PHOTO CALL - STAGE DOOR

An Actor muses on STAGE DOOR

Mechelle Moe gives an actors POV of what it's like to put together a show like STAGE DOOR

It’s hot. A very, very hot sweaty tech. Twenty-seven actors crammed in a dressing room that is meant for about twelve sitting on top of each other in what seems to be a never-ending game of twister. Arms reaching for costume pieces, legs draped over each other and faces leaning towards the few fans trying to catch a breeze. This is our second day in the space, and I just received a note not to pull my dress up. I don’t even remember pulling my dress up during the run, I think subconsciously I was just trying to let any bit of air in to cool off. There’s even sweat between my fingers and I don’t feel very pretty. That being said, everyone is in really good spirits. We’ve been sardines in a can for the past six weeks and nary a temper has flared. It’s a pretty amazing phenomenon for this many people to be gathered in small quarters. This show is not for the claustrophobic.

Tech. Deep breath. There’s no way around it. No more miming props or pretending to walk up and down stairs that aren’t really there or hitting the wall to simulate the door slam. We finally have all the real things. Trouble is we’ve gotten so used to all our imaginary bits and bobs that the real stuff throws everyone off. It’s that frustrating regression that strikes every show at this point in the process. Trying to find the rhythm, the new rhythm outside the rehearsal room. My shoes are slightly too big, and I stuff kleenex in them to make sure they won’t slip off while running up and down the stairs. My coat weighs a hundred pounds and I remember how much I detest nylons. I have new sight lines to contend with in a space that seems impossible not to upstage your fellow actor. There’s lights now and sound. And a ladder to climb in the dressing room to reach a perch to enter into the space from the bedrooms upstairs. Logistics. All logistics. Where’s the best place for costumes and props and how much time to I have to change between scenes? That’s what occupies my mind. In two weeks, this will all become second nature and we’ll laugh when thinking back to how horrifying it seems in this moment. But right now everyone is scrambling to get it right. Oh, and then there’s actually worrying about the acting part and playing the scenes. Making sure all that work doesn’t go out the window with your sanity.

The first day of rehearsal our director, Robin Witt, called Stage Door a love letter to actors. I underestimated this play at the start and the depth of my character’s journey. It’s not exactly the 1930s romp I anticipated paying homage to all those films I watched growing up. It’s been an extremely challenging process that has struck at my very core. And I am just as stage-struck as the character I play. After 13 years of treading the boards of Chicago theater, I still believe in it and what it has to offer the community. Despite the struggle to pay bills and scramble for work, I wouldn’t trade it in for the life of me. My character states: “The theater beats me and starves me and forsakes me, but I love it. I suppose that’s the kind of girl I am--you know--rather live in a garret with her true love than dwell in a palace with old Money-bags.” Truer words could not be spoken.

STAGE DOOR - In the Rehearsal Room

Directors Note - Robin Witt on STAGE DOOR

Robin Witt Director of Griffin Theatre's STAGE DOOR talks about the play, late at night after a work through of Act One, scene 1

"A woman can look both moral and exciting -- if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle." - Edna Ferber

Griffin Theatre’s production of Stage Door by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman: 248 costume pieces; 33 characters; 27 actors; 16 set pieces; 13 door slams; 9 door bells; 5 phone rings; 4 bananas; 2 apples; a baseball bat; an upright piano; a two-story staircase; and 1 small dog.

Bill Massolia, Griffin’s artistic director, phoned me up last summer and asked me if he was crazy. He thought the Griffin should produce Stage Door in the upcoming season. I had directed a staged reading of the play as a benefit for Griffin a few months earlier, and it had gone surprisingly well. Yes, I had to rehearse it in shifts, and yes, only 17 actors played the 33 roles. But the evening had been really, really fun (and oddly, on the night of my birthday). Amidst the fast-paced carnival atmosphere of the reading, there had also been moments of deep pathos.

