Black Box Theater Research Articles

The Spanish Tragedy

Reviewed by: The Spanish Tragedy Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich The Spanish TragedyPresented by The Broccoli Project at the Black Box Theater, University of Texas at Austin, TX. 04 20– 23, 2017. Directed by Who Ray and David Higbee Williams. Music and puppeteer training by James Smith. Lighting by Laura Nagy. Tech by Dana Moore. With Kat Agudo (King of Spain/Isabella/Lorenzo’s Page/Watchman), Casey Allman (Balthazar/Ambassador/Serberine/Hangman/Jacques), Gabe Colombo (Ghost of Andrea), Laura Doan (Bel-Imperia/Spanish General/Bazardo/Watchman), Patrick Greer (Duke of Castile/Horatio/Pedringano/Ambassador), Austin Hanna (Hieronimo/Ambassador), Nicole Harrison (Revenge), and Bryson Kisner (Lorenzo/Pedro/Watchman). On opening night of a student production of The Spanish Tragedyat the University of Texas at Austin, its directors warned the audience about a “blood splatter zone” and “puppet sex.” Although these two delightful spoilers accurately previewed its most memorable parts, the performance was still filled with surprises. This swiftly moving and thoroughly enjoyable puppet version of Thomas Kyd’s revenge tragedy demonstrated the value of creative approaches to Renaissance drama. Conceived and executed by a student group called “The Broccoli Project,” the performance began with a man singing the Muppets theme song. The company members and their friends had made all the puppets, and indeed many recalled Jim Henson’s style. Lorenzo’s dimwitted Page, not quite a frog but resembling Kermit, was a small green puppet with googly eyes and curly hair. Some puppet choices were irreverent, [End Page 703]such as Balthazar as an alligator and Jacques as a blue squid who gurgled in place of his lines, whereas others shaped characters purposefully. The most human-seeming puppets were Hieronimo, Horatio, and Isabella, whose simple dress of white shirts or blue overalls represented them as humble country folk (fig. 4). Although most puppets were about the size of the actors’ torsos, the King of Spain puppet was an enormous head worn over the actor’s own, and she needed to move his mouth with both hands. The King became a ridiculous, out-of-touch ruler who towered over his subjects and stood apart from them. Only six puppeteers dressed in black played almost all of the characters, and they brought out the humor in the play’s lines and situations. Deaths were funny when puppets awkwardly stabbed each other and released red string when they died. Two characters played by humans framed the action: Revenge as a pale woman with green-streaked hair in a black dress and Andrea as a thin man in a tie. Both sat in chairs on stage during the performance, as Andrea watched with worry and Revenge appeared bored and insolent. Otherwise, the black box stage featured only a giant cardboard tree (where Horatio would later hang), and the puppets sometimes held small props: letters, handkerchiefs, a knife, and a rope. The directors judiciously streamlined the text to a running time of two hours. Many cuts were practical: to enable a small cast to use few props and to eliminate dense lines or ones in Latin or Italian. The production cut Hieronimo’s masque of knights and kings, the dumb show with Hymen, a slew of minor characters, and the subplot featuring the Viceroy of Portugal and Villuppo, whose ambitious plotting nearly kills Alexandro. The Broccoli Project’s version became not a political drama about competing nations, but an interpersonal one about a few major characters at a single court. The small stage and few actors contributed to the sense that this Spain was an isolated, intimate place, not one positioned internationally. Three aspects of the performance deserve further discussion: the characterization of Bel-Imperia, the representation of Hieronimo’s grief, and the concluding play-within-the-play. This Bel-Imperia was no submissive virgin, but a bold, independent woman. She wore a red velvet lowcut dress and had huge red lips, spiky multicolored hair, and enormous breasts. She spoke fewer lines than in the playtext but delivered them with defiant conviction. Although the production retained enough lines to indicate that her family arranged her marriage to Balthazar to strengthen peace and produce an heir, it included less conversation about her being a valuable commodity...

Three-dimensional audio immersion: Development and human perception testing of a large scale, 128 loudspeaker surround sound system

Large-scale loudspeaker arrays for immersive audio are beginning to see increased interest in the research and entertainment industries. There are many algorithms to produce 3D sound fields. Although these algorithms are well developed, there is little published work that quantitatively compares their performance in terms of human perception for various numbers of speakers and speaker arrangements. In this talk, we will present listener perception test results using a 3D, 128 loudspeaker array. This loudspeaker array is part of the CUBE theatre at Virginia Tech. The CUBE is a 5-storey 50 ft. x 50 ft. black-box theatre that uses Dante™ audio-over-ethernet to send signals to the 128 loudspeakers. Combined with a 3D motion tracking system and an immersive video vision system. The CUBE provides a very high-resolution test bed for human perception studies. Using speech intelligibility tests with stimulus phrases and various interferers and noise fields, listener tests will be performed for surround sound algorithms such as Higher Order Ambisonics, Vector Based Amplitude Panning, Wave Field Synthesis, and Higher Order HARPEX (High Angular Resolution Plane Wave Expansion). The Higher Order HARPEX decoder is a novel improvement to First Order HARPEX. Also, we will present technical details of the development of a 16-element soundfield microphone.

