Jobsite Theater

Who is Larissa Fasthorse?

/ strazmarketing

Jobsite Theater’s latest knockout of a show presents the work of Native American playwright Larissa Fasthorse. Obviously, she’s gonna have a few thoughts on Thanksgiving.

The Thanksgiving Play opened in the Shimberg Playhouse a few weeks ago to rave reviews. The play is terrifically funny, especially if you’re looking for someone to jab a sharp stick in the eye of white fragility among self-appointed woke liberal folk. The playwright, Larissa Fasthorse, holds the very dubious distinction of being the first Native American to have a full-length, full production in a major Off-Broadway theater for this very play. When? Last year, in 2018. So, we’re happy to have this chance to introduce you to her. You can get to know her a little better—then, if you haven’t already, go check out her fantastic play, or see it a second or third time.

Caitlin Eason (Logan), Giles Davies (Jaxton), Dana Mauro (Alicia) and Adam Workman (Caden). Photos from a tech rehearsal of Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play. Photo by Jobsite Theater.

We’ve edited and excerpted the interview below from a wonderful article by Victoria Myers, for The Interval. For the full article, visit “Larissa Fasthorse on The Thanksgiving Play and More”.

Victoria Myers: I read that you have a background in dance, and film and TV. How do you feel all of that affects your writing? And how did all of that impact how you taught yourself to be a playwright?

Larissa Fasthorse: I was a classical ballet dancer for a whole first career. In a lot of my plays, there are very large sections of physical, visual action as opposed to text, and it wasn’t intentional, but I’m sure that comes from my dance background and my film and TV background. I have a lot of trust in physical action on stage and physicality and seeing visuals without text behind them or involved in them.

I think it has helped me hugely. I sold two TV shows before I was commissioned to write my first play and I had a feature film going to the Sundance Native Film Program. I always wanted to write plays because I came from a stage background, but because every playwright I knew had a master’s degree, I thought that was a requirement, you just had to have one. Because I didn’t even have any kind of degree, I figured I wasn’t able to do that. Then I got commissioned to write my first play and I realized how much my film and TV background has really helped me.

VM: Going to [The Thanksgiving Play] and the idea of the American theatre, I read the play very much as a satire on many, many types of people that I’ve met working in the theatre. Did that ever feel scary to write about or have produced, especially as your New York debut?

LF: I don’t know why people are doing this play. I’m constantly surprised. I said in another interview that I just make fun of white people for 90 minutes and people keep coming. But, like I said, I did make sure that there’s comedy for everybody. Everybody can laugh at something. It’s not like I’m sitting there bopping you over the head with rthings.

I’m just really trying to say, this is what I see. This is what I experience every day in the world, in the American theatre, in white liberal America. I did a play called What Would Crazy Horse Do, where I worked with a Klan member as my research subject for a year and a half. He knew what I was doing, what the play was, helped me inform this character, and interview him about everything—and that was so much easier than working with super, super, super well-meaning liberals. I knew where he was coming from. It was an easy collaboration. We knew what our points of view were, we knew what our goals were, and we could just work forward. But when well-meaning American theatre, which is fortunately changing slowly, but has up until now mostly been white liberal folks, they’re so scared of making a mistake that it paralyzes them into doing nothing, and I can’t do anything with that. I don’t know how to deal with it. I can’t change it, I can’t fix it, I can’t work with you if you’re just sitting there in fear and ultimately doing nothing.

These folks that I’m actually talking about in my play, I hope what they take away from it is: let’s just all make the mistake together, let’s all be ridiculous together, and then that gives us somewhere to go. If I know where you’re coming from, you know where I’m coming from, and you can make mistakes, and I can make mistakes, and we can all get kind of crazy and yell at each other, but keep moving forward, that’s going to change everything. It truly will. I’m not someone who’s like, “Theatre will change the world,” but honestly, if we could all just start talking to each other and make mistakes and be honest, and then move forward and deal with that, it can change the world.

Adam Workman, Giles Davies, Dana Mauro, and Caitlin Eason. Photos from a tech rehearsal of Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play. Photo by Jobsite Theater.

VM: Have you found while doing press, now and in the past, that you get asked questions that a white male playwright is not being asked?

LF: All the time. It’s endless. As soon as the announcement came out in The New York Times about this play, immediately I got fellow folks of color saying, “We need to talk to you about your white male director.” And I was like, “Great, I’d be happy to have that conversation after you assure me that you’ve talked to every white playwright that’s hired a white male director, and if you’ve asked them that same question first, then feel free to come to me, the first Native American person ever to be produced in the history of this theatre, who feels like I’m holding on to American theatre by my fingernails, then you can come to me and question me. But until you’ve asked the people that have been here doing this for 50 years, until you’ve asked them that question, then don’t come to me.”

