The coolest part of my job is the design and production process – the part that happens behind closed doors months in advance of audiences walking into our theatre to see a play. I often get asked about this seemingly Masonic period of time when the director, designers, technicians and I are hunkered down figuring what the heck things are going to look like, sound like, feel like; I could give you a timeline of what happens when…but timelines are BORING! So instead I thought I’d share fresh experiences from the show we’ve got on Stage in November – THE HISTORY OF LIGHT. This is the first blog in a four part series that will take you through the design process leading up to the first performance, by plunking you down smack in the middle of design meetings. Ready?

PART I: THE CONCEPT

It’s early August, a warm summer evening – muggy, actually. I’m sitting at June’s kitchen table and we’re intently peering at the five little video feeds on my laptop that show each of our designers and our director in their homes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York. It is our first design meeting – the “concept” meeting where we talk in big ideas, big themes, and images about the play.

What’s remarkable is not that we’re doing this via Skype (the first design meeting I’ve conducted this way), but that, unlike any other concept meeting I’ve been at before, everyone’s landing on the same ideas, feeding off of each other, riffing on what the sound designer says about texture, or the costume designer says about color and light. It’s a playful piece, The History of Light by Eisa Davis; we move in and out of time, dreams, memories – one moment we’re in the 1960s, the next 2002, the next the early eighties. We’re talking about how old faded photographs often have one color that remains vibrant, how our memories of times past are often viewed through the lens of old photographs – “Do you remember that red sweater Aunt Marnie always used to wear? I always picture her that way when I think of her…” We’re talking about how songs and the color of light can immediately transport us to a different time and place; how fluid this play is as it weaves through time and space, and how the design team can support that physically. What kind of set will help the actors change locations instantly? We all agree projections will help with the fluidity immensely. Then, the costume designer says, “I’m not sure why, but every time I read The History of Light, I think of The Glass Menagerie.”

Immediately, the videos fall silent. A second later everyone – literally everyone – is agreeing whole-heartedly: it’s the nostalgia, how we see things the way we want to, the fragile dreams and the heartbreak and how we heal after a dream has been broken, how we make ourselves whole again… The words are flying through my tinny speakers and then I watch as five little videos show our designers and director each with their own dog-eared copy of Tennessee Williams’ classic in their hands. Jade, our director, reads a portion of the opening stage directions aloud, describing the set, the house that the Wingfields live in:

The scene is memory and is therefore non-realistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic.

The entire story of the glass figurines and fabled gentleman caller are viewed through Tom, the narrator’s eyes. The journey that SOPH is on in The History of Light is similar – the worlds we follow her through are from her perspective, her memories. From that one comment by our designer, that one quote from Williams’ masterpiece, we have a synthesis in the design concept: it’s SOPH’s story and the lights, the costumes, the playground of a set will be as she envisions and remembers them and will have a distinct feeling from the “reality” of the present time.  

With that realization, the designers and the director are elated, some have already started sketching while we talk schedule and logistics for our next meeting; some are clicking away on their computers pulling up images, colors, and other research for inspiration. When we meet next, we’ll have sketches, ground plans, color palettes and where we’ll run into the practicalities of design, where we’ll struggle with what we’d like to do and what we can afford to do. The next phases brings us to the point where we decide to “throw out the babies”, but keep the bathwater: we toss the physical ideas that are less interesting but keep the concept until we find a baby that’s just the right size to fit in the tub.

See you in Part II: STROKE OF GENIUS, where practical challenges lead to surprising artistic solutions.

-Kacy

Passage has always boasted an adventurous audience but the response to Passage’s season opener, De Novo, showed us that you are an extraordinarily smart, articulate, social justice oriented crowd as well. The actors, who have been touring this show for over a year now, remarked that this was “the most amazing, culturally diverse community with the best questions mobilizing the talkbacks towards rich, complicated areas”. They are in love with you all and I felt so proud of the Passage audience and of Trenton.

