Connecticut Stories on Stage Playwriting Competition—Staged Readings of the Winning Plays

Closed. Presented by Connecticut Heritage Productions April 17 at the Arts Hall, Educational Center for the Arts, 55 Audubon St., New Haven. Directed by Kenneth Heaton and Peter Loffredo. Stage Manager/Lighting Designer: Seth Harris. Producer: Michael Eck.

Rosary Peas by Michael Burgan. Won in the Full-Length category. Read by Henry Ayres-Brown (Paul), Bunni Barresi (Mom), Ingrid Shaeffer (Allie, James Luse (Carl), arolyn Ladd (Shirley) and Carolyn Kirsch (Wilma), Peter Loffredo (Stage Directions).

Sunset by William McGovern. Won in the One-Act category. Read by James Luse (Dan), Bunni Barresi (Margaret), Carolyn Kirsch (angie), Javis Arnold (Usher, Bartender), Peter Loffredo (Man, Homeless Man, Stage Directions).

Drugs, War and Nine by Elizabeth Appel. Won in the Ten-Minute Play category. Read by Carolyn Ladd (Carol), Peter Loffredo (Doug) Javis Arnold (Bobby), James Luse (Stage Directions).

It would be a disservice to review these plays based on readings; that’s just not appropriate. They won their prizes, and may one day get the full productions they deserve. But there’s lots else to discuss.

Years ago, I wrote a film feature for the New Haven Advocate positing that movies made in Connecticut tended to be about broken relationships, crushing self-delusions and blithe dismissals of the suffering of others.

If you were to read too deeply into the three plays which were given staged readings Sunday afternoon as a culmination of the Connecticut Stories on Stage Playwriting Competition, you might add the following to this common artistic sense of what it means to live in Connecticut:  despair, deception, anti-social behavior, and murder. Any characters who acted out of kindness and selflessness were negated by those strictly motivated by self-interest and massive egos.

This intimate afternoon brought me back—not just to the Connecticut environs in which these “Connecticut Stories on Stage” were set, but to the sense of community spirit which was once so much a part of small theater in this state. I’ve known some of the performers in these pieces for 25 years, from academic as well as community-theater climes.

It reconnected me, for instance with Kenneth Heaton, whom I knew when he was a student in the playwriting program at the Yale School of Drama over a decade ago. He conceived of a Connecticut-centered playwriting contest after settling in the state and teaching at Central Connecticut State University. Ironically, since starting Connecticut Stories on Stage, Heaton has moved to New York. Luckily for the competition’s rooted relevance, Heaton created the competition in league with the well-established and fervently community conscious Connecticut Heritage Productions.

These were punchy plays rooted in uncomfortable realities. While they stuck to the conventional staged-reading arrangements of a line of folding chairs, co-directors Heaton and Peter Loffredo used that model to subtly and strongly enforce the distances between some of the characters.

In community-based theater, which is so often rosy and escapist, a clear vision of distance and discord is to be celebrated.  Congratulation to the competition winners, but also to the competition itself for having its feet on the muddier patches of the Connecticut ground.

TOMMY SCHRIDER , SANS POOP, IN BATTLE OF BLACK AND DOGS LAST YEAR AT THE YALE REPERTORY THEATRE. PHOTO BY JOAN MARCUS

Ask and ye shall receive… a pile of shit. Gratefully, I should add.

On Friday I posted an item about a Yale Rep stage effect and casually mentioned that I’d love to know “the recipe for the poop that covered that poor man head-to-toe last year in Battle of Black and Dogs at Yale Rep).”

Today I received an email from Elizabeth Bolster, the Yale Rep Wardrobe Supervisor. She not only was a part of the Eurydice team but (in her words) “I

also worked on Battle of Black and Dogs last year and was the creator of the poop.”

The remarkable Ms. Bolster provides the recipe, which she euphemistically calls Sludge.

It is made in two parts: Slime and Clumps.

For 1 gallon of Slime:

2 cups Brown Crayola Washable Tempera paint.

2 cups Black Crayola Washable Tempera paint.

2 cups Baby Shampoo

10 cups Cornstarch

Mix dry into wet with electric mixer for best consistency.