I said “yes” to Bill. Yes that he was crazy and yes, that I would love to direct it.

Set in a boarding house for actresses in Manhattan, Stage Door premiered at the Music Box in NYC on November 1, 1936. It was a time when the United States was struggling to pull itself out of the Great Depression and Hitler had recently presided over the Summer Olympics in Berlin. The world was a dark and uncertain place, and the theatre and film of the era were doing what they could to lift public consciousness away from gloom and despair. Ferber/Kaufman did their bit with some of the greatest comedies of the time, including The Royal Family and You Can’t Take it With You. Inspired by Ferber’s visit to the boarding house in New York where her niece–the actress Janet Fox– lived, Stage Door is an acerbic and loving look at the intoxicating, backstabbing, heart-breaking, and arduous life of show folk.

Below is a roughly outlined list of what I considered some of the most important ideas/actions/themes of the play:

· Hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds

· Sharing of worldly goods—generosity in times of hardship

· Theatre as a higher art form than film—a noble life

· The draw of fame and money

· Artistic life worth living despite of rejection, poverty, and the bad rap being of the world’s 2^nd oldest profession, etc

· Struggles of poverty

· Grasping for success

· How is success measured?

· The inequities of gender and class

· Dire acts committed by the desperate

· Insular nature of the boarding house that the women inhabit—a safe place

· Outside world—the theatre: impossible to penetrate and conquer

· Action within the boarding house—ceaseless, fluid, elegant, desperate, tedious, churning

· Stage-stuckedness (I made up this word)

· Music. Dance. Drama. SHOWTIME!

There is not a whole lot written about Stage Door (the play). Ferber/Kaufman’s other plays have garnered more attention and therefore more scholarly research as well. SD isn’t produced very often, except at Colleges and Universities. Why is that you ask? See the above list of elements needed for the production (elements=$$$$$). But there is also a very interesting tone issue in this play. SD is not pure comedy. It is not You Can’t Take it with You. SPOILER ALERT: skip to the next paragraph if you don’t know the play and want to come to the production without knowing key plot points. There is a suicide, and prostitution, and shattered dreams. SD also has elements of screwball comedy. Comedy and tragedy sit side by side and the switch between them can be razor sharp. How does one navigate through such ever-changing currents?

Brooks Atkinson, in his review of the 1936 production, puts it best. After praising the play’s “keen edge” of comedy and its “ebullient” nature, he ends with a lengthy discussion on how badly actors were treated by producers. Atkinson writes: “Stage Door would be funnier if the whole subject of acting were less painful.” He spends 3 paragraphs in the review naming all that is wrong with the current hierarchal system of 1930s Broadway. It’s amazing. He pretty much predicts what is going to happen in the 1960s with the birth of repertory companies in the U. S.

Ok. Now it’s really late at night. More later regarding tone…..xo and goodnight.

1 in 27 - How do you fit all those cast members into the Griffin rehearsal space?

Jennifer Bettancourt plays Bobbie in our upcoming production of STAGE DOOR. A recent graduate from Notre Dame, Jennifer provides perspective from one who is relatively new to the Chicago scene.

So far, whenever I tell people about Stage Door: the setting, the gist of the plot, and especially the cast size/make-up, nine times out of ten I get, "There are HOW many girls?! Whoa!! Please, you HAVE to tell me about the drama that goes on backstage!" and for those that know The Theatre Building, there's the additional, "Ha, Have fun in those dressing rooms!" As of this point in the rehearsal process, though, I'm pretty happy to say that I'm only seriously concerned about the dressing rooms...

