houses, students in to see the show to write a review for their drama classes, inappropriate gigglers (general consensus is they came to the show somehow chemically altered - we're not sure why)


This week holds a student matinee at a high school in Palo Alto, our Rossmoor performance, and the very special Hallowe'en show in SF to kick off our two weeks in SF.


Did you see the Pink Section of the Chron over the weekend? If not go here to read AD Erin Merritt's interview about Macbeth. There are also cool interviews w/ Victoria Evans Erville and Mark Jackson, talking about productions of Macbeth that they are working on if you'd like to play compare and contrast.

Now What?

The show is up. We've finished opening weekend. This is the rehearsal blog and rehearsals are over. So, am I still supposed to be checking in here? I'm not sure.

While I mull it over, here's some highlights from opening weekend:
1. my friend D_ telling me the show gave him tears in his eyes at one point
2. K, J, and C saying that I was scary
3. the gasps during the 'Casa de Macduff' fight sequence
4. re-meeting someone who had been my student in the first student production I ever directed over 10 years ago, and now she's an adult and still doing theater!
5. talking to people who had come to the show on their own (without knowing anyone connected to it), and finding out why they chose to come and see us.

See you at the Show!

Whew! Tech for this show has been a slog, but the elements are in place. On the tech/design side: Costumes (thanks Tammy), a Set (thanks Jackie), Lights (thanks Stephanie), Video projections (thanks John), all of it tied together w/buttons pushed, etc (thanks Alicia), On the artistic side: Fight Choreography (thanks Carla), cool shadow-y witch movement (thanks Lauren), general artistic vision (thanks Joan and Claire).

Whew - and then there's all the producing side that the Woman's Will company folks are taking care of - I'm not even sure who's doing what here because they've thankfully kept most of it away from rehearsals so we could concentrate on our stuff (thanks Erin, Victoria, and Woman's Will Company members.

Tonight: Final Dress
Tomorrow: See you there!

The 3 usual questions #3: did you guys really kiss?

Yes, just as soon as they ask about the stage violence, the young ones want to know about the stage romance.

For the less sophisticated question-asker, this question can mean - did your two mouths really actually touch? The answer to this part of the question is and has always been in my experience yes.

For the slightly more sophisticated question-asker, this question I think is a coded way of asking if the two actors are romantically involved with each other. The answer to this part of the question is and has always been in my experience no.

So here's the real problem for 'civilians' - your lips touched but you're not romantically involved with each other - how does that work? My answer here - it works the same way that all good relationships work: communication and respect about comfort level.

There's one kiss in Macbeth. I'm one of the two involved in it (the other is Leontyne, as Lady Macbeth). When we were rehearsing the scene with the kiss in it, we were getting very close to each other, and it seemed like a point where Macbeth would want to kiss his wife. I didn't do it even though I had the impulse - It was fairly early in the rehearsal process and I didn't know Leontyne very well yet and I didn't want to surprise my fellow actor and take her out of her comfort zone. But soon after that Joan, our director, stopped us to make an adjustment, and I said that it seemed like we should've kissed after a certain point in the text. We were all in agreement, so we tried it and it worked. I know that I would tell Leontyne if something about that moment were making me uncomfortable, and that she would tell me - in the same way we'd communicate about fight choreography and personal safety.

A few more thoughts about stage kisses - I have yet to be involved in a stage kiss that has open mouths and tongues moving around. In every circle I've traveled in the stage kiss is kept 'professional', that is lips only, no tongues. And, I think unless the kiss was made explicit by the stage directions or text, a conversation between at the very least, the people doing the kiss needs to happen before it happens onstage. Lastly, for the professional actor involved in stage kisses, oral hygiene is important - brushed teeth, breath mints, avoiding odorous foods. And, in a story I heard from a fellow actor - knowing if your onstage kiss partner has strong food allergies. She was in a show, and kissing an actor with a severe peanut allergy, and ate a peanut butter energy bar in between two shows, and her cast-mate had a reaction to it.

Tony Roma, Ben, Jerry, Macbeth?

