Archives for 2009

A delightfully warm discussion at the dinner table before one of the operas at the Santa Fe Opera Festival a couple of nights ago about the French soprano Natalie Dessay prompts this blog post. A couple of eminent music writers (whom I admire a great deal and very much enjoyed meeting in the flesh at the Festival) consider Dessay to have a less than stellar voice and her acting to be gimmicky and repetitive.

To my new friends — and to anyone else who thinks Dessay is anything less than one of the best performers to have graced the opera stage in a long, long time — I say this:

People tend to forget that opera is theatre. What Dessay brings to each part she plays is “total performance”. Her voice is fine and flexible — she can sing an aria whether she’s standing in the middle of the stage or lying flat on her back, and make it sound like it’s pouring out of her soul. When she performs recitative, she gives the impression that she’s having a visceral conversation with herself or her scene parter. It all feels so completely organic.

Beyond her vocal powers, she is also one of the most dynamic and agile operatic actresses around. Unlike Anna Netrebko, whose Violetta in La Traviata I caught at San Francisco Opera recently, Dessay actually behaved like a woman on the verge of death. Netrebko’s death scene came across as a strange surprise; Dessay’s was organic. Even when bouncing about the stage in a sea anemone-like, fuchsia-colored frock in the first act, the performer’s rapacious energy seemed finely undercut with the manic energy of someone who knows they may not have long to live.

Admittedly, I’m not that interested in hearing recordings of Dessay’s voice. It’s the whole package that fascinates me: I am engrossed with her stage presence and all the elements that fuse to together to make the opera star the consummate artist that she is. I have traveled a long way to experience Dessay on stage in the past and don’t plan to give up doing so anytime soon.

Surprises at San Francisco Symphony’s Distant Worlds: Music From Final Fantasy concert of music from the famous video game written by the Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu:

1. The audience was full of game geeks, most of them under 35 and many of them Asian.

2. The composer processed through the hall flanked by two aides at the start of the concert before taking his seat with a bow to rapturous applause from his fans.

3. Thousands of people — maybe hundreds of thousands worldwide — are obsessed with Uematsu’s score for Final Fantasy. As soon as the orchestra struck up the first couple of notes, a whoop of delighted recognition rippled through the audience.

4. Fans don’t care about house rules regarding photography. I saw lots of cameras snapping throughout the event despite the loud warning against taking pictures or video.

P.S. Extended Absence Greeting: I will be at the Santa Fe Opera Festival for the rest of the week. Be back in the blogosphere starting next Monday.

Stanford Summer Theater (SST) is addressing issues of tragic memory with a triptych of Ancient Greek takes on the Electra story. Guest blogger Aisha Wells, Student Producer of SST, shares her thoughts about some of themes in this year’s Festival...

Maurice “Rush” Rehm, Stanford Drama and Classics professor and Artistic Director of Stanford Summer Theater (SST), has recently purchased a new cell phone–a small, convenient flip-phone complete with a built-in camera and that polished luster that characterizes most new technology. “$29.99,” Rehm exclaims in disbelief at his own ownership of such a strangely modern device.

Ask any student, friend or colleague of Rehm–or even Rehm himself–and you will hear confirmation that he is not a person concerned with keeping abreast of the latest cutting edge technology. While the rest of Silicon Valley moves forward at a blindingly quick pace, at Stanford
University, Rehm is directing Stanford Summer Theater’s 11th season, the Electra Festival, which offers a comprehensive investigation into the timeless theater stories of the ancient Greek world.

But Rehm cannot be accused of living in the past. As an author of four books on Greek tragedy, Rehm is internationally considered an expert on the Classical drama, and yet it is not merely his personal interest in the ancient world that motivated his decision to select Electra as the theme for this year’s SST festival.

On the contrary, selecting Electra was done primarily with the intent to provide modern audiences with an intimate experience of the value of confronting tragedy– a tragedy ancient in origin, but as pertinent and current as Rehm’s brand new $29.99 camera phone.

