Front & CENTRAL

HYSTERIA SubText: Freudian Slips

2011-01-12T12:57:00.000-05:00

Oops, our blog break seems to have lasted longer than our holiday vacation! Funny how that happens. But we're back and meeting 2011 head-on. First, some video from a really fun event during our opening weekend of The Nora Theatre Company's production of HYSTERIA, or Fragments of an Analysis of an Obsessional Neurosis (playing January 6 - 30).

On January 8th we held a SubText storytelling night. In this pre-show event, our friends and SubText partners at massmouth competed with stories inspired by the theme "Freudian Slip: Did I Just Say That?" Take a look at their funny and surreal stories:

Next, massmouth co-founder Norah Dooley (the "penis on the house" storyteller in the video above - yeah, now you want to watch it!), led the audience in a quick workshop to develop their own "Freudian Slip" stories by sharing memories with their seat neighbors. This exercise inspired a number of audience members to stand up and tell their own stories:

We were thrilled with the results of the workshop and the entire event. Everyone brought honesty, generosity and, most of all, LAUGHTER to the evening. Then they headed into the mainstage to enjoy HYSTERIA. Congratulations to the massmouth contest winner, Michael Anderson, who won two tickets to see the show.

Want to check out a SubText event for yourself? We hold one for every mainstage production. Next up will be Haitian storytelling before a Saturday performance of Underground Railway Theater's production of TI-JEAN AND HIS BROTHERS by Derek Walcott, a co-production with Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University. The schedule will be published soon on the Ti-Jean page of our website.

Peeking into Freud's world

2010-12-08T11:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we held our first production meeting for The Nora Theatre Company's January production of HYSTERIA: Or Fragments of an Analysis of an Obsessional Neurosis, which places us in Sigmund Freud's London study in 1938. Things don't remain calm for long, as Freud (played by Richard Snee) is visited by a mysterious young woman (Stacy Fischer) and eccentric Surrealist artist Salvador Dali (John Kuntz) drops by for tea.

This play presents a multitude of design challenges (can't give too much away, though!), which our design team are tackling head-on. Check out some photos from the design presentations:

Set plan by Janie E. Howland

Lighting Designer John Malinowski looks on as Scenic Designer Janie E. Howland

demonstrates the spandex material that will play a surprising role in the design.

The Nora's Artistic Director, Mary C. Huntington,

consults the set model during the discussion.

Things swing into high gear next week, when we welcome the cast to begin rehearsals and design decisions continue to solidify. More inside info to come!

The writing's on the wall: Responding to war and peace in the Middle East

2010-12-02T17:51:00.000-05:00

With THE FEVER CHART: THREE VISIONS OF THE MIDDLE EAST now open, it's well past time for an update, so here we go:

It's been a fascinating process getting this show on its feet, given the current weight and immediacy of Middle East issues. Playwright Naomi Wallace explores such issues in poetic narratives in three dream-like settings. Yet that doesn't mean we were able to conveniently avoid the realities of contemporary Middle East conflicts. All of us, from the director and actors to the design team and our administrative staff, have had to come face-to-face with the challenges of working on a play that addresses extremely sensitive, often loaded subject matter. Rehearsal coffee breaks led to animated conversations between the diverse cast members, for each of whom the Middle East has very personal meaning. Our artistic staff got a crash course in these subjects, as well. Ultimately, we recognized that it's impossible to entirely separate the artistic process from ideology. And that's OK, because a) opinions are interesting, valid, and important to the dialogue, and b) working on this production has created many meaningful learning moments. When we approached the work from familiar directions, using certain conventions or with set expectations, we soon realized that what we needed to learn required new ways of thinking, researching, and sharing. We also began to identify and understand our own biases. We struggled to formulate and communicate in a language of neutrality and objectivity, and to figure out what that even meant. In sum, we made realizations about ourselves and the world that helped us embrace the ambiguities and dualities inherent in this play.

But we wondered, how do we talk publicly about these subjects beyond the script, beyond the "safety" of someone else's words? Some things were clear: We wanted people to react to the play and we wanted to hear those reactions, so we created a large lineup of pre- and post-show discussions. We wanted to involve as many perspectives as possible, so we did our best to be inclusive and diverse in the lineup of guests we brought in for those conversations. And we wanted audiences to talk to leave their thoughts with us to share from one performance to the next.

That last goal was addressed in our lobby design, which incorporates a mural representation of the Israeli Security Fence on which patrons can leave chalk drawings and messages, and our cafe-style seating, which provides tabletop space for doodling thoughts about the play's topics, inspired by quotes from the script. People have been leaving wonderful food for thought:

Click on each photo for a closer look

We hope to see your writing on the wall before THE FEVER CHART closes on the 18th.

A warm welcome to THE FEVER CHART

2010-11-01T12:59:00.001-04:00

Last week began two weeks of overlapping performances (The Nora's A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN) and rehearsals (for Underground Railway Theater's THE FEVER CHART: Three Visions of the Middle East). It's always exciting to have a new cast in the building as we prepare to bid farewell to the currently running production; the constant activity provides a forward momentum that springboards us from one show to the next.

We kicked off THE FEVER CHART rehearsals on Tuesday, October 26th, with a Meet & Greet between the creative team and Central Square Theater's staff, and then we moved straight into a table reading of the script.

URT's Artistic Director, Debra Wise (foreground) looks on as the cast of

THE FEVER CHART reads the script aloud together for the first time.

Actress Maria Silverman (Um Hisham Qishta)

Actor Ibrahim Miari (Ali)

THE FEVER CHART has a structure you don't see all that often: it is a triptych (what a wonderful word) of three short plays, or "visions." And while each stands alone in terms of its characters and storyline, the plays resonate even more deeply in sequence.

Playwright Naomi Wallace focused on Israel, Palestine, and Iraq in the three visions:

Vision One is "A State of Innocence". It's set in "something like a small zoo, but more silent, empty, in Rafah, Palestine. Or a space that once dreamed it was a zoo," Wallace writes.

Vision Two is "Between This Breath and You" and is set in a medical clinic waiting room in West Jerusalem.

Vision Three is "The Retreating World" and features Ali, an Iraqi man in his late 20s, at the International Pigeon Convention.

"The Retreating World" is a solo piece, while the first two plays feature three characters each. In other companies' productions, THE FEVER CHART has been performed with as few as three actors filling all seven roles. In URT's production, which opens on November 18th, we have a cast of six, meaning that only one actor appears in more than one of the visions. In this case that's Boston favorite Ken Baltin (most recently on the CST stage in 2009's TRU GRACE: HOLIDAY MEMOIRS and THE CHERRY ORCHARD), playing Shlomo, an Israeli architect, in Vision One, and Mourid Kamal, a Palestinian father, in Vision Two.

This performance structure and casting pattern may be a little unusual, and the eccentricities don't stop there. There's also the matter of seating configuration. We'll be staging the show in a layout unlike any we have attempted before - and if you've been to CST more than once or twice, you know we're terrific at testing the limits of our seating options. This time around (hint, hint), we'll be performing in...the round! Or more accurately, in the square. It's the first time we've done this at CST, and yes, we're geeking out over this a bit; it's always fun to switch things up and venture into new territory, experimenting with both actor and audience experiences through the physical manipulation of our space.

Given that audience will be watching from all directions, the set design needs to provide as clear a view of the action as possible, from all angles, at all times. So scenic designer Susan Zeeman Rogers (who designed last season's HARRIET JACOBS set for URT) created a set that focuses less on objects surrounding the actors and more on the floor and the ceiling, utilizing layers of construction materials, like tile and plastic sheeting, in her design.

THE FEVER CHART scenic design model by Susan Zeeman Rogers

By this time next week, the MOON set will be coming down and the risers will be shifting around. Doesn't that make it sound so easy, like these matters take care of themselves? In reality it takes a small-but-mighty crew to pull off the transformation and get the next set ready for the actors to rehearse on by the end of the week. Then technical rehearsals begin and - presto! - we're in performances, off and running again.

More updates as the magic happens. In the meantime, final call for A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN: Only 5 performances left - order now!

SubText storytelling premieres with "Hellos and Goodbyes"

2010-10-25T17:42:00.001-04:00

This past weekend we kicked off Central Square Theater's newest addition to its "Talk in the Box" programming, "SubText: Your Stories, Real or Imagined", with a pre-show storytelling event before Saturday's performance of A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN. In partnership with massmouth, a great local storytelling organization, and our favorite Boston Globe etiquette columnist, Robin Abrahams, we presented a diverse roster of storytellers with one thing in common: their stories were all inspired by our MOON theme, "Hellos and Goodbyes."

Remember our recap from September's storytelling event? That was a trial run of what has now become the SubText series. For each production we will feature a lineup of storytellers and offer the opportunity for our audience members to become storytellers, too, by relating to the performance with their own stories, made up or true, 5 minutes or under.

On Saturday night we enjoyed six true stories:

massmouth co-founder Norah Dooley kicked off the night with a short intro to the basic points of telling a great story, then launched into her own story, a funny tale about the realization that she had first met the man who would become her husband when he was a kindly stranger who gave her a ride while she was hitchhiking. It wasn't until several years into their marriage that they each realized who the other person in the car had been.

massmouth member and actor H.R. Britton came next, with a melancholy story (his own admission) about a former girlfriend, her red Volkswagen, the euphoria of early love, and the inevitable end of the affair.

massmouth member Robin Maxfield followed with a touching story about her mother's movement in and out of her life as a child, ending with a surprise reunion with an unfamiliar face.