History vs Hollingsworth: The scenographic subversion of Canadian history

Abstract Founded by Michael Hollingsworth and Deanne Taylor in the late 1970s, VideoCabaret is one of Canada’s most prolific theatre companies and has become known for its unconventional scenography. Hollingsworth later began a one-of-a-kind historical epic – a 21-part play series, which chronicles over 400 years of Canadian history – The History of the Village of the Small Huts. In 1985, Hollingsworth directed the first play of the cycle, New France and almost every year since, a part of the cycle has been produced throughout Toronto at Theatre Passe Muraille’s Backspace, The Theatre Centre, Factory Theatre, Cameron House, a sold out run at Stratford, and recently at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. This article analyses VideoCabaret’s unique scenographic approach and the impact of the scenography on Canada’s historical narrative. The script is created with a unique scenographic design in mind. Costumes become exaggerated portraits of the figure they represent and immediate triggers of recognition. The show takes place in a black-box theatre with oversized, grotesque or two dimensional props. Actors come and go from the lights without being seen to appear or exit, much the same way these figures come and go in Canadian history. Such an approach contrasts the stark black box with the chaotic happenings of the play. By addressing the costumes, props, lighting and set, we can see how the subversive scenographic choices interact with the audiences’ traditional assumptions of what Canadian history is and how it is told. This article will also show how the scenography of VideoCabaret both constructs and challenges the narratives of Canadian history, and by extension, Canadian identity.

An intimate appearance: Black Box Production in the twenty-first century

Abstract This article explores how, in an era where e-mail has discharged the letter or where Facebook replaces face-time with friends over a drink, where the lines between virtual reality and reality are colliding, can live performance aid in the creation of an activated citizenship? I believe to create an activated citizenship, we must first involve an activated spectatorship. Wrapped up in spectatorship, itself, are the elements of identity politics, subjectivity, ways of looking/seeing/gazing and cultural conventions. This research explores the relationship between the ways in which spectators look/see/view and the ways in which the production, working with the intimate relationship of performance-spectatorship in a black box theatre, manipulates the visual vocabulary, collapsing the boundaries of culture, performance and the real.

Terra Nullius: The nomad and the empty space

Inside the markings of the compass is an empty, unclaimed space, or ‘Terra Nullius’. It is the kind of void or ‘place without co-ordinates’ that is sought for theatre in the writings and practises of Edward Gordon Craig or Peter Brook. This paper argues that performance space is not the territory for monument-builders, as these artists have become. It argues that the spirit of theatre is not sustained by fixed compass points within a building or a city, but instead flourishes in times of change or economic struggle, when industries collapse: leaving spaces without purpose. Spatial practises in theatre are broken down into discussions on scenography, performance design and theatre architecture, suggesting that performance design must precede the architecture in order to escape the decorative preoccupations of scenography. Connections to landscape, ecology, territory and colonialism are considered in this notion of ‘the scenic’, positing that the so-called ‘empty space’ is the burden of contemporary design practises in performance, and a construct as loaded as the concept of ‘terra nullius’: a term originally used by settlers to describe the continent of Australia as unclaimed land. Examples like the black box theatre, Brook's Bouffes du Nord, experimental performance spaces and many regional or national theatres are discussed as cultural or colonial monuments. As such they have become obstructions to the progression of performance practise in the 21st Century, with resident companies often held hostage by real estate and institutional programming. Contemporary responses in performance are also discussed, including Societas Raffaello Sanzio's Tragedia Endogonidia, the Prague Quadrennial Intersections project, The Performance Arcade, and the current dilemma faced by performance practitioners in Christchurch, New Zealand; where the community is considering new theatre spaces in the aftermath of the 22/2/2011 earthquake. Through these examples it is possible to propose a radicalisation of spatial practises for performance, questioning the role that theatre architecture plays within the new field/s of performance design. The paper arrives at a point where conventional ‘landed’ and pastoral practices for theatre making and building can be identified as unrealistic or antiquated within new cultural and economic landscapes.

Hamlet (review)