Directed by Rehm, SST’s major production of Sophocles’ Electra, beautifully poetic in this translation by Anne Carson, is an uncompromising look at an archetypal story of revenge. The part of Electra, played by Stanford Alumnus, Valentina Conde, is a theatrical tour de force. Her fiery rage, unsettling obsession with avenging her father’s murder, and inability to move beyond her memory of past injustices, combine to ignite a series of increasingly tragic events.”In Electra” says Rehm, “Those who forget are rewarded, while those with fixations on past wrongs are ultimately consumed by their own obsessions.” Rehm proposes that this is not all too different from today’s attitude toward dealing with the past: “We are asked to forget before we remember. Progress is favored over memory– particularly when it comes to tragic historical memory.” Tragedy in the
real world is so overwhelmingly prevalent that often the only feasible mechanism we have for coping with it is to forget it–to move onward and upward.

But forgetting tragedy, and the modern preoccupation with the glittery appeals of perennial progress, has proved problematic. “Like the old caveat goes, those who forget history are doomed to repeat.” Indeed, today’s tragedies often demonstrate a seemingly endless repetition of historical mistakes.

Electra, Rehm suggests, is an explosive experience that invites its audience to confront the catch-22 imposed by tragic memory: While on the one hand we should not abandon our tragic memories, on the other hand, will determination to remember injustice ever allow us to forgive it? Or will tragic memory, as in the case of Electra, inevitably cause
perpetual frustration, persecution, and cyclical acts of revenge?

“Here, Electra gets complicated; it’s not clear that simple memory and action based on that memory leads us out of the woods at all,” says Rehm.

And while many playwrights, dramatists, and scholars share this viewpoint, part of what adds to Electra‘s timelessness is the countless ways in which perspective can introduce additional nuance and complexity to the myth. Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, Euripides’ Electra, and the films selected for SST’s weekly screenings are all telling the same story, yet their divergent approaches avoid simple unnecessary rehashing–instead bringing to light subtle shifts in the characters’ motives
and feelings. Perhaps the more perspectives that shape Electra’s retelling, the closer one can get toward reconciliation with tragic memory.

While many people may share a good joke at Rehm’s unwillingness to embrace technology’s constant new developments, there is something to be said for what we may glean from slowing down and taking a good look into the past.

Stanford Summer Theater’s Electra Festival runs July 13 through August 15, 2009. For more information, click here.

The Ghost Town Gallery isn’t in a particularly lovely part of Oakland. The streets are rife with swirling trash, windows are boarded up and there are prostitution and drug warnings posted on almost every corner.

It is, however, the perfect neighborhood in which to stage a theatrical adaptation of The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov’s great 1930s satirical novel in which the Devil runs rampage around a destitute and corrupt city.

Four Larks Theatre Company, a scrappy and exceedingly talented young troupe with one cloven hoof in the Bay Area and other in Melbourne Australia, is making black magic in the Gallery his week with its take on Bulgakov’s chef d’oeuvre. The walk-through production is an immersive experience in three acts which combines eerily beautiful live music and spirited writing and acting with a visual art-inflected mise-en-scene that looks like something out of a 1980s New Romantic pop group video.

I have witnessed a number of adaptations of The Master and Margarita before. It’s easy to see why theatre companies are so attracted to the work. With its black comedy and opportunities for dazzling theatrics (a guy gets his head chopped off in a freak accident involving a tram; characters fly; the Devil puts on the Party of the Century) the novel begs to be staged. But very few of these theatrical adaptations work because the adaptors try to cram too much of the novel into the play. Another related problem is figuring out what to do with Bulgakov’s heavy, incense-laden secondary plot, which deals with the contents of The Master’s Biblical book about Pontius Pilate. This plot just isn’t as sexy as the story about the Devilish Woland and his band of renegade satyrs causing havoc in Moscow.

The artfulness of Four Larks production lies partly in the fact that the company doesn’t attempt to put Bulgakov’s entire novel on stage. The adaptation focuses mostly on the love story between the two titular characters and on the attitude and pluck of Woland and his entourage. The emphasis on character brings the story to life. From Nathan Greene’s sprightly feline Behemoth to Max Baumgarten’s serious, matinee idol-like Master, each actor imbues his character with a strong sense of purpose without upsetting the carefully balanced sense of ensemble.

Another reason for the success of the production is the clever conceit of doubling the characters of Pontius Pilate and Jesus with The Master and Margarita. This is not only economical from a casting perspective but also brings a whole new layer of meaning to the relationship between the central couple and helps to tie the two plots more closely together.