The final massmouth member to tell her story was Katie Liesner, who wove a tale about her life as a 24-year-old journalist. Overcoming her timidity about approaching strangers for information in order to pursue a juicy lead, she didn't end up with the story she expected, but created a memorable goodbye as she was escorted off private property by an unamused school principal.

Linda Gentile was a winner of Robin Abrahams' Miss Conduct contest. Her sweet and funny story involved the careful disposal of her late husband's liquor collection via transport in the back of her minivan.

We were also pleased to welcome Michael Mack back to our storytelling stage after his popular poetry recitation during our Truth Values event. For "Hellos and Goodbyes," Michael shared a powerful, theatrically realized story about his childhood experience with his mother's schizophrenia.

Not surprisingly, "Hellos and Goodbyes" inspired a lot of reminiscences about those near and dear to our hearts. Seems pretty likely that our next SubText theme, "Love and Redemption," will be no different. Join us at 6:45pm before the 8pm performance of MOON on Saturday, November 6th, when we welcome Boston Globe "Love Letters" columnist Meredith Goldstein.

Interested in SubText? If you would like to learn more or are ready to participate by sharing a story of your own, please email Alison Klejna, CST's Manager of Artistic Operations, at ark@centralsquaretheater.org for basic pointers and to add your name to the list.

Get ready to FALL in love with A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

2010-09-24T12:38:00.003-04:00

On Wednesday afternoon several members of our team boarded the T in Central Square and headed over to Emerson College so we could go straight into a production meeting after Anthony Phelps, our set designer for A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, finished teaching a class. We toted along the new model for the set, which some of us got to look at for the first time since the earlier mock-up.

In the meeting we got straight into the nitty-gritty, making detailed decisions about the set, props, and lights. Director Richard McElvain would like the set to feel as much like a functional farm as possible, so we explored how to dress the stage (and also how to protect it) to allow the actors to do household and farmyard chores such as pumping water, washing and hanging laundry, pitching hay, chopping firewood, and scrubbing the porch. Seems like it should all be possible, so that's good news.

We also looked at length at the importance of a pieta image created in the play. Richard emphasized just how significant this visual is to the whole of the piece, and discussed with Anthony, lighting designer Margo Caddell, and props coordinator Corinne Lunnin how the moment dictates the placement and dimensions of certain pieces of the set so that the visual, as seen by the audience, has the proper emotional impact. There are a few different ideas to investigate, out of which we'll surely achieve the desired effect.

The reports back from rehearsals have been great; sounds like a lot of progress has been made in just a week and a half. The actors are beginning to run through the first acts already. It can sometimes be a shock to the system to move from detail work into the bigger picture, but the benefits will soon be clear. With a piece like this it will help them immeasurably to run the the show as many times as possible; it's been part of Richard's plan from the start.

Outside of the rehearsal hall, our new tradition of decorating the theater's lobby to tie in with the mainstage production will continue. Without giving away too much, let's just say it will relate to A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN's 1923 Connecticut setting and feel just right for this time of year. Those who arrive early will be rewarded with table seating, music, and activities to keep their fingers and brains busy before the house opens. We'll post sneak peeks as the design is implemented in the next two weeks.

Happy autumn!

Production Notes: A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, off and running

2010-09-16T17:11:00.000-04:00

During the season, it's almost always the case that while one show is in performances the next one is rehearsing. So while Gioia De Cari weaves her way through a math maze in TRUTH VALUES on the mainstage, we have begun rehearsals for A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, The Nora Theatre Company's fall offering and the first production of Central Square Theater's subscription season, in the Studio Theater.

The Studio Theater serves many purposes: it's a rehearsal space, classroom, second stage performance venue, special event site, and meeting space. This past Monday we held our second MOON production meeting in the hours before the first rehearsal. As each department spoke about its ideas for the show the topics included, among other items, how to best represent the moon through lighting, the desire to create the essence of a working farm through props and set dressing, and finally the presentation of the set itself. Set Designer Anthony Phelps brought in the model and sketches of his in-progress design.

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN is set in 1923 on the Hogan family's rented farmstead in rural Connecticut. The land is less than fertile, and the house...well, let's let playwright Eugene O'Neill's own description paint the picture:
The house is not, to speak mildly, a fine example of New England architecture, placed so perfectly in its setting that it appears a harmonious part of the landscape, rooted in the earth. It has been moved to its present site, and looks it. An old, boxlike, clapboard affair...it is propped about two feet above ground by layers of timber blocks... [The] windows have no shutters, curtains, or shades. Each has at least one panel missing, a square of cardboard taking its place. The house had once been painted a repulsive yellow with brown trim, but the walls are now a blackened and weathered gray, flaked with streaks and splotches of dim lemon... To make matters worse, a one-story, one-room addition has been tacked on...evidently homemade... There is a footpath going around an old pear tree...through a field of hay stubble to a patch of woods. The same path also extends left to join a dirt road... Close to the house, under the window next to Josie's bedroom, there is a big boulder with a flat top.

And that's just part of the "scene of the play" that O'Neill outlined. He tended to be very thorough in describing his plays' settings. A set designer's challenge, then, is to take in all of the information, decide how it informs his/her understanding of the world in which the characters move, and then incorporate that knowledge into a design that is distinctly his/her own.

Anthony shared a series of sketches that illustrated a progression of decision-making that had occurred as he and director Richard McElvain discussed their visions. This one is the closest to the aesthetic represented in the subsequent model:

The set model in its first incarnation.

Lighting designer Margo Caddell and director Richard

McElvain use the model to discuss the lighting design.

Then the actors arrived and we turned the room over to their first rehearsal. It's such an emotional, beautiful work of art, and we're thrilled to be started. More updates soon!

A homecoming for TRUTH VALUES

2010-09-14T16:58:00.000-04:00

The return engagement of TRUTH VALUES has now opened, and the first week was full of activity.

With back-to-school thoughts on audiences' minds, we had three great post-performance discussions about women's status in science and mathematics. These conversations included current female MIT students, many of whom closely related the events in the play to their own student experiences 20+ years later. And on the other side of the equation (though, really, it turned out, their experiences weren't very divergent at all), we welcomed a selection of female professors from MIT, who recounted their own experiences as students and discussed the role of women at the Institute today. With the play's creator and star, Gioia De Cari, in the mix, and several of the MIT students active in theatrical pursuits, we also dug into the relationships between art and science, of which there are many. At the most fundamental level, sometimes there is simply a need to offset the heavy load of scientific studies with a creative outlet. Under deeper analysis, the arts and sciences also come together intellectually and spiritually to complement and speak to each other.

On Saturday night we formally welcomed Gioia back to CST - and wished her a slightly belated happy birthday - with a party featuring an enormous cake

and an open mic session, at which a number of audience members told their own school-related stories to the crowd.

It was a lot of fun, though in one way perhaps we bit off more than we could chew. So much leftover cake!

Talkbacks continue this week on the 15th and 19th, and next week on the 22nd and 23rd. In between, you can catch Gioia at a special event hosted by the MIT Libraries in conjunction with their new exhibit, "Tell her to go to it: Women's Experiences at MIT," which chronicles the history of women establishing themselves at the Institute. We hear there will be cookies! [If you don't get that joke, come see TRUTH VALUES; you must hear the cookie story.]

Theater and the Art of Storytelling: From HOUND to TRUTH VALUES

2010-08-20T15:57:00.010-04:00

What can we say about the fantastic success of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES except WOOHOO!! We've been selling out consistently, getting terrific feedback from our audiences, and are very proud of the work the creative team achieved on this production. We'll be sorry to see the curtain go down on Sunday night and to close down our Thirsty Fang pub. Thank you to everyone for making HOUND such a memorable success.

We'll quickly be moving onto our next production, the return engagement of Gioia De Cari in TRUTH VALUES: One Girls's Romp Through MIT's Male Math Maze. Gioia enraptured audiences and critics last September with her autobiographical one-woman show recounting her experiences as an MIT math Ph.D. student in the late eighties, and how that led to her true calling.

Truth Values writer and performer Gioia De Cari

Our talkback series will return with select Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday post-show discussions featuring Gioia and an array of math and science students and professionals, many from MIT. And we're going to try something new, too. Do you know "The Moth" series? Perhaps you've caught The Moth Radio Hour on NPR or listened to the Moth podcast. If not, here's a description from their website: "True stories told live on stage without scripts, notes, props, or accompaniment....Humorous and heartbreaking tales told with honesty, bravery and wit." They're pretty great; you should listen.

While we won't be recording it for national radio distribution (shucks), we will be hosting our own "Moth"-like night on Saturday, September 11th, following the 8pm performance. Join us for a reception of light refreshments while audience members share their own stories about the trials of academia. There are sure to be a few so-painful-it's-funny tales and likely some truly inspirational memories, too. This is an open mic style event, so grab your tickets to the show and start thinking up your own story to share. The more the merrier!

Youth Underground tackles the tough issues for Cambridge teens

2010-08-11T16:53:00.014-04:00

Youth Underground is Underground Railway Theater's teen acting ensemble at Central Square Theater. This summer we had 15 Cambridge high school students participate in the program - some veterans of the program, many new this session. During the summers, Youth Underground participants are supported by the Cambridge Mayor's Summer Youth Employment Program, which enables the teens to earn a wage for the hours spent participating in the program. It's a terrific win-win partnership between the City, the students, and the theater. In the process, we've discovered some amazing natural talent in the program, helped students discover untapped creative outlets, and even inspired healthier relationships between groups of young people in our city. This summer's program culminated in a production of YOU CAN TELL AT LUNCH: Truthful Moments and Real Connection Among Cambridge Youth. The script addresses a variety of subjects familiar to young people, from isolation and loneliness to popularity, inclusion, diversity, and, strikingly, the concept of turf wars between Cambridge neighborhoods. It's not an issue all residents are aware of, but it impacts many of the kids who grow up in this city.

