As the Stage Turns

Can we talk?

I have to tell you, even though I'm in charge of production here at UPT, which means I'm the one shepherding every show of the season...I'm not a big fan of musicals.

At least, I haven't been.

I know, I know...it's heresy for me to say such things in this business. But I am nothing if not controversial, right? Truth be told I've been in one musical in my life and that was Archy and Mehitabel, a strange, fairly old musical written in part by a young Mel Brooks. It's very jazzy, filled with odd little riffs from the early 50's jazz scene. I played Archy, a cockroach that danced on a giant typewriter, and I was in love with an alley cat, Mehitabel.

The show is kinda hip, but a little odd. Our production wasn't very good, I'm afraid. I was working with a little theatrical group in Alaska and we kept having to replace people who dropped out of the show. But the show itself was sweet and I finished that run feeling pretty okay about at least one musical.

Still, for the most part, I had a hard time getting into musicals. For some reason I can suspend disbelief when I'm watching Luke Skywalker battle Darth Vader with lightsabers and the Force. I can suspend disbelief when Harry Potter sends spells sizzling through the air. I can even suspend disbelief (sometimes) when Keanu Reeves is called upon to act.

But musicals? Really? A bunch of hardened gang members just broke into a graceful song and dance routine? The French Revolution was won by the best chorus? Andrew Lloyd Webber continues to have a career?

I just didn't get it...until now.

Since being cast as The Baker in Into the Woods I have had to confront the notion of what is good about musicals. I have to believe musicals can be worthy because I'm in this musical and I want it to be good.

And, I have to admit, I've lost a lot of my aversion to musicals now that I'm in one. And you wanna know why?

Two reasons:

First, because some musicals are much more than prancing gang members. Some have depth. Stephen Sondheim, the man who wrote Into the Woods, is a genius. Not only is Into the Woods funny and touching, it's deep. It doesn't shy away from delving into the nature of what it means to grow up, and family, and our perceptions as both parent and child. You could write a very detailed master's thesis on this musical. Seriously. And yet, at the same time, it somehow manages just to be fun. A good story.

Second, because I have discovered that musicals are a major challenge. Really, really hard. Drama can be tough, don't get me wrong. But a musical will stretch everyone involved further just because there's simply more to them. As an actor in a musical, you're not just doing your best to play your character, in a musical you have to sing your character. Keep the beat, stay in tune, use proper breathing techniques and introduce just the right amount of emotion. Dang. That's hard. And don't get me started on the dancing.

But you want to know what's even more impressive. Honestly, it's the degree of talent I've seen on Mendocino College's Center Theatre stage. The people involved with this production are just plain talented. Great voices. Great acting chops. Great directing and musical accompaniment. Great technical and costumes and props.

I hope to live up to it all. There are times when I just feel like everyone is going to turn to me when I've just finished singing a line and feeling really good about my part and they'll say, "What are you doing here? You don't even like musicals." And I'll sheepishly bow my head and slink off into the wings.

Into the Woods is good theatre. And I'm not just proud that I'm in it...I'm proud that UPT and our community is filled with the level of talent that will make this show a hit.

-Keith Aisner

PS. DAVID CORY ANDERSON is in the show as Narrator and Mysterious Man. He's very talented and forgiving.

INTO THE WOODS opens July 31st and runs through August 10 at Mendocino College's Center Theatre. For tickets and information call 707-462-9226.

Posted by UPT Writer at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So you should already have read the last entry, talking about the 24 Hour Play Festival. To sum it up...it was a blast. It stole four years of my life, but it was fun, nonetheless.

Anyway...directing! How the heck do you direct a play, much the less one that's just been written and will be performed in twelve hours?

Well, it's an odd process. For me, since I was the writer, it was a pretty simple deal. I wrote the play knowing where the play was to be performed. I also knew my actors. So when I wrote the play I was staging it in my head at the same time. There was no need for the typical director's task of staring at a script until it made sense. So when it came time to direct "Whee! Gee!" I simply took the images in my head and translated them as best I could to the stage. Since I had good actors and a minimum of set, that allowed us the luxury of focusing on line memorization and fine-tuning the comedy.

All directors have a similar task. They take stories and interpret them for the spaces and mediums in which the stories will be told. They are the ringmasters, guiding the actors, crew, and technical staff to turn words on paper into a vision.

But when is a director a good director? And how easy is it to tell?

Just about anyone can tell you when a play stinks. It can be for any number of reasons...maybe the play was poorly written or the actors weren't up to their parts, or the costumes are totally inappropriate. All these things are noticeable because they jar the audience back into reality. You think, "Why the heck is Romeo wearing a set of Blu-Blockers? Boom! You've been sucked out of Venice and back into the theatre.

The funny thing is, I don't think most people will notice when a director is doing something brilliant. A scene that's poorly lit or blocked will stand out because it's interfering with the telling of the story. But when the lighting is really setting the mood and the actor was directed to take their character in a unique direction, often the director's touch will go unnoticed--because that's the director's job--to use others to tell a story as well as it can be told.

I personally believe that you can always tell a bad director because the bad director is more interested in interjecting their own personality into the work, rather than being true to the story being told.

That or they just have no idea how to direct.

Anyway...directing is hard. Directors have to interpret a story and know enough about the medium they're working in to tell that story well. It's technical and it's creative and it's a blast.

Just another reason to love theatre.