Directed and scripted by Jesse Rasmussen and devised by Rasmussen, Mat Sweeney, Sebastian Peters-Lazaro and Alessandro Rumie, Four Larks’ production certainly has its sticking points. The ball scene, which should be the flamboyant centerpiece of the entire work, loses power, focus and all sense of story line owing to the fact that it’s made to double up as a sort of intermission. The actors hand out eye masks to the audience members, shoo us into a room and suggest that we buy a drink and have some fun. The cast members themselves wander around in heavily powdered faces and flea market Gothic drag ad libbing in character. Susannah Freedman, as Margarita, sits above the party room on a swing in a cabaret girl dress, swigging red wine out of a giant goblet. At one point, Ern Gift’s larger-than-life Woland stands astride the bar and makes a bit of a speech. As Woland’s saucy and underdressed maid, Hella, Caitlin Valentine half-heartedly attempts to engage audience members in a waltz. Lindsey Cooper, as Frieda, sings a sad little song through which the other characters declare their boredom and ask her to shut up. It’s all very intriguing and offbeat, but the conceit neither ultimately works as scene nor intermission.

However, this Master and Margarita is, generally speaking, such a box of fairy tale wonders that it’s impossible not to leave the theatre smiling. West Oakland feels like less of a ghost town upon exiting Ghost Town Gallery.

Four Larks Theatre Company’s production of The Master and Margarita plays at Ghost Town Gallery, 2519 San Pablo Avenue, Oakland. Tickets cost $10-$15. Call 510 967 0426 or email info@fourlarkstheatre.com to reserve tickets.

When I first heard about the The San Francisco Symphony‘s online Social Networking project, I wasn’t all that excited. I thought that it wouldn’t attract that many people as classical music concert goers tend to be of an older generation and I imagined it would turn out to be a bit like a sparsely attended Facebook.

The Symphony is proving me wrong though. The Social Network turns out to be a fascinating place to meet people with all kinds of weird and wonderful musical interests. And I’m pretty impressed with the ways in which the organization is leveraging the Web to create buzz around and interest in on-stage musical events.

Take the Smule Group, for instance. I joined this group — which brings together musicians who use Smule apps to turn their iPhones and iPod Touches into musical instruments — within the Network a couple of weeks ago. I don’t yet own an iPhone or iPod, but I was totally intrigued by the way in which the Symphony is bringing all the musical gearheads who like to do more than listen to other people’s music on their PDAs. If I end up getting one of Apple’s coveted gadgets, I’m pretty sure I’ll be learning to play the ocarina or leaf trombone before too long.

There were about 20 members on the Smule Group when I joined. Now there are 150. One of the main reasons why people are excited about the Smule Group on the Social Network is because of the current tie-in with this weekend’s Final Fantasy concert at Davies Symphony Hall. Led by conductor Arnie Roth, San Francisco Symphony will play the music from the popular Final Fantasy video game series by the Japanese video game composer Nobuo Uematsu. The concert will feature videos and art stills shown on massive screens highlighting the games. The event will very likely attract a different audience from the usual Symphony crowd which I’m curious to be part of.

The Smule Group is not only running a competition to win tickets to the concert and an iPod Touch loaded with Smule musical apps, but Smule’s Marketing Manager, Turner Kirk, is also running a free Ocarina Master Class after the concert at the front of the Davies Symphony Hall stage for interested concert ticket holders. Kirk will provide tips on playing the iPod touch or iPhone. Attendees will practice an excerpt from the music from Final Fantasy and the whole event will culminate with an instant ocarina orchestra reprise of part of the concert.

The Smule Group activities and the concert look like they might provide a perfect mixture of live concert, demonstration, interactive educational experience and technology. If the event goes well, the San Francisco Symphony’s Social Networking activities will doubtless provide a model for other orchestras’ communication and community-building endeavors.

I am trying to wrap my head around the news that as of next season, theatre journalists will no longer be part of the Tony Award voting process. As a story in yesterday’s New York Times explained:

“In a significant change to voting procedures for the Tony Awards, the Tony Management Committee announced Tuesday evening that about 100 theater critics and journalists — about one-eighth of all Tony voters — will no longer be eligible to vote in the competition for Broadway’s most prestigious honor…An official close to the committee, who was not authorized to discuss the committee’s private deliberations and therefore spoke on condition of anonymity, said the change was made because the committee concluded that it was a conflict of interest for journalists to vote on Tony contenders when they have a platform to champion a show in news and entertainment media.”