Here Maggie Moore Abdow, URT's Education Director, shares her thoughts about this production:

This summer session marks the fifth year of Youth Underground. Since we settled into our Central Square Theater home in 2008, Youth Underground has mounted two extensive productions for audiences in over 20 performances. Youth Underground continues to grow in numbers and diversity. This past spring, we celebrated our first graduating class with 16 members! All of this growth, community support, and momentum have led to an exciting new partnership with the Summer Theater Project’s Director, Betsy Bard. In 2003, Betsy launched the project, working with Anna Deavere Smith (Twilight: Los Angeles). The goal was to activate a social justice dialogue with community through deep exploration of the achievement gap. Using Smith’s methodology, Bard created scripts through interviewing, documenting, and ultimately directing youth performances of the insights of various Cambridge community members. By 2008, the project created 5 complete scripts, with many more never-performed monologues. In winter 2010, URT began discussions with Ms. Bard about ways to re-activate the scripts and connect them to Youth Underground’s exploration of neighborhood and self-identity. YOU CAN TELL AT LUNCH illustrates the beginnings of this new collaboration. It features the words of Cambridge students, teachers, stakeholders, and leaders alike. The Youth Underground ensemble members and staff are thrilled that the Summer Theater Project scripts have found a new forum – and we have found that the conversation we can have as a community resonates as strongly as when these monologues were first performed.

After each performance, Youth Underground members led a community dialogue inspired by our internal conversations around turf identity and segregation in the post-Obama era: Where do you sit at lunch? How do we segregate ourselves? Why? We have started the conversation among our members, and want to continue it with you. To add your thoughts and experiences, simply reply using the icon below. We look forward to hearing your stories!

Pearls of Comedy-Directing Wisdom

2010-08-11T09:53:00.006-04:00

This summer Central Square Theater provided 16 internships in various departments and projects to college students and recent graduates. From organizing our costume and props storage (no small feat) to working on the crew of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, helping to coordinate auditions, conducting dramaturgical research for upcoming productions, and teaching in our education programs, they've been major players in our work this summer. So we wanted to give you a peek into their experiences. Here, our Assistant Director from HOUND provides some terrific reflection on what he learned during his time at CST.

Pearls of Comedy-Directing Wisdom

My name is Noah Simes. I’m a rising junior majoring in theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and for the past six weeks, I’ve had the honor and pleasure of working with the legendary Tommy Derrah as the Assistant Director for THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. I learned a lot about directing, especially a comedy such as HOUND. Learning from the master, I gathered these lessons, some right from Tommy’s mouth and some by observation and osmosis.

1. Play

There’s a reason a play is called a play. At least half of the rehearsal time for HOUND was spent not on instructing the actors on the best way to do things but on letting the actors play around with the script. Moral of the story? You’ll never land on a moment that works as well as one you stumble across while playing around.

2. Be Specific — Eventually

Comedy is in the details, and in a fast-moving show such as HOUND, there are a lot of details. It would be easy enough to let everything become broad strokes, but to create a finely crafted piece of theater, the devil’s in the details. That said, there’s no rush to make things specific; why set details when a broad sketch of the play is not in place? If I were going to draw a person, I would start out with a rough sketch of where the head, the arms, or the legs would be, not with the shape of the eyes or the contour of the fingernails. Likewise, in rehearsing a play, it is important to deal with details — after the broader strokes are in place.

3. Simplify (Unless You Shouldn’t)

Clarity is key to comedy, and simplicity is key to clarity. Countless times, Tommy would shred a moment of the show to pieces, seemingly throwing out half of what was there, only for it to emerge from the slaughter cleaner, smarter, and funnier. The exception to this rule is important in a farce such as HOUND. Sometimes, the humor comes from the unjustifiable complexity of certain actions or moments (such as the absurd route Cecile Stapleton takes on and off stage during her first appearance). In these instances, I learned that breaking this rule is not only A-okay, but also can be ten times funnier.

4. Identify Set-Up and Payoff

Anyone with a sense of humor knows, at least subconsciously, that every joke needs a set-up and a payoff. That’s why the classic joke isn’t simply, “The chicken crossed the road to get to the other side.” A skill that comes with practice (and one I certainly haven’t mastered) is the ability to identify and refine the set-up and payoff of jokes. With this skill, Tommy was able to identify what part of a joke wasn’t working and fine-tune it so that it didn’t drag on too long, or get cut short, or fall flat because the rhythm was wrong.

5. Question Everything

When I direct, I tend to take certain things for granted. Interpretations of particular lines seem obvious to me, and I often assume that the expected is the most effective. Tommy taught me to question every choice I make, and ask myself if I’m really making a choice or if I’m just assuming that it’s the only way to do things. Some of Tommy’s greatest ideas for moments in the play would never have occurred to me, simply because I would have assumed that another way was the only way.

6. Don’t Be Afraid to Throw Things Out

When I direct, I get attached to specific directions I have given, or bits that the actors have discovered themselves. They are hilarious in initial rehearsals, or they seem so obviously superior to another interpretation of a scene. That said, there’s a rule I need to learn to adhere to: if it doesn’t work, toss it. Scrap it and start again. The idea that a play is a puzzle is a tired but accurate metaphor; an idea may be great in a vacuum, but it has to fit into the puzzle, and if it doesn’t, it needs to go.

7. Consider Rhythm

Rhythm seems like the domain of music; one might imagine that rhythm is of little concern to the director of a play whose only music is created and played on a computer. In fact, I learned that rhythm is the lifeline of a farcical play such as Hound. For example, the breakneck speed in the beginning of Act 2 is what drives the humor there, and any number of jokes in HOUND rely on an unexpected or uncomfortable silence.

8. If You Can’t Hide It, Feature It

This is probably the most useful artistic lesson I learned while working on this production. In a play such as HOUND, when there are actors running back and forth across stage changing costumes and props, often in fewer than 10 seconds, it is sometimes impossible to disguise the fact that a costume change (or a scene change, or an actor needing to cross the stage) is not supposed to be watched too closely. When Tommy runs up against that wall, he knows it’s futile to make the impossible happen, so instead of trying to hide what can’t be hidden, he’ll make it look like it was supposed to be there all along.

9. Bring an audience

Once the show is in a semi-coherent form, with all the scenes blocked and put in order, it is very wise to have people from outside the production come watch. It can be anyone — friends, teachers, total strangers. What I learned is that what’s important is the effect an audience has on the way the director looks at the show. The first time we had a small audience for HOUND (just designers and CST staff), Tommy voiced something that I had felt, too: certain jokes and moments that seemed great at first suddenly seemed more arcane and less funny when we put an audience in front of them. And it had nothing to do with the audience response. I actually became more critical of our own work, viewing it as an audience member might, which helps with adherence to lesson 6 (Don’t Be Afraid to Throw Things Out).

10. Comedy Should Make You Laugh

As obvious as it sounds, it’s easy to forget. In creating comedy (as opposed to simply enjoying it), I sometimes feel like I should be regarding it academically, studying the construction of jokes and their placement in the play. Knowing how to do that is without doubt important, but as Tommy would constantly remind me with his belly laughs during rehearsal, good comedy is funny. If it doesn’t make you laugh, something’s amiss.

Critics bark their approval for THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

2010-07-29T10:07:00.006-04:00

Reviews are in for THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, and boy are our ears burning! Take a look at the critics' praise:

From The Boston Globe:

HOLMES MYSTERY 'HOUND' FINDS FUNNY BONE

"Much of the fun comes from watching these three pros dash nimbly from role to role....Derrah's direction [gives] us the double pleasure of watching an amusing Sherlock Holmes story and appreciating the deliberate staginess of its presentation. It’s not just a joke; it’s a smart joke, and one that both children and adults can enjoy."

Remo Airaldi, Trent Mills, and Bill Mootos

From the Boston Herald:

‘HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES’ A BARKING GOOD TIME

"It’s just good old, fourth-wall-breaking fun."

"Central Square Theater has gone all out....The lobby has been redecorated in faux-gentlemen’s-club style, complete with a dartboard and a miniature billiards table. It’s a collection of diversions, like the play itself - exactly what we need on a balmy summer night."

Remo Airaldi and Bill Mootos

From EDGEBoston:

"[Remo] Airaldi’s speciality is hair-trigger comic timing, and he’s in top form here as Holmes, not to mention a variety of other characters."

"The Central Square Theater is a young venue, but already it’s earned a reputation for ambitious, high level productions: The Hound of the Baskervilles marks another notch in its belt, with the play’s fun and sparkle spilling out of the auditorium and into the lobby. Come early and enjoy games and drinks at the "Thirsty Fang" cafe!"

Trent Mills, Bill Mootos, and Remo Airaldi

We're sensing a trend here...on top of the artistic success of the production, it seems we've set a precedent by turning our lobby into the Thirsty Fang pub.

Audiences have been asking us if we'll be changing up the space for each production from now on, and we like the idea. So what should we do next for TRUTH VALUES in September? (To be honest, we already have some ideas brewing. But send your inspiration in, too, if something sparks your imagination. Think math and science, MIT, the 1980s, student life...)

In the meantime, scoop up your tickets to HOUND before they're gone, because sales are going strong.

Photos by Elizabeth Stewart

Learning about the world through theater

2010-07-25T19:52:00.014-04:00

A slight side topic today, as we await the critic's reviews following last night's press opening of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES.