For 1/2 gallon of Clumps:

6 cups Yesterdays News Kitty Litter (soaked overnight in water)

2 cups of Slime

We would pour and smear the slime all over Tommy (the actor) and then put

handfuls of the clumps here and there over the top of the slime. Tommy would

then step in a bucket of cork mixed with Fuller’s Earth to keep him from sliding

around on the plexiglass floor. Then we put on his microphone, handed him and

AK47 and sent him on his way. After Tommy came offstage he would immediately run to the shower.

It was an interesting experience and ultimately a lot of fun. And the formula has come in handy for a couple of Yale School of Drama productions this year. It was a starting point for the oil at the end of Streetcar and, I believe made some appearance in Twelfth Night. It’s a very versatile formula and easy to clean up.

That sludge-covered actor, Tommy Schrider, later resurfaced at the Rep as another unclean character (morally speaking—this one simply thought his shit didn’t stink, and wasn’t literally covered in the stuff), an adulterous teacher in Kirsten Greenidge’s Bossa Nova.

The director of Battle of Black and Dogs, of course, was Robert Woodruff, currently represented at Yale Rep with Autumn Sonata.

I’m dashing off now to Never Ending Books, 810 State Street, for the latest Play in a Day exercise—today, Monday April 18, from 2-5 p.m. Last school vacation, we staged a ten-minute version of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard with a cast of children aged 6-11. This time it’ll probably be Aristophanes—rehearsed, designed and performed all within a three-hour timespan.

All are welcome to partake or view. (Performance will be at 5 p.m.). No fees, unless you want to help kick in for pizza.

The trend of deliberately bad theater singing—which began with the glut of plays and musicals about Florence Foster Jenkins between 1999 and 2005, and could also be said to include The Producers—now continues with a musical about The Shaggs. The legendary trio of New Hampshire siblings recorded The Philosophy of the World, one of the best-worst LPs in pop history, in 1969. The album was rescued from obscurity by Terry Adams and Tom Ardolino of the NRBQ, who spread the Shaggs gospel by getting the album reissued. A cult sensation swept around the sisterly squeals in the 1980s and beyond.

The musical, also called The Shaggs—The Philosophy of the World, has its Off Broadway premiere May 12-July 3 at Playwrights Horizon. The cast includes a current Yale School of Drama student, Sarah Sokolovic, who played a more talented and credible rock star in the original Michael McQuilken piece Jib at Yale’s Iseman Theater a couple months ago.

Edward Albee won an awarded from the MacDowell colony.

But doesn’t Albee run his own writers’ colony, the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center? What a kindly colony macdowell must be; not a jealous bone in its yard.

The MacDowell award was announced last week, but won’t be presented until August. Albee is only the third playwright to be given it. The Creative Persons Center is notifying its 2011 Fellows this week.

MERRITT JANSON AS HELENA IN AUTUMN SONATA. PHOTO BY JOAN MARCUS, COURTESY YALE REPERTORY THEATRE

You know that line in “Comedy Tonight,” the Sondheim song from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?:

“She plays Medea later this week!”

Well, Merritt Janson plays Rosalind in Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like it later this year at the balmy Shakespeare & Company in the Berkshires.

First, she must languish thorough the role of Helena in a stage adaptation of Autumn Sonata at the Yale Rep. The show began previews last Friday, opens Thursday (April 21) and runs through May 7. Tickets and info at (203) 432-1234 or www.yalerep.org.

Not only is the play based on the somber film by the legendarily chilly auteur Ingmar Bergman, it’s directed by a guy renowned for bringing the darkness: Robert Woodruff, one of the most mindwarping mavericks in the regional theater realm.

Doing projects with Woodruff, Janson says, is “draining and challenging and inspiring. It’s the kind of draining you like. But you do need to recover after them. This is a brutal text to work on.”

Janson studied with Woodruff at the ART/MXAT institute at Harvard. Woodruff now teaches at the Yale School of Drama, and has blessed and blistered the Yale Rep with the harrowing stage spectacles Notes from Underground and Battle of Black and Dogs. This is the third time Janson and Woodruff have worked together on major productions. First was Britannicus for at the American Repertory Theatre. Then Notes from Underground began at the Rep and recently finished a tour. While still involved with that Dostoyevskyan deconstruction last fall, Woodruff approached Janson to see  if she was interested in helping transmogrify Bergman’s music-laden drama of mother/daughter bonding.

(The director also signed up another Notes from Underground collaborator, Michael Attias, to compose new music for Autumn Sonata. Attias performed as both a musician and an actor in Notes, and his translation of Battle and Black and Dogs was the basis for Woodruff’s Rep production.)

