Results tagged “Underground” from Inkblog!

Happy Tuesday, folks.  It's Anne here, resting up a bit from the closing weekend of The Inkwell's first Inkubator Festival.  I'm tired, happy, and busting with pride for everything that team did over the past four weeks.  Jessi let me know this weekend that we employed almost 40 people to get this festival off the ground.  I don't know what else to say about that but WOW... and thanks so much to everyone who put their blood, sweat, and tears into this thing (yes, we had some of each).

But I also wanted to add a bit to Cindy Marie Martin's thoughtful blog entry by providing the lyrics to the song that she is talking about, Makin' Time.  It's rather beautiful and deeply moving in the context of the play.

It's hard for me to pin down one life lesson impressed on me in the past month while working on Underground, but the title of the song my character, Mindy Lee, sang called Makin' Time, does a good job of summing it up.  Make time for the things and people who are important to you. 

My name's Cindy Marie Martin and I hail from the small town of West Union in North Central West Virginia.  Not a coal mining town, like the town of Mindy Lee, but just as small and just as community driven.  As a very little girl, I grew up with my daddy workin' in Weirton Steel and my mama at home.  Both their families were from good ole' Doddridge County, and when my father retired from the mill, we moved back there.  I was in sixth grade.  I spent the rest of my schooling in West Union... and couldn't wait to leave.  Everyone knows everyone else's business.  And if they don't, they think they do.  Which is just as good and probably more interesting.  It felt suffocating to this young girl. 

But, distance lends perspective, and after five years in Northern Virginia where neighbors don't know your name and the traffic eats up a good quarter of your day, sometimes I miss the slow pace and close knit community of the mountains.  I certainly have a healthy appreciation for it now that I lacked as a teenager. 

And that Appalachian mindset is what I love about West Virginia and why I wanted to do this show so badly.  Folks there never seem to forget to take their time and smell the daisies.  Honestly, they pretty much forget to move fast at all.  And family is always on the top of their list — everything else can wait.  James McManus' script really captures that.  I felt he had a show that honestly portrayed West Virginians and their values, as well as the hard lives of coal miners.  I felt proud of this script and wanted to help put it into the world so others could experience what I knew about West Virginia, instead of the punch line of someone's stereotypical joke. 

And what all went into putting Underground onstage, at least for me?  Makin' time for some intensive training on the guitar from my husband, Lonnie, for one.  I had to play the guitar (at least a little) while I sang Makin' Time.  I took lessons in high school, but I haven't played since then.  So, that was a fun adventure for both he and I.  Thanks are due to fellow actor, Clay Steakley, for the loan of his guitar for the past month.  That was a lifesaver. 

The biggest challenge was just making a decision, making an acting choice and going with it.  The rehearsal process was so fast that there wasn't time to try out many different ideas.  But, ultimately, I think that made for some very strong choices for the whole cast.  There wasn't time to question a bold decision too hard — just go for it.  It was actually liberating to be free of the deeply intellectual process that actors normally go through for a role.  Table work, endless discussion of characters and motivations, and my personal favorite — the analysis of each line and it's subtext.  My script usually looks like a gaggle of children were turned loose on it with highlighters and pencils.  The time constraints of the Inkubator Festival forced us to boil down the process to essentials only.  In the words of Sir Lawrence Olivier to Dustin Hoffman, "Just act, dear boy.  Just act." 

And, we did.

Inhabiting Mindy Lee has been so much fun.  And it's reminded me to make time for what's important.  And maybe the process itself has reminded me to take less time creatively.  Because isn't it sometimes better to go with what feels right over what's analytically the best choice?

The great theatre director Peter Brook called it Rough Theatre.  I call it Punk Rock Theatre.  Theatre produced on a shoestring both in money and time.  Raw theatre, no-apologies theatre that confronts, challenges, mocks, laughs at itself, weeps, and hollers.  All of the work The Inkwell has produced over the past month has been just that — honest and direct with writing that's in your face and action that happens practically in your lap.

Although The Inkwell's primary purpose is to incubate new plays and to give playwrights an opportunity to see and hear their work with hopes toward future revisions and drafts and productions, I've found that this process has also been transformative for the actors involved in bringing this work to light.  I know it has been for me (I'm Clay Steakley and I play Bones in James McManus's Underground, by the way).

