Rehearsal began today at 10 am. I've been very tired because I've been directing a youth cast of Annie while playing Warbucks in the adult cast of the same production. Literally the same production -- same theatre, same props, same set, same Sandy. It works rather well, actually. We sell a lot of tickets. But today's rehearsal was for Oakenboard's Oliver!. I don't mention Annie at Oliver! rehearsals since I overheard a woman in the ensemble referring to Solano College as The Theatre Where They Love Gays. I think perhaps she's new. But I'm not taking any chances. I learned a long time ago that fundamentalist Christians travel in packs and will take over a production as fast as they possibly can.
Today's rehearsal began with music. Our Music Director is Bill Bradley, one of my favorite Music Directors with whom to work. He's been doing this forever and he knows how these shows work. He also knows hilarious stories about Mitchellson Mitchellson and has several amusing photographs of Oakenboard's Founding Artistic director back when he was thin, with a full head of hair, loads of ambition and that most precious of theatrical commodities: artistic integrity. He also, from what I can see in the few photographs I've glimpsed, really enjoyed smoking pot in Codornices Park in Berkeley around 1972. This may explain his current rotundity and the occasional memory jag during rehearsal ("What the fuck is that pirate doing there?! There are no pirates in this show!" while rehearsing a scene on Hook's ship for 2002's ill-fated Space-Age Peter Pan.)
What I love about rehearsing music is that we get to learn the music. Bill Bradley is very good a teaching the music, he is jolly and makes jokes that the grown-ups get but that the kids have no idea are funny. (I know for a fact that he had a promising on-stage career back in the day, but he never talks about this.) Learning music is central to a musical and the challenge at Oakenboard is that the Stage Manager has to schedule things in just such a way that Mitchellson Mitchellson is not anywhere in the building. Because if Mitchellson is anywhere in the building, he will hijack the music rehearsal and start to coach the actors on their acting while they're learning the music. This is a monumental waste of everyone's time. Mitchellson thinks it's efficient. Mitchellson also thinks it's efficient to berate actors for dropped lines during notes after the first run off book. Mitchellson is big on efficiency.
I already know the music for Oliver!, I've directed it once and performed the roles of Bill Sykes and Fagin in the same six month period in 2006. I was given the option of not being at rehearsal because I know my part, but I wanted to be there because I love the way Bill Bradley teaches the music. It's actually like a music theory refresher course, but always performance-oritented. And I like to see how the younger actors work, how they take music direction; this tells me a lot about the success of the production. It also tells me who to watch out for backstage: who is going to be talking during quiet scenes, who will probably forget props, who will miss cues, miss entrances, miss performances. While all of these things can royally fuck a show, they are also prime opportunities for ad-libs. Ad-libs, while they can annoy stage managers to no end, will forever endear one to audience and fellow actors alike. The key is not to push the ad-lib; one has to wait patiently for the opportunity. One of the secret joys of working at Oakenboard is that one is guaranteed at least three perfect ad-lib moments during the run. This is because the Technical Director is so dangerously bi-polar that the turnover rate in the crew is near legendary in height. Like two new crew members per week in a nine-week run of Big River back in 1998. And the best place to get hard-working, wide-eyed, fearful tech bunnies is the local High School, which has no performing arts department because this is California. So they have no idea what working backstage at Oakenboard will be like. I tried recruiting some Solano students to work backstage on the first Oakenboard production I ever did, and they were the ones who told me about Dangerous Dan, the nickname of Oakenboard's longtime Tech Director, Dan Wrathburne.