Reviewed by: Hamlet Amy Rodgers Hamlet Presented by the Sandra-Feinstein Gamm Theater at the Pawtucket Armory Annex, Pawtucket, Rhode Island. November 3–December 18, 2011. Directed by Fred Sullivan, Jr. Set by Patrick Lynch. Costumes by Marilyn Salvatore. Lighting by Matthew Terry. Sound by David Tessier. Fights by Norman Beauregard. Dramaturg Jennifer Madden. With Tony Estrella (Hamlet), Steve Kidd (Claudius), Jeanine Kane (Gertrude), Sam Babbitt (Polonius), Kelby T. Akin (Laertes), Gillian Williams (Ophelia), Marc Dante Mancini (Horatio), Tom Gleadow (Old Hamlet, First Gravedigger, First Player), Joe Short (Guildenstern, Francisco), Ben Gracia (Rosencrantz), Richard Noble (Osric), Tom Denucci (Fortinbras), Vince Petronio (Marcellus, Lucianus, Norwegian Captain, Second Gravedigger), and David Tessier (Player, Sailor, Priest, Musician). The Gamm Theater’s twenty-seventh season took on a variety of dystopic narratives, ranging from the political (1984) and cosmic (Boom!) to the domestic (Festen). Fittingly, the season’s centerpiece was Hamlet, Shakespeare’s drama of familial, lineal and subjective fragmentation. But this production held another significance for the Gamm: in 1997, Fred Sullivan Jr., in his first year as the theatre’s resident director, agreed to work with twenty-five year old Tony Estrella in the title role. Fourteen [End Page 344] years later, Sullivan and Estrella (now the Gamm’s artistic director) revisited their initial collaboration. The result was a nuanced, character-driven production that largely steered clear of gimmicky updating and heavy-handed attempts at political “relevance.” Set in the 1950s, the production illustrated its historical situatedness mostly through Marilyn Salvatore’s costuming. The women looked stunning in Mad Men-esque cinched-waist dresses and coiffed hair; the men’s costumes included wonderful details, such as Polonius’s purple silk pocket square and Rosencrantz’s argyle sweater. Sets were minimal, consisting mostly of mobile pieces of furniture—a throne, a plank bed for Gertrude’s closet scene, a small table for the wine goblets at the play’s end. The backdrop was hung with deep scarlet draperies, which were torn down with brutal efficiency by Fortinbras’s soldiers directly after Hamlet’s departure for England. The sudden shift from rich, soft crimson to chalky-white plaster suggested the barren desolation left at the play’s end; indeed, the first scene to occur in this “new” setting was Ophelia’s mad scene. The Gamm performs in an intimate, black-box theatre that is ideal for showcasing actors rather than production values. An experienced Shakespeare actor with a natural dynamism, Estrella was neither a brooding, reticent post-adolescent nor of a species I call “temper-tantrum Hamlet” (examples include Branagh’s 1996 film portrayal and more recently Ben Carlson’s 2008 Stratford, Ontario rendition). This Hamlet was profoundly thoughtful, a young man who lives largely in his head and cannot escape its confines. In his first appearance (1.2), he entered quietly with the procession and sat down on a step located at downstage right, while Claudius and Gertrude proceeded to center stage. During Claudius’s “auspicious and dropping eye” speech, Estrella stared off into the middle distance with a kind of unfocused horror, giving the impression that his mental state was less a direct result of his mother’s overhasty marriage to his uncle and more a result of the collision between this event and his already-present psychological demons. When Claudius touched Hamlet’s shoulder in a gesture of familial intimacy, he winced as if scalded—a reaction that set the tone for Hamlet’s physical persona. Kinetic, restless, and displaying twitchy mannerisms, Estrella suggested the character’s youth through unrelenting proprioception rather than emotional immaturity. The result was a sympathetic and complex Hamlet, one who tries but fails to withstand the unfortunate combination of genuine misfortune and emotional disequilibrium which seems built in to his psyche. It was not only the chiaroscuro quality of Estrella’s performance which knit the production together; his presence seemed to unite the cast in [End Page 345] easy camaraderie and devotion, qualities not always present even in longstanding repertory companies. Equally significant in creating this rapport was Gamm veteran Sam Babbitt, whose performance seemed to elevate every actor that shared the stage with him. A marvelous combination of doddering charm, recalcitrant short-sightedness, and genuine...

Acoustical design of Soka University Performing Arts Center

The Soka University Performing Arts Center and Academic Building will open in September 2011. The $73 million performing arts center is open to the public, hosting various types of performing arts. For lovers of the performing arts, the center will become another choice among the many fine venues in Orange County. The building houses a 1000-seat multipurpose hall, a 150-seat black box theater, support spaces, and classrooms. The multipurpose hall was designed primarily as a concert hall, and later to become suitable for dance, plays and musicals. To satisfy these flexible programs, the design features a curtain system for variable acoustics and an automated stage lift to accommodate concert, thrust, and convocations stage settings. The seating layout of the multipurpose hall was arranged in the arena style. The room shape and interior materials were carefully selected to optimize the acoustics of the space, including the two layered ceiling design: one for aesthetics and the other for room acoustics. Acoustical design and characteristics of the new multipurpose hall will be reported.

Ordinary Days (review)