As our director Chris Niebling said to the cast last week, we've done two months of work in three weeks.  That's what Punk Rock Theatre is all about.  Get it up on its feet, don't give it time to get self-indulgent, and throw it in people's faces.  That's just what we've done, getting a complex play about the lives of West Virginia coal miners and those they love up and running, blocked, off-book, lit and designed with minimal opportunities for full runs, dress rehearsals, or the niceties of previews or — God forbid — table work (for those of you less familiar with the rehearsal process, table work is when the actors gather around the table to read and talk through a script moment by moment).   

For an actor, there's something both terrifying and exhilarating about this.  The limited time and the shaky, changeable nature of a new work force you to strip everything down to its essentials.  You can't waste time with narcissistic character exploration.  Instead, strip your character to his or her core attributes.  With my character of Bones, I found that he is honest, innocent, ambitious, and fiercely loyal.  That's enough to begin with — especially since some of these basic attributes have their own inherent conflicts.  Next, you identify the basic actions within the individual beats of scenes.  Bones, for example, defends, deflects, attacks, protects, retreats, and pleads.  Find the simplest, most playable and straightforward impulses and intentions, and trust them.  Trust your fellow actors.  Listen.  Communicate.  Sure, you're not positive just which line comes next, and yeah, you have no idea which scene follows this one.  But, if you relax, trust yourself and your cast mates, let the language do its own work and just go out there and act, listen, and communicate like a human being, all those other pieces fall into place.

In other words, rather than complicating or destabilizing the actor's process, the limitations of the past month's work have served, for me, to distill it to its basic, most honest and direct components.  Honesty is the key.

And having fun.

This, combined with our director and stage manager's shepherding (and cajoling and arguing and exasperation), our designers' brilliant, intuitive work, and, most of all, our playwright's beautiful language and rich characters, have made these plays produced by The Inkwell burst forth into real, gritty glory.  Call it Rough Theatre, Punk Rock Theatre, plain old Theatre or old-fashioned Entertainment — it works.  And, as Peter Brook described it in The Empty Space, it is by its nature, "anti-authoritarian, anti-traditional, anti-pomp, anti-pretence.  This is the theatre of noise, and the theatre of noise is the theatre of applause."

Hello, folks, how are y'all?  It's Anne here on this fine Thursday to tell you a little bit about the opening night for The Inkwell's second Inkubator production, Underground by Jim McManus.  The play takes us to a small West Virginia mining town and into the lives of those who spend most of their waking hours in and around the coal seams.

We have another outstanding group of actors breathing life into this script — Clay Steakley, Andrew Price, Cindy Marie Martin, Steve Beall, Frank Mancino, Ben Shovlin, and Charlotte Akin.  As one audience members pointed out at the post-play discussion, this is a world that many of us urban folk don't see too often.  Jim's harshly poetic language, as well as the contradiction between each character's dreams and the seemingly mundane details of their lives (church, sweet tea with gin, poison ivy found in unusual places, pails of blueberries, dirty fingernails), quickly draw us into the rituals of small town life.  But we're also pulled into the mine itself, thanks to clever thinking by the design team.  It was a reminder to me about how theater can create magic with very simple effects.  I felt the darkness and cold around me just watching the actors in nothing but the light from their mining helmets.

What I've enjoyed most about witnessing the process of bringing Underground on its feet is the way in which the actors have worked with changes in the script that have put their characters on new and surprising courses.  Many of the actors were involved in the Page to Stage reading at The Kennedy Center this past September, and they were startled and a little uncomfortable with the revisions that Jim made over the past several months.  Steve in particular — who plays Tracks, the father of two young boys trying to get out of this town — has had to struggle with some dramatic changes to his character, including a drinking problem that surfaces halfway through the play.  It's been fascinating to see how these actors absorb these twists and turns and to see how it deepens the stories interwoven into the play.  Bravo, guys.

Unfortunately, Jim has not been able to come down to be a part of the rehearsal process, but he'll be here this weekend to see the show.  If you come on by on Saturday, you might get a chance to ask him a question or two about the play and where it's going.  It's so cool to see this play at this particular moment in time; it's likely to be entirely different after Jim sees it and continues his revisions.