VM: Do you feel that there’s an added pressure of altruism placed on you and your work? The play is a comedy and satire. Have there been people who have wanted to take it very seriously and reverently?

LF: Absolutely. … These characters are doing per formative woke-ness. They want to seem really woke, but it’s very much a performance that they do when it suits them and not when it’s needed and not for the people it’s needed by.

VM: What is your personal relationship like with ambition and have you found that it has changed over the course of your career?

LF: I’m definitely like a Type A. I’m a North, which is like the ambitious, aggressive, overachiever. My 40s have been a gift of being like, “Okay great, I’m a North.” I used to fight that and be like, “Oh, I should be more Northeast or Northwest,” But now I’m like, “You know, I’m just a North, so I’m just going to do that.”

I feel like I’ve always done that in my life. I said I wanted to be a classical ballet dancer from the middle of nowhere South Dakota, and as a Native American woman and there have been very few of us, and I did it. I said I wanted to write in film and TV, and I sold two TV shows. I said I wanted to write plays, and I’ve been really fortunate I can do this. It’s taken me a long time because I come from both the Midwest and the Lakota culture, which is very self-deprecating and everything’s about the community. But I’ve come to realize I’m a very ambitious person. I like to do well. That’s the reality.

Photos from a tech rehearsal of Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play. Photo by Jobsite Theater.

I work and live in a white dominant society that values certain things, and what they value is a certain type of ambition, a certain type of ego, a certain type of confidence. Often, it’s different for women, but I don’t know how to adjust myself for gender, so I just go ahead and I’m me. I get called direct a lot. I love it when people are direct. But in women it’s often considered a negative. And I’m like, “Oh well, then I guess I’m not for you, that’s okay.”

I think that’s been a big part of my whole philosophy. I’m just going to go ahead and be me, and I’m going to be ambitious and I’m going to want to do well, and I’m going to want to succeed, and if that’s not for you then that’s okay, there are other people. …

My ambition is my secret weapon to make the seventh generation be able to do this a lot more easily.

I’m standing on the shoulders of so many Native women. We have Spiderwoman Theatre right here in town. Those ladies paved such a hard road. They were moving boulders, they were moving mountains just to express themselves and get to do their work here in downtown New York and have their own theatre company. They had to do such incredibly hard work just to say what they wanted to say in a small space, and they’ve grown themselves into this beautiful, nationally beloved theatre company and this institution. They worked so hard for it and I know that I’m walking on that road that they already created. They may not have been in this space, but I only can walk into this space because they created the road from downtown to here.

The Thanksgiving Play runs in the Shimberg Playhouse until Nov. 17.

Picker, Grinner, Emmy -And Grammy- Award Winner

/ strazmarketing

Steve Martin may have made his way to the spotlight as a star on Saturday Night Live and in films like The Jerk and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. But there’s a lot more to this wild and crazy guy than a genius knack for comedy.

This month, Jobsite Theater launched its new play season with Steve Martin’s give-you-a-stitch-in-the-side funny Meteor Shower. The troupe saw a raucous success staging Martin’s The Underpants a few seasons ago and Picasso at the Agile Lapin a few seasons before that, so they’re bringing in his most recent play to treat audiences to Martin’s signature mix of intelligence and hilarity.

A frequent contributor to The New Yorker – the paragon of excellent writing – Martin eclipsed his own celebrity as a comic actor when the arts establishment noticed he was a sublimely talented writer.

A triple threat, Martin pens plays, essays and novels, each of which requires a different skill set from the writer’s craft. Well, make that a quint-threat: he also writes songs and poems. His long-nosed character C.D. Bales famously states in Roxanne, Martin’s film adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, “tell her you’re afraid of words!” Regarding Martin himself, this line seems deeply ironic since he deep-dives into them all, no matter the shape, size, form or fashion.

His writing chops developed on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the 1960s, where he netted his first Emmy Award® for outstanding writing achievement. His first short film, The Absent Minded Waiter (1977) was nominated for an Academy Award®. For those of us in live theater, we were thrilled when his play Picasso at the Lapin Agile opened Off-Broadway in 1996 (of course winning the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play that year).

We were even more giddy when we found out, in 2014, that Martin and alt-pop-folk 90s wunderkind Edie Brickell were collaborating on a bluegrass musical. That show, Bright Star, opened on Broadway in 2016 and earned a subsequent Tony® nod for Best Musical in 2017.

Martin, who had implemented his impressive banjo skills as a gimmick in his stand-up, eventually quit playing around and came out as a serious student of bluegrass and a masterful banjo player in league with  the greats of the bluegrass tradition.