Reviewed by: Ordinary Days Ryan McKinney Ordinary Days. Music and lyrics by Adam Gwon. Directed by Marc Bruni. Roundabout Underground/Roundabout Theatre Company, Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre/Black Box Theatre, New York City. 19 November 2009. Now in its third season, "Roundabout Underground," the Roundabout Theatre Company's newest artistic initiative, was created to foster new work by emerging writers and directors, allowing artists to premiere their work via a fully realized production. Having previously presented Stephen Karam's Speech & Debate and Steven Levenson's The Language of Trees, Roundabout Underground tackled its first musical offering with Ordinary Days by emerging musical theatre composer Adam Gwon, a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and winner of the 2008 Fred Ebb Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre Songwriting. His work, which has been seen and developed at Primary Stages, York Theatre Company, and the Kennedy Center, includes Ethan Frome, The Boy Detective Fails, and Bernice Bobs Her Hair. In its Roundabout incarnation (the musical was previously showcased at the National Alliance of Musical Theatre Festival of New Works), Ordinary Days was a seventy-five-minute chamber musical intimately staged in the sixty-two-seat Black Box Theatre. It charts the paths of four New Yorkers, each trying to find him- or herself in the chaos of contemporary New York City. This familiar journey serves as an intriguing metaphor and parallel for the entire production: as the characters struggle to find their purpose, the musical struggles to find its voice. In the first third of the piece, as the characters grapple with happiness, this searching musical grapples with originality; in the second third of the piece, as the characters voice their fears and acknowledge their problems, Gwon gives those characters notably different and increasingly complex compositions through which to do so; and in the final third of the piece, as the characters begin to find fulfillment and an increased sense of maturity, the musical matures as well, using a welcomed sense of patience and nuance to fully explore its characters' journeys. Overall, the musical itself becomes a fifth character, finding itself and its voice just as the characters within that very musical do. As Ordinary Days begins, a series of solos introduces the four characters to the audience: Warren, a delightfully quirky personal assistant determined to stay positive amidst increasingly negative surroundings; Deb, a transplant to New York City hoping to find herself in her doctoral work on Virginia Woolf; and Claire and Jason, a couple dealing with the trials and tribulations of moving in together and the effects of cohabitation on a relationship. Although Click for larger view View full resolution Hunter Foster (Jason) and Lisa Brescia (Claire) in Ordinary Days. (Photo: Joan Marcus.) [End Page 470] Click for larger view View full resolution Hunter Foster (Jason), Kate Wetherhead (Deb), Jared Gertner (Warren), and Lisa Brescia (Claire) in Ordinary Days. (Photo: Joan Marcus.) effective in storytelling, this quartet of solos is ultimately a disappointing opening: the melodies often seem interchangeable and, furthermore, they often ring familiar, reminiscent of a previously heard Jason Robert Brown or Maltby and Shire composition. Although rich with exposition and aiding in character development, the melodies fail to ignite a musical spark in the ears of the audience—a perilous issue for a musical that is entirely sung. After the storylines intersect at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (a sequence that was amusing though ultimately forced), the musical began to find its footing in the second third of the piece. In the role of Jason, Hunter Foster sang the touchingly honest ballad "Favorite Places," and with that song, a far more interesting piece of musical theatre commenced. The song is unique, melodious and informative, and was beautifully performed by Foster, quickly redirecting a lackluster piece of musical theatre onto a new, more promising path. In the subsequent musical numbers, both the characters' relationships and the musical compositions take on an increased level of texture and complexity. Warren and Deb begin to discover a greater sense of purpose and friendship in each other, whereas Jason and Claire struggle to demolish the metaphorical walls in their relationship. It is at this point in...

The “theater inside-out” and other spaces.

Over the last years, Kahle Acoustics has had the opportunity to collaborate on several projects for innovative theatrical spaces. For The Curve in Leicester, UK, from the start of the design process the brief called for what was labeled the “theater inside-out,” a theater that would be visible from the street and breaks with the classical boundaries between front of house and back of house spaces. In the final design, the central stage opens onto both a 750-seat auditorium on one side and a 350-seat Black Box theater on the other side. In addition, the side walls of the stage house are vertically moving acoustic shutters, so that the stage can be opened to the glass-clad foyer surrounding the theaters. Other spaces include the more classical Royal Flemish Theatre (KVS) in Brussels and the Thâtre de l’Archipel in Perpignan, a theater with two configurations and variable seat count from 600 to 1100, and the highly flexible space La Commanderie in Dole, France, with variable seat count from 592 to 2700, and usage ranging from intimate theater to opera, classical concerts, as well as professional sports events and standing audience rock concerts.

Acoustical compromises: Working with a design team for maximum isolation at minimal costs in high school music facilities.

Texas Public High Schools place a large emphasis on their music and drama programs, often providing facilities for their students that are far superior than many 4-year college and universities. These high school facilities include several rehearsal rooms for band, choir, orchestra, percussion, ensembles, mariachi and individual practice. In addition, they also often have a drama classroom, a black box theater, and a Performing Arts Center. When working with the design team on these projects, there are often many obstacles to work around in order to provide the best scenario possible for the end user. These “obstacles” often include (but are not limited to) school district codes, budgets, the “convenience” factor, city codes, and space planning. This paper will showcase many high school music facilities through the south and southeast and the compromises and obstacles that were overcome with the end result goal as satisfying the music department.

7(x1) Samurai (review)