Posted by UPT Writer at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you weren't able to make it to last Saturday's 24 Hour Play Festival here at UPT, you missed a very unique and enjoyable experience. If you didn't already know about the 24 Hour Play Festival, seven teams from Lake and Mendocino Counties (the group from Sonoma County canceled due to smoke) wrote, memorized, and produced their own short plays (see previous entry for more information).

This year's festival was the best yet, with all teams coming together to make a really enjoyable evening.

But I wanted to give you, dear reader, an inside look at what it takes to do something like this. You see, I was the writer/director for my team--Team UPT.

REPRESENT!

My team was certainly filled with quality actors. I had KC Dill, Nathan Bell, David Strock, and my wife Shelley. These are the kinds of people who could be working professionally as actors under the right circumstances...and by "right circumstances" I don't mean incriminating photos of the management at Paramount. I mean talent.

I felt good going into it as a writer/director this year. I had a full team and could concentrate purely on the writing and directing, whereas last year I lost an actor right before the show and had to fill in myself in addition to doing the writing and directing. (I wanted no fewer than four actors, since I didn't want to burden three actors with memorizing all the lines for the entire show. Trust me, there's a big difference in the number of lines four actors have to memorize as opposed to three.)

The character I ended up playing wore a fur-lined jockstrap, panties, and a nice pair of brown wingtips with long black socks. I learned that when you are writing a play that you're in, you can be pretty hard on yourself. I would never have written such a thing unless I knew I had a fool such as myself to play the part. Of course, Erica Cooperrider still gets points for playing my scantily-clad counterpart. Go Erica!

So this year I was feeling good. I'd done this festival twice before, I knew what to expect. I had complete control over every aspect of the production (which is good because I am a control freak). They even randomly selected my theme for this year's show!

"Death."

Love it! So I went home and sat down in front of a blank screen and felt no pressure. I had ideas. I was set. But there was a problem. Earlier that morning I'd gathered some helpers and drove up to Greenfield Ranch to help a friend clear brush from around her fire-threatened house. We worked hard for about three hours and the smoke was thick, making breathing difficult at times. By the time I was finished I wasn't exhausted, but the smoke and the manual labor had significantly drained my battery. And this is the first year I've helped to run the festival, so after I finished clearing brush I headed into UPT where I worked up until the teams started arriving.

As I sat before the screen, the ideas kept swirling about in my head and I found myself getting sleepier, and sleepier. Then Ten o'clock approached and I knew I was in trouble. Writing these plays takes at least four hours and I hadn't even started yet.

I rarely get to bed before 2am usually, so when I found myself wanting to nod off at 10...well, oh dear. But I battled it. I played loud music in my headphones for a while but that wasn't exactly conducive to the creative process. I stepped outside for a breath of cold air, but the smoke had crept down from the hills to rest itself in my back yard, sending me back into my muggy home.

So I stayed there, bouncing ideas around with Shelley...just waiting for inspiration to take me by the nose and lead me to success. But I kept falling asleep. I hadn't written one word yet and I kept wanting to fall asleep. So I did what anyone else would do in that situation. I grabbed a Ouija board and played with that for about an hour with our friend Kelly.

My father had recently discovered the Ouija board along with a bunch of my belongings in his basement and it had been years since I'd used it. It worked like a charm. Within a couple minutes I was communicating with the spirit realm. And NO long distance charges applied.

Anyway, we finished with that, and I started to have an inkling of an idea on how to incorporate the use of a Ouija board into a show with the theme of death. I started to wonder what it must be like for the spirit...just floating around somewhere...waiting...hoping someone somewhere will whip out a Ouija board so they can chat. There was something to this line of thought. It felt right. I was pretty sure this was the direction I wanted to move in.

But just having a vague idea does not help the fact that the computer screen was still completely blank. I started to panic. This had never happened before. I was always able to go to the well. It was always full. But I was so sleepy I couldn't think straight.

Then I fell asleep at 11. For 45 minutes. I had an alarm set. I woke up and started writing...hoping the 45 minute power-nap might invigorate me. And it did...just enough to give me the energy to write the first few lines. I wasn't sure where the story was headed, but I saw a spirit hanging around a Ouija board session in which a guy who was passing himself off as a psychic was trying to seduce his not-so-bright date through his Ouija board.

This is all very well, but what would the story be? It can't just be a scene. When you're writing a one-act play (even if it's no longer than 13 minutes) you still have to have a beginning, middle, and and end. It still needs to be a real story. It's not a sketch comedy show like Saturday Night Live (which seems to revel in finding one joke and repeating it over and over and over and over again until the next commercial break).

It was now 2am. I decided I needed to take a drive. So I headed over to the USA Mini-Mart on North State Street where I bought very bad things. Little chocolate donuts, a fruit pie, a bag of sunflower seeds, and a giant cup of toffee-flavored coffee. Enough sugar and caffeine and salt and chemicals to make my heart jump...in anticipation. On the drive the rest of the story started to fall into place. It was working. The coffee was starting to take hold. The sugar was making my fingers twitch but that didn't matter because soon they were striking the keyboard.

I wrote until the sun came up. I finished just before 7am. I had pulled an "all-nighter". Something I hadn't done in well over a decade. And when I had finished I was pleased. My play, "Whee! Gee!" made sense. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And I thought it was pretty funny. But would anyone else like it?

Next time...DIRECTING in a DAY!

Posted by UPT Writer at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)