Take a peek into my life for a moment. Every Sunday I try to catch up on the theater section of the New York Times, to read the week's reviews and features. I suspect this is a habit shared by many others in the industry. What may be different about my experience (or maybe not, who knows these days) is that I read it all online. One bonus of the digital format is access to additional content, such as blogs. That's where I came across today's inspiration, Theater Talkback: Doing Your Homework.

I recommend reading it yourself, but in summary, drama critic Christopher Isherwood talks about how "One of the pleasures of a life of theatergoing, I’ve discovered, is the serendipitous dips into wildly diverse areas of culture it can provide... And that the 'new doors' that theater keeps opening have been instrumental in forging new paths of intellectual discovery."

For me, this phenomenon is one of the most engaging aspects of theater. And not just in theatergoing, but in theater making. The ability - in fact, the need - to learn about all of the topics in the plays we produce at Central Square Theater means that we're constantly engaging with a broad range of worldly subjects. And thank goodness drama covers so many subjects, or we'd be limited to producing plays solely about theater. Though there are some great plays about theater out there, how refreshing that we have a dramatic canon as rich and diverse as any other type of literature.

When producing plays that reach beyond our own spheres of knowledge, we use all sorts of research techniques: reading, talking to experts (and sometimes having them talk to our audiences, too), watching films, exploring artwork...whatever lends itself to the learning. In the end we find that what we discover not only informs our approach to the play, on the most basic level it simply enriches our understanding and appreciation of the topics and themes themselves. This intellectual enrichment, as Isherwood says, is a reward in itself.

When I look back and think about how little I knew about many of the topics of last season's plays when the season began - from Truman Capote's childhood to Cambridge's connections to nineteenth century slavery; from 1920s tabloid scandals to the challenges in Charles Darwin's private life; and most recently from the incredible career of Ann Landers to the history and legacy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous novel (which I read for the first time to prepare for THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES on our stage) - it's exciting to realize how much theater allows us to learn in a year, especially things that don't necessarily shout "this would make a great play" at the outset. It convinces me that our work is truly, relevantly connected to the larger world, and that drama is an important medium for continuing (sometimes actually creating) dialogue on any subject.

With this in mind, it's exciting to look ahead to what we have in store for the 2010-2011 season. We've already kick-started the thinking and researching and conversations around many of the plays slated for production, and we look forward to passing on some of that knowledge to you. So stay tuned to this blog and the performance and special events schedules as they're posted on our website.

Alison Klejna, Manager of Artistic Operations

Thoughts from THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES technical rehearsals

2010-07-18T20:27:00.020-04:00

Remo Airaldi, Bill Mootos, and Trent Mills in

technical rehearsals for The Hound of the Baskervilles

Greetings from technical rehearsals for The Hound of the Baskervilles! We are in day 2 of these hardcore rehearsals, which means long days, lots of starting and stopping and rerunning as we move through the scenes to incorporate all of the technical elements, and of course requisite doses of coffee and candy to get us through. It's exciting to see the show taking shape on the set, in costume, fully lit and sounding great.

I won't go so far as to make a gross, sweeping generalization that producing a comedy is more technically complex than producing a drama (because I'd be immediately proven wrong), but it sure can feel like that's a universal truth when you're working on a show like this, in which sound and lights and props and costumes add so much to the storytelling, especially in emphasizing the humor.

This makes me think back to my (and I'm pretty sure every theater student's) early lessons on the essential elements of theater: actors, audience, a space in which to be together, action, and a little light to illuminate the situation. It's always comforting to remember that theater, for all its potential to be as high-tech as innovation allows, also doesn't need tons of bells and whistles to work. You just need a few bodies and a story to tell.

Underneath everything else, Hound is all about telling a terrific story. I can only surmise that's a major part of what compelled the playwrights, Steven Canny and John Nicholson, to adapt it in the first place. So all of the technical elements we incorporate into the play are for the sake of telling that story as fully as we can by taking advantage of the resources we have to do so. Even if theater doesn't require technical design to qualify as theater, it sure can benefit from it. And that's what tech rehearsals are for, in a nutshell: working all of those ideas into one complete package. Sometimes easier said than done, but it always comes together in the end.

More to come. Wish us luck in finishing up our tech early in the week. Audiences starting Thursday night!

-Alison Klejna, Manager of Artistic Operations (providing artistic direction for The Hound of the Baskervilles)

A night at the theater, a night at the pub

2010-07-09T09:58:00.005-04:00

Have you heard? We're turning the Central Square Theater lobby into a British pub for the run of The Hound of the Baskervilles this summer. And we're holding a contest on Facebook to name it. We're loving the suggestions we've received so far and will choose the winning name next week.

In the meantime, preparations for the pub are well underway. We'll be doing some painting and decorating, adding furniture, accessories, games, etc. So come early, stay late, and enjoy the space as part of your night out with Sherlock Holmes, trusty Dr. Watson, and the colorful characters of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's beloved novel.

While the pub waits patiently for its name, the theme is shaping up to be "hunt club." The acquisition of this artwork pretty much sealed the deal, along with other accessories we've been scooping up from thrift stores, parents' and grandparents' basements and sheds, and the theater's own props stock. It will be a fun space to escape the heat, play darts or cards or dominoes with your friends before the show, grab a beer during intermission, and linger after the show for more activities. For more on the British pub tradition, here's trusty Wikipedia.

The heat is on, the game is afoot, and it's going to be a rollicking good time at Central Square Theater this summer. Won't you join us?

What would Sherlock wear?

2010-07-02T17:00:00.006-04:00

Happy Independence Day weekend, readers! The weather has turned idyllic, so many of us are headed to our favorite out-of-town destinations for the long weekend. But our Hound of the Baskervilles team will be hard at work rehearsing for the production, which opens in just a few weeks.

Today we had our third production meeting, and now we head into the heavy design implementation phase. This is a fairly tech-heavy show for each department: set, lights, props, costumes, and sound, because it's an incredibly fast-paced comedy with lots of jokes based around and supported by the design elements. Here's a sneak peek of some costumes that Mallory Frers, our costume designer, has envisioned:

And that's not the extent of them, by a longshot. There will be lots of hat-switching and even a little South American touch thrown in for good measure. The three actors have to cover about a dozen characters in this show. The end result: zany brilliance.

Gotta jet for the weekend, but more sneak peeks next week, we promise. In the meantime, have a great holiday!

PlayPen Profile: Bob Boulrice and "Cassie's Gambit"

2010-06-12T10:42:00.006-04:00

Central Square Theater's PlayPen staged reading series concludes on Monday, June 14th, with a reading of Cassie's Gambit, a new play by PlayPen member Bob Boulrice. A longtime theater aficionado, Bob turned to playwriting just a few years ago and quickly became actively involved in a number of writing groups. Here, Bob tells us about his jump into playwriting and what's in store for Monday evening.
Q: When did you begin writing plays, and what draws you to the genre?
A: I'm the newbie in the PlayPen. I've been writing for four years. I've been a numbers guy for my entire professional life. For reasons I can barely understand, another side of my brain seemed to open up and with some proper training, a dozen or so scripts have emerged. It is profoundly gratifying to hear talented actors speak my words.

What are some of the highlights of your playwriting career?
I did an updating of the Robin Hood saga, titled Tidewater 4-10-0-9 that was converted into a radio play and broadcast over Brandeis college radio. That was lot of fun. Robin and Little John are former Stanford classmates who reconnect after twenty years to engineer the short sale of a pharmaceutical stock, thereby returning ill-gotten wealth to its rightful owners. Another pleasant memory occurred when Oy Yea, Oy Veh was performed at the Baldwin Theatre, Royal Oak, Michigan. A not insignificant number of very earnest Jewish ladies fought for the right to sit next to the playwright, pinch his cheek and describe their brisket recipes, being that the play ends with a brisket reference.

Tell us a little about Cassie's Gambit.
Cassie's Gambit is a play about pain and its various forms and its various effects on a high achievement family.

How long have you been working on this piece?
A couple years. Initial writing occurred in summer 2008. Cassie was first read at the Write On group that fall and winter.

What is the inspiration behind it?
Well, I became quite close to a group of people who underwent a very intensive multi-year effort to explore and understand - hopefully heal - their damaged, inner child personas. Some of the struggles and conflicts I observed were then set in the context of two groups of professionals I worked with several careers ago: symphony musicians and Jungian psychoanalysts. So Cassie features a child, a cellist mother, an anaylyst grandfather (retired) and several dream sequences.

How has the PlayPen program contributed to the play’s development?
Just as the character Cassie is a child in desperate need of nurturing, so is this script. The benefit has been obvious to anyone familiar with the process.

What are you looking forward to most about your reading? What do you hope to gain from the experience?
There are very talented actors participating in this project. Exploring the characters with them has been revelatory.

Ready for a revelatory experience of your own? Come hear Cassie's Gambit in a free staged reading on Monday, June 14th, at 7pm at Central Square Theater, and help us conclude our 2009-2010 PlayPen readings with a bang!

PlayPen Profile: Amy Merrill and "The Townhouse"

2010-06-12T10:15:00.006-04:00

We had a great experience with the first PlayPen reading of Rosanna Alfaro's Before I Leave You last Monday. Next up is Sunday evening's presentation of The Townhouse by PlayPen member Amy Merrill. Amy is a Cambridge resident with a long history as a playwright, and we are proud to be a part of that history. Next spring The Nora Theatre Company will present the world premiere of the new musical Silver Spoon, with book by Amy and music and lyrics by Si Kahn.