Wrathburne is so unstable that he has been known to follow crew around backstage, shouting at them if he thinks -- thinks, mind you -- that they are about to do something wrong. I played Billis in South Pacific for Oakenboard about two years after I did it at The Willows. During Honey Bun, Dangerous Dan thought that that week's new crew member was going to drop a bucket. This was opening night. Packed house. I've just jumped through the curtain in my grass skirt and coconut bra when this terrified 17 year old boy comes stumbling after me in seabee costume (so the crew could move things without looking like crew), a bucket flying after him and narrowly missing the back of my head to sail into the orchestra seats and brain a retired Army colonel. After the bucket came Dangerous Dan in full Wrathburne fury, and it was my challenge to alter the choreography so that I just happened to be between them for the rest of the song. Oakenboard stage managers have a way of calming Wrathburne down, a combination of colors built into every lighting plot that resets the rage button in his cerebral cortex derived from the colors of specific incendiaries and explosives used during the Viet-Nam conflict. The sudden strobes and sound effects in the Wrathburne Reset are remarkably effective. That night, most of the orchestra seats were taken by a group of military retirees. Unfortunately, one cannot predict how the Wrathburne Reset will affect every veteran. The bucket-brained colonel promptly forgot about the bucket, experiencing the first orgasm he'd had in two decades. Others were not so lucky. Ushers had to restrain at least three elderly veterans from rushing the stage. Pat Craig's review praised Mitchellson's amazing penetration of the fourth wall and the real sense of danger experienced during what is usually just a cute production number.
I get along very well with Dan Wrathburne. I think this is because I make him laugh. But he always tells me that he knew my grandfather, and for reasons that mystify me he makes certain that the crew treats me like royalty. This can be a little odd at times, but it makes my job very easy at Oakenboard. Frankly, I suspect that working with Mitchellson is what triggers Wrathburne's PTSD fugues. It's understandable. I practically had one myself during the music rehearsal today.
We were working on Be Back Soon when the door slammed open and Mitchellson strode in, eyes alight with messianic musical theatre certainty. Bill Bradley put closed his eyes, sighed, and took his hands from the piano keys, politely folding them in his lap.
"Sorry, Bill, won't be more than a minute, you don't mind, do you?" and pulling up a chair, Mitchellson opens a file folder stuffed with yellow legal pads, then fixes us with his Mansonesque stare. In a flash he snaps up a creepy black ink sketch of a monstrous vulva, shouting, "You are ALL of you WHORES!!!"
Gasps from the kids, some quite young, boys and girls both, who play Fagin's boys. One girl giggles.
"WHORES!!!" Mitchellson bellows, standing and running the sketch in front of all our faces. "And you're PIMPED to the UPPER CLASS by ..." and he spins, scanning us, his right index finger raised. I begin to cringe. "By FAG-in, not his REAL NAME, but a nickname you gave him because he always wants to stick his FAG, English for twig, IN you!"
Bill Bradley's head is in his hands by now and I am frozen in dismay, unable to disguise my deep alarm at this interpretation. I resolve to buy the Stage Manager a crate of Scotch if he can keep Mitchellson away from me for the rest of the process. I will not play the role this way, and I'll leave if I have to. But I really need the money. Perhaps I, after all, am the whore.
"Now, take it again, and Edward I want you to FUCK them with your VOICE!!! Play, Bill!"
It was a very long rehearsal. None of the children learned their music. Seventeen of the twenty-two kids have withdrawn from the show. Parents were complaining before rehearsal was over, thanks to their kids' texting and Facebook mobile. I don't know how to fuck anyone with my voice, and I'm not about to try it in that situation so I just pretended not to know the music and asked Bill Bradley a lot of questions about note durations. This really confused Mitchellson, who thought I knew the role. It's why he hired me. I'm not worried about it, though: he was surrounded by irate parents when I left, looking like a giant Norse explorer who can't find his compass in a sea of foreigners.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Oakenboard Tavern Theatre Under The Stars
Oakenboard Tavern Theatre Under The Stars begins its twenty-fifth season with a stellar production of Oliver!, directed by founding Artistic Director Mitchellson Mitchellson who, as you have no doubt read, was raised by a theatrical family here in the Bay Area who all played leading roles at one time or another at Chanticleer Theatre or Hayward Little Theatre. Their adventures are oft recounted by Mitchellson during breaks at Oakenboard, and many are the glazed eyes of younger actors who have fervently prayed he would finish his tale in time for them to piss.