Reviewed by: 7(x1) Samurai Gavin Hawk 7(x1) Samurai. By David Gaines. Orlando Fringe Festival, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Orlando, FL. 24 May 2009. When Jacques Lecoq first opened his L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in 1956, he envisioned a school where students would learn to use their whole selves to create dramatic works—dramas that would rely primarily on the actor’s voice, body, and imagination to tell the story of the play, the type of production that Lecoq labeled a “theatre of movement and gesture.” A key component of this training was immersion in the gestural language of mime—not just the Marcel Marceau–inspired mime seen on Parisian street corners, but a storytelling mime comprised of three components: white pantomime, figurative mime, and cartoon mime. In 1977, David Gaines, along with fellow Lecoq graduates Paul Filipiak and Toby Sedgewick, created a company called the Moving Picture Mime Show that developed plays using this form. One of the company’s most notable pieces was The Seven Samurai and Other Stories (1979), a forty-minute adaptation of Akira Kurasawa’s three-and-a-half-hour film The Seven Samurai. In 2008, Gaines expanded the piece into 7(x1) Samurai, reinventing the show as a one-hour-solo tour de force that utilized all three components of storytelling mime. The audience entered a simple black-box theatre with a stage empty except for a small wooden box with two masks sitting on it. These were kabuki in style, one in white and black representing the good Chief Samurai, the other white and black with red stripes representing the evil Chief Brigand. Wearing a white and tan gi, Gaines entered to the sound of a strong wind blowing and a mournful bell tolling, aurally setting the tone for the uneasy peacefulness of a Japanese village and foreshadowing the impending conflict. Gaines deftly transitioned between each character, telling the story of a small village beset upon by brigands who steal the crops, beat the people, and wreck the town. One of the villagers goes into the city and seeks out the aid of ronin, or masterless samurais, to defend the village. Because the villager cannot pay these ronin for their services, he is turned down repeatedly until he meets the Chief Samurai, who agrees to help. The Chief assembles a band of six other warriors, each with a unique specialty, to fight the brigands. In a hilarious sequence, they train the villagers to fight using hoes and bows and arrows. Finally, the day comes when the brigands attack, and what follows is a huge battle sequence, complete with booby traps and flashing swords, and ending with the grateful townsfolk safe and the Chief Samurai striding off into the sunset. White pantomime—the mime technique most commonly associated with street performance—is used to translate what normally would be spoken dialogue into a common gestural language. Gaines used this technique most effectively in the sections of the play that required dialogue between characters. Rather than speaking lines from the source material for these moments, he employed gibberish that sounded like Japanese, along with specifically articulated gestures. Surprisingly, this method resulted in no loss of understanding of the story by the audience. One of the best examples of the use of this technique was when one of the peasants went from bar to bar in the city, telling the story of [End Page 116] how he had been trampled by horses and his town had been destroyed, begging the samurai for help, only to admit each time at the end of his tale that he could not afford to pay them—and each time being thrown out of the bar on his ear. Click for larger view View full resolution David Gaines as Chief Samurai in 7(x1) Samurai. (Photo: Aude Guerrucci.) Eliminating the need for an elaborate set or multiple costume changes, Gaines used figurative mime to create all of the scenic elements. Figurative mime has the actor draw in the space all the scenic elements and properties represented, and Gaines did so with gestures and whistles, creating everything from a beard on an evil brigand’s face to a...

On Collaborating: An Interview with José Cruz González

FALL 2009 159 On Collaborating: An Interview with José Cruz González Susan Vaneta Mason José Cruz González is a playwright, director, musician, lyricist, creator of the Hispanic Playwrights Project at South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, California, and Professor of Theatre Arts and Dance at California State University, Los Angeles. His parents and grandparents were farm workers and he grew up on California’s central coast. He went to college during the Mexican American Civil Rights movement where he was among the first generation of Chicano Studies students who defined and shaped Chicano theatre. González has a prolific career as a writer of youth and adult plays and has received numerous awards (Kennedy Center, NEA, TCG and others). During his development as an artist and throughout his professional career with commissions by numerous theatre companies, he has been committed to exploring diverse approaches to artistic collaboration. González’s latest play, Sunsets and Margaritas, was recently produced at the Denver Arts Center in Colorado. Susan Mason is González’s colleague at California State University, Los Angeles. She has collaborated with him on professional and academic projects. When and where did you first begin studying theatre? I did my undergraduate work at University of California San Diego in the late 1970s where I majored in U.S History/Chicano Studies and minored in Theatre. Why theatre? I knew I wanted to go to graduate school and thought theatre would help my communication skills. So I began by taking beginning, intermediate and then advanced acting. Eventually the teacher asked me to help coach ac- 160 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW tors. I was also tapping into the creativity in my childhood: painting, sketching, making things with my hands. How did theatre and Chicano Studies come together for you? Were you aware of Chicano theatre at that time? I first became aware of Chicano theatre by taking a class at UCSD from Jorge Huerta. We studied Teatro history and read plays. With that course I found my calling. Besides that, companies such as Teatro de la Esperanza toured to the university with bilingual productions. I also got to see the work of Carlos Morton who was an MFA student there. He had worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Tony Curiel was a graduating senior who went on to Stanford and then El Teatro Campesino. Silvia Cortez, Olga Villanueva, and Goyo Flores, a Vietnam vet, were undergrads in the program. So I got involved with the teatro group Jorge created on campus. After UCSD I went to Arizona State University and worked on my MA in theatre. I poured over everything I could find on Latino theatre, the history of the movement, when, how, Nuyorican writing. I started a teatro there. We performed with local actors and created some of our own work. At this time my focus changed to directing. I directed The Hands of God by Carlos Solórzano that became my thesis project. I was also introduced to theatre for young audiences. At that time my overall goal was to work with El Teatro Campesino or Teatro de la Esperanza: to take my training and experience back to the theatre. So after ASU, I applied to the MFA program at UC Irvine for more training in directing. What kinds of directing opportunities did you have when you completed your professional training at Irvine? How did your employment at South Coast Repertory (SCR) come about? While I was at Irvine, I had a summer internship with El Teatro Campesino. I also directed a student production of a Mexican play, Los Fantoches (The Effigies), that we took to the Edinburgh Festival. At Irvine I also worked with EOP [Education Opportunity Program] that had participated in a project called Second Lives at South Coast Rep. Second Lives was about immigrants and refugees of Orange County. I met with the project director, Michael Bigelow Dixon who invited me to assist him at SCR. And that lead to full-time employment at SCR? I began reading plays in Literary at SCR while I was still a student at Irvine. And I directed a play, Terra Nova, in a black box theatre...