Why does the Tony Committee believe that journalists present a conflict of interests problem? Surely the other people who make up the Tony decision-making body — a group consisting of “theatre producers, owners, publicists, actors, writers, designers and members of various Broadway theater unions and committees” as the NY Times story lists them — pose a greater threat from a conflict of interests perspective?

Journalists are, as far as I can tell, the most impartial members of the group and are less likely to be swayed by cronyism. They are, in all likelihood, in a much better position to see a wider range of performance events than producers and other theatre insiders. This move makes no sense to me. Removing journalists from the decision-making pool for the Tonys will make the awards even less credible than they currently are.

At the gym the other day, the instructor of a fitness class put a pop song on the stereo to which we were about to do some kind of painful chest routine with the dumbells.

“This track is weird. I think it’s European,” said the instructor as she brandished her weights.

“How do you know?” Someone asked. “Well, I’m only guessing,” said the instructor. “Because it’s got five beats to the bar.”

In advance of a class I’m teaching over the next couple of weeks about engaging with and responding to live performance through writing for California Shakespeare Theater‘s Summer School program, I’m trying out Twitter as a conduit for channeling thoughts about a performance.

It’s not easy.

For what it’s worth, here’s my take, in 140 characters including spaces or less, of the production which my students are going to be writing full reviews about this week (and posting them on the CalShakes’ blog):

“Stephen Turner and Diana LaMar’s lovebirds don’t tweet but bark in CalShakes’ sizzling take on Noel Coward’s Private Lives www.calshakes.org“

It takes up at least half of a Tweet to tell people the name of the production, the company behind it and the URL. Thank goodness I’m not trying to Tweet about a play with an extended title like Mrs Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge!

One might question whether there’s any point in using Twitter as a reviewing mechanism at all. I think there are some definite pluses to alerting people to shows with this technology though. The main function, I think, is to grab a reader’s attention enough to make them want to go on to read a full-length piece about a show. A few quick words, plus the URL which people can follow to get an in-depth take is the way to go. Wendy Rosenfield, in her terrific Drama Queen blog , came to a similar conclusion a couple of weeks ago.

A message on Facebook from Bay Area playwright Trevor Allen alerted me to some sad news last night: Local actor Luis Saguar passed away on July 8 at the age of 52 of a terminal illness.

Saguar was a founding member of the inventive, San Francisco-based theatre company Campo Santo, the resident theatre company at Intersection for the Arts. Over more than 15 years with the collective, he helped to bring to life new plays by the likes of Denis Johnson, Jessica Hagedorn and Octavio Solis. Saguar was instrumental in connecting diverse audiences with live performance by telling stories that reflected on and impacted individuals and communities. I always enjoyed watching him perform. He brought a pungent animal energy to drama and was also a lively and touching comedian.

Intersection is mounting a campaign to raise money to lend support to Saguar’s family during this harrowing time. If you would like to donate, please click here.

While some state funding of the arts is, to my mind, an important way to keep a country’s culture alive and kicking, one negative thing about state-sponsored theatre companies is that traditionally, they’ve been able to keep running productions of plays for way too long past their sell-by dates. Mothballed sets, going-through-the-motions actors and stale direction become hallmarks of shows that continue playing on the national dime. The fact is that people tend to become lazy when their bills are all being paid, or when the entity that’s paying them decides that this or that production is representative of the best of the nation’s culture and should therefore be presented in its original state, regardless of how stale and old-fashioned the work may have become.

In light of this, it’s quite refreshing to experience Israel’s National Theatre Company, Habima, performing its latest production of the great Jewish play by S. Ansky, The Dybbuk. The company (pictured above, left) opened its San Francisco run last night at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. To my mind, director Shmuel Shohat’s production represents a perfect marriage between paying homage to tradition and keeping things bold and contemporary.