After doing the staged reading last year, I feel really lucky and beyond excited to be able to delve into this script and get to know the characters and their relationships again, and much more fully. When we did the reading, everyone except a few were given multiple characters and, at least for me, it was like a really cool challenge to try and give each one their own distinction while sitting down and without changing costumes. This time around, I'd be lying if I said I didn't keep my eyes and ears open during the first few reads to see how these "new girls" chose to play the parts I'd done and perhaps it's petty of me to admit that I was worried I'd never be able to fully let go of the idea that I'd once said that line differently. As we've gone along though, it was beyond easy because of everyone's enthusiasm for the script and the story (no one more than Robin, and that energy has done wonders, at least personally, to make my excitement just continue to grow with every rehearsal). The ensemble nature of the show has made it essential for each character to know themselves in and out and embrace what everyone else offers.

We're now in my favorite time of the rehearsal process: Books are dropped, blocking is done, and now it's time to string it together and explore and play! I've always been tickled at the idea of playing Bobby but the more we rehearse, the more I discover her and really dig the person we're becoming together (that doesn't sound too strange does it?) For example, despite what I think of myself walking down the street on any given day, when I think of being Bobby I immediately feel lighter, springier, flirtier, more in control of that flirtation, and really oblivious to time. It also works in reverse as I relate onstage the Bobby that is tempered by who I am as an individual. We also, meaning the girls of the Footlights Club (not me and my apparently multiple personalities), have spent enough time together in rehearsals to start becoming familiar with each other and it's exciting to see where different bonds and friendships are forming. It isn't that there are people NOT getting along (or maybe there are and I just am not cool or perceptive enough to know) but the substance of actually knowing and liking the people you're onstage with and why you like them, what it is about them specifically that makes you giggle or wince, is invaluable.

Given the time the girls have had in the last few weeks just to rehearse with one another I don't envy the guys (aside from Chuck...poor chuck, reinforcements are coming soon!) having to come into it and find their way in this nest of women giggling, gossiping, and constantly in various states of dress (actually, maybe they won't mind so much...). It's only gonna get better from here on out and I can't wait to see where we all end up together! While there may develop some drama backstage, I'm sorry at this point to disappoint those that were expecting it by reporting what can only be described as a veritable profession of love, maybe I'll try and start some tonight. You know, to make it up to you. - Jennifer Bettancourt

Next Up at the Griffin - STAGE DOOR by Edna Ferber & George S. Kaufman

In the upcoming weeks we will be posting interviews, rehearsal photos and directors note from our upcoming production of STAGE DOOR by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman. Check it out!

Brian Dennehy to host LETTERS HOME at Westport Playhouse

Award-winning actor Brian Dennehy will host Westport Country Playhouse’s presentation of “Letters Home,” a dramatic production of actual letters written by U.S. troops serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on Veteran’s Day, Wednesday, November 11. Produced by the Griffin Theatre Company of Chicago, the initial production last winter was critically acclaimed and nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for “Outstanding New Play.”

In conjunction with “Letters Home,” the Westport Arts Center (WAC) will install an exhibition in the Playhouse lobby, “Daily Exchanges: U.S. Soldiers in Iraq - The Ordinary in Images.” Curated by WAC's Director of Visual Arts Terri C. Smith, with the guidance and input of artist and "Operation Enduring Freedom" veteran Paul Kaiser, "Daily Exchanges" will feature photographs and videos depicting the everyday lives of troops serving in war.

A reception and guided tour of the art exhibit will begin at 6 p.m., followed by the performance of “Letters Home” at 7 p.m. A panel discussion will follow the play at approximately 9 p.m., moderated by Lisa Chedekel, an award-winning investigative reporter with more than 20 years experience writing for Connecticut newspapers. After the discussion, Smith and Kaiser will be available for comment on the exhibition.

“The Playhouse is pleased to present ‘Letters Home’ as a powerful reminder around Veteran’s Day of the hard work and sacrifices of our nation’s servicemembers. We are delighted to work with the Westport Arts Center to create an immersive experience in the portrayal of our troops in both drama and the visual arts,” said Angela Marroy Boerger, the Playhouse’s Education and Community Programs Coordinator.