But first, let's learn more about Amy's career, her experience in the PlayPen, and The Townhouse.
Q: When did you begin writing plays? What draws you to the genre?
A: Over thirty years ago. I had taken a playwriting course at Brandeis, but became smitten with the form after I took a course with Eliza Wyatt at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

What are some of the highlights of your playwriting career?
Working on The TV War, a play about a Vietnam veteran suffering the effects of Agent Orange, with June Judson, a dear friend and mentor. We presented the play in Boston and beyond at the time that the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC was being inaugurated (early 1980s).

Working on Cigarettes and Whiskey, a play about a country singer who runs AWAY from Nashville, first in Nashville with country singer Gail Davies and Nashville Theatreworks, and then locally in a workshop that featured Leslie Dillen.

The fun I'm having right now preparing for the Townhouse reading on June 13, as well as the upcoming CST premiere of Silver Spoon in Spring 2011. Developmental work on Silver Spoon has involved a couple of readings in New York (2008, 2009) with phenomenal talent, and I am confident that we will have a wonderful cast for the local production, which will be directed by [The Nora Theatre Company's Associate Director] Daniel Gidron.

Tell us a little about The Townhouse.
A young professional couple purchases a townhouse in the West Village, NYC, only to find out that it is haunted by the ghosts of Weathermen killed in the townhouse bombing in 1970.

How long have you been working on this piece?
2-3 years, I think.

What is the inspiration behind it?
My preoccupation with how the past (in this case radical politics from the 1970s) is part of our present day lives.

How has the PlayPen program contributed to the play’s development?
Enormously! Before last month's cold reading, I had never heard my play read. Also, I was helped by Debra [Wise] and Mimi [Huntington] to find director Adam Zahler and the lovely cast. Thanks to them and other members of CST staff.

What are you looking forward to most about your reading, and what do you hope to gain from the experience?
First of all, to hear play read by our lovely cast. Next to see how much of it is there and how much more work it needs.

The Townhouse will receive its first public reading at Central Square Theater on Sunday, June 13th at 7pm. Admission is free (contributions welcome) and open to the public. End your weekend by experiencing theater in the making, and lend your voice to the process!

Meet "Before I Leave You" playwright Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro

2010-06-06T23:00:00.008-04:00

Our very first PlayPen play reading is right around the corner - Monday night, in fact - so it's time to meet the playwright. As you'll learn, Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro's plays have been produced over the last three decades in numerous cities. We're proud to support her voice during this inaugural year of Central Square Theater's PlayPen playwriting program.

Let's learn more about Rosanna and her play, Before I Leave You, which will receive a public reading at CST this week (more information here), straight from her:

My first play was produced in 1981 by People’s Theatre in Cambridge before it moved on in 1982 to Pan Asian Repertory in New York. I had written short stories until then, but was immediately smitten by a form in which the characters in your head literally become flesh and blood. Short story writing is a solitary task. With plays I spend four fifths of the year writing (which I still love) and one fifth (if I’m lucky) in the exciting company of directors and actors..

Of my early plays I think Mishima, produced by East West Players in Los Angeles and starring Mako, was my favorite, especially because the title character was a friend of my parents, and I had met him at an impressionable age. I think my best play is Barrancas, produced at the Magic Theater, about U.S./ Latin American relationships as seen through the eyes of an imaginary Latin American dictator. I love writing one woman shows (Martha Mitchell and Sailing Down the Amazon) and 10-minute-plays for the rough and tumble world of theater festivals that bring together all your friends in Boston or take you to places as far afield as New York City, Seattle, and Edinburgh.

I’ve been working on Before I Leave You for more than three years. It’s not exactly based on me or on any of my friends (which doesn’t mean they won’t find their words or their ailments coming out of the mouths of the characters). In fact, each character is a composite of at least three or more people. The story of elderly Cantabrigians worried about their health and their love life is, of course, completely fictional.

I have had a wonderful time in the PlayPen this year with Amy Merrill and Bob Boulrice. We met regularly once a month – there’s nothing like a deadline to stir up one’s creative juices – and I benefited a great deal from the astute suggestions of writers as obsessed with theater as I am. It’s also wonderful to read new works in various stages of development and chart their progress.

I’m looking forward to Monday night because all the strengths and weaknesses of a play become glaringly apparent once it’s put on stage, even in a reading. I also love the rehearsal process, being someone who is happiest tinkering with the lines, before, during, and after performances. I learn a great deal from actors and directors, especially Danny Gidron, who has steered many of my plays from the shallows into the ocean.

To hear Before I Leave You for yourself and share your reactions with Rosanna immediately following the reading, pop over to Central Square Theater for the 7pm reading on June 7th. This stage of the development process is all about having an audience to hear the piece, so we'd love to see you there!

The PlayPen Players - Act 1, Scene 1

2010-05-21T11:26:00.012-04:00

We had a terrific opening weekend of The Lady With All the Answers, The Boston Globe just put out a glowing review, we celebrated another terrific year of theater with our Wicked Good 50 Years Gala on Tuesday night, and the warm sun is back out. We would say "welcome to May!'" but suddenly it's almost over. How'd that happen?

As we move quickly towards June, we want to draw your attention to three exciting events coming up next month. It's our great pleasure to present readings of new plays by Central Square Theater's PlayPen Playwrights, a trio of talented local writers who have been in residence at CST this season, coming together monthly to nurture along their projects in the company of their peers.

As we approach the readings on June 7, 13, and 14, allow us to introduce you to these three dedicated writers in more depth. We'll be surveying them on a variety of questions about their PlayPen experiences and the work that has come out of the residency, and posting their answers on this site. We'll also feature a profile of each writer and a look at his/her featured play as the respective readings approach.

Our first question to the playwrights: As a writer, what are the benefits of being part of a playwriting group like the PlayPen?

Bob Boulrice, author of Cassie's Gambit, responded, "Playwriting is mostly a lonely, solitary pursuit. Sure, it can be exciting when our characters speak to us, making our fingers fly over the keyboard. Often that happens in the middle of the night and usually when we are alone. Writers need a home. A safe place to go; to gather with our fellows and to share our words and our worries. The PlayPen is our home. Be it ever so warm and welcoming. It makes the task easier and our scripts better. We are happy to have the PlayPen."

Amy Merrill, author of The Townhouse, added, "All playwright groups are an opportunity to build community and share work. What makes the PlayPen special is we are attached to the Central Square Theater, which provides us with resources such as artistic leadership and publicity. Our meetings have been in the PlayPen (aka the greenroom) or the classroom. In turn we become ambassadors for the theater and its work."

Rosanna Alfaro, author of Before I Leave You, shared similar sentiments: "How nice to have an institutional roof over your head to retreat to once a month to discuss your plays with those as keen about making theater as you are! It's been most helpful for all of us in the PlayPen to be critiqued and encouraged by fellow playwrights throughout the year, and at the end to have two readings, one in-house, the other public, with excellent directors and actors brought together by the Central Square Theater. What's there not to like? "

What's not to like, indeed! The playwrights make good points: As Bob said, writing is often thought of as a solitary endeavor, and for good reason - much of the time it helps to be by yourself, surrounded by your tools of choice, writing as quickly or slowly as the words will come. But if no man is an island, that's especially true of playwrights. When you write material intended to be performed, you not only crave the feedback of fellow writers, you really NEED to hear your work aloud, ideally in the mouths of actors. And when you're so close to your own work that you can no longer see the forest for the trees, you rely on peer, director, actor, and ultimately audience feedback to bring things back into focus. Those are among the goals of the PlayPen program. Glad to hear it's been working for this year's members!

The Ladies Behind the Answers - Saturday night is Advice Night!

2010-05-10T17:07:00.007-04:00

"The Ladies Behind the Answers" is a special event of The Lady With All the Answers, featuring Boston Globe advice columnists Meredith Goldstein and Robin Abrahams on Saturday, May 15.

What does it take to be a great advice columnist? Is it an art, a craft, or a science? And how would different columnists respond to the same questions? Discover for yourself with The Boston Globe’s own Meredith Goldstein of “Love Letters”, and “Miss Conduct”, Robin Abrahams, at a very special night at The Lady With All the Answers at Central Square Theater in Cambridge.

For 47 years, Ann Landers was America’s reining advice columnist, tackling the tough questions from A to Z. Whether inadvertently inciting a national debate about which direction to hang your toilet paper or inspiring landmark change in the government, she was “the lady with all the answers” for generations of readers, the one to turn to for honest, no-nonsense advice or simply to keep you company over your morning bowl of cereal.

Meet Meredith and Robin at a pre-performance discussion on May 15th at 7:00pm, where they will explore the world of advice writing and take on some classic Ann Landers columns themselves. Will they agree with Ann, or even with each other?