We've moved into our Oakland performance location. It's an empty storefront in Jack London square. On one side of us, Ben and Jerry's. On the other, Tony Roma's. I wish we had the funds to put up a giant piece of signage that would confuse passersby - I'm picturing the thoughts in their minds.

Macbeth's - is it a one-stop shop for tartan plaid clothing? Do they make burgers, fries, and shakes (Scotland PA anyone?)? Or, wait, what's going on - those people have swords - why are they running around and shouting?

So - if you're planning on joining us in Oakland - know that you'll be able to choose from a variety of pre and post show options for dining, drinking, snacking, etc.

I'd love to mention one more thing. Woman's Will is participating in the nationwide Free Night of Theater program, hosted locally by Theatre Bay Area. We'll have free tickets available on 10/8 (that's tomorrow!) for the 10/17 performance. To reserve tix for this program, you must visit www.tixbayarea.org, then follow the prompts to see available Free Night of Theater shows, and find us in the list under 'East Bay'.

See you there!

The 3 usual questions #2: how do you guys learn all those lines?

Repetition and hard work. Whether that's a method where you make a recording of your lines and listen to it over and over, or you read your lines over and over, or you write them out longhand, or you get a friend or fellow actor to run lines with you, you've just got to do them again and again.

A few things that are helpful.
1) Figure out the meaning of what you're saying - it's got to make sense to you before you can learn it.
2) Figure out the reason you're saying what you're saying - is it because you're trying to intimidate someone? or trying to flatter them?
3) Figure out what you're responding to - is this thought in response to something someone else said? Is it further clarification for what you just said?
4) Picture the action that goes with the words. Knowing that you say certain words as you fall to your knees, or turn away from a fellow actor can provide the juice that gets the lines memorized.

Other than this it's a lot of drilling and repetition. Definitely not the glamorous part, but also not the hardest. Learning lines is a basic component of every role an actor plays, so the experienced actor knows what methods work for them, and gets this part of the job done.

tough slogging

Whew! We did our first run-through last week, and it was exhausting. I was convinced at the intermission break that we'd been working for at least 2 or 3 hours and was shocked to learn that only an hour had passed.

We're into the difficult part now. We put it together once, and now we're taking it all apart again. And getting off book. It's time for growing pains, difficult questions, and commitment. To be honest, this part is hard to write about.

A few things I've been working out and grappling with over the past week:

1. man hands - distilling the essence of what makes a male hand gesture male - watching men's hands on BART as they hold phones, turn pages of the paper, etc. The basic thing seems to be keeping fingers together.

2. the intersection of status, confidence, and maleness. I know that I have a tendency as an actor to make choices which lower my status. I know there is a connection between status and confidence. I believe there is a further connection between status, confidence and maleness. Yet here am I, a female, playing a male character who has status, but at times lacks confidence. How to illustrate status and confidence and therefore maleness without veering into caricature. How all of this is made more difficult by the obstacle of being a female playing the character.

A tactic I'm using to examine #2 is watching films with male characters who are what I'm calling 'warriors'. I don't tend to watch a lot of this type of film, but the examination is interesting - Platoon, Braveheart, Gladiator, Apocalypse Now, Patton.

Another tactic I'm using to examine this is what happens if I don't apologize, especially for the amount of space I take up. This was an interesting one on a walk through a crowded grocery store. Other shoppers apologized to me for letting their carts get too close, etc.

Looking forward, we're just over 2 weeks from opening, and will be moving from the rehearsal space to the Oakland performance space next weekend!

This is so freakin' cool!

So many amazing things are happening at rehearsal.

I am jealous of every 'witches-only' rehearsal - Joan, Treacy, Leontyne, and Julia are working out this amazing movement stuff w/shadows and lights and fabric, and then I come in at the end of these rehearsals to integrate my text/movement w/the witch scenes. And they give me the shivers.

Carla has given us basic staging for all of the fight sequences - I count 5 onstage deaths. Things are brutal, scary in places, and dangerous looking. Last night's rehearsal was full of people saying 'ohmigod that's gross' 'cool!' 'that looks so real' etc.