Retrofitting a performance space: Everyman Theatre.

The new home of the Everyman Theatre company opened in 1910 as a Vaudeville house and has had many reincarnations throughout its lifetime, including a parking garage and 1550‐seat movie theater. In its latest reincarnation, the space under renovation was a large movie theater. A challenge for the project team has been to take this configuration and turn it into something that fits the needs of the Everyman Theater company. The current renovation is underway and will include a large studio theater, with approximately 250 seats and several different configurations including a typical end stage, thrust stage, and arena stage, a Blackbox theater, and support spaces such as classrooms, offices, and rehearsal space. One of the main issues related to the pre‐existing space is its current structure. The current design has two theaters stacked vertically and there is concern that noise and vibration from activities from the upper theater could disturb occupants in the lower theater. Upgrading the structure is complicated by the location of the building which sits directly above a metro tunnel and therefore has strict weight requirements. The approach currently proposed is to include a floating concrete floor and sound barrier ceiling. [Chris Pollock (SMW), Rima Namek and Diane Cho (Cho Benn Holback), Millie Dixon and John Coyne (Theatre Projects), and Vincent Lancisi (Everyman Theatre).]

Melancholia (review)

Reviewed by: Melancholia Chantal Rodríguez Melancholia. Collective creation by The Latino Theater Company Laboratory. Directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela. Cultural Reconstruction Series, Los Angeles Theater Center, Los Angeles. 14 June 2007. The Latino Theater Company's recent production of Melancholia seamlessly blended influences from the early Chicano theatre movement with contemporary political issues and elements of European theatrical tradition to stage the widespread devastation of warfare. By following the journey of an East LA marine, the play explores the increasingly high rate of suicide among soldiers returning from Iraq. Created collectively by the company's laboratory of new actors in 2003, the piece grew out of community based research, improvisations, and workshops, premiering at the Edge of the World Festival in October 2005. As the Iraq war rages on and both sides suffer the consequences, the Latino Theater Company chose to remount the production for the Los Angeles Theater Center's Cultural Reconstruction Series in the spring of 2007. The audience entered a small black-box theatre where a minimalist set and low whispers greeted them, setting the tone for the production, which was purposefully unpredictable, nonlinear, and highly theatrical. The play began in darkness with a haunting aria from Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, titled "Dido's Lament." After the echoes of the aria faded, several soldiers ran across the stage and exited through an illuminated door. Two fools/clowns, Tar (Fidel Gomez) and Skittles (Carmen Corral), managed to stop one soldier, Mario, from going "into the light"; determined to save his soul, they decide to go back and replay the events of his life to try to save him from the darkness of melancholy. The scenes shift to various moments in Mario's past, which illuminate his life choices and offer insight into his worsening alcoholism and insomnia as he distances himself from family and friends, struggling to forget the unspeakable acts that haunt him every time he closes his eyes. With Melancholia, the Latino Theater Company continues to mine an aesthetic grounded in the techniques of the early Chicano theatre movement by combining minimalist staging with music, dance, ritual, and haunting imagery. The production also reflected influences and didactic methods associated with the movement's early styles: actos, collectively created, improvised agitprop scenes; mitos, or myths; and corridos, Chicano storytelling songs. In addition to Melancholia's collective and improvisation-based creation, the production also shared elements traditional to these pieces, including the use of Brechtian devices, strategic use of music and song, a bilingual script rich with Chicano slang, and classic Chicano characters such as La Muerte (Death). Melancholia bears a striking similarity to Soldado Razo, an early Chicano acto performed to protest the Vietnam War during the Chicano Moratorium in 1971. Theatrical similarities between the plays include a strong antiwar theme, a focus on the role of the family in Chicano culture, the integral role of La Muerte in the central character's life, and the use of whiteface makeup, here used on the entire cast. This visual technique was highly successful, serving as a constant reminder of the death that haunts Mario and foreshadows his demise, while also allowing each actor to slip into several roles. Three different actors played the role of Mario (Ramiro Segovia, Sam Golzari, and Michael Esparza) and often occupied the stage at the same time, a choice that also contributed to the play's Brechtian tactics. The production's incorporation of European elements was also evident in its juxtaposition of Shakespearean dialogue from Hamlet with contemporary language and Chicano slang to create profound insights into mortality with dialogue accessible to the community audience. Throughout the evening, several key moments in Mario's tumultuous journey through his past emphasized the didactic nature of this production, solidifying the play's antiwar message. For example, a reenactment of a military-recruitment commercial was played in the form of a full-blown doo-wop musical number. Melancholia suggested the subversively glamorous recruiting techniques of the military: offering money for college, travel, adventure, respect, and, of course, women and sex. Although the military's specific recruitment of minorities in lower-income families could have been more explicit, Mario's desire to join the...