Oliver!, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' immortal classic, Oliver Twist, is a very good musical. It will make money every time you do it because it has the best of everything a family musical can offer: a gaggle of precocious kids who sing and dance, a dog, and a happy ending. Mitchellson Mitchellson is notoriously particular about the dogs he uses in his shows and he began the first rehearsal by bellowing the following in his inimitable stentorian tone, "The dog will be a Basset Hound."
Those of you who know Oliver! know that the dog, Bullseye, belongs to Bill Sykes. Bill Sykes is an evil bastard of a villain whose only redeeming quality is that he cannot forget the image of his lover's eyes as he beats the living shit out of her; so plagued by this vision is he that his last words as he falls to his death are, "The eyes! The EYES!!!" Bullseye is supposed to be a Bull Terrier or Pit Bull or an English Bulldog, and frankly the latter is too damned cute to work well for him. The dog should compliment Bill Sykes' viciousness. They should be a matched pair, almost symbiotic. Bad man, vicious dog, scary scary.
To have Bill Sykes make his first appearance with a Basset Hound snuffling in after him seems to me to be less than ideal. With few exceptions, the general response to a Basset Hound is, "Awwwww! Cuuuuuute!" Perhaps I am taking things a bit too seriously, but this doesn't seem to be the most effective response to Bill Sykes or anything closely associated therewith.
I know what I'm talking about. When I played Bill Sykes at PCPA in 2006, their Bullseye was played by a verrrry friendly Golden Lab named Kyle. He was pristine in his cleanliness. He got a cheer when we took our curtain call. I got a nod. While I was somewhat terrifying as Sykes, Kyle's presence effectively cut the balls of evil right off of my character and immediately threw Sykes' backstory out of whack. The result was that I was never quite as scary as I would have been had the dog been a) scary or b) not there at all.
I think the show works better if you can have the dog present. But if you can't get the right dog, don't just go for any dog. It's not like Annie, where there pretty much has to be a dog. Sandy is the character to whom Annie sings Tomorrow, though that song is often spent wrangling a happy woofie so his anus isn't eye-level with the front row; ideally, the song is meant to reassure Sandy and, by extension, Annie herself and all of us, that tomorrow will be better. I have yet to see a production where Sandy will sit still during that song. Perhaps a Basset Hound would be a better choice for Annie. But that's neither here nor there because it's Oakenboard's Oliver! I'm writing about.
I don't play Sykes in this Oliver!, I play Fagin. I'm a ringer, I've played Fagin before. In Idaho. A delight. In this production, Bill Sykes is played by none other than Johnny Ringold. If you've seen me in any shows recently, you've seen Mr. Ringold in at least one of them. He was the pudgy tapper in the chorus. He played Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals. He was neck-in-neck with Peggy Levine for Mrs. Lovet in Oakenboard's disastrous Sweeney Todd of two seasons ago (dubbed Queeney Odd for the peculiar homoerotic quality of the title role's interactions with the strapping young sailor), until it was revealed that Ringold was the source of the rumor that Mitchellson Mitchellson is half African-American, which shocked many subscribers in the 925.
LeshleyRep's Ragtime saw Ringold and Mitchellson friendly again, as Mitchellson was by that time assumed to be at least 3/4 black by most of the Oakenboard Subscribers, who, owing to their advanced age and low pigmentation, are also the majority of the subscribers at LeshleyRep. This is probably why Dottie Hale tottered down the center aisle, tearfully regal in her hip replacement, to embrace Mitchellson opening night as he left his seat to visit the bar again before curtain. Ragtime, as you probably know, has African Americans in it. However, most of the named African American characters die, and the surviving named African American is raised by white people who move to California. This is Very Moving to women like Dottie, who grew up in Piedmont watching Mickey and Judy dance around in blackface. Dottie is desperate to appear Not Racist. Embracing Mitchellson Mitchellson, who, at 6'2" is much taller than Dottie and therefore, in her mind, likely to play basketball, was probably deeply cathartic. He is also blonde with blue eyes and appears perpetually sunburned between March and October. The root of Ringold's rumor and its longevity remain a mystery. But Dottie Hale has her street cred nailed down and she can smile serenely when Somali pirates rape a tourist on the news.