Prior to making Bright Star with Brickell, Martin released two acclaimed bluegrass albums of original songs, collaborated with stars The Steep Canyon Rangers and won the 2011 International Bluegrass Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year Award. An ardent devotee of banjo history, stylings and experimentation, Martin created the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass which comes with an unrestricted cash prize of $50,000 through the Steve Martin Charitable Fund.

On Sep. 19 in NYC’s Town Hall Theater, Martin hosts a live concert of bluegrass all-stars which culminates in the unveiling of the 2019 Steve Martin Prize recipient.

Jonelle Marie Meyer (Corkey) and Jordan Foote (Norm). Photo courtesy Pritchard Photography.

Meteor Shower, Martin’s latest play, opened on Broadway in 2017 starring Amy Schumer, Laura Benanti, KeeganMichael Key and Jeremy Shamos. Schumer garnered a Tony® nomination and both she and Benanti – a perennial Broadway favorite – landed distinguished performance nominations from the Drama League.

Jordan Foote (Norm), Jonelle Marie Meyer (Corkey), Jamie Jones (Gerald), and Amy E. Gray (Laura). Photo courtesy Pritchard Photography.

To get your seat for Jobsite Theater’s production of Meteor Shower, playing in the Shimberg Playhouse Sept. 4 – Oct. 6, visit strazcenter.org.

Who in the World is Lucy Kirkwood?

/ strazmarketing

Jobsite Theater’s current offering in their record-breaking season is a work by one of the Royal Society of Literature’s designees for their “40 Under 40” initiative—and one of the most exciting young playwrights out of the box in a long time.

2_47798272521_faebf72aef_z

Christopher Marshall and Emily Belvo during tech rehearsal for Jobsite Theater’s production of Lucy Kirkwood’s Hedda. (Photo: Desiree Fantal)

Before she even graduated from University of Edinburgh, Lucy Kirkwood had caught the attention of Mel Kenyon, a literary agent known for representing Caryl Churchill, one of the most intellectually challenging and morally daring living playwrights.

Churchill also happens to be Lucy Kirkwood’s idol.

Kirkwood’s impressive talent and fearless deep-dives into the pool of human turmoil launched her into the UK’s theater scene, first at the Bedlam Theatre in Ireland with Grady Hot Potato (2005), then with experimental works in London. At 24 years old, she tackled an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, positing Ibsen’s beautiful, disaffected lead character Hedda in London’s modern-day Notting Hill neighborhood. Kirkwood’s close-to-the-source version, Hedda (the protagonist retains the matching set of pistols for which this play is known), premiered in 2008 to very favorable reviews, solidifying Kirkwood’s reputation as formidable, playful, unflinching and willing to make audiences uncomfortable enough to think about what they were witnessing without feeling violated. Seems as though Kirkwood picked up extraordinary tips from Ms. Churchill then made them her own for the current generation of theatergoers.

Last week, Jobsite opened Hedda in the Shimberg Playhouse with Jobsite veteran Emily Belvo in the title role. Another Jobsite recognizable, Stuart Fail, made his directorial debut with the company, chronicling his collaboration with Kirkwood on Jobsite’s blog. Kirkwood offered insights into Jobsite’s production, enthusiastically supporting their discovery processes as they uncovered what made Hedda and the rest of the dramatis personae tick. You may be relieved to know that Kirkwood’s reboot employs a bit more humor than Ibsen’s original story.

“We chose the play for a few reasons,” says Jobsite’s Producing Artistic Director David Jenkins. “We really like Kirkwood as a dramatist. At 35 years old, she’s already made a huge name for herself in Britain on TV and the stage. This script is unique in how it takes a known story, one of the theater titans, and tells it in an all-new way through this 21st century update.”

FUN FACT: For any of you fans of British television, Kirkwood’s epic tale of China-America trade relations, Chimerica¸ ran as a miniseries in April to rave reviews and involved a stellar cast. The play version, it’s worth noting, was commissioned for Kirkwood in 2006 right after she met with Mel Kenyon and opened on London’s West End in 2013 to sell-out crowds. Chimerica netted five Olivier Awards that year including Best New Play for Kirkwood.

Catch Hedda running now through June 2.

A Bill By Any Other Name Would Not Smell As Sweet

/ strazmarketing

The Stratfordians. The Oxfordians. Baconians and Marlovians. What sounds like the breakout of Illuminati frat houses is actually something a lot stranger. These sects war over a secret at the root of possibly the greatest cover-up in literary history: that William Shakespeare was, in fact, not the great author William Shakespeare and the aristocracy of the time knew.

shakespeare

Artwork by Gregory Newcomb for Jobsite Theater.