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For those who may have missed the show, what I particularly liked about the production is its balance. Edgar Chocoy was no choir boy. Thrown into the maelstrom of a poor Los Angeles neighborhood, largely abandoned by his mother who found him uncontrollable, Edgar returned to the streets and the world most familiar and safe to him – gang life. While the play's perspective is always sympathetic to Edgar (who genuinely struggled to become a normal, sports loving American boy), you can also readily see the point of view behind the perspective of the prosecutor and judge who decide to send him back to Guatemala.

There were “talk backs” after each show, and I believe our audience found them as important as the play. Immigration attorney Aryah Somers spoke at three of them, and brought an incredibly informed perspective to questions from the audience (you can see a video here). In the final talk-back, led by Director and writer of the play, Jeffrey Solomon, several members of the audience came from Trenton's Guatemalan community. One emotional mother spoke about her fears for her 12 year old son and about keeping him out of the gangs. We were all incredibly moved by her testimony.

My conclusion from the response to De Novo is that we should bring more social justice productions to Passage's mainstage. What do you think? Let me know by emailing me, or posting a comment on our Facebook page.

Editor's note:  Our final production of the 2011-12 season will be the world premiere of Slippery as Sin, written by none other than Passage's Associate Artistic Director, David White.  David is best known to Passage Audiences for his wicked sense of humor as exhibited in last season's smash hit, Blood: A Comedy.  We've asked him to comment on his new play.

Sometime in 2002 I was watching a news program and one of the pundits said, “Since 9-11, America has become an old dark house.”  The image instantly rang true for me. We were suddenly living in a world of evil masterminds that hid in the shadows and had grand designs for world domination. Naturally, I thought…WHAT A GREAT IDEA FOR A COMEDY!

It’s taken me ten years to actually sit down and write the thing, but Slippery as Sin will open in May of 2012 on the Passage Mainstage with my favorite actress, June Ballinger, playing a phony medium. Phony mediums are, of course, one of the staples of the old dark house mystery – a genre that includes novels, films, plays…you name it. While the finer details may vary, the rules of the stories seldom change. In addition to phony mediums, you’ve got a young ingénue about to inherit an estate, a butler who seems to know more than he’s willing to admit and any number of shadowy figures reaching through doorways, windows and bookcases.

Agatha Christie popularized the genre by turning the stories into intellectual puzzles but the original examples were far less sophisticated. John Willard’s play The Cat and the Canary opened on Broadway in February of 1922 and introduced the basic template of the genre. Cyrus West is a wealthy eccentric who decrees that his will isn’t to be read until 20 years after his death. As the play begins, his relatives converge on West’s mansion to find out which of them will inherit his estate. Various horrifying hijinks ensue. My challenge as a writer was to take all these elements and twist them in a way that reflected the culture we’re living in right now in 2012 - when people are increasingly choosing superstition over scientific fact and conspiracy theories are shaping national policy. Words like “proof” and “evidence” have taken on increasingly dubious definitions.

Cat and the Canary ran for two years on Broadway and was followed by a number of similar Hollywood productions. Mary Roberts Rinehart’s novel The Circular Staircase was filmed as The Bat  and became a popular success. Pioneering film director D.W. Griffith got into the act with his film One Exciting Night and Cat and the Canary ultimately wound up being filmed four times. With the advent of sound, James Whale offered up on the final word on the genre with his classic dark comedy, the simply titled The Old Dark House.  As movies became cheaper to make, film studios like the Chicago-based Monogram Studio began cranking films out at a shocking rate. Many of these were slow, laborious duds but many of them still retain a creaky charm. If you’d like to prepare yourself for May’s production of Slippery as Sin, take a look at The 13th Guest, featuring a young Ginger Rogers before she started kicking up her heels with Fred Astaire. It’s a neat little film – barely over an hour long – and it’s a suitable enough time waster for the Halloween season.