So Ringold is Bill Sykes. Ringold is 5'4" tall and looks like a roly-poly math whiz. He keeps getting these straight leading male roles and it's mystifying -- do directors really think the audience can't tell? I saw him as Jud in Oklahoma at Fairfield Stage and couldn't stop giggling. He has an amazing voice. He is a superb dancer. He is also a jolly little gay Hobbit. So, Jud? No. Curly? Only the hair on his feet. Everything else is waxed weekly, an image forever seared into my memory centers after the tech rehearsal where Ringold "accidentally" walked out of the shower glistening with cocoa butter and nothing else. He looked like a little inflated hippo with nubbins. When he stepped toward me, he slipped on the tile and his body actually squeaked like a wet balloon. Watching him struggle to get up, slipping and squeaking and squealing all over the floor of the locker room, I got trapped on the bench: the floor was so oily I couldn't walk without slipping. The first-year acting student who was sent to find me when I missed an entrance left the program at the end of the semester.
The first scene we worked after the read-through was the one where Bill is threatening to kill Oliver. Before the Fine Life Reprise. Oliver is not that much shorter than Ringold. Oliver is played by a girl, and Ringold spends most of his time smiling at me. He threw a twinkle-kick into the reprise and Mitchellson Mitchellson did not seem to notice. I will not be inviting prospective employers to opening night.
Oliver!, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' immortal classic, Oliver Twist, is a very good musical. It will make money every time you do it because it has the best of everything a family musical can offer: a gaggle of precocious kids who sing and dance, a dog, and a happy ending. Mitchellson Mitchellson is notoriously particular about the dogs he uses in his shows and he began the first rehearsal by bellowing the following in his inimitable stentorian tone, "The dog will be a Basset Hound."
Those of you who know Oliver! know that the dog, Bullseye, belongs to Bill Sykes. Bill Sykes is an evil bastard of a villain whose only redeeming quality is that he cannot forget the image of his lover's eyes as he beats the living shit out of her; so plagued by this vision is he that his last words as he falls to his death are, "The eyes! The EYES!!!" Bullseye is supposed to be a Bull Terrier or Pit Bull or an English Bulldog, and frankly the latter is too damned cute to work well for him. The dog should compliment Bill Sykes' viciousness. They should be a matched pair, almost symbiotic. Bad man, vicious dog, scary scary.
To have Bill Sykes make his first appearance with a Basset Hound snuffling in after him seems to me to be less than ideal. With few exceptions, the general response to a Basset Hound is, "Awwwww! Cuuuuuute!" Perhaps I am taking things a bit too seriously, but this doesn't seem to be the most effective response to Bill Sykes or anything closely associated therewith.
I know what I'm talking about. When I played Bill Sykes at PCPA in 2006, their Bullseye was played by a verrrry friendly Golden Lab named Kyle. He was pristine in his cleanliness. He got a cheer when we took our curtain call. I got a nod. While I was somewhat terrifying as Sykes, Kyle's presence effectively cut the balls of evil right off of my character and immediately threw Sykes' backstory out of whack. The result was that I was never quite as scary as I would have been had the dog been a) scary or b) not there at all.
I think the show works better if you can have the dog present. But if you can't get the right dog, don't just go for any dog. It's not like Annie, where there pretty much has to be a dog. Sandy is the character to whom Annie sings Tomorrow, though that song is often spent wrangling a happy woofie so his anus isn't eye-level with the front row; ideally, the song is meant to reassure Sandy and, by extension, Annie herself and all of us, that tomorrow will be better. I have yet to see a production where Sandy will sit still during that song. Perhaps a Basset Hound would be a better choice for Annie. But that's neither here nor there because it's Oakenboard's Oliver! I'm writing about.