“Letters Home” paints a powerful portrait of servicemembers’ experience in the ongoing war, and, without politicizing, gives voice to the people who are still fighting and dying far away from home. The production is inspired by the New York Times Op-Ed article, “The Things They Wrote,” and the subsequent HBO documentary, “Last Letters Home,” and additionally uses letters and correspondences from Frank Schaeffer’s books, “Voices from the Front: Letters Home from America’s Military Family,” “Faith of Our Sons” and “Keeping Faith.”

The art exhibition, “Daily Exchanges: U.S. Soldiers in Iraq - The Ordinary in Images,” is in dialogue with the Westport Country Playhouse’s “Letters Home” performance and includes artist interpretations of the daily lives of U.S. soldiers in Iraq – as well as projects relating to their loved ones at home. The exhibition will also feature photographs, videos and emails from soldiers themselves. Direct documents and artworks are exhibited in tandem to provide a variety of viewpoints. By emphasizing the quotidian – the everyday routines, environments and stories of U.S. soldiers – the hope is to avoid “newsworthy” portrayals of a soldier’s life in a deliberate attempt to circumvent stereotypes of troops and war. In addition to Wednesday afternoon and evening, the art exhibition will be on display Thursday, November 12, 1 to 6 p.m. and Friday, November 13, 12 to 6 p.m.

Brian Dennehy, host and panelist, has maintained a strong presence in film, theater and television for three decades. He has twice won the Tony Award for Best Actor: honored for playing James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's “Long Day's Journey Into Night,” and for playing Willy Loman in “Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.” The latter production was also filmed for Showtime which subsequently earned Dennehy a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Emmy Award nomination. He revived the role of Willy Loman in London's West End for which he received the coveted Olivier Award for Best Actor. Dennehy is well-known to audiences worldwide for his performances in many popular films and a wide range of television projects.

Lisa Chedekel, panel moderator, is a former staff writer for The Hartford Courant, where she won a number of national awards, including a 1999 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news which she shared with a team of reporters. As a member of The Courant’s investigative team, she co-authored a series of stories in 2006 on soldiers’ mental health that led to sweeping reforms in the military’s system of screening and treating troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The series was a finalist for the Pulitzer in investigative reporting in 2007 and won a George Polk Award for military reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize, and the Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting. Chedekel previously covered the state Capitol, education and immigration for The Courant, and was a reporter and columnist for the New Haven Register. She now writes for publications in the Boston area.

The Playhouse’s presentation of “Letters Home” is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and Pitney Bowes. Tickets are $15 for the general public and $10 for veterans.

For more information or tickets to “Letters Home,” call the Westport Country Playhouse box office at (203) 227-4177, or toll-free at 1-888-927-7529, or visit the box office at 25 Powers Court, off Route 1, Westport, or www.westportplayhouse.org. For more information about the exhibition, call the Westport Arts Center at (203) 222-7070 or visit www.westportartscenter.org.

Photos of THE HOSTAGE

Rob Fenton & Sara Sevigny

Donna McGough & Eammon McDonagh

The cast of The Hostage break into song.

Rob Fenton & Nora Fiffer.

The cast of The Hostage.

All Photos by Michael Brosilow

A Note From the Director on THE HOSTAGE

Finally, with some time on my hands, I’m able to sit down and write a bit about THE HOSTAGE process, with a little perspective and, hopefully, a little insight into the work and our intentions.

I recognize that this play can be a little challenging to grasp. Lord knows in rehearsals, moment after moment, good intuitive actors had to stop and have a discussion about “why am I doing this now?” Just to grasp the history, and political beliefs of each of these individuals takes a whole lot of charts and diagrams and trust to just get the basics of the shifting allegiances brought about by the fight for Irish independence. I was grateful every day to have both Stefka, our dramaturg, and Eamonn McDonagh (playing Pat) in the room to provide guidance and insight and a vague road map of where Behan was coming from.

