The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2013 Season continues through November 3rd, and though one may be drawn to the beautiful town of Ashland by the prospect of seeing world class productions of works by the Bard, it is the new work by playwrights and play-makers that will astonish, entertain, and activate audiences. Under the tenure of Artistic Director Bill Rauch, OSF’s commitment to the voices of writers who reflect the diversity of a twenty-first century America is unwavering. OSF has truly become America’s first and only National Theatre.
I saw two plays in each of OSF’s distinctive performance venues. In the outdoor Elizabethan Theatre (1200 seats), the American Premiere of David Farr’s The Heart of Robin Hood, shares the stage with Rauch’s staging of Shakespeare’s late play Cymbeline. In the intimate space of the Thomas Theatre (formerly the Black Swan, with up to 360 seats), Rauch’s staging of King Lear and Kwame Kwei-Armeh’s brilliant guidance of Naomi Wallace’s new play The Liquid Plain transformed the physical space in every imaginable way. In the Angus Bowmer Theatre (600 seats), the premiere of Tanya Saracho’s The Tenth Muse is set in a 18th century convent, and director Amanda Dehnert’s daring staging of My Fair Lady strips the stage bare but for a fabulous marquis and seating for her omnipresent ensemble. The undersung heroes of OSF may very well be its designers and technical teams. These visual artists, including projection/video designer Alex Koch, scenic designers Michael Ganio (outdoor designs), Brenda Davis and Christopher Acebo (Lear and Plain), David Jenkins (My Fair Lady) and Richard L. Hay (The Tenth Muse) and their artistic entourage of technicians, stagehands, electricians and carpenters, have created the effects that transport audiences across the globe, through time, and into spaces of the imaginative minds of the directors and playmakers. Absolute magic indeed.
Without a doubt, the breakthrough productions of the festival for this reviewer were the premieres of works by playwrights Tanya Saracho and Naomi Wallace, both of whom hold passionate commitments to uncover hidden histories of the Americas. Wallace’s internationally known body of work includes One Flea Spare (Wallace is one of just two American playwrights included in the repertoire of the Comédie Française, the other writer is Tennessee Williams), while Saracho is the co-founder of Teatro Luna, Chicago’s first and only all-Latina theatre company.
Wallace’s new play, The Liquid Plain exposes the history of the most “successful” slavetrader in history, the eventual Senator James De Woolf, (played to perfection by Seattle favorite Michael Winters). But this historical truth is there to create the changing world for Wallace’s other figures: the slaves and sailors who did or did not escape his wrath and ultimate actions of cruelty. Wallace’s masterpiece is set on a dock on the coast of Bristol, Rhode Island, where the lives of two escaped slaves Adjua and Dembe (the brilliantly partnered June Carryl and Kimberly Scott) are changed forever. When they haul a dead white man from the sea to scavenge his body for usable goods, he revives. Their histories are tragically intertwined, and as the story of slaving and surviving unravels, it becomes clear that Wallace is not only a tireless historian and gifted dramatist, she is also a deeply psychic channeler of voices dwelling in the still-raw scars of America’s past. The scenic team here includes lighting and projection/video designs by Christopher Akerlind and Alex Koch respectively, who, along with Chicago-based Sound Designer and Composer Victoria Delorio, create for audiences a living, breathing, and constantly shifting ocean, beyond the horizon of the proscenium. During the breathtaking dramatic action of the The Liquid Plain, audiences too are at sea, confronting the lives of Africans and American-born slaves. Masterful performances by the rest of the ensemble calibrate the uncovering of Adjua and Dembe’s secrets, and the years of 1791-1837 are cast into a history American children are never taught. Director Kwei-Armeh (the new artistic director of Baltimore Centerstage) writes, “This is a play about remembrance. It’s a play about revenge. It’s a play about what we—America, the West—are built upon and whom we have been built upon.” This quote engages audiences in the criminal legacy inscribed in slavery, and also demands our attention to the courageous actions of renegades, hidden populations, and the absolute power possible when a person demands, and eventually finds, the truth.
Seattle’s major theatre have shamefully neglected producing Wallace’s work. I challenge both Kurt Beattie at ACT and Jerry Manning of the Seattle Rep to look past what is perhaps their own rather vanilla sensibilities and consider the maturity of Seattle audiences. We are ready for the fearless writings of Wallace’s plays—war zones and slaughter houses, worlds of mixed races and more than two genders, slaves who survive and, perhaps, change the world. Bring The Liquid Plain to Seattle.