The genius poet who penned the definitive catalogue of Great Theatre and whose turns of phrase cycle through everyday parlance (“it’s Greek to me,” “love is blind,” “forever and a day”) may have been several men. Or, maybe, just one man: Christopher Marlowe, the famed Doctor Faustus playwright who allegedly died in a tavern after a squabble over the bill pitched him on the business end of a dagger.

This confounding “authorship question,” as it’s known, dates to the 1800s when Delia Bacon, an American woman ironically unrelated to Sir Francis Bacon, argued convincingly that the philosopher was the true author behind Shakespeare’s works. Baconians, ergo, side with Delia that Sir Francis is the real genius behind the folios and sonnets. Delia’s blasphemy on the subject of authorship attracted another great blasphemer of the time, Mark Twain. He gathered the thread of Sir Francis Bacon as the real writer as a lark, something else to poke fun at, until the evidence against William Shakespeare, a farm boy with a grammar school education, seemed to suggest that Delia wasn’t another cockamamie American out to discredit the motherland. In his book Is Shakespeare Dead?, Twain ultimately concludes he can’t prove who wrote the works of Shakespeare, but he is “quite composedly and contentedly sure that Shakespeare didn’t.”

800px-somer_francis_bacon

Portrait of Francis Bacon by Paul van Somer I, 1617.

These allegations against The Bard – the man of the age who dominated the cultural landscape and determined the standards of the Western world’s artistic achievements – would not stand. Stratfordians, those who believe William Shakespeare was the genius of Stratford-upon-Avon, sounded a volley shot, decrying the Baconians as American snobs barking on with no convincing evidence. But there was nothing the Stratfordians could do to heal the damage to Shakespeare’s reputation. The authorship question raised too many other puzzling issues.

How did a rural child with no formal education create such astounding works of classical references and symbolism? Why do no records exist of a Shakespeare from Stratford being paid to write (there are records of other paid writers)? In the death record, Shakespeare from Stratford is noted as a “gent,” not a “playwright” or “poet.” Even his death went unnoticed. In his cunning and often eye-rolling attempts to throw petrol on the ever-smoldering coals of who-really-wrote-Shakespeare, filmmaker Michael Rubbo for PBS’s FRONTLINE series took to the lanes of England to interrogate experts from all factions.

earl of oxford

Portrait of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This 17th century work by an unknown artist is thought to be based on a lost work of 1575.

According to Rubbo’s documentary Much Ado About Something, the Oxfordians answer the riddles by arguing that the Earl of Oxford – a poet and playwright – hired the Stratford actor William Shakespeare to be the public face of his work. As an aristocrat, the kind who would have a refined, classical education and first-hand understanding of the nuances of social and political machinations, the Earl couldn’t tarnish his social standing by rolling around in the common muck of public theater. Shakespeare would have made the perfect front. However, Oxford died before Macbeth and The Tempest, so he definitely wasn’t the only author if he was any “Shakespeare” at all.

800px-marlowe-portrait-1585

A portrait, supposedly of Christopher Marlowe, by an unknown artist in 1585.

Where this authorship question gets a bit DaVinci Code happens in the Marlovian camp. Marlovians assert that poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe faked his own death in the tavern to escape torture by the British court’s gestapo-esque Star Chamber. The Star Chamber specialized in medieval torture techniques against anyone cited for sedition or heresy. Marlowe was both seditious and heretical. More than that, he was a spy for the Queen, and his benefactor happened to be the Queen’s spy master. A network of connections supplied a real dead body to be “Marlowe” while the writer was secreted away to Italy. There, Marlowe wrote in exile, his manuscripts smuggled into London to be copied over so no one would recognize the penmanship. A player and business partner of the theatrical company, someone named William Shakespeare, took the manuscripts public. To keep Marlowe alive, everyone kept their mouths shut and let the thing play itself out. The case for Marlowe carries a lot of weight except no one has yet to produce undeniable proof Marlowe lived after the alleged killing in the tavern.

And that’s a pretty big hole in the plot.

naysayers

Stratfordians contend that without definitive proof to close the case, Marlovians continue to weave unnecessary myths and legends about the man from Stratford who should get his due without aspersions thrown upon his accomplishments. The Shakespeare/Marlowe debate led to the creation of the Hoffman Prize by late writer Calvin Hoffman, whose bestselling book The Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare launched the modern case for Christopher Marlowe as the real author of works credited to William.

The prize, totaling one-half of the Hoffman’s substantial trust fund, goes to any scholar who offers “incontrovertible proof” that Marlowe was the real Shakespeare.