Small Dances about Big Ideas (review)

Reviewed by: Small Dances about Big Ideas Christine Jowers Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Small Dances about Big Ideas, presented by The Culture Project/Impact Festival and Dance New Amsterdam. The Choreographer's Commentary Version of the work, October, 2006. The choreographer Liz Lerman was once told that she would never earn any critical support because her work wasn't confrontational. The [End Page 177] memory of that comment has stuck with her despite her being recognized with a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 2002 and receiving numerous critical accolades for performance and community work. During a question-and-answer period at the conclusion of the New York City performances of Small Dances about Big Ideas, she said of her audience, "I want to keep them in the theater, not chase them out," and added, "I love this"—referring to the sense of community one feels after a shared theatrical experience. For Small Dances about Big Ideas, an evening-length dance/theater piece, Lerman was commissioned by the Seevak Fund for Harvard Law School to create a choreographic work commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Nuremburg Trials that would encompass human rights law from Nuremburg onward—an important and unprecedented commission for a dance company. Even in New York City, often called the dance capital of the world, dance artists can feel like an irrelevant part of the culture as they struggle to convince presenters, arts funders, critics, and new audiences of the validity of their work. Much of having a contemporary dance company involves teaching people why they should care about the art form at all. Then along comes Harvard Law School, an unusual dance partner, demonstrating not only that they appreciate the relevance and possibility of the medium but also that they are willing to commission a work for it. In the choreographer's commentary version of Small Dances about Big Ideas (a smaller version of the original work, designed to fit into tiny spaces like Dance New Amsterdam's black box theater), Lerman talks to the audience, reading e-mails between herself and her legal muse at Harvard, Professor Martha Minow. Minow believed that Lerman, with movement, could illuminate human rights law in an unacademic fashion that would resonate with an audience in their very bones. One of the powerful stories presented in Small Dances is that of a woman forensic anthropologist, an analyst of skeletal remains who determines whether bodies have been tortured or mutilated before death. The "bone woman's" voice is overheard speaking of her work. She talks of marking victims by placing red flags beside their bodies. In a short time she discovers that there are not enough flags. A dancer (Cassie Meador), on a dimly-lit stage, moves away from a mound of crumpled bodies at her feet. She reaches out for one of the male figures in the pile, tenderly rolling, folding, and kneading his body to bring him toward her. She embraces his head, caresses the back of his neck lovingly with her finger tips, she nestles her ear to his thigh, then gently cradles and rocks his body as one would a newborn. As she moves, we see the Narrator (Peter DiMuro) observing from the background while reading from a text describing the bone woman's disbelief at the torture she uncovers. Meanwhile, Meador continues her mindful ritual, listening to the story this body has tell, its various positions seeming to whisper, "I was hit here . . . on the left side . . . on the right side." At the scene's conclusion the bone woman releases [End Page 178] the cradled body from her grasp and stretches out empathetically to rest on the ground beside him. The scene evokes an additional aspect of genocide: the beauty and commitment of those who fight for victims. Many stories overlap in this performance, some danced—at times with simple movement and at times with great energy and technique—and others vocalized. Lerman and her company of dance artists use straightforward minimal movement (walking, running, jumping, and falling) with abstracted familiar gestures (waving, nodding one's head, wiping a brow, or rubbing eyes) to reach out directly to the audience. Most of the movements, with the exception...

The Performing Arts in Second Language Acquisition

This paper is a report on the experience of dramatizing Hans Peter Richter’s novel Damals war es Friedrich (1961). Subsequent to the discussion of the novel in an upper division German class, students and I worked on a dramatized version of the text. The play was performed in the Black Box Theater at Georgetown University, Washington D.C., on April 11, 2006. The first part of the report will illustrate how the work on the play was embedded within the context of a literacy approach towards teaching German as a foreign language. In addition to outlining the benefits of including a theater performance in language education, as experienced during the rehearsals and the performance of the play, the second part of the report will discuss how the project was carried out. This paper is a report on the experience of dramatizing Hans Peter Richter’s novel Damals war es Friedrich (1961). Subsequent to the discussion of the novel in an upper division German class, students and I worked on a dramatized version of the text. The play was performed in the Black Box Theater at Georgetown University, Washington D.C., on April 11, 2006. The first part of the report will illustrate how the work on the play was embedded within the context of a literacy approach towards teaching German as a foreign language. In addition to outlining the benefits of including a theater performance in language education, as experienced during the rehearsals and the performance of the play, the second part of the report will discuss how the project was carried out.

Programming remediation to a newly complete performing arts center

A large new performing arts building at a university included an 800-seat recital hall, proscenium theater, black box theater, large instrumental rehearsal room, choral rehearsal room, and practice rooms. It was designed with attention to acoustics concerns throughout, but the final results left the owner with a myriad of problems. These problems included poor hearing conditions in the large performance space, intrusion of exterior environmental noise, excessive mechanical system noise and vibration, and inexplicable lack of separation between rehearsal rooms that were separated by an STC 70+ wall. The authors parsed through the complaints and field conditions to extract a range of reasons for the problems. The paper presents the analysis techniques for these challenges and shows options that were developed for practical solutions.

