(About Face Theatre Blog)

AFT Literary Intern Emma Stanton (pictured above) updates us on next year’s XYZ Festival of New Works. 

In the last three weeks, the literary department of About Face has been focusing on our 2010 XYZ Festival of New Works. This is a festival that gives four plays in development the opportunity to have a reading at About Face Theatre in the fall of 2010. About Face will provide professional actors and directors for the reading and offer feedback, as well, to the playwright.  

While the XYZ Festival enjoyed a successful run in 2009, we have decided for the first time to open up the pool of submissions to the national community of playwrights. By March 15, one hundred and eighty-seven plays were submitted—twice as much as expected! Since the pool of applicants was so large, we sought readers across the country to read at least two plays (all anonymous to the readers) in order to give each play a fair, well-rounded assessment. These plays were sent out March 17^th. 

By March 24^th, readers sent back their evaluations of the plays to the literary department and between March 24^th and April 1^st, we lived and breathed XYZ plays! Finally, after a very intense week, we were able to determine which twenty plays would be sent out to the panelists—who will be determining the finalists and the XYZ Festival of New Works participants.  

It has been an extremely interesting and exciting process so far, from which we have learned a lot. Not only have we come to understand how to manage a festival with one hundred and eighty-seven submissions, but we have also had the opportunity to engage with each other in a full and meaningful way on the significance of new work at About Face Theatre and also, on the greater American stage.

Assistant Director Tyler Greene discusses the talkback/post-show conversation in the context of SWEET TEA.

In recent years, the post-performance dialogue has begun to materialize as an extraordinarily useful tool for bridging the gap between what happens on stage and off.  Four years ago, I had the distinct pleasure of working as an Artistic intern at Steppenwolf Theatre.  At that time, Steppenwolf set out to create a Public Square and began to offer discussions following each performance.  Two years later, I had the equally distinct pleasure of working as an Artistic Resident at Long Wharf Theatre in Connecticut.  They too were piloting dialogue-based programming and, in fact, part of my job was to lead discussions following every performance.  These experiences ingrained within me a desire to connect beyond what we say on stage.  What I find most compelling about theatre is, of course, the event itself but inherent in that is also a unique opportunity for connection.  When the house lights come up, unlike other modes of expression, both artist and audience breathe the same air, share the same space.  These discussions help us to connect our disparate experiences at that crucial moment immediately following an art experience. 

For our next production SWEET TEA, About Face Theatre has partnered in co-sponsorship with the Ellen Stone-Bellic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, an organization committed in many ways to conversation and dialogue.  This partnership is exciting for a myriad of reasons, particularly in the sense that it presents an extraordinarily fine opportunity for the Institute to continue the work that they do while we continue to honor the theatre’s commitment to post-performance dialogue.  As a theatre dedicated to ‘advancing the national dialogue on gender and sexuality’ across the nation, it is artistically vital that we offer a forum for our audiences.  This forum exists already in our blog and various social media avenues.  It is our hope that the existence of this forum every night will enhance our audiences theatre-going experience.  Jane Saks and the wonderful folks at the Institute have organized a series of panel discussions featuring a wide range of scholars, community leaders and artists.  These discussions will occur once or twice a week for the duration of the regular run.  At AFT, we are also interested in offering general conversations on each performance night where we are not featuring a panelist discussion.  These in our mind provide the aforementioned public forum.  It is my hope that these efforts appeal to our audiences and that each and every one of you will join us in the conversation. 

Artistic Director Bonnie Metzgar will post a special guest blog next week with her comments on this topic.  Look for that!

Photo courtesy of www.chesapeake.edu.

As rehearsals progress in New York in preparation for Chicago, SWEET TEA lighting designer Kathy Perkins discusses her attachment to the production.

I was drawn to Sweet Tea when I first heard about the book.  Having grown up in the segregated South during the 1960s, I was familiar with many of the characters E. Patrick wrote about.  The term sissy was a commonly used term in my community.  In fact, sissy was often used openly to describe homosexual boys and men.  My childhood friend’s name was prefaced by “sissy.”  I often wondered years later what effect this had on him, if any.  This same friend was always protected by his girlfriends, knowing that the bullies would never touch him in our presence.

I am excited to see E. Patrick present this aspect of African American life on the stage.  I look forward to creating the world of Sweet Tea with E. Patrick and Daniel.

Photo courtesy of KathyPerkins.com.

Check out this really interesting conversation regarding contemporary social media from House Theatre’s Carolyn Defrin.

As About Face Theatre begins to establish our social media identity (S.M.I.?), we’d love to hear your comments regarding this issue.  Happy Friday!

Photo from Zazzle.com.

SWEET ON TEA: Notes from an AD

Tyler James Greene

Hey, ya’ll.  Tyler Greene, here, Assistant Director of SWEET TEA and 1/3 of the Artistic Intern Army at About Face Theatre.  I’m happy to report that this next thrilling production goes forth at breakneck speed towards opening night, supported at this speed by a company of extraordinarily talented artists. 

We’ve quite a few exciting things on the horizon in conjunction with SWEET TEA.  Most of these I will save for future notes.  Today, though, I wanted to take a brief moment to share with you, dear audience, our current operating schedule so that you have a sense of where we’ve been and the places we plan to go.