Saracho’s play The Tenth Muse also uses a little known piece of history to take audiences deep into her theatrical imagination. Her world is contained within the walls the Convent of San Jeronimo, in occupied Mexico City, the year 1715. The Tenth Muse tells the story of the women in that religious world and their connection to Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, the Mexican nun and poet who was, arguably, the first playwright of “new world”. The dank cells and spiritual mysteries of the cloister are evoked by Hay’s ingenious collaboration with Lighting Designer Jane Cox, and the use of candles, silhouettes and shadows gives the feeling of a cavernous and dangerous space, full of secrets. Today, Sor Juana’s dramatic works (House of Desires is Sor Juana’s play-within-the-play of Saracho’s Tenth Muse) are working their way into the theatrical canon; the historical convent finally acknowledged as a space of intellectual and creative retreat for many women of independence and/or means. Saracho’s play is the first I know of to imagine Sor Juana’s world, and to make clear the caste system in the stolen and colonized Americas. The measurement of Spanish and AmerIndian (indigenous) blood in a person’s body determined one’s station in life. Saracho provides invaluable information about the peninsulars, criollos, mestizos, cholos, mulattos, zambos, negros and los indios that inhabit Mexico’s history. As with The Liquid Plain, the plot of The Tenth Muse is too full of gradually revealed secrets for me to dare to give any details to you. Suffice it to say that three young women of different castes arrive at the convent, creating disruption and eventually open the armoire they were specially told NOT TO OPEN. As with every great tale, the story, and the herstory of Sor Juana herself, lie inside.
As a salve for the hidden histories of the Americas, OSF’s audiences are treated to the other highlight of 2013, the syncopated pandemonium of director Amanda Denhart’s sure handed and sure-footed staging and musical direction of My Fair Lady, Lerner and Lowe’s classic musical treatment of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Denhart drives her ensemble off a theatrical cliff by creating a production responding to Brecht’s insistence that theatre have its mechanics seen, only essential costumes and props used, no decoration or embellishment, a conscious theatre about theatre. These meta theatricks offer actor/singers as story tellers, the story as a teaching, the setting nowhere but the theatre itself with mere suggestions of Shaw’s London Haymarket, Professor Higgins’ home, or most thrillingly, Opening Day at the Ascot races. So it follows that we see actors changing characters and clothes and the players onstage at all times. Single gestures change a scene, as a kind of essentialism is the organizing principle in Denhart’s work. Crazy, crowded, and captivating, Denhart’s staging reflects her seamless artistry in her dual roles. Directing the music is directing the play, and her integrative sense of storytelling techniques makes the staging, songs and the marvelously action-driven choreography by Jaclyn Miller all one thing. As with The Tenth Muse (and not incidentally, many of Shakespeare’s plays) there is a play-within-the-play. Recent chamberized New York productions of Stephen Sondheim’s works were conceived in a similar manner. With just two pianos, and the violin of the engaging performer-in-training Chloe Brown, the mise en scene is changed with nothing more than a chair, a series of suspended chapeaus, or a staircase. One of the greatest scores in American musical theatre history needs no decor. Dehnert knows this, and when Freddy (the marvelous Ken Robinson) sings On the Street Where You Live, with choreography so over the top it would qualify for a Charles Ludlum cabaret, audiences transport to the clouds of fabulous entertainment. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledged another brilliant bit of casting partnership—Jonathan Haugen and Rachel Warren as Henry Higgins and Eliza Dolittle. The story of a cockney beggar and the upper class elocutionist who swore he could teach her to talk like a lady was never well-served by the too old Rex Harrison and the too-young (and non-singing) Audrey Hepburn (in the film). Here, Haugen and Warren are close in age, and are inextricably drawn to what they loathe and love in each other. Dehnert writes, “It’s the story of a young woman who is trying to figure out how to be in the world, and get buffeted around by all sort of forces, and then figures out how to climb on top of them.” In my experience, Dehnert miscalculated her ending, having Higgins and Dolittle take hands like business partners, exiting through the theatre doors, rather then the curtain legs of the stage. Does the Professor fall in love with his subject? Does the flower girl fall her in love with her teacher and tormenter? Shaw had one answer, Dehnert has another. All power to her.