Here are the questions they'll tackle:

Dear Ann Landers: Here’s a new one for you. First, let me say I am divorced and the father of three wonderful children. I love them very much, and I try to spend as much time with them as possible. At present, I am with them about three days a week. Recently, my ex-wife asked that my present wife, “Babette,” watch the children every day after school while she works. This means until 6:30 in the evening. It seemed like a great idea to me since the children get a long very well with Babette, and our home is a pleasant and familiar place to them. The problem is that Babette believes that she should be paid the same as any other child-care provider because she is performing a service for which my former wife has paid others in the past. My former wife feels that Babette is obligated to watch the children for free because they are, after all, my children and she is now my wife. Babette says it’s not so much the money but the idea that my ex-wife is just trying to take advantage of her. I love my children and am in the middle of a battle between these two women who are not crazy about each other to begin with. Do you have a solution? -Between a Rock and a Boulder in Colorado

Dear Ann Landers: After being a bachelor for nine years, I was recently married. We both knew adjustments would have to be made, and we settled some of the problems in advance. But one small item was not discussed, and it is creating more trouble than I dreamed possible. It’s the toilet seat. Old habits are hard to break. I am simply not accustomed to flopping down the seat before I leave the bathroom. We started with gentle reminders and then tried taping notes to the wall. From there, we went to good natured kidding that led to insults. Last week, we escalated from snarling to yelling to screaming. I have decided that it is easier to rebel than to change. I refuse to apologize for my habit ever again. When I enter the bathroom, I have enough sense (and decency) to lift the seat. Does it require of my wife more energy to flop it down than it does for me to lift it up? No! Less, in fact, because I am fighting gravity. I say if a women doesn’t have enough sense to look where she is about to sit, she deserves the consequences. In my opinion, courtesy is something that is extended. If should not be demanded. Will you settle this, Ann? And if you aren’t on my side, please skip the whole thing. I have more trouble that I can cope with right now. -Up, Up, Up in Grand Rapids

Dear Ann Landers: I don’t think my new husband is very sensitive to my feelings. He insists on calling me “Babe” instead of using my real name. He calls me Babe when he phones from his office. He refers to me as Babe in conversations with others and I’m Babe when we’re in bed. “Jay” has been married before – three times. I often wonder if he called his other wives Babe as well. Every time he calls me Babe, I have the feeling that he can’t remember my name, or I wonder if it’s because he doesn’t want to get mixed up and call me by the name of one of his ex-wives. I’ve asked him several times to please call me Jane, but it hasn’t done one bit of good. What do you make of this, Ann? Am I super sensitive or what? Should I keep harping on this or shut up? -Babe No. 4 in Virginia

Have your own opinions? Come share!

Following the 8:00pm performance, join Meredith and Robin for a post-show dessert reception at the theater. Celebrate Ann’s arrival in Boston – and her taste for chocolate - with some sweet treats and swinging tunes.

Both pre- and post-show events are free with admission to the performance, so snap up tickets while they last:

Becoming Ann Landers

2010-05-05T15:56:00.009-04:00

Our very own Ann Landers, actress Stephanie Clayman, has begun blogging about her preparations for her solo debut in our final production of the season, The Lady With All the Answers. You can read all about it on the Jewish Women's Archive blog. Follow her posts as she moves from rehearsals to performances and ruminates on all things Ann. Stephanie has been doing fabulous work in rehearsal and we can't wait to see the transformation complete, beginning May 13th. Here's a tidbit to tickle your funnybone:

Stephanie Clayman in rehearsal as Ann Landers in The Lady With All the Answers.
Photo: Elizabeth Stewart/Libberding Photography

Also can't wait to see the completion of the set, which is starting to be installed today. Here's a sneak peek at the early stages of that process:
Hardwood, molding, chandelier...fancy stuff, Ms. Landers!

Orchids mural on display

2010-05-04T17:43:00.005-04:00

We've moved the From Orchids to Octopi mural downstairs to the empty storefront next to the theater for a few weeks, so stop by and see it! It's hard to photograph through the windows, but actually, the reflections of Mass. Ave. are pretty interesting layered on the view into the building.

Click on each to view larger!

The evolution is complete

2010-04-30T13:48:00.005-04:00

Thank you all so much for making From Orchids to Octopi a rousing success! As we conclude the show's run this weekend, some thoughts from dramaturg Roxanna Myhrum:

There has been a recurring theme during our post-show conversations with scientists and audience members: Evolution is Everywhere. It’s talked about in science labs and lecture halls, but it’s also used as an explanatory metaphor in politics, medicine, music, history, and just about every other walk of life where we try to make sense of change. For our own part, we can’t help using evolution as a metaphor for the play writing process. In our final week of performances for From Orchids to Octopi: An Evolutionary Love Story, it seems appropriate to reflect on the evolution of this play over the past two years. Here are some highlights from behind-the-scenes. Enjoy!

From so simple a beginning…

Underground Railway Theater/The Catalyst Collaborative @ MIT get a commission from the National Institutes of Health to write a play about evolution in honor of the 150^th anniversary of the publishing of On the Origin of Species, and of Darwin’s 200^th birthday.

Co-Evolution

How would an artist make sense of evolution? Melinda confronted this dilemma as she set to work digesting a massive amount of scientific writing in the hopes of turning it into drama. Then it hit: what if the protagonist faced a similar plight? Melinda sends the creative team an e-mail asking if artist David Fichter would be available to paint a mural for the production. He agrees, and our modern-day muralist character Emma is born. As the creative team works to make science into art, new material gets generated for Emma.

Variation

We schedule readings of the play, some just with actors and Melinda, others for audiences. In earlier versions, Emma is very naïve (C: What do you know about evolution? Em: That we come from monkeys?), and that’s not playing well. Also, we have a Charles Darwin character, but no Emma Darwin…yet. And after months of interviews with scientists, it’s time to meet with a panel of muralists to generate more realistic dialogue for Emma.

Selective Pressure

In the first version of the play, Emma and Charles were unmarried when they find out that they are pregnant. The NIH is concerned that this topic will become politicized and will distract from the substantive content of the play. Productive debate ensues about what can be done to preserve the central conflict while shielding the project from detractors. Charles and Emma become married, and Melinda fashions a new proposal for the (hopeless romantic) Charles: “marry me every day.”

Mutation

Some scenes where scientists appear and deliver information to Emma are coming off as too didactic, especially a section about the evolution of Lactose tolerance. How do we add conflict? Comedy? The solution: turn the scientist into a two-headed cow that argues with itself while talking to Emma. In a similar transformation, Melinda had always envisioned the Annie Darwin character as a puppet, but right before rehearsals started the creative team discussed having the part played by a child actress. When Kiva came in to read for the part, she blew us all away, and, in a move that would make Pinocchio jealous, Annie Darwin became a real girl.

Extinction

During the rehearsal process, the actors discover moments that don’t quite work, perhaps because they are still vestiges of previous drafts. Melinda deletes two entire scenes, and substantially re-writes dialogue for three more. Meanwhile, David Fichter starts painting the mural, and last-minute demands for what image should go on which section get phoned in to his studio.

Before opening in Cambridge the play tours to Bethesda, MD (where the NIH is located). The scenes with a talking giraffe and a T-Rex driving a Prius aren’t working as well technically as they were conceptually. Melinda gets out the red pen again and, with two days to go, makes her final cuts.

Survival of the Fittest

Orchids is now playing in Cambridge to sold-out houses. Live audiences give new life to the play, and the actors keep discovering new significance in the lines. Our hope is that continued demand for the play will allow us to tour outside of Massachusetts. If you liked what you saw, spread the word!

Happy Earth Day from Charles Darwin

2010-04-22T09:57:00.007-04:00

There's been a lot of attention on Earth Day for its 40th anniversary (or is it birthday?) today. Here in the theater world, producing From Orchids to Octopi has opened our eyes to our own role in that conversation. The direct connections between evolution and the health of our planet have become crystal clear as we listen to so many truly amazing scientists discuss the links in our pre- and post-show discussions.

For instance, let's think about the relationship between mass agriculture and multiple antibiotic drug resistance. In April 17th's pre-performance science symposium, "Evolution and Disease", an audience member asked "What happens to the evolution of viruses and bacteria in light of the rampant use of antibiotics, antimicrobials, and such?" Listen to MIT microbiologist Jonathan King's response:

And then there's the matter of extinction. An audience member asked how concerned we should be about extinction if new organisms continue to emerge. Hidde Ploegh and Jonathan King respond about the regrettable aspects of extinction and evolution's inability to replace lost species:

Once you start thinking about it, Darwin is everywhere. And we like to think he's wishing everyone a very happy and conscientious Earth Day!

You can still get tickets to select performances, but availability is limited:

When an artist falls in love with science

2010-04-02T12:13:00.013-04:00

Director Diego Arciniegas and playwright Melinda Lopez
Photo by Dina Rudick/Globe Staff

From Orchids to Octopi received a lovely feature in The Boston Globe today. Click through to learn about the conception of the project and how playwright Melinda Lopez fell in love with evolutionary theory and transferred that experience to her main character.

And here's some footage from the Meet the Playwright talkback on March 31, after our first performance at Central Square Theater:

In this video Melinda, Underground Railway Theater (and cast member) Artistic Director Debra Wise, and dramaturg Roxanna Myhrum discuss the contributions of professional scientists to the play, including how some ended up as characters in the play...at least for a time.

Next, a look at how elements of the play were added throughout its development process. What wasn't in it at the beginning that is now, and vice versa? And what does cooking have to do with evolution?

Finally, an inside look at the collaborative process of a developing a new work between the playwright and the rest of the creative team, and the role that the National Institutes of Health had in the play's creation.

Creating Darwin's world: A muralist's evolutionary vision

2010-03-23T14:32:00.015-04:00

From Orchids to Octopi had a public dress rehearsal yesterday, followed by its first performance in Bethesda, MD. A friend of our Development Director sent this shot of the Bethesda Theatre marquee lit up beautifully last night, along with his praise for the play.

We're excited to have our actors and creative team back in town later this week to complete preparations for its premiere at Central Square Theater on March 31. In the meantime, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the play's visual centerpiece: a beautiful, evolving mural by designer David Fichter.

Photo by Elizabeth Stewart

The play's protagonist, Emma, is a muralist whose current project is about evolution. She has a lot of research to do, and when she learns that she and her husband, Charles (like Emma and Charles Darwin, get it?), are expecting their first child, evolution becomes an especially fascinating and personal subject for her - in turns funny, terrifying, and often wacky, thanks to the variety of historical creatures that playwright Melinda Lopez parades through Emma's life, from Tiktaalik to Tuberculosis to an unforgettable bovine with quite a set of personalities.