We began development on January 4^th with a weeklong workshop of E. Patrick’s pre-existing script for POURING TEA, a touring production including many of the men you will see in SWEET TEA.  This script, nearly 150 pages in length and broad in scope, emerged from our workshop in the form of a tight, 90-minute performance script.  In a few short days from today, director Daniel Alexander Jones will meet with E. Patrick in New York City for a series of rehearsals of that text.  On April 15^th, we begin working in Chicago.  All of this will prepare us for the first preview on April 29^th and dual opening nights of May 7^th and 8^th.  A compact but unquestionably driven schedule, yes?  The most magical things happen in small frames.

For the next few months, I will be your eyes and ears in the room, regularly posting updates with each passing Wednesday.  Next Wednesday, I will discuss the talkback as a mode of connection beyond the theatrical event itself and how we plan to integrate one after every performance of SWEET TEA.  You can look forward to Monday as well, wherein we will feature blog entries from other members of the creative team.  Coming up this Monday is lighting designer and theatre historian Kathy Perkins. 

If you have any questions, I encourage you to post them here.  I’ll try my best to address them as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

We look forward to sharing these stories with you!

Hey y’all!  Dav here with another guest blog from Neal!  Huzzah!

Roma Choirs and Roma Musical Aristocracy 

The beginning of the process of settling “Gypsies” in the big towns of the Russian Empire was closely related to the famous “Gypsy choirs”. The first such mixed (men and women) choir was founded by Count Alexei Orlov in 1775, in his estate at Pushkino, near Moscow. The conductor was Ivan Sokolov (succeeded by his nephew Ilya  Sokolov), and the members of the choir were serfs. At the beginning of the 19th century the choir members were freed from serfdom and moved to live and work in Moscow. In 1812, they made big donations towards the needs of the army during the war against Napoleon, part of them were volunteers and took part in army action (for instance at the battle of Borodino). 

Count Orlov’s Gypsy choir was very popular among the Russian aristocracy. Other similar choirs were founded, many generations of famous “Gypsy” musicians grew up. “Gypsy” musicians began to move to Moscow, and subsequently to St. Petersburg and other larger towns. In Moscow, from 1807 to the middle of the 19th century, “Gypsy” musicians enjoyed a kind of self-government – they elected their own “burmistr” (mayor), who was responsible to the municipal administration for the gathering of taxes (Roma were registered as “meshchane”), maintained contact with the authorities, resolved petty conflicts within the community etc. 

After several generations Roma musicians and actors in large towns (chiefly Moscow and St. Petersburg) became special social stratum (separated to a certain extent even from other Roma), comprising famous artist dynasties, such as the Sokolov, Shishkin, Panin, Khlebnikov, Dulkevich, Pankov families, with a high social position. Roma musicians regularly met the highest circles in the Russian Empire – the aristocracy, rich merchants, famous poets, writers, musicians etc. There were even mixed marriages with the high society: Feodor Tolstoy, (a close relative of the writer Lev Tolstoy), the brother of the writer Sergei Tolstoy and his son Lev L. Tolstoy, Prince F. P. Masalskii, Prince Witgenstein, the millionaire from the Ural Nechaev, Anenkov, the rich landowner, Ledwik, the publisher of “Borsovie vedomosti”, and others, all married Roma girls. 

The first complete “Gypsy” performances by “Gypsy” musicians and actors were staged towards the end of the 19th century. On March 20, 1888, the musical comedy “Chave adro vesha” (Children in the forest) was performed at the Malyi Theater in St. Petersburg. The music, primarily “Gypsy” songs and romances, was an arrangement by Nikolai Shishkin. The play was continously shown up to 1906. 1892 saw the premiere of N. Shishkin’s new operetta “Gypsy Life”. 

Source: Project Education of Roma Children in Europe 

(photo courtesy Wikipedia)

Dav here with another guest Blog post from Neal, Dramaturg Extraordinaire.  Spaceba!

Tolstoy’s Real-Life Inspiration 

In 1881, E.P. Simon, the daughter of an acquaintance of Tolstoy’s, married N.S. Gimer, a middle-ranking clerk in the Ministry of Justice.  Gimer turned out to be a drunkard, and after two years of marriage and the birth of a son, his wife left him.  Her mother then introduced her to P.P. Akimov, a white-collar employee of the railroad.  Although Simon-Gimer never divorced her first husband, she lived as Akimov’s common-law wife for approximately seven years.  Unfortunately Akimov proved no better than Gimer, and Simon-Gimer finally ended the relationship in 1890.  Sometime in the early 1890s she met and fell in love with Chistov, she tried to divorce her first husband, but for reasons that remain unclear, the divorce was not granted.  At this point Simon-Gimer, now desperate, paid her first husband to fake his own suicide.  He pretended to drown himself, and the “widow” soon remarried.  The scheme was uncovered, however, as soon as Gimer attempted to obtain a passport.  Simon-Gimer’s second marriage was annulled, and she and her first husband were put on trial in 1897.  The two were sentenced to Siberian exile, but through the intervention of high-placed friends, the sentence was commuted to a year in prison and then suspended. 

Source: Wachtel, Andrew. “Resurrection a la Russe: Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse as Cultural Paradigm”. PMLA 107.2 (1992): 261-73. 

(photo courtesy Wikipedia)