So far, no scholar has yet to proffer the definitive evidence.

Whether you be Baconian, Stratfordian, Marlovian or Oxfordian, you are welcome to Jobsite Theater’s productions of Shakespearian works. Othello is on stage now – Feb. 9 and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] runs March 13 – April 7 in the Shimberg Playhouse. For more of The Bard, catch the Tampa Bay Symphony performing Brush Up Your Shakespeare Feb. 24 in Ferguson Hall.

othello_skypoint_1280x720

Someone Rapping at the Chamber Door

/ strazmarketing

Caught in the Act catches up with Jobsite Theater during rehearsals of their next exciting production, Edgar and Emily.

44571273562_176820cbbe_k

Katrina Stevenson and Paul Potenza star in Jobsite Theater’s production of Edgar and Emily. (Photo: Pritchard Photography)

Edgar as in Allan Poe. Emily as in Dickinson.

Yes, the granddaddy of Southern Gothic literature winds up in the bedroom of the emdash enthusiastic belle of Amherst, Emily Dickinson. Confined to this space, made all the more close and macabre thanks to his own gently-used coffin that Poe must tote around as part of his pact for being rescued from death by an otherworldly specter, the two writers square off in a tete-a-tete that is truly a remarkable work of theater.

Emily Dickinson meme

Penned by Ohio-based playwright Joseph McDonough, Edgar and Emily is both an American Lit wonk’s fantasy and a nuanced, complex examination of two people famed for their obsession with death. Combining an expletive-free Mamet-esque repartee with elements of slapstick (sight gags galore), unexpected vulnerabilities and moments of old-school horror tactics worthy of Vincent Price, Edgar and Emily accomplishes much in a relatively short script. Expect to be taken on a fun house ride with this offering—there are creepy parts, funny parts, and, of course, a very subtle trip through the hall of mirrors where you see Dickinson and Poe as distorted reflections of the stories we’ve been told about them; you may see yourself reflected therein as well.

Edgar Allan Poe meme.jpg

Katrina “Kat” Stevenson plays Emily against Paul Potenza’s Edgar. David Jenkins directs. This trio began working together in Jobsite in 1999, lauded for their record-breaking 2001 production of Dracula. Stevenson, a diminutive, sharp-eyed redhead, taught English for three years and, as Potenza notes admiringly, comes by her poetic delivery naturally. To prepare for the role, she immersed herself in Dickinson’s poems, reading hundreds of them to absorb the language, to glean what she could to deliver what she feels like is an honest portrayal of a giant in American literature about whom very little is known. Potenza traveled to Poe’s home in the Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx via a trip to Yankee Stadium. He stood in the rooms where the bedeviled genius worked and lived, himself absorbing something of the writer’s real life to bring to the role. Jenkins sent him a list of Poe’s physicalities based on accounts of Poe at the time (no such list exists for Dickinson who was famously reclusive), and over the course of rehearsals, Potenza has morphed into the writer who changed our notion of ravens forever.

Last week, Caught in the Act joined David, Kat and Paul at the top of rehearsal to chat about the play and bringing these literary figures to life. To hear them talk about the play, their process and the challenges and surprises along the way, listen to Rapping at the Chamber Door on our podcast, Act2.

Edgar and Emily opens Oct. 12 in the Shimberg Playhouse with previews Oct. 10 and 11.

All That Glitters is Gold for Jobsite Theater

/ strazmarketing

Jobsite Theater opens its 2018-2019 season with a return of Spencer Meyers in the lead role of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Spencer, who by day plays our unflappable group sales associate at The Straz, debuted as Hedwig in Jobsite’s 2013 production. Says Jobsite Artistic Director David Jenkins, “I always knew the prodigious talent inside of him, but it was amazing to watch Spencer blossom through the process to fully bloom during the run. His Hedwig is delicate, self-effacing, vulnerable, a true underdog. I think Spencer is even more prepared, more in his prime, than perhaps he was before. So, I’m very excited to get back in the rehearsal room with him to see how she’s [Hedwig’s] grown in this time.” Here’s what Spencer has to say about being Hedwig and returning to the show.

Hedwig-full-stage-8

Spencer Meyers as Hedwig, backed by The Angry Inch, during a technical rehearsal. (Photo: Brian Smallheer)

CAUGHT IN THE ACT: Many people know you from your work with Jobsite and saw you in the first run as Hedwig in 2013. Are you nervous about coming back to the role? In what ways are you approaching your performance differently this time around?