Keeping to the theme of evolution, the play not only evolves through its storytelling, but also environmentally, as Emma's mural develops and is revealed in phases.

Here's an early model of the mural design. Some of the images have changed since then, but the concept has remained constant.
The mural was painted in one giant piece in a large open space. Below, a promo shot of actress Kortney Adams (last seen in Harriet Jacobs) as Emma, "painting" the mural during its actual construction phase at Artex in Somerville:

Photo by Elizabeth Stewart

When the painting stage was complete, the canvas was sliced into segments and mounted on the set pieces, which include four giant periaktoi. To learn more about what a periaktoi is, click here.

You can see our bare periaktoi behind director Diego Arciniegas in this photo, as he works with cast members Kiva Bertman McElhiney and Debra Wise early in rehearsals. What you can't see are just how tall they are. They are really quite impressive in stature.

And how they are covered with this beautiful mural
which flips into different configurations to create additional settings, including an evolutionary freak show. Don't pretend you don't want to know what that's all about.
When you come to see the play, make sure to spend a little time looking at the mural after its final reveal. There are things to see that we're not showing online!

A first look at "From Orchids to Octopi": Meet the Playwright

2010-03-18T15:23:00.012-04:00

From Orchids to Octopi: An Evolutionary Love Story. An intriguing name, no? This is the next play to grace the Central Square Theater stage this season, brought to you by Catalyst Collaborative@MIT, Underground Railway Theater's science theater initiative with MIT, through a commission by the National Institutes of Health.

Past CC@MIT productions have included last spring's The Life of Galileo, QED in the summer of 2008, and Einstein's Dreams in repeated productions. We've explored a lot of math, physics, and astronomy in the past few years. Now, From Orchids to Octopi takes on another fascinating topic: EVOLUTION. Get ready, because Darwin is in the house!

We recently spoke with playwright Melinda Lopez about the creation of From Orchids to Octopi and her hopes for the play.
How did you become involved in this project, and was this commission a significant departure from your previous works?
MELINDA LOPEZ: Debra Wise [Artistic Director of Underground Railway Theater] called and asked if I would be interested in collaborating on a piece celebrating evolution. I jumped. I had worked with URT earlier on the commission How Do You Spell Hope?, a play about literacy, and I loved the process from beginning to end. But evolution has turned out to be a much, much bigger topic-- enormous in scope, ramifications, subject matter, historical impact, current events-- everything. It's everywhere.

What are the challenges of addressing a topic like evolution in a theatrical format?
ML: Wow. Um. Many, many challenges. I asked myself almost every day, “What does this topic have to do with me? Why should I be interested?" and so I hope all moments in the play come back to that. Because you have to edit-- I mean, you could focus on medicine, social dynamics, genetics, immunology, misuse of the theory, Darwin the man, ad infinitum-- so how do you selectively go deep? It's also crucial that there's a story, a theatrical event, with conflict and characters-- in earlier drafts I had scientists coming out of the mural to talk about their work. Interesting. But not theatre. So I had to change the idea. It's a very complicated marriage.

During the play’s development you consulted with numerous professional scientists. What were their contributions to the process and the piece? Did you also consult with individuals from other fields?
ML: It was such an honor to meet with people who dedicate their lives to science. Who are leaders in the field. Sometimes, I forget what it means to live in Boston. To have access to geniuses. The scientists I met with were funny and kind and approachable. And brilliant. And so passionate about their research. Roxanna Myhrum, who made initial contact with these people, and who came to the interviews, and helped me bat around ideas, and often, helped me understand the more complex scientific concepts-- she was a constant resource. I also talked with a labor and delivery nurse and folks in the food industry. And I talked with muralists! My god! So inspiring! The artists! Passionate. Committed. Wow. So great! And I read a lot of books. A lot.

The play has been presented in several readings since its early drafts. What did you learn in those readings, and how has the play changed over time?
ML: We have great actors, who could make the yellow pages interesting. But I cut a lot of the yellow pages out after seeing their challenges with the drier text. I hope I gave them something to do worthy of their talent. And I hope I gave the audience a pageant to watch. Action and conflict get people excited. Facts and statistics, not so much. I mean, how do you find conflict and character in lactose tolerance? I hope I did.

The play was originally called From Orchids to Octopi: An Evolutionary Fantasy. Why did you decide to ultimately call the play a “love story”?

ML: Marketing. But really, when you dig into evolutionary theory and find out that love may be a function of our survival mechanism-- that's pretty great.

Science plays, like all plays, have the potential to teach, entertain, and move us. What do you hope audiences walk away with after attending From Orchids to Octopi?
ML: I hope people will laugh, and have some of their assumptions challenged, and talk at the dinner table or at the water cooler about antibiotic resistance; and that when they have an ice cream, they'll understand that they can digest milk because of a mutation in a gene which helped their family survive. And I hope they'll read any one of the hundred's of fabulous books on evolution, and that they'll fight any watering down of science curriculum in the school, and also go to a museum and that they'll-- I guess that's enough.

Come see what you take away from the play when From Orchids to Octopi makes its world premiere at Central Square Theater this spring. This brand new work heads to Bethesda, MD, home of the National Institutes of Health, for two days of performances next week. It will then return to Central Square Theater for a full world premiere run in Cambridge from March 31 through May 2.

WHAT'S YOUR POISON? A "Not Enough Air" special event

2010-02-28T21:56:00.008-05:00

When we learned that Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Deborah Blum would be in town during our run of Not Enough Air, and that her brand new book, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, includes an exciting look into the investigation into the death of Ruth Snyder's husband - a catalytic event in the play - we just had to invite her to spend some time with us.

From a spark of an idea developed "What's Your Poison?", a post-performance event on March 5th at Sidney's Grille, Le Meridien Hotel's posh restaurant just around the corner from Central Square Theater. Walk over with us, grab a drink at the bar, and gather round for some delicious refreshments as Deborah shares her discoveries about the Snyder-Gray investigation, which led to one of the most infamous death penalty cases in the 20th century America.
The Poisoner's Handbook looks at the case from a different angle than Not Enough Air, and it's a fascinating one on its own: Before modern forensic toxicology, Manhattan's first trained chief medical examiner and its first toxicologist devised ingenious methods to detect poisoning, leading to the arrests of individuals who would probably otherwise have gotten away with their crimes. They were also able to determine how poisoning was related to other components of a crime. Take Albert Snyder's death: Was he killed by blunt trauma or by the chloroform his wife and her lover used on him?

Find out what they discovered by joining us for Not Enough Air on March 5th at 8pm and ending your night at "What's Your Poison?" with Deborah Blum. We can't think of a more perfect way to cap off the week!

Hot off the press - Not Enough Air photos

2010-02-12T13:58:00.005-05:00

Photos, photos, get your photos!

We have your first look at Not Enough Air production photographs, which will soon hit the press.

Anne Gottlieb as Sophie Treadwell and
Craig Mathers as William "Mac" McGeehan

In the middle of one of the acts, amidst all the onstage action, take a minute to look around and soak in the setting. You may just feel that you've been transported to an edgy off-off Broadway black box in Manhattan. Maybe when the play's over you'll step into the misty night air and round the corner into a smoky jazz club for a nightcap. Only you didn't have to go to New York for the experience - you're having it right here in Cambridge.

Anne Gottlieb, Marianna Bassham, and Ruby Rose Fox

The designs, directing, and performances in Not Enough Air have come together so well that the production really transforms the theater into its own little atmospheric world, teaming with intrigue, scandal, media frenzy, and, at its heart, two women whose voices struggle to rise above it all. You may have seen The Cherry Orchard or Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs in this room, but not in this space. You may have been here before, but you haven't been here like this. And when you see Not Enough Air, you'll see why that counts.

Marianna Bassham and Anne Gottlieb

All photos courtesy Elizabeth Stewart

Examining the death penalty onstage through an infamous crime

2010-02-05T13:35:00.013-05:00

Check out the great feature on Not Enough Air in The Boston Globe today!

On the night of our first performance, February 11th, we are excited to welcome Carol Steiker to our Harvard Night talkback. Harvard Night is for anyone and everyone, regardless of your alma mater. We call it Harvard Night because one night per production we roll out the red carpet for a special guest from the Harvard community. This time it's a criminal law and death penalty specialist, so we should have lots to talk about!

Professor Carol Steiker, Harvard Law

On theme with Not Enough Air, Professor Steiker will respond to the play from her professional and personal perspectives on American criminal law and her particular interest in the death penalty, both of which she teaches at Harvard Law School, where she is the Howard and Kathy Aibel Professor of Law.

Professor Steiker is exceptionally accomplished in her field and has been honored with the Hugo A. Bedau Award by Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty for her contributions to death penalty scholarship. Among her courses at Harvard are "Capital Punishment in America", from which we'll be welcoming students on the 11th.

In recent news, Professor Steiker and her brother, Jordan Steiker, professor at the University of Texas Law School, conducted a study that led the American Law Institute (ALI) to vote to withdraw the capital punishment section of its Model Penal Code in October 2009. "The Steikers’ study examined whether or not the death penalty was in fact being administered in compliance with the Constitution," a Harvard Law article explains. "They found that there are too many obstacles, both structural and institutional, to administering the death penalty in a non-arbitrary way."