The Dybbuk was first performed in Moscow in 1920 by the Yiddish-speaking Vilna Troupe. Habima’s Hebrew production, launched in 1922, immediately became a huge hit. The company kept the original staging in its repertoire for decades. (See above, right, for a 1922 production still of the actress Hannah Rovina as Leah, the daughter of a rich merchant, Sender, who becomes possessed by the spirit of her forbidden lover, the brilliant but tortured rabbinical scholar Chanan). Habima’s latest staging evokes the 1920s original through its use of stark, Expressionistic makeup and Cubo-Futurist scenery, the centerpiece of which is a deeply-raked wooden table which later transforms into a graveyard. The actors turn up on stage as they would have 90 years ago, striding on with suitcases and proceeding to dress themselves and ready the performance area for the play.

In its use of puppets, this Dybbuk feels very new, however. Apparently the large-eyed, white-ethereal mannequins representing Leah and Khanan were inspired by Tim Burton’s movie Corpse Bride. Intriguingly, Burton was in turn reportedly inspired by early productions of The Dybbuk. Other puppets used in the play for the comic characters including the rabbis and Leah’s dim, milquetoast of a fiance, are made of foam with outsize, squishy, cartoon faces and tiny insect-limbs. These puppets are more reminiscent of Sesame Street or Muppet Show marionettes. In fact, the two curmudgeonly rabbis in the play remind me strongly of the Muppet Show‘s resident windbags, Statler and Waldorf.

The interactions between the puppet and human actors are powerful. Sometimes performers Ayelet Shadmon (Leah), Yaron Sancho Goshen (Sender) and Nimrod Eisenberg (Chanan) manipulate the puppets from behind the scenery, and cannot be seen. Elsewhere, they stand on stage with the puppets, but “keep out of the way” of the puppet actors. Meanwhile, in some of the production’s most ghostly and arresting scenes, the human actors interact with the puppets, almost as if they are the human consciousness behind the characters. Every now and again, for example, the puppet Leah looks to the human actress holding her for what seems like a second opinion or verification of her actions. It’s as if Shadmon is on stage coaxing on her puppet alter ego to trust in her feelings. There are even occasions when the human actors perform without puppets. Sender never appears in puppet form. Goshen plays him in a bravura style. Paradoxically, the only non-puppet character in the play is the most grotesque.

The effect of all of this is to disorient and delight the audience. A little girl sitting in front of me giggled in all the right places (and some of the ones where the adults were very quiet.) I felt like I was engaging in a piece of theatre history as well as being sucked wholeheartedly into the present moment. It was magic.

Karen McKevitt started an interesting debate recently on Theatre Bay Area’s Chatterbox blog about whether trade publications should publish “negative” articles about artists and and their work. Here’s the gist of Karen’s commentary:

“The July/August issue of American Theatre hit my mailbox today, and I found an intriguing juxtaposition in its Letters section. I skimmed the page and saw Tony Taccone’s name as one of the letter-writers, and I knew right away he was going to take exception to the feature [San Jose Mercury News critic] Karen D’Souza wrote about [Amy Freed’s play produced at Berkeley Rep] You, Nero, where she basically rehashed negative criticism of the South Coast Rep performance in a feature that in theory was supposed to be about the second production at Berkeley Rep.”

At the invitation of TBA marketing manager Clay Lord, I offered a few initial thoughts on the topic on the comments section of Chatterbox.

The first was this: “I think it’s possible to write for American Theatre without being a cheerleader. I often do it. At the end of the day though, a feature story for any publication — whether it’s an “industry” publication or a general interest newspaper or magazine — is not a review. I think focusing too strongly on the words of other critics (or more directly offering one’s own opinion) in what’s supposed to be a balanced piece about the evolution of a play is not necessarily the fairest or most journalistically interesting way to go.”

I returned to the comments section of Karen McKevitt’s blogpost later and wrote this: “I’d like to add something to what I wrote earlier. In Karen D’Souza’s’s defense: her piece was for the Critics Notebook section of the magazine, which isn’t necessarily supposed to be a section for straight reporting. Although the articles written for this section are often feature-like in style, the magazine wants critical insight into the work/artists in question, so I think there is a bit of leeway for editorializing. That being said, there’s still something odd going on in the case of the You Nero article: Karen didn’t so much give her critical opinion of the SoCal production as give many other critics’ (negative) opinions of the work. Which is maybe the root of the issue here. Criticism is disguised as reporting in the article, which may come across as being disingenuous.”