Even then, the shifts remain challenging. As Eamonn kept reminding us, there is a legend where Freud said that the Irish were the only people on the planet who are completely impervious to psychoanalysis. They love to fight and argue and sing and joke and dance and will do all of them within moments of each other – two folks can be fighting fiercely for their opposing political opinion one moment, then singing raucously the same freedom fighting song the next. They are, as a people, made up of a bag of impossible contradictions – so to represent them on stage is to embrace these contradictions, and hope that people spend less time looking moment to moment, and rather attepmt to grasp the whole picture at the end. One has to check one’s linear mind at the door. You cannot solve this play (or the Irish) with your heads. You have to use your heart.

And ultimately that’s why I love this play. It is a collection of such beautiful, flawed, painfully real individuals who embrace these contradictions and embrace the fullness of life in every moment. They are the people that were left behind, the fringe – none of these people will be important to the course of Irish history, or the movement – they aren’t particularly gifted poets – they are the everyday people of Ireland, fighting for their beliefs, or the next pint of Guiness, or the two pounds for the rent. But, despite their ordinariness, they fight for life with ferocity and a fullness of spirit of the greatest of Irish heroes.

No one feels that their life is unimportant. Behan wrote this for the people he knew from the neighborhood, those nameless, faceless people who he saw every day growing up in Dublin’s Fringe. We try to honor those people with this production.

Similarly, Behan looks at the cost of war – and that the people who pay the price aren’t the high up decision makers, not the generals making the plans, but the every day. As Meg says, “Old women and mother’s with their infants” – or in Leslie’s case – a 19 year old Cockney boy without a family, who has no real prospects and nothing much to look forward to. But Behan knows that, to him, he’s just as important as any Duke or Lord of the manor.

For the tragedy of the play to come from a chaotic misunderstanding is a strong comment on the absurdity of a war effort. Talk to some of our returning soldiers even now – the mission may be clear, but anytime you try to lay a black and white morality over the intricate grayness of our human existence, you are going to have trouble reconciling the differences. Our lives are not neatly ordered and regimented in sharp clear ideology. This play celebrates those contradictions and asks us to recognize that THAT is what makes us human, and brings us together, and that life must be cherished above all things.

Yes, the play is messy. It’s too much. It shifts to quickly. Sometimes it’s confusing and, when you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense. But that is so often my experience of life as well. And I believe that, if you come to this play with your heart, instead of your head, you’ll find a richness of experience that feels to me remarkably human.

I love this play. I hope you do to.

Jb

The Hostage opens Griffin's 21st Season!

Chicago, IL, August 10, 2009: The Griffin Theatre Company opens its 21^st season with Irish playwright Brendan Behan’s most celebrated play, The HOSTAGE. Press opening is Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 7:00pm. Tickets are on sale now at Theatre Building Chicago, (773) 327-5252, or online at ticketmaster.com

In 1959 Dublin, a young British soldier is held captive by the Irish Republican Army while an equally young IRA volunteer awaits execution for killing a policeman. Should the British carry out the Irishman's sentence, the IRA will do the same to the Englishman. Playwright Brendan Behan, himself a former IRA member, took this dire premise to mold a sly political satire.

Griffin ensemble member Jonathan Berry brings his directorial vision to Behan’s play set in a Dublin brothel and reveals it to be a rollicking, bawdy comedy, full of brawling energy, song and satire that mixes beautifully with powerful drama. Berry who last season helmed the Griffin’s hit production of Simon Stephen’s On the Shore of the Wide World will intertwine laughter, tears, joy and fear in a music hall staging of one of Ireland’s most significant Irish dramas.

Behan's absurdist tragi-comedy, THE HOSTAGE, was originally written in Irish Gaelic and performed in that language as An Giall at the Damer Hall, St. Stephen's Green in Dublin, Ireland, in 1957. Following the success of that production, Behan translated the play into English and Joan Littlewood, the innovative director of the Theater Workshop in London agreed to direct it. The premiere of THE HOSTAGE opened on the 14th of October, 1958, at Littlewood's Theater Royal in Stratford, London. The work has subsequently become one of the pillars upon which Behan's reputation rests, and the original Littlewood production has since become recognized as evidence of the Theater Workshop's important role in Postwar British theater.