Rauch’s productions had strengths and disappointments. I saw Michael Winters play Lear, (he is sharing the role with Jack Willis); his rendering of the aging king and his three daughters, and the terrors of madness, memory, and betrayal is a powder keg, first of explosive authority, and eventually of heartbreaking disorientation and grief. Rauch’s present day setting is concise and effective; the opening, exposition-heavy scene has never been clearer. It is the intimacy of the Thomas Theatre and Rauch’s arena staging that helps to deliver the play with such clarity. There were weaknesses in this production, notably Edgar’s sharp changes from preferred legitimate son to disguised beggar (the otherwise excellent Benjamin Pelteson is greatly disabled by the staging of Edgar’s critical soliloquy in the catwalk where we could not see him) and the strange imagining of Cordelia (Sofia Jean Gomez) as the soldier in charge of France’s army. (Where is her husband?) Cordelia is first presented as an entirely believable goth rebel, her older sisters as elegantly dressed socialites. But her fifth act return as a soldier-in-charge did not resonate. There were stand-out performances as well. Raffi Barsoumian delivers Edmund the Bastard magnificently, as a Green Beret with his enraged finger on the trigger. The competitive lust of daughters Goneril (Vilma Silva) and Regan (Robin Goodrin-Nordli) for both power and for Edmund’s body is deeply rooted. Daisuke Tsuji’s fool was as marvelous a king’s jester as I’ve ever seen. Wisdom poured from his mouth, and his ebullient youth and love for his King made him seem like Lear’s son. Rare is the chance to see this great tragedy in such an intimate setting, so if you love this play, get down to Ashland to see either Willis or Winters in the role of their lives.
Rauch’s Cymbeline was far less effective. Over-burdened by a chaotic setting (Ganio’s design’s for the outdoors shows were fine for the pragmatic needs of each production, but visually were erratic and confusing) and what seemed like a total lack of editing, the play was very difficult to follow. It’s a good thing Rauch is directing Into The Woods in 2014, as his affinity for fairy tales knows no bounds. In Cymbeline his fairy tale concept failed, creating confusion about what planet we were on, and more than a fair share of inexplicable costume choices and unclear allegiances. This late work of Shakespeare’s is a difficult play and Rauch’s production did little to help focus the story.
Director Joel Sass did a terrific job with Farr’s The Heart of Robin Hood. This all-ages outdoor production was an utter delight. Marion (Kate Hurster) is “the heart” of this production, in which Robin Hood (John Tufts) is happily stealing from the rich, but must learn to give to give to the needy and deserving. Marion, escaping from her own confinement by disguising like a boy and trying to join Robin’s merry band, becomes the teacher. Disappointingly, Marion ends up a maid-in-distress who must be rescued. The refreshing idea of her sense of adventure and boldness deteriorates into a rather predictable boy-rescues-girl scenario. Nevertheless, if you have never sat in OSF’s enchanting outdoor theatre, heard the trumpet’s “call to performance” and seen the raising of the theatre’s flag (just as they did in Shakespeare’s days at The Globe), The Heart of Robin Hood is a perfect play with which to begin. With the stars sparkling in the falling dark, lightning flashing in the distant Oregon sky, and lovers twirling magically over our heads, OSF creates an enchanting world, however fleeting, for our imaginations.
With the top notch team of dramaturgs led by Lue Morgan Douthit, OSF sets the standard for how theatres can work with audiences, writers, production teams and performers to expand all our minds about language, history, story, and playmaking. If anybody ever asks you what a dramaturg is, or what they do, just send them to Ashland and tell them to read from the wealth of materials readily available. They, and hopefully other theatres in America, will realize that the dramaturg is not a luxury, but a necessity, for world class theatre and for that matter, world class audiences.
You will find both in Ashland.
My friend Karen and I travelled south for 4 days and 3 nights, and we saw six plays during our visit. By the good fortune of finding an affordable and beautifully appointed large studio apartment to rent, we also had two great bicycles to use, and thus stayed out of the car for our entire visit. The heat of the summer and the smoke of the lightning- ignited fires had both diminished, and Ashland’s temperatures were mild. This is really the best time of year to go; the summer high season is over, the kids are back in school, and the plays will continue through early November.
The outdoor theatre will close October 12, with All indoor shows will run
through November 3rd. The 2014 Season has been announced, and will include The Tempest, Richard III, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Into The Woods, Water by the Spoonful, Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, The Cocoanuts (Mark Bedard’s adaptation of Irving Berlin’s classic), and world premieres of A Wrinkle in Time, Family Album, and Robert Schenkkan’s The Great Society. Contact www.osfashland.org for information about tickets, membership, calendar and visits.