SPENCER MEYERS: Tampa Famous! Of all the roles, it’s my favorite. Hedwig’s first preview was the first time I ever had stage fright, seconds before making my entrance; I literally was wondering how I could get to my car the fastest without being seen. We had a birthday in the audience that night of a long-time Jobsite supporter. I went out there, sang the birthday song like Marilyn Monroe’s JFK version and then, Hedwig took over. Now, I have a new set of nerves. Whereas the first time was, “can I do this?” This time, I know I can but I wonder – “can I live up to the hype of the last time? Or the hype that this show has had since its Broadway run/success?”

Preparation? Wait, I’m supposed to prepare? Memorizing those lines ahead of time, is the smartest thing I can do to prepare. Sections start coming back more than others. Although, I’m five years older, and it’s interesting how some moments have more meaning to me than others because of new life events.

2013 Angry Inch band

The 2013 band is pictured in the top photo (L to R: Woody Bond, Amy Gray, Spencer Meyers, Jonathan Cho, and Jana Jones). The bottom photo shows the 2018 band (L to R: Nader Issa, Jeremy Douglas, Woody Bond, Spencer Meyers, Mark Warren and Amy Gray).

CITA: We heard through the grapevine that your acting has been strongly influenced by the style of Miss Piggy. True? If so, is there anything you’re bringing to the role of Hedwig that has a little Piggy in it?

SM: Okay, this grapevine has been on my Instagram (I have a side by side comparison photo of me and Piggy–we could be related). My favorite Muppet has always been Miss Piggy. She’s loud, she’s funny and always manages to steal the scene. She’s the number one reason I love The Great Muppet Caper. Haven’t seen it yet? Watch it and see Hedwig, who shares the same diva-like qualities as Miss Piggy and some physical traits like the big smile and head tilt–as well as some aggression towards those who try to steal her light. It’s Hedwig’s show, she’s the star–never forget that.

CITA: It’s a tough, demanding role. Hedwig is always onstage, talking or singing, and swinging through a million emotions. How do you keep your energy up throughout an entire run?

SM: It’s exhausting–I’m barely a human being for the first 20 minutes after the show closes. My preparation before each show consists of a series of events the second I arrive to the dressing room. First, I shave my face, then paint my nails, wipe my face with alcohol wipes and start putting on the many layers of garments (pantyhose, fishnet stockings, Spanx slip, fishnet top).

preshow shave & eyebrows

First step to get ready for the show: shave and glue down the eyebrows.

Then it’s time to warm up with the band (“Origin of Love”), then back to the dressing room for makeup. The makeup will usually take until close to showtime (that’s right, I’m still putting on my face as you enter the theater and get comfortable). At about 10 minutes to places, I put on both layers of my costume, the cape and then finally, the wig.

It’s a 90-minute show of Hedwig singing and telling a beautifully tragic and cheeky story of her life. As you said, a million emotions. The wonderful thing about this character as an actor is the mask you wear with the makeup. I can’t see any resemblance of myself once the makeup is completed. I’m able to let her take over, and it’s an adrenaline rush all the way until the end. The moment after I take my bow, I dash to the bathroom to take everything off and throw on comfortable clothing. So, if you are waiting for me to come out, I will–just give me a quick minute.

Spencer and Lindsay, makeup designer

Lindsay MacConnell (L) designed the makeup for the 2013 production of Hedwig and is back again for this production.

CITA: Favorite part of playing this character?

SM: Everything except the Spanx and glitter. Seriously, I love everything about her. Her story is tragic, funny and relatable. We’ve all experienced the moments of her life. We’ve had the first loves that didn’t work, distance from family members at times, heartache and that moment that we search for our place in the world. The music is what made me fall in love with the show. Honestly, I think the songs connect us all in the human experience. We cry and laugh for and with her, she’s human–like us.

photo shoot BTS glitter

A behind-the-scenes look at Spencer getting glitter-ized for the promotional photo shoot.

CITA: Hedwig makes plenty of inappropriate remarks to audience members as a part of the show—most of which is ad libbed during the performance. How do you know who to target and how far to push the envelope?

SM: Don’t bring the kids unless you want to explain a lot of things on the drive back. I’ll admit that the inappropriate lines are some of my favorite things in this show. As I mentioned before, she likes to take over and I gladly let her. She’s like the alter ego of mine that I never knew existed. So completely different than me in my every day. Those ad libs shock me sometimes. If you get offended by something I say in the show; it wasn’t me, it was her. The first run, my biggest fear was having to ad lib and have no fourth wall because every audience will react differently.