“Britannicus at ART, this, Notes from Underground—and I’ve played piano in all of them,” Janson gushes. “I love that Robert used me as a musician as well as an actor. There are other productions I’ve played music in, but not this way.” Her character in the play is a skilled pianist. Helena is also physically and mentally challenged, and becomes part of a psychological battle between her sister Eva (Rebecca Henderson) and their mother Charlotte (Candy Buckley).

Woodruff’s directing process appears to be a rare mix of extensive preparation and complete openness. “He spends unbelievable energy and time before we enter the room. The designers as well—they put in so much time, thought and energy into recreating this world.” In adapting Autumn Sonata, for instance, Woodruff not only consulted Bergman’s published screenplays (which differs slightly from the final film), he commissioned a literal translation of the film’s Swedish dialogue and investigated the subtle differences in various subtitled versions.

“But,” Janson continues, “when he has a question during rehearsals, he poses it to the entire room. It’s a gift to the actor, how open he is.”

Woodruff often builds shows from other media, but never fails to offer a fresh interpretation or a contemporary connection. “He does plays with this idea of character versus the action,” Janson suggests. The director’s also unafraid of inaction: his productions often have actors standing on the outskirts of scenes they’re not in. As Janson puts it, she’s always in character “but there are varying  levels to where the character is. You can see characters when they’re not in the scenes. Robert’s not interested in respecting artifice—he’s looking for a stronger truth.”

Woodruff does have a lighter side, evinced by his ‘90s collaborations with The Flying Karamazov Brothers juggling troupe on The Comedy of Errors and Room Service.  But when asked if there are any comic moments in Autumn Sonata, she reacts as if she’s asked about the moon being made of cheese. “No. There is beautiful intensity. Emotional upheaval, moments of revelation. But light? No.”

Janson herself seems emotionally balanced enough, considering all the chill of Bergman in the theater, not to mention New Haven’s still cold and rainy weather. In our interview at Atticus Bookstore Café the day before the show’s first preview she’s peppy, upbeat, animated, in living color. The expressive doe-eyes which gave needed warmth to Notes from Underground are bright and attentive. She’s dressed comfortably, not in the gowns and tight garments Repgoers are used to seeing her in. She’s got her skateboard by her side and she’s asking where the good small rock clubs are. In Autumn Sonata, she gets to play C.P.E. Bach’s Solfeggietto—“It’s something I learned when I was a teenager; it’s a very personal piece for me”—but she says “the guitar was my main instrument for a while. I played music my whole like: barrelhouse, honky tonk…”

Her own lifelong love of music led to a revelation about how to play Helena. “When beginning to work on Lena, I had to work out her physical and emotional parameters. I was making the sounds and movements which seemed essential. And I had this ‘Aha!’ moment, realizing it was something I was doing technically with the music, but that it wasn’t technical. It is her language. That’s how music is. Non-verbal. More powerful than words. It feels so right that Lena should also play music. She’s this great connection between the two strong personas” of Charlotte and Eva.

Rock on, Lena.

Just as the Yale Cabaret 2010-11 season was concluding and the Summer Cabaret Shakespeare Festival was getting trumpeted louder and louder, along came the just-in-time announcement of who will be running the school-term Cabaret next year:

Sunder Gangliani

Kate Attwell,

Lileana Blain-Cruz

Michael “Micky” Place

plus Matthew Gutschick as the Managing Director.

That’s right, four co-Artistic Directors, again rewriting the rules of how the Yale Cabaret can be run. The place has been co-administrated by multiple people before, but usually bearing more “advisory” titles. The recent norm has been one or two artistic directors and one managing director.

A pack of five bodes well for the sort of ensemble work which has distinguished the Cabaret in recent seasons. Blain-Cruz, for instances, oversaw the memorable devised work based on Wilde’s Salome which ended the 2009-10 season, as well as the solo show (performed by Sheria Irving) Hollow Roots this past season. Attwell directed Amelia Roper’s Hong Kong Dinosaur: A Real Aussie Love Story. Gutschick was credited as producer of the penultimate 2010-11 Cabaret attraction, Dorian Gray, while Gangliani both acts and plays viola in the final show of this season, The Perks: A Rite of Spring.

No time for audience interest to wane. The 2010-11 season is only just ending, and anticipation for the next is already burning within me.