Two more freakin' cool people that you need to know about - Claire, our AD (assistant director) - she and Joan are constantly bouncing ideas off each other, and Alicia, our stage manager, in charge of scheduling, communications, generally keeping track of everybody, and on top of all that, she shuttles a few of us back and forth from BART before and after rehearsal. The things these ladies do don't seem outwardly as exciting as broadswords and shadow projection, but are ultimately what keep us all moving forward on this adventure - the coolest part of all.

The 3 usual questions #1: Are those real swords?

The title of this post comes from my days of touring children's theater - which were many, included 11 states, and sent me everywhere from a monster truck arena in Cheyenne, WY, to an extremely poor school in the border town of Nogales, AZ, where the audience spoke mostly Spanish. But I digress...

After performances, we did a Q&A session for the student audiences, and there were three questions we almost always got. I thought I'd answer those three questions in relationship to Macbeth.

So, #1 - are those real swords? Yes, and no. In general, stage swords are not tipped, i.e. not sharp, so no, they aren't 'real' in that sense. However, they're really made of metal, and they really weigh what real metal weighs, so if used correctly(incorrectly?), you can definitely bruise a person, or injure small body parts like noses, eyes, and fingers.

The other thing to know here is that stage fighting is not improvised - it is choreographed as closely as any dance, and rehearsed prior to every performance at a 'fight call' to ensure everyone's safety. Fight choreographers use angle and body position to create the illusion of actual physical contact, or when a move is performed with contact, we target areas of the body which are able to take it (typically large muscle groups), and pull punches a bit, then sell it w/a big reaction.

All this being said, I'm really excited about the fights in this show - I've got two broadsword fights and what we've done so far looks terrific. There are moments of real bad-assery for both Julia (Macduff) and myself, as well as some horrible horrible injuries.

Questions #2 and #3 in later posts. Stay tuned!

Witches Only!

That's who's called for tomorrow's rehearsal, so I thought I'd take a minute to talk about them.

Our witches - Julia, Leontyne, and Treacy - have an amazing task ahead of them. I play Macbeth, Desiray plays Malcolm, and these 3 are playing ALL the other roles. It's all part of the adaptation that Woman's Will Artistic Director Erin Meritt has put together - and a way to create a world where the Fates are in charge of what happens for these two men - Macbeth and his successor Malcolm.

It also presents terrific challenges for all involved. These three actors, of course, but also the design staff. Joan, our director, has shown us some amazing Butoh movement imagery as well as images of cancerous cells dividing and spreading through the body. My understanding is that this is something they'll be exploring through movement at their rehearsal tomorrow. Our lighting designer is talking about LEDs, and projections, and the set designer has shown us a model that includes canvas areas for shadow work and projections.

It's going to be a different Macbeth, that's for sure. One that only Woman's Will can do.

You're Being Watched

if you're male that is. Thought I'd let you know.

This weekend the cast of Macbeth, some Woman's Will company members, and a few other folks participated in two workshops.

In the first, Finding Your Inner Man, led by Rami Margron (mult. roles at Woman's Will including the title role in The Rover and Orlando in As You Like It), we worked on creating male gesture, body language, and appearance. The nearly unanimous conclusion was that we all need to study men more. How do they do what they do? So I thought I'd warn you that as you go about your daily activities - riding transit, walking down the street, eating in restaurants or drinking in bars - we're studying you.

The second workshop was an introduction to the broadsword, let by our amazingly talented fight choreographer Carla Pantoja. I know Carla primarily from other contexts, because she's also an actor and teacher, and was blown away by her expertise here. We are in very good hands, and these fights are going to be really terrific.

The energy in both workshops was palpable. We've got a cast of confident, grounded women. I can feel Joan, our director, is ready to rip into this text with the group. Tonight, we begin a few days of table work, so you'll hear more from me soon.

Here are a few photos from Sunday. In the first you can see Carla (white shirt) leading cast member Julia and company member Marilet through a head parry. In the second, I'm standing 'engarde' with cast member Leontyne in the background. In the third, Carla is demonstrating a shoulder parry.