So, you want to know my secrets on how I choose my audience participants, huh? Well, it took the first preview to know who to target. It’s a tricky game. A lot of the ad libs happen by the third song of the show, “Sugar Daddy” (prepare yourselves, I will leave the stage and come to you if chosen). By this time in the show, I know who’s into it and who isn’t. I look for the laughers. There are a lot of inappropriate jokes and funny bits early on in the script, so I take note of those who are living for it. Eye contact is important as well. If they are having a good time and not looking away when I make eye contact, then they are potentially going to get more attention throughout the show.

I don’t want to ruin anyone’s experience by making them feel uncomfortable. Some people do not like having audience interaction while watching a show. I can understand that. If you are one of those people, sit at least three rows back in the main seating bank (I’m not going to crawl over people, CenterBills and drinks just to get to you).

Hedwig-full-stage-6

Spencer, in all of Hedwig’s glory, during a technical rehearsal. (Photo: Brian Smallheer)

I’m Uncomfortable

/ strazmarketing

Gabbing about the importance of facing the awkward, the awful, the upending and the just plain weird in the theater with special guest Paul Potenza, artistic associate with Jobsite Theater.

This week Caught in the Act caught up with Paul Potenza, 30-plus-year stage veteran in the Tampa Bay area and artistic associate with our resident theater company, Jobsite Theater, to address a delicate issue: a trend in audiences finding subject matter “objectionable” that didn’t used to bother folks. What’s going on? The conversation led to the bigger topic of theater’s role in provoking audiences towards some greater understanding, some bigger revelation, and why being uncomfortable can be very beneficial despite living in a world dominated by traumatic and uncomfortable content on social media.

SDRR_crop

Paul J. Potenza in Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, the first play ever performed in the Off-Center Theater (now the Shimberg Playhouse). Circa 1994. (Photo: Steve Widoff)

PAUL POTENZA: I have this vivid memory of working with my friend and director at the time, Jeff Norton … I was battling with a scene, and, at a certain point in the rehearsal I said, “I’m not really comfortable with how this is going.” Jeff simply replied, “I’m not overly concerned with how comfortable you are right now.” It was fantastic! We worked our way through it, and we moved the play forward. There was progress. It’s important to me to be challenged, whether it be onstage or as an audience member. It’s how we can grow, how we can get better. Better at listening, better at learning and simply sitting next to one another.

CAUGHT IN THE ACT: This title of this blog is “I’m Uncomfortable.” The topic came up after a national conversation about certain theater customers complaining, asking for money back, boycotting shows or writing nasty grams on social media because they didn’t “want to pay good money for [that kind of language], [that political view], [those kinds of characters],” etc. Jobsite typically goes for a least a few of these types of shows on their season, with 1984 being next in line. Will you share your thoughts about why socially and politically challenging theater upsets people so much and why you think it’s necessary (or not) as a part of Jobsite’s mission?

PP: I suppose, historically, arts patrons have, at times, had their way or their “$ay” with what is being done artistically, based on their comfort level, at their venue of choice. People not showing up for shows because of content … well, that’s also been going on since the beginning of time as has being part of something “you just must see”—something trendy and fashionable. If you’re uncomfortable, truly uncomfortable, then I respect that as an individual, but to make it corporate policy? Not so much. I love hands on, open palms, open ears and eyes, face to face. “Those kinds of characters” the anti-heroes, are at the nucleus of the greatest stories ever told onstage. Jobsite, the company, has obligations to its mission statement. Jobsite shares and surveys so many plays among its associates – it’s amazing and exhausting. We’re trying to find great plays. Period. As much of a fan I am about holding hands and happy endings, there is a whole lot more to do onstage. Theater that challenges and upsets might just move you to think, to feel something or see a person or situation or idea in another way. It’s absolutely necessary.

CITA: Over your span of time with Jobsite, what would you rank as the Top 5 “most uncomfortable” works—works that pushed the envelope for audiences’ social, political, and moral assumptions? What value did these pieces have for Tampa audiences and the company itself? Where does 1984 fit compared to these?

2528292246_dee388f006_o

PP: So, the play Blackbird by David Harrower immediately comes to mind. It’s the story of a shocking visit between 27-year-old Una and 55-year-old Ray at his workplace. Fifteen years earlier, he sexually abused her when she was twelve. They had unsuccessfully attempted to run off together. Ray was arrested, found guilty and jailed for three years for statutory rape. After serving his time, he tries to establish a new life for himself with a new career and a new name. Una discovers his whereabouts and tracks him down at this workplace in the break room. And this is where we find the two characters at the top of the play. Very uncomfortable. Why the hell would anyone want to do this play or see this play? It would be much easier to stay at home and watch comfort programing on Netflix. But where is the payoff? The conflict, the energy, the insight into these two people “involved” seems like an insurmountable situation. There’s a door in the room—but why doesn’t either just leave? Because that isn’t what this story is about. It is very easy to simply decide that one person here is the guilty one (and he is), but what would make this now young woman come back to confront him, to experience … god knows what?