Kuningas Lear [King Lear] (review)

Reviewed by: Kuningas Lear [King Lear] Nely Keinänen Kuningas Lear [King Lear] Presented by the Finnish National Theater, Helsinki, Finland. From April 7, 2005. Directed by Reko Lundán. Translated by Juha Siltanen. Sets by Kati Lukka and Antti Mattila. Costumes by Auli Turtiainen. Lighting by Ville Toikka. Sound by Esa Mattila. Fights by Kristo Salminen. With Esko Salminen (Lear), Jani Karvinen (King of France), Ilja Peltonen (Duke of Burgundy, Curan), Esa-Matti Pölhö (Duke of Cornwall), Petri Liski (Duke of Albany), Timo Tuominen (Earl of Kent), Ismo Kallio (Earl of Gloucester), Jussi Lehtonen (Edgar), Eero Aho (Edmund), Juha Muje (Fool), Jani Karvinen (Oswald), Ilja Peltonen (Curan), Tuomas Mattila (Old Man), Tuomas Mattila (Doctor), Kristiina Halttu (Goneril), Wanda Dubiel (Regan), Elsa Saisio (Cordelia), and others. Given how infrequently King Lear is performed in Finland, there was understandable enthusiasm in Helsinki when it was announced that the director/playwright Reko Lundán would direct the play on the main stage of the Finnish National Theater, with Esko Salminen in the lead role. In addition to his work in film and television, Salminen is known as a Shakespearean actor, having most recently played Prospero (1995) and Falstaff (2003) at the National Theater. Lundán's production examined what happens to individuals when they are forsaken by the gods, left alone, capable only of treachery and cruelty. Although Lundán also [End Page 68] said in the program notes that the aim of tragedy is catharsis, building a bridge from suffering to solace, I was not completely convinced that this production managed to build that bridge. But still, there was much to admire. Since its first production in 1886, King Lear has been performed sixteen times by professional theatre companies in Finland, making it the least performed of Shakespeare's major tragedies (compare Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet with 58 professional productions each, followed by Othello with 30 and Macbeth with 23). The play was produced only sporadically in the 1910s, 30s, and 50s (with no performances in the 20s, 40s and 60s), but since the 1970s has appeared somewhat more regularly. Influential productions include one by the director Kalle Holmberg at the Turku City Theater in 1972, which was influenced by Peter Brook, and another by Jotaarkka Pennanen at the Finnish National Theater in 1983, a powerful and visual modern production, which included an auditorium built around the back of the stage where the 'characters' retreated to watch the rest of the play (and the audience) after they had died. In 1998, Teatteri Jurkka, the leading black-box theatre in Helsinki, staged an experimental Lear directed by Petteri Sallinen, where five actors took on fourteen roles, playing on an empty stage. Lear was played by Pentti Siimes, who had come out of semi-retirement to take on the role; one reviewer reported that she had never seen such a cruel and sarcastic Lear. This production also experimented with cross-gender casting, sometimes to quite good effect: the lone actress played Regan, Cordelia, and Edmund, while a male actor took on Goneril along with Edgar and Kent. Reko Lundán brought to Lear a stark, modern sensibility, familiar to Finns from Lundán's own work as a playwright, most recently in his trilogy on the Finnish welfare state: (Tarpeettomia ihmisiä [Unnecessary People], Ihmisiä hyvinvointivaltiossa [People in a Welfare State], and Aina joku eksyy [Someone Always Gets Lost]. Two key decisions shaped this production: first, he set the play in a kind of Finnish minimalist fantasy of modern-day Britain, complete with cell phones and golf courses. Second, he used a physical, rugged translation by Juha Siltanen, one of Finland's leading translators, commissioned especially for this production. For a non-Finnish-speaking audience, it's difficult to describe the qualities of Siltanen's translation. Lear was first translated into Finnish in 1883 by Paavo Cajander, who from 1879 until his death in 1913 translated all of Shakespeare's plays except Pericles (for some 20 of Shakespeare's plays, Cajander's is still the only Finnish translation). Cajander's translations are known for their lyrical, poetic qualities. The most recent major [End Page 69] translation is by Matti Rossi, a well...

14th Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, 2005 Black Box Theater, Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA, 7–9 April 2005.

14^th Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, 2005 Black Box Theater, Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA, 7–9 April 2005.

Enacting This Is for You, Anna

In the spring of 2004, I had the opportunity to direct a student production of the play This Is for You, Anna at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. The play was done in our black box theatre with seating for about 200, as part of Theatrextra, a “second season” of plays intended to offer smaller or more “experimental” shows. In this article, I will consider how the play attempts to re-enact the circumstances and context of a real-life crime in a non-realistic, yet evocative, manner. I will also consider the fact that to perform This Is for You, Anna is, to an unusual degree, to re-enact the history of the play’s creation through collective process. Finally, I will comment on the effectiveness of enactment as a tool of feminist pedagogy with student actors.