Taking up the Torch, or perhaps, the Dagger

I'm Valerie. I'm playing Macbeth. We'll be starting rehearsals on Saturday, September 6th. Tune in here for notes on the process, fly on the wall rehearsal tidbits, and how the sausage gets made. Which will hopefully make you more interested in sampling ;)

First - the pre-rehearsal work. I've known I would be playing this role for about 6 weeks now, which has given me plenty of time for reading, viewing, thinking, and pushups. Different actors approach things differently, but for me, prior to the start of rehearsal is a great time to see how other folks have done it - to know what is possible.

Some of the indispensable books for me on any Shakespeare role include: a Folio edition for spelling and punctuation clues, the Oxford edition for notes, and the Players of Shakespeare series from the RSC - a 6 volume set in which actors write essays about the roles they've played. I usually grab a book of criticism too if I can - and end up skimming it, not finding too much that's useful and then throwing it back.

Also on this role - the pushups. A way to connect with upper body strength and get ready for the sword fighting. I'm following the regimen at hundredpushups.com

So, a salute to the ladies who've written before me on previous Woman's Will productions, and thanks for letting me take over.

Opening Weekend

I believe the production has finally hit its stride. Granted it's a somewhat lengthy stride (clocking in at somewhere around two hours forty minutes), but it's pretty tight, all things considered.
A few items of note:
The costumes. The costumes range from serious-business (the suit Maryssa/Yang Sun wears after becoming Shui Ta's manager) to hilarious (Susan and my hooker outfits, the Gods robes and hats). My personal favorite would have to be the garish, floral-print dress, matching shoes, and flamingo-pink jacket Lauren wears while portraying Wife. Hats off to Holly for the hours she spent hunched over the sewing machine altering various costume pieces and creating the God's robes.
The set. You should see that thing. Jackie recreated a portion of a cityscape out of flats and hinges, and it looks darn good. And the kicker? That sucker is portable. Because at Woman's Will, Load-In and Load-Out are daily occurances; every day we put the set together, and organize the props and costumes in under thirty minutes, and at the end of the performance, we break everything back down and pack it up in the Woman's Will Truck.
And speaking of the truck. The Woman's Will Truck, which we use to haul the entire production from one public park to another, used to be covered in graffitti, but now has a snazzy stencil of the Woman's Will logo on the side.
The performance. I have this attitude that some have described as "annoyingly positive," so, needless to say, I'm not much of a critic. All I can really say is this: as a rule, I love to laugh, and I love things that make me laugh, and I can't think of a single person in the cast whose performance has failed to do so. Two Snaps Up to Erin our delightful director, for the adaptation, and for putting this whole show together. Let's hear it for the girls.

I must remember this...

On the off chance that I ever direct a show of my own, I must remember the excersize Erin had us do yesterday. We had been rehearsing a scene for what felt like hours in the blazing heat when Erin decided to have us switch parts. She also instructed us to be as ridiculous as possible. The result was so funny that I started laughing onstage. How unprofessional of me.
However, in addition to being amusing, it was quite eye opening. Obviously, different actors make different choices playing the same parts, and some people were quite good in the parts they took when Erin had us switch. My personal favorite during the switch was Desiray's five-year-old niece as the carpenters child (Desiray had her sister's kids with her yesterday). She was an absolute natural.

The Women Behind (and In Front of) The Curtain, (part one)

Believe it or not, it took me five minutes to come up with that title. See, I was originally going to riff on the title of the play, but then I realized I did that in the last post...well, never mind.
Anyway, it just occured to me today: how lucky am I to be working with people I actually like? I'm not just saying that, either. You really do meet the most interesting people in theater. Some of the women in the show are circus performers, others teach, some are career actors...I've heard some fascinating stories from everyone I've talked to. Almost makes a girl want to bring a tape recorder to work. I think it might be especially interesting for me because I'm the baby of the group; I'm guessing that the people closest to my age in the play are five or six years older than I am. Needless to say, I feel extremely immature.
Everyone's official bios can be found here (under "bios"). But here's what I've noticed about a few people in the cast:

El Beh (Shen Te/Shui Ta) is amazing. I was lucky enough to get to watch her audition, which was so memorable and funny that I still remember both of her monologues. Her second one was particularly hilarious; it was an obnoxious guy in his early twenties talking about seeing Hulk Hogan in a Del Taco. Even though the people behind the audition table usually keep their faces completely impassive, I think I was laughing by the second sentence of the monologue. I think even Erin the Serious Director Lady was smiling by the end of it.