Does he deserve a chance at a new life? He served his time. Why does she seek him out now? What is she searching for? Redemption? Revenge? A relationship? We don’t know. The characters don’t even know. The theater, this play, gives you an opportunity to be in that room. It creates a dialogue, and it is UNCOMFORTABLE.

4853638692_75b537ec2a_b

Topdog/Underdog by Suzi-Lori Parks is a play about two African American brothers struggling to make ends meet. Abandoned by their parents when they were teenagers, Lincoln and Booth, now in their thirties, were forced to learn to survive relying on themselves. Poverty, family relationships and responsibilities, honesty, dishonesty—are just some of the themes in this uncomfortable play. To say that the play does not have a happy ending is an understatement. Life and the cards you’re dealt are sometimes inescapable. You are not going to get the whole story in a 60 second news segment. You don’t get the whole story in a 90-minute play. We do gain some perspective as audience members. We can and do learn in the theater.

16979526381_8a1e3eb81d_k

Annapurna by Sharr White is the story of a man and woman who were married twenty years ago and haven’t seen each other since the man, in an alcoholic state, was responsible for a terrible accident with their five-year-old son. Now living alone, off the grid, his ex-wife comes to find him sober and terminally ill. Her mission is to prepare him for a visit from his son. Why? Uncomfortable. As the audience, we have to know: after all this history, did love survive? My god—theater is so beautiful to give us the chance to see and feel inside the hearts of those who hurt, of those who hurt us.

6066556383_4850c48d7e_b.jpg

The Guys by Anne Nelson is based on the true story about a fire captain faced with the responsibility of writing the eulogies for eight of his lost brothers, post 9/11. Uncomfortable. The beauty of this play is the humanity shared with a writer to help the captain capture the truth and personalities of these “regular” guys. A tough swallow, a hard sell … but grace and beauty beyond belief. Uncomfortable on the surface—try telling someone to go see a play about dead firemen. Then, go talk to audience members post-show, and you’ll see people at their best. The play creates so much appreciation for the men, for the shared experience of dealing with 9/11 and for the actors who carry the story.

3529217112_1b4078730f_b

Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire is the story of a young husband and wife who tragically and accidentally lost their son while he was innocently chasing the family dog. To witness the near impossible task of how a couple, a family, can or cannot come back from what many would consider the worst loss any human could experience, the loss of a child … that’s uncomfortable.

40330160024_eaa15e7e69_k

In George Orwell’s 1984, the character of Winston Smith is determined to remain human under rather inhuman circumstances. Although I’m drawing up the plot rather simply, there are many parallels to the other plays I’ve mentioned. A human spirit, a well-meaning human spirit, may not always fare well or best in a human world but the difficulties, the divide and the incongruities of them make for great theater and many valuable lessons no matter where you live.

CITA: The play version of 1984 opens April 25. It will hardly be a jolly night at the theater as the audience watches an average citizen interrogated for Thoughtcrimes in a dystopian (read: alarmingly familiar) society. We’re inundated with traumatic stories on an hourly basis, day after day, year after year, thanks to social media, so why continue to use theater as a space to provoke us in ways that social media now does? Why not have each play be a happy escapist fantasy vs. an artistic rendering of a dystopian reality? Tangentially, where do we find hope in 1984? Where do we find hope in being uncomfortable in the theater?

PP: Yes! 1984 opens April 25th, and it will be a jolly night in the theater—if you are open to it. First and foremost, we are absolutely privileged to be in that intimate space. The Shimberg Playhouse is getting better and better technically and aesthetically. Thank you, Straz Center. So, I know that’s not your question but that’s how I feel there … It’s been my theatrical home since the day it opened. I did the first play in that space, then called The Off Center Theater. Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll by Eric Bogosian. Again, I digress. Of course I see all the traumatic stories we are inundated with hour by hour, and it’s easy to say “No way I’m going to go see that play.” I see that horror every day on my phone—yeah, I said phone. You ask why continue to use theater as a space to provoke us in ways that social media now does. Because the theater has a heartbeat, it breathes. At its best, it brings people together to share small magnificent stories. In 1984, the hope is the fact that Winston believes that the human mind must be free. He believed this before he was tortured and forced to let go of that belief, that truth. Don’t let go of live theater—I trust you’ll find truth and perhaps comfort there.

See Winston Smith fight for humanity in Jobsite’s production of 1984, playing April 25-May 20 in The Shimberg Playhouse.

1984-665x325