The play is written in a non-realist style; characters frequently burst into song and sometimes into song-and-dance routines, and Behan consistently tries to undercut seriousness with humor. Littlewood tried to act and direct her plays in a way that would break down the "fourth wall" between actors and audience. It is a key text of the Absurdist theater movement, a movement that influenced later generations of playwrights such as Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter. The play is especially important because it represents the intersection of British and Irish theater that occurred prior to the escalation of hostilities in Northern Ireland.

THE HOSTAGE continues the Griffin’s tradition of producing rare revivals not seen in Chicago for decades—Ah Wilderness!, Time and the Conways, The Robber Bridegroom and Dead End to name a few. The Chicago cast includes, Rom Barkhordar, Ryan Bourque, Chris Chmelik, Rob Fenton, Nora Fiffer, Kevin Gladish, Pat King, Evan Lee, Jason Lindner, Eamonn McDonnagh, Donna McGough, Eddie Paul, Melissa Riemer, Sadie Rogers and Sara Sevigny.

The Technical and Design team for THE HOSTAGE includes: Stephanie Sherline (Music Director), Maureen Janson (Choreography), Chantal Calato (Costumes), Lee Keenan (Lights), Marianna Csaszar (Set), Rick Sims (Sound) and Kimberly Purcell (Production Stage Manager).

BRENDAN BEHAN (Playwright) was born in Dublin and lived his childhood in the slums of the city. In spite of the surroundings, he did not end up becoming an unlettered slum lad. He also owed much of his education to his family, well-read, and of strong Republican sympathies. Behan attended Catholic schools until the age of 14, when he abandoned studies and then worked as a house painter. In 1939 Behan was arrested on a sabotage mission in Liverpool, following a deadly explosion at Coventry. He was sentenced to three years in Borstal in a reform school for attempting to blow up a battleship in Liverpool harbour. After release, Behan returned to Ireland, but in 1942 he was sentenced to 14 years for the attempted murder of two detectives. He served at Mountjoy Prison and at the Curragh Military Camp. In 1946 he was released under a general amnesty. During his years in prison, Behan started to write, mainly short stories in an inventive stylization of Dublin vernacular. Later he lived in Paris and Dublin, writing for Radio Telefis and for the Irish Press. Behan's best-known novel, Borstal Boy (1958), drew its material from his experiences in the Liverpool jail and Borstal school (reform school). Behan's first play, The Quare Fellow, was based on his prison experiences. Behan wrote several plays, but he had difficulties in getting performed in his own country. Among Behan's other dramas are The Big House (1957) and THE HOSTAGE (1958), written in Gaelic under the title An Giall and set in a disreputable Dublin lodging house-or a brothel-owned by a former IRA commander. The play was acclaimed in London, Paris, and New York.

THE HOSTAGE begins preview performances Saturday, September 12, 2009 at 7:45pm. Previews continue September 17, 18, 19, at 7:45pm and Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 3:00pm. Press opening is Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 7:00pm. Tickets to THE HOSTAGE range from $18-$28, and are on sale now. The regular run performances (September 20 – November 1, 2009) are Thursday through Saturday at 7:45 pm. and Sunday at 3:00pm. Note there will be no matinee performance on Sunday, September 20, 2009. Preview tickets are priced at $18.00 each and regular run tickets are priced at $28.00 each. Tickets are on sale now at Theatre Building Chicago, (773) 327-5252, or online at ticketmaster.com. Senior and student discounts and group rates are available.

Check Out the Youtube Videos of LITTLE BROTHER

We have three videos posted on Youtube of Little Brother. Now seen by thousands of people! Very cool.