Holly Chou (Wang) is as kind as the character she plays. She's so very enthusiastic about the play and life in general that being in the same room with her often makes my day. Wang is my favorite character, quite possibly because of how Holly manges to find the perfect balance between endearing and funny; even the big chunks of exposition Wang does are amusing.

According to Anne Hallinan (Mrs. Shin)'s bio, she returned to the stage on the eve of the millenium. The stage is quite lucky that she did; her Mrs. Shin's intelligence, nosiness and melodramatic outbursts make for some of the best moments in the play (if there were a play called "The Smart Person of Szechuan," Mrs. Shin would be the star--she's the only one who figured out that Shen Te and Shui Ta were the same peerson). I got to be there for an hour of rehearsal during which she was the only actor called, so she and Erin could work on her monologues. She's perfect for the part; she has made Mrs Shin into a wonderfully sympathetic busybody.

I have just as much to say about everyone in the cast, but if I said it all right now, I'd be sitting here until the cows came home (and considering that I live in the suburbs ofthe Bay Area, that would be an extremely long time). So, you'll have to wait until tommorrow to hear more about the wonderful cast and crew of "Good Person."

The Good Plot Devices of Szechuan

Hello! This is Sophie the Intern here to tell you about Woman's Will's currrent show, "The Good Person of Szechuan." We're already about halfway through the rehearsal process...suffice it to say, I'm waaayyy behind on the blogging.
So allow me a moment to get caught up.
"The Good Person of Szechuan" begins with a scene that one might expect to see at the end of most plays, and the happy end of most plays at that. In the opening scene we see three gods coming through the gates of the city of Szechuan, trying to find lodging for the night. Needless to say, most of the people in Szechuan toss them out on their godly rear ends. But finally, they find someone willing to put them up for the night--Shen Te the prostitute. Satisfied that they have managed to find a Good Person, the Gods give Shen Te a thousand silver dollars (which, at the time, was big money) and off they go. Shen Te uses the money to take over the lease on a tobacco shop. Usually, in situations like that, the protagonist lives happily ever after. No such luck for Shen Te, however. As soon as the town gets wind of Shen Te's good fortune, all her casual aquaintances come out of the woodwork, palms outstreched; her first landlords, the woman who formerly owned the shop, and the homeless guy who hangs out in front of the shop, just to name a few. And Shen Te is so soft-hearted that she can't say no to any of them. To make matters worse, Shen Te falls in love with a penniless deadbeat named Sun. In fact, things get so bad that Shen Te dresses up as a man and claims to be Shen Te's cousin Shui Ta. Shui Ta is everything Shen Te is not. He's tough, ruthless, and excels as a businessman. He has as many successes as Shen Te has failures. As the protagonist goes back and forth between kind-hearted Shen Te and hard-ass Shui Ta, hilarity, and some not-so-hilarious situations ensue. It's darkly hilarious and hilariously dark.
There's just one thing. One of my jobs as intern is to make a study guide. I'm supposed to include the themes of the play on the study guide. Themes that a seven year old could understand. No, I'm not exaggerating; people from the company are going to be teaching a class about this to kids so there is a good chance that seven-year-olds will actually be reading this thing. What themes am I supposed to include on this study guide, exactly? Prostitution? How even your gods will abandon you in the face of Capitalism? How it is impossible to be good to yourself and others at the same time? Szechuan, we have a problem.
However, the play itsself is lovely, as are the actors and director and pretty much everyone involved. I'll tell you more about all of them in the next entry.