I don't play Sykes in this Oliver!, I play Fagin. I'm a ringer, I've played Fagin before. In Idaho. A delight. In this production, Bill Sykes is played by none other than Johnny Ringold. If you've seen me in any shows recently, you've seen Mr. Ringold in at least one of them. He was the pudgy tapper in the chorus. He played Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals. He was neck-in-neck with Peggy Levine for Mrs. Lovet in Oakenboard's disastrous Sweeney Todd of two seasons ago (dubbed Queeney Odd for the peculiar homoerotic quality of the title role's interactions with the strapping young sailor), until it was revealed that Ringold was the source of the rumor that Mitchellson Mitchellson is half African-American, which shocked many subscribers in the 925.
LeshleyRep's Ragtime saw Ringold and Mitchellson friendly again, as Mitchellson was by that time assumed to be at least 3/4 black by most of the Oakenboard Subscribers, who, owing to their advanced age and low pigmentation, are also the majority of the subscribers at LeshleyRep. This is probably why Dottie Hale tottered down the center aisle, tearfully regal in her hip replacement, to embrace Mitchellson opening night as he left his seat to visit the bar again before curtain. Ragtime, as you probably know, has African Americans in it. However, most of the named African American characters die, and the surviving named African American is raised by white people who move to California. This is Very Moving to women like Dottie, who grew up in Piedmont watching Mickey and Judy dance around in blackface. Dottie is desperate to appear Not Racist. Embracing Mitchellson Mitchellson, who, at 6'2" is much taller than Dottie and therefore, in her mind, likely to play basketball, was probably deeply cathartic. He is also blonde with blue eyes and appears perpetually sunburned between March and October. The root of Ringold's rumor and its longevity remain a mystery. But Dottie Hale has her street cred nailed down and she can smile serenely when Somali pirates rape a tourist on the news.
So Ringold is Bill Sykes. Ringold is 5'4" tall and looks like a roly-poly math whiz. He keeps getting these straight leading male roles and it's mystifying -- do directors really think the audience can't tell? I saw him as Jud in Oklahoma at Fairfield Stage and couldn't stop giggling. He has an amazing voice. He is a superb dancer. He is also a jolly little gay Hobbit. So, Jud? No. Curly? Only the hair on his feet. Everything else is waxed weekly, an image forever seared into my memory centers after the tech rehearsal where Ringold "accidentally" walked out of the shower glistening with cocoa butter and nothing else. He looked like a little inflated hippo with nubbins. When he stepped toward me, he slipped on the tile and his body actually squeaked like a wet balloon. Watching him struggle to get up, slipping and squeaking and squealing all over the floor of the locker room, I got trapped on the bench: the floor was so oily I couldn't walk without slipping. The first-year acting student who was sent to find me when I missed an entrance left the program at the end of the semester.
The first scene we worked after the read-through was the one where Bill is threatening to kill Oliver. Before the Fine Life Reprise. Oliver is not that much shorter than Ringold. Oliver is played by a girl, and Ringold spends most of his time smiling at me. He threw a twinkle-kick into the reprise and Mitchellson Mitchellson did not seem to notice. I will not be inviting prospective employers to opening night.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Why Direct?
Over time, I have come to think of the actor as a shaman. Taking on a role, putting on another face, transforming oneself in order to instruct, dazzle, enchant, delight, terrify: this is all the sort of thing that would have brought the Inquisition knocking. And rightly so: it is also exactly what the shaman does in her work, opening doorways to another world, opening the eyes of her fellow humans, changing people and changing the world.
If the actor is a shaman, what, then, is the director? It is my belief that the director must also be an actor, fully trained in acting, singing, dance, combat, dialects, everything on the actor training menu (full design training would be nice, as well); with full command of all of the theatrical arts, a true director, ideally diversely adept, would also be a true Adept, a Magician, a Wizard, a Sorcerer.
I draw a distinction between shaman and Adept for the purposes of this discussion: in many minds, they are one and the same -- and who am I to say that this or that shaman is not also an Adept? -- but for the purposes of this discussion, an Adept can be seen as the master of many disciplines, while the shaman can be seen as the master of a subset thereof.