Or look at it on YOUTUBE.




Or look at it on YOUTUBE.




Or look at it on YOUTUBE.

First Look Production Photos of LITTLE BROTHER

An Illegal Concert, Sadie Rogers & Mike Harvey

The revealing letter, Josh Odor & Mike Harvey

The Family, Kevin Gladish, Jennifer Lowe & Mike Harvey

The Interrogation, Ariel Brenner, Mike Harvey & Brian DiLoreto

Little Brother's gang, Mike Harvey, Jorge Silva, Denice Lee & Darren Meyers

Mike Harvey is Marcus Yallow (aka M1k3y)

LITTLE BROTHER OPENING

Well, the opening of Little Brother is just around the corner. It's been quite a journey. The production boast an incredible amount of technical expertise. My hat is off to director Dorothy Milne for keeping it all running so smoothly. Our sound designer Rick Sims said that Little Brother may have the most sound ques he has ever put into a play. The set in made up of a series of movable gates that simulate a caged environment--all the incredible work of the talented Alan Donahue who is designing the set. Add to that, wonderful lighting by Sarah Hughey fun, hip costumes by Branimira Ivanova and superb fights by Geoff Coates and I am sure audiences are going to have one of the most unique experiences they have ever had going to the theatre. And did I mention there is video too. Wheww! The production is bolstered by an incredibly talented cast lead by newcomer Mike Harvey in the lead role. More to come on the play....

The Robber Bridegroom - The Reviews are In!

The Robber Bridegroom opened last week and received glowing reviews from Chicago critics. Here are the links below to some of the best. Congrats to director Paul Holmquist and the cast and crew of the production! The production also received a Jeff Recommendation.

Read the Chicago Tribune review HERE.

Read the Chicago Sun Times review HERE.

Read the Chicago Reader review HERE.

The Year that Was....a Great Year

We haven't posted in a while due to the fact that the company has been incredibly busy with projects both large and small. I thought I would bullet point some of the highlights.

* The Griffin touring production of Letters Home played to more than 10,000 people this fall. Stops on the fall tour included Madison, WI., Cleveland OH., Cerritos CA., Indianapolis, IN., Brooklyn NY., Westhampton Beach NY. and Peekskill, NY. The tour continues in the spring with stops in Syracuse, Buffalo, Watertown NY and Concord NH. And negotiations are underway for the production to tour to Alaska, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Seattle, Wilmington and Hartford to name more than a few.

The LH cast on the beach in Montauk, NY

* On The Shore of the Wide World concluded a great run at Theatre Building Chicago, garnering outstanding reviews. If you saw the production the Griffin is now the proud owner of 4 dozen chairs--none matching. Anyone want one?

On The Shore of the Wide World

* "Best of the Year Lists" The Griffin production of Journey's End was listed by Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune as one of the "top ten productions of the year" and one of the "top five revivals of the year" in New City Newspaper. And Be More Chill was listed as one of the "top five productions of the year" in New City Newspaper too.

Be More Chill & Journey's End

The First Word On - THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM

Here is the first post from Paul Holmquist, the Director of our next production, The Robber Bridegroom. Remember this production opens in February. On the Shore of the Wide World is running for four more weeks--GO SEE IT! It's great. And we are on tour for Letters Home - in Indianapolis next week. Busy, busy fall.

"The auditions for The Robber Bridegroom have come to a close and I've been fortunate to assemble quite a cast. Something my Musical Director Mark Elliott and I agreed over early on in discussing this project was that I cared less about having "pretty" voices than I did about having authentic and talented actors to play the characters. I have it all with this group and I couldn't be more thrilled.

Each show I direct (heh, all five of them now) has had a different audition focus for me: auditions for The Island of Dr. Moreau involved groups of 8 - 10 at a time for a two hour movement and vocal lab, The Constant Wife required straight on reading of sides for scenes, for The Flight of the Dodo I asked actors to sing a ditty, experiment with bird movement and perform a short group scene.