And please, don't be shy about sharing your thoughts and impressions with us about these plays.  In the next posting, I'm going to throw some questions out there that you might want to think about before, during, or after the performances.  Please post your thoughts here at Inkblog!  You are a part of the play-making process.

Here's a shot of Cindy Marie Martin as Mindy Lee, a girl in love with a miner but with big dreams of heading to Nashville to start a singing career.  We learn a bit more about her struggles in this revision of Jim McManus' play than we did in earlier drafts. (photo by Melissa Blackall)

Hey folks - It's Anne once again, energized and excited after opening night of OK.  Wow.  I just have to say that Jessi Burgess and the team of actress who devoted so much time and energy to the play — Fiona Blackshaw, Suzanne Edgar, Andrea Gaspar, Hilary Kacser, Helen Pafumi, and Casie Platt — have done a remarkable job in putting this piece up on its feet, especially when faced with day after day of rewrites.  And with such a crackerjack design and production team — Amy Kellet, Matt Soule, Jarett Pisani, Suzen Mason, Diana Khoury, Adam Magazine, James Hesla, and Lee Liebeskind — this bare bones production couldn't be more beautiful.  It's worth it to just come and hear the "gunfight." (Could that be more of a teaser?)  I couldn't be more grateful or more humbled. 

There was a rich post-play discussion as well, where we talked about the structure of the play (which has changed significantly since it's reading at The Kennedy Center in September), as well as some of the questions and themes I'm trying to explore around guns, girls, history, and legend.  I need a little time to absorb all that's happened to the play, but I'll share with you all my thoughts in the coming weeks.

But there's more good news for The Inkwell.  The DCist, the premiere blog about all the comings and goings in the District, has written a long feature about us and the Inkubator Festival.  Take a look at the article and learn more about what Jessi envisions for the company.  And find out a lot more about Jim McManus and his play Underground, the Inkubator production that premieres this evening, 8:00 p.m. sharp at H Street Playhouse.

I hope you'll read the article in full, but I just have to share with you all this quote given by Actor Steve Beall — he's amazing as a West Virginia miner who's seen his fair share of tragedy in Underground.  In describing The Inkwell, he says:

“If actors or anybody else with an interest in theater aren’t involved with things like this, then they need to stop bemoaning the state of theater in America.”

How we love you, Steve.

Come on by and see Underground, OK, and The F Word this week.

Hey folks - It's Anne again... The Inkwell has just made it through two straight days of tech - where we light the lights, throw the actors on stage with their costumes and props, and figure out where sound cues go in the two Inkubator productions that open this week at H Street Playhouse.  At the same time, Patrick Torres, Melissa Blackall, and the cast of The F Word continue to work through the script for the upcoming staged reading of the play to be held this coming Saturday.

Here are few photos from the weekend to show you what we've been up to and whet your appetite for these last events of The Inkwell's inaugural Inkubator Festival. (All these fantastic photos are by Melissa Blackall.)

OK by Anne M. McCaw (yours truly)
(opening on Tuesday, January 22nd at 8:00 p.m. and running through Sunday, January 27th)

Stage Manager Amy Kellet (right), Director Jessi Burgess (middle), and Properties Designer Suzen Mazon (middle right) create bubbles out of cotton batting in a bathtub for actress Suzanne Edgar (far right), who plays Josie, Wyatt Earp's lover, in OK.

Actress Casie Platt struts in her spurs as the Cowpoke in OK.

Actress Fiona Blackshaw (bottom) plays Mattie, Wyatt Earp's dejected wife, who pours out her troubles to a mysterious stranger Vida, played by Actress Hilary Kacser (top).

UNDERGROUND by Jim McManus
(opening on Wednesday, January 23rd at 8:00 p.m. and running through Sunday, January 27th)

Director Chris Niebling (left) gives some instructions as Actor Frank Mancino (left) looks on during the tech for Underground.

Actors Frank Mancino (left) and Steve Beall (right) play Bucky and Tracks, two long-time miners taking a break in the coal seam.

Actresses Charlotte Akins (left) and Cindy Marie Martin (right) play the miner's wives, Lydia and Mindy Lee, sharing a cup of sweet tea with a little kick.

Cast and the technical crew work through a scene during the tech of Underground.

THE F WORD by Melissa Blackall
(staged reading on Saturday, January 26th at noon)