This morning, I’ve been mulling more deeply over the complex issues at stake and here’s a new thought: Just as actors and directors get cross with critics for making ill-informed assumptions about the production process based on the final product, so TBA and various other members of the theatre community may be guilty of the same thing: Only Karen D’Souza and the editors at American Theatre Magazine know the nature of the assignment. So to label it as a “feature” is to make assumptions about the kind of piece that Karen was commissioned to write that may not be correct. When Karen McKevitt writes “[D’Souza] basically rehashed negative criticism of the South Coast Rep performance in a feature that in theory was supposed to be about the second production at Berkeley Rep,” she’s making all kinds of assumptions about the nature of the assignment. Her take may be wrong. I’ve never personally written a Critics Notebook piece for the magazine, but I’m guessing that the critics who are commissioned to do these pieces are asked to assert their opinions in some way.

This leads to more questions such as a) should American Theatre publish opinion pieces at all? and b) if yes, should the writers be more up-front with their feelings (both negative and positive) rather than disguising them as “impartial” reporting by purloining the (negative) words of other critics?

In answer to part a), I say YES. American Theatre Magazine and other media like it should publish opinion pieces. It is possible to both support an industry and be its gadfly, though that line might be tricky to walk sometimes. Sycophantic writing about the arts in any context is boring and pointless. One of the things I most relish about writing for American Theatre Magazine is that I’m able to paint honest pictures of my interview subjects. I don’t feel like I have to be a cheerleader. So, at least to a degree, the editors are open to broad-minded reporting.

In answer to part b), I say YES too. If the magazine is going to publish a Critics Notebook — which, right or wrong, implies the solicitation of an opinion in its title — the editors should encourage the writers to be honest and take ownership of their criticism rather than try to pass it off as straight reporting. Again, I am not party to the process that went on between Karen D’Souza and the editors at the magazine. So it’s difficult to tell why the article was spun this way. But if the writer had personal doubts about the success of the Berkeley production of Freed’s play, she should have voiced them (or been allowed to voice them) herself rather than couched her disapproval through a bunch of other peoples’ quotes.

At the end of the day, this debate will hopefully cause the magazine to think more carefully about the role it plays within the industry and help theatre makers to reassess their relationship with the magazine. These outcomes can only be good in the long run. Down with cheerleading! Up with in-depth, sparkling, engaged prose!

Visiting the Asian Art Museum‘s Lords of the Samurai exhibition the other day in San Francisco turned out to be marked by an unlikely interest in the finer things of life such as high fashion.

Running till September 20, the exhibition focuses on daimyo — the provincial lords of the warrior class in feudal Japan. The exhibition features more than 160 works from the Hosokawa family collection (the Hosokawa clan was a powerful family of military nobles with a 600-year-old lineage) from the Eisei-Bunko Museum in Tokyo, and from Kumamoto Castle and the Kumamoto Municipal Museum in Kyushu. Objects on view include suits of armor, armaments (including swords and guns), formal attire, calligraphy, paintings, tea wares, lacquerware, masks, and musical instruments.

The most eye-catching items on display are undoubtedly the beautifully preserved and detailed examples of warrior armor. There are also lots of incredibly lethal-looking weapons and important-looking scrolls.

What was more surprising, were the parts of the exhibition dealing with samurai culture. It’s hard to imagine these fierce warriors in their imposing helmets stopping on the warpath to eat picnics out of a set of gorgeous lacquered bento boxes or engaging in perfume-concocting and smelling parties with the aid of delicate little scent jars. But apparently these warriors had exceedingly refined tastes.

This impression extended even to the atmosphere of our visit. When the friend I was with, Alain, walked in to the coat check to leave his bag, the staffer on duty commented on his T-shirt (which had a buddha logo on it.) Then, when we entered one of the galleries, a museum docent told Alain that his hairdo reminded him of how the more modern samurai would wear their hair — Al had some of his long, curly locks trussed up in a ponytail. The early samurai, the docent told us, would have shave their foreheads alongside wearing ponytails.

The Asian Art Museum’s website includes a fascinating page all about little known samurai facts. John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood could clearly learn a thing or two from the Hosokawa clan.