This is not a science quiz, but I will be honest- I did actually contemplate the scientific conception of “Light” for a brief second when I heard the title. Did you know that one of the definitions of Light is: Something that makes things visible or affords illumination: All colors depend on light. Very apropos for our November production…

The History of Light grabbed me immediately upon reading. The play was written by Eisa Davis (photo), who some may know from trekking to New York to catch her Obie award-winning performance in Passing Strange (one of my absolute favorite plays) at the Public Theatre or on Broadway. The History of Light tells the story of two inter-racial couples from separate eras (one couple from the 1960’s and the other from 2002). Through this relationship, Eisa illuminates the complexity of connections lost and regained between daughters and fathers, lovers and friends, now and then. Each of the couples lives have been determined by the choices they once made between their hearts and a sense of responsibility. As spectators we can’t help but take notice of what has changed and those things in the world that hold “change” hostage- even after 40 years.

Highly theatrical and playful in its execution, the creative use of music and hilarious games connect the two parallel stories to each other. It is a form of storytelling that captures the dynamism of theatre that reminds you that some stories can only be told on the stage as opposed to the small or large screen.

As we are reminded in The History of Light, the power of story lays in its ability to unite people…share common experiences. Our ancestors did not even wait until there was writing in the world before they told stories and sang songs! The writer Ursula K. LeGuin stated, “There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories”. They have forever shaped the destiny of the world… and it is these stories that continuously reinforce my vision for Passage Theatre and our home Trenton, NJ. I remain constant in my goal to continue celebrating the diverse communities that make up our city and region- while facilitating artistic, authentic, and relevant ways to show the human thread that will always weave through our differences to create our undeniable human commonality.

In my next blog, I want to discuss the importance of sustaining Arts Funding in America. I often wonder what our story would look like without the arts? Let me know what you think! Like us on Facebook (Passage Theatre) or follow us on Twitter (@passagetheatre)

FYI… We have a really informative blog coming soon from our producer Kacy O’Brien on the process of taking The History of Light from the written page to the living stage as she shares the creative and collaborative process of the designers, director and actors. We may even post a video (shh..don’t tell Kacy!!) June

As Easter approaches and we are in the midst of Passover, I find myself meditating on how I feel blessed. I will unapologetically call it blessed - some might say lucky, others foolish - to be working as a theatre artist and to spend my days among other theatre artists. I get to go to work and be in love with the people I work with. I am not saying there are never difficult colleagues in the theatre, but as I watched rehearsal last night and saw two young, early career actors struggle through the beginning of their second week of a 3 week period (always the time when one’s talent seems to turn to mud) and witnessed them “muster” with eagerness and the willingness to fail, and when I see the director guide the process with compassion and patience, I feel honored to be in our profession. A profession in which the financial gains are remarkably meager, the education extremely high (many having masters degrees), but where most are responding to a calling. The arts are a personal mission. And when not in production, I have the privilege of working each day with some of the people I like best in this world. The emotion of love just feels “right”. It is how we are supposed to feel. It is the gold standard of the human condition.

Spirituality and artistic expression tend to run side by side. When I was in college I read a book by Jane Ellen Harrison on the origins of Greek religion. It made a huge impression on me and I am sad to have lost it after hanging on to it for many years. I must see if I can get a copy from an antique book store. It spoke of theatre and religion stemming from the same source...a ritual known as Goat Song. After a while, theatre forked into its particular ritual of drama (or comedy) and religious faith had its own rituals, but they both sprang from the same parent: the ritual honoring of the unknown. Both evoke recognition of our humanity in the face of that awe. And somehow love, joy, ecstasy, result. O.K. often guilt, fear, shame, and anger are the end products….perhaps because they point to where we have chosen not to love but are driven by selfishness. I haven't figured that out but it seems right.

All of this results in one point I want to make. Our communities must appreciate their artists. They are the conscience of our civilization. I think in this time of economic uncertainty people are much too quick to eliminate the arts, considering them a frivolity. What they offer the human spirit in proportion to their embarrassingly little cost has been obscured. Not everyone can be an artist and not everyone can work around artists. But we can all put ourselves in their company and be reminded of who we all are and can be. Happy Easter, Chag Sameach, Happy Spring.

June

We wanted to let the Trenton community know that singer Mary Cleere Haran's memorial service will be held at St. Peter's Church, 619 Lexington Ave. in Manhattan, on Monday, May 23 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm.  Mary Cleere was a great friend of Passage Theatre, appearing with us numerous times.  We miss her.

June Ballinger