For The Robber Bridegroom I simply had them sing - sixteen bars in the style for the initial audition and selections from the score for the callback. While the audition process was going on, Mark and I were listening to their voices and watching them for infusing character into their singing. As important to me however was observing the personalities in the room. Watching the way they interacted and treated each other, watching how they asserted themselves while balancing the competitive nature of the evening graciously. The fact that they are incredibly talented singers and skilled actors felt to me to come hand in hand with being excited to work with these people for the sheer joy of sharing a creative process with them.

Part of the beauty of this play is the nature of it's storytelling, a group shared experience with the audience. From the moment the audience walks into the theatre there should be something special in the air and the fact that the entire ensemble will be onstage for almost the entirety of the 90 minute show will add to community feeling the show is meant to produce.

There are a slew of co-existent dualities in the story. Jamie Lockhart has two faces, the clean cut gentleman and the robber stained with berry juice. Rosamund is spoiled but bored and lonely. Salome wants money and gets it but can never be satisfied. Further themes contrast passion and violence, love and lust and actor and audience. We see the actors are audience as they act and as audience we participate in the performance. This dual shared role will bind us in the experience of performance - for 90 minutes we share the support of the tale and it's telling. Hence my interest in the inherent charm and grace of the actors I've cast - this concept can only be produced by a generosity of spirit."


And here they are:

Rosamund - Caroline Fourmy
Jamie Lockhart - Cameron Brune
Salome - Amanda Hartly
Clement Musgrove - Dan Loftus
Little Harp - Steve Best
Big Harp - Michael Kingston
Goat - Kyle Gibson
Goat's Mother - Darrelyn Marx
Airie (Goat's Sister) - Kate McGroarty
Ensemble/Raven - Julie Nichols
Ensemble/Narrator/Banjo - Dylan Lower
Ensemble/Violin - Hilary Holbrook
Ensemble/Salome Understudy - Katie Swimm
Ensemble/Jamie Understudy - Eric Lindahl
Ensemble/"Deeper in the Woods" soloist - Sean Dean Effinger
Ensemble/Rosamund Understudy - Jennifer Tjepkema

Jeff Awards - We Have a Winner!

Griffin ensemble member Bill Morey won a Jeff Award on Monday night for his Costume Design work on the Porchlight Theatre's production of Nine. Congrats Bill!

Click here to see the complete list of winners.

LETTERS HOME tour - The Performance

We had a very early call the day of our performance at the Cerritos Center. 6:30am in order to load-in and tech the show. The venue was beautiful as you can see by the pics posted here.

The view from the stage

The performance went really well and for some of the actors it was their first big venue performance. Afterwards we had a short discussion with the audience, mostly high school age kids. I am always struck by the fact that some of them view the play as pro-war. It really takes no stance, but, I think since most of America today is not for the war (well any war for that matter) it just comes off that way unless you are blatantly bashing it. That would be an easy target for an artist. And this of course, is not something we would do as it would be a disservice to the soldiers and families who provided us with their stories. I think presenting the letters as we do gives the audience so much more to think about in terms of the costs of war and the humanity that lies within it as seen through the eyes of the men and women fighting it.

Cheap sunglasses that you could only buy on Venice Beach.

Obvious Chicagoans in SoCal

After the performance we had some time to kill and we went to Venice Beach. Had a drink or two and then left for the airport. The first performance is under our belt and now we move on to Indy.

LETTERS HOME tour - The OC

We arrived in LA around 1:30pm pacific time so we had the day to kick back and chill. A group of us drove to Huntington Beach. Who could resist seeing the sunset over the pacific ocean?

Can you see the surfers in the background?

Drinks on the Beach.

The perfect OC sunset. It's like this everyday?

LETTERS HOME tour - Economy class

Cast member Niall McGinty took these great pics from the plane. Hoover Dam, Lake Powell and of course La-La Land.