My early theatrical training, composed largely of my time at The Boston Conservatory in the mid-late 1990's, was made up almost entirely of the exact opposite philosophy: there is no such thing as magick, there is only Art. Focus on the Why in Art and you will have the key to any project. I want to make it clear that this was incredibly useful training and still is, to this day. I believe that it is important for undergraduates to develop calluses from walking on the shards of their shattered illusions -- thus enabling them to travel as far as their dreams can lead them.
My time in Boston was one of darkness wherein I lost my way and my connection to the mystical. It was only upon my return to California that I was able to find that part of my soul again -- but the discipline instilled in me from my undergraduate training gave me a new and potent approach to everything I do, particularly my pursuit of Adeptitude in both spiritual and theatrical work.
Since then, the shamanic and Adeptic nature of acting and directing have only increased in clarity; each project I take on presents new and powerful challenges from which I learn new and powerful lessons. What becomes startlingly clear to me are those other artists who simply do not understand these things, and whose approach to the work is thus hampered. This leads to hackneyed, theatrically deadly productions: a Dracula that is not scary, a musical comedy that is not funny, a season that is not interesting.
Unfortunately, one cannot simply walk up to another director and spout, "Wow, your work suffers because of your lack of understanding of the shamanic/adeptic connection to theatre!" I suspect that the initial, undergraduate training must be strict enough and strong enough that it forms an Adamantine skeleton supporting anything else layered on top of it. To be clear: I am not saying that a shamanic/adeptic approach to theatre is the only one. In my opinion, there is an undeniable connection, but it's anecdotal. This path will not work for everyone, and, frankly, each theatrical explorer must cut her own path into the forest of adventure; following another artist's trail only leads to ashes and shit.
If the actor is a shaman, what, then, is the director? It is my belief that the director must also be an actor, fully trained in acting, singing, dance, combat, dialects, everything on the actor training menu (full design training would be nice, as well); with full command of all of the theatrical arts, a true director, ideally diversely adept, would also be a true Adept, a Magician, a Wizard, a Sorcerer.
I draw a distinction between shaman and Adept for the purposes of this discussion: in many minds, they are one and the same -- and who am I to say that this or that shaman is not also an Adept? -- but for the purposes of this discussion, an Adept can be seen as the master of many disciplines, while the shaman can be seen as the master of a subset thereof.
My early theatrical training, composed largely of my time at The Boston Conservatory in the mid-late 1990's, was made up almost entirely of the exact opposite philosophy: there is no such thing as magick, there is only Art. Focus on the Why in Art and you will have the key to any project. I want to make it clear that this was incredibly useful training and still is, to this day. I believe that it is important for undergraduates to develop calluses from walking on the shards of their shattered illusions -- thus enabling them to travel as far as their dreams can lead them.
My time in Boston was one of darkness wherein I lost my way and my connection to the mystical. It was only upon my return to California that I was able to find that part of my soul again -- but the discipline instilled in me from my undergraduate training gave me a new and potent approach to everything I do, particularly my pursuit of Adeptitude in both spiritual and theatrical work.
Since then, the shamanic and Adeptic nature of acting and directing have only increased in clarity; each project I take on presents new and powerful challenges from which I learn new and powerful lessons. What becomes startlingly clear to me are those other artists who simply do not understand these things, and whose approach to the work is thus hampered. This leads to hackneyed, theatrically deadly productions: a Dracula that is not scary, a musical comedy that is not funny, a season that is not interesting.
Unfortunately, one cannot simply walk up to another director and spout, "Wow, your work suffers because of your lack of understanding of the shamanic/adeptic connection to theatre!" I suspect that the initial, undergraduate training must be strict enough and strong enough that it forms an Adamantine skeleton supporting anything else layered on top of it. To be clear: I am not saying that a shamanic/adeptic approach to theatre is the only one. In my opinion, there is an undeniable connection, but it's anecdotal. This path will not work for everyone, and, frankly, each theatrical explorer must cut her own path into the forest of adventure; following another artist's trail only leads to ashes and shit.
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