Wouldn't Sophie Treadwell, Not Enough Air's real-life protagonist, be intrigued! Not only did she follow the trial of Ruth Snyder, the most famous woman executed by electric chair in New York, she felt so strongly about what she witnessed that she based her most successful Broadway play, Machinal, on the salacious saga the kept the country at the mercy of relentless tabloid fodder in the late 1920s. Now playwright Masha Obolensky has added another delicious layer to the story, examining Treadwell's intense, often obsessive, sometimes self-destructive experience creating her landmark work.

Anne Gottlieb as Sophie Treadwell and Marianna
Bassham as the Young Woman rehearse Not Enough Air.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Stewart

Please join us on February 11th for the 7:30pm performance, followed by the talkback with Carol Steiker. Take advantage of a special $10 ticket offer in honor of Harvard Night by entering "AIR10" when ordering:

Our special guests events occur early in the run, so don't miss out!

Introducing Not Enough Air

2010-02-02T20:32:00.002-05:00

A lot of teenagers learn about the Rosenbergs and Sacco and Vanzetti in U.S. History class. But when did America forget one of the most intensely followed trials of the early 20th century?

It's time to remember Ruth Snyder. In 1927 she was convicted, along with her lover, Henry Judd Gray, of murdering her husband. The next year she became the first woman executed in the Sing Sing electric chair in the 20th century. Reporters recounted every detail of her trial in the newspapers, and the public drank it up. She was depicted as a blond vixen, though photographs would suggest otherwise.

Ruth, a Queens housewife, and Judd, a corset salesman, weren't the most skilled criminals, and the jury quickly found them guilty of murder. When they were sentenced to death, applications poured in to witness the end of Ruth's life. When the date came, news photographer Tom Howard used a smuggled camera strapped to his ankle to snap a shocking photo of the moment of her electrocution. It was splashed across the front page of most major newspapers, under the headline, "DEAD!" You can look that photo up online.

It was surely the trial of its day, overshadowing even the Sacco and Vanzetti trial and the men's 1927 executions. Surely it was not as politicized as that case, but Ruth and Judd's story was filled with marital dissatisfaction, boozy parties, seduction and infidelity, child negligence, double indemnity insurance policies, Ruth's multiple attempts at ending Albert Snyder's life, the final premeditated plan between lovers, and a shoddy cover-up that was quickly blown wide open. It had all the makings of a terrific public sensation.

Journalists, and sometimes even celebrities, packed the courtroom. Photographers lined up as the verdict was announced. And a playwright named Sophie Treadwell, herself a highly accomplished journalist, was so moved by the proceedings that she penned her most successful and frequently revived play, Machinal, based on Ruth's story and similar stories of other real life women.

The Nora Theater Company's upcoming production, Not Enough Air, by local playwright Masha Obolensky, takes a fascinating look at Treadwell's experience witnessing the Ruth Snyder's trial and writing Machinal, which became a defining Expressionist play on Broadway in 1928. It's a beautiful, intimate, stylish piece about women struggling for their voices to be heard, trying to understand what would cause an ordinary woman to commit a heinous crime, and the toll the creative process can take on an artist. It premiered in Chicago in 2009 and was nominated for 5 Jeff Equity Awards - not too shabby!

Not Enough Air opens February 11th. For our blog readers, we have $10 tickets in honor of 2010. Use code AIR10 when you order online or by phone:

Harriet Jacobs' terrific month

2010-01-29T09:25:00.008-05:00

It's hard to believe another production has come and gone so quickly, but alas, it has: There's only one weekend of Harriet Jacobs left at Central Square Theater. We've had so many sold out performances that we added two more this weekend, and they're filling up quickly, too. The success of this run, from great reviews to packed houses to the standing ovations to conversations that last long after the curtain call, has been overwhelming in the best sense of the term.

So what has made Harriet Jacobs so popular? In our talkbacks it's often brought up how difficult it can be to have honest, open conversations about slavery and about race in general, and this play does not shy away from those subjects. But Lydia Diamond's honesty and clarity with Harriet Jacobs' candid story (not to mention Harriet's astounding perseverance and sincere optimism) invites us to take a good hard look at a painful period of our nation's history in an intensely personal way that is incredibly moving and has really connected with audiences. Take a look at this video clip from our pre-show symposium with Timothy Patrick McCarthy from Harvard University, in which we got up close (literally), with Lydia as she told us why she embarked on this project:

Credit is also, it should go without saying, due to the production's cast and creative team. Their creativity, tireless spirits, and heartfelt work have elevated this production to a true synchronicity between vision and product. For every production we feature and Artists & Audiences Night talkback. For Harriet Jacobs we welcomed the eight cast members and the director, Megan Sandberg-Zakian to the stage after our January 14th performance. There are four, count 'em, four, videos of the talkback. Here's the first; if you get into it you can link to the rest through our page on YouTube.

Most shows are sold out this week, but there may be some availability on Saturday the 30th at 3pm and Sunday the 31st at 7pm, if you act quickly!

Thanks to Mass Humanities for its support of Harriet Jacobs special programming

Harriet Jacobs: A voice no longer alone

2010-01-11T21:19:00.020-05:00

Kami Smith as Harriet Jacobs.
Photo by Elizabeth Stewart

WOW. What a tremendous response we received to the first week of Harriet Jacobs! And with several events programmed around those shows, we had an opportunity to hear the thoughts that accompanied the standing ovations and delve into the important topics the play raises - questions that don't have easy answers.

The strong emotions Harriet Jacobs evokes have been pivotal to the audience experience. We explored some of those feelings in our Harvard Night talkback last Thursday, which was expertly led by celebrated historians John Stauffer and Timothy McCarthy. Some of the diverse topics raised included considering the implications of the word "slave" and how it may dehumanize the individuals who experienced the terrible institution; analyzing how choices of musical key in the vocal compositions created emotional impact; interpreting the symbolism of the set design; and discussing how our country still has difficulty talking openly about race and will probably never be a "post-racial" society.

We also had the pleasure of having Timothy McCarthy prepare the Saturday night audience for the performance in a pre-show symposium. He made astute connections between the play and his extensive body of knowledge on slavery and social movements. From the audience, playwright Lydia Diamond explained why she felt compelled to tell Harriet's story on stage, and patrons shared their feelings about why such stories need to be told. It was a great warm-up for the show. We'll post video soon!

This week John Stauffer will lead the second (and final) Saturday evening symposium at 7:00pm. All ticket-holders are invited to attend the free half-hour pre-show discussion that will offer valuable history and perspectives to consider as you watch the play.

We also have a lineup of post-performance events for most of this week's shows, from our MIT Night with Martin Luther King Artists/Scholar Ricardo Pitts-Wiley on Wednesday night to the Arists & Audiences talkback with the cast and director on Thursday, plus our PLAY it Forward talk with theater staff and local community leaders on Friday to discuss the value of telling our local history on stage. And on Sunday afternoon we're honored to welcome State Representative Byron Rushing, who will respond to the play and talk about our local African American legacy in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The spirit of our talkbacks always welcomes audience input. We want to hear your thoughts and reactions, so please stay and add your voice to our guests'.

Tickets have been selling quickly and Harriet Jacobs only runs through January 31. We want you to experience the power of this moving and provocative story, so order today:Thanks to Mass Humanities for its support of Harriet Jacobs special programming

Harriet Jacobs - Special Events 1/7-1/10

2010-01-05T22:10:00.014-05:00

Very excited for the Harriet Jacobs final dress rehearsal tomorrow! Then we'll have final production photos, which you'll start to see in the press. We already have some beautiful rehearsal shots of Kami Smith, who will charm you with her portrayal of the play's title character:

Photos by Elizabeth Stewart

And we captured a sweet scene between Harriet and Tom (played by Sheldon Best), the boy she loved, during the beginning of technical rehearsals last weekend.

You'll notice they're not fully in costume yet. That step comes this week, during final dress rehearsals, along with finishing touches on the set, lights, and props. Then we're off! On the 7th we begin performances and welcome our first talkback and symposium guests.

On the 7th we hold our "Harvard Night" (don't let the name fool you, though - it's open to everyone) with a talkback led by Harvard professors Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer.

McCarthy is a Lecturer on History and Literature, Adjunct Lecturer on Public Policy, and Director of the Human Rights and Social Movements Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Stauffer is Chair of the History of American Civilization Department and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard.

They are popular professors and good colleagues, having taught and written together. Both have authored books about the Civil War era, abolitionism, and race relations, and are frequently published in major newspapers and periodicals. It's an honor to have them in our midst to share their reactions to Harriet Jacobs and impart their historical knowledge in discussing the play with the audience. Our thanks to MassHumanities for its support of our Harriet Jacobs talkback and symposia series.

Speaking of symposia, we want to make sure you're aware of the pre-show symposium on the 9th. This forum with Timothy Patrick McCarthy (Stauffer's will be in the 16th; more on that next week) will occur in our Studio Theater at 7pm with a free talk to prepare for the performance by sharing fascinating information, posing thoughtful questions, and to getting the dialogue flowing before seating begins for the 8pm performance. Our symposia were very popular during last season's The Life of Galileo, and you're not going to want to miss this chance to delve into this amazing woman's world with a leading scholar of the Civil War era.

Also this week, we have post-performance receptions on Friday and Saturday nights and on Sunday, January 10th, our 2pm press performance will welcome the critics and celebrate the show's opening with our audience. We hope to see you at the theater this week!

Thanks to Mass Humanities for its support of Harriet Jacobs special programming

Harriet Jacobs finds her way back to Cambridge

2009-12-31T12:08:00.013-05:00

Happy New Year! We're jumping right into 2010 with an amazing new play by Lydia Diamond, Harriet Jacobs, receiving its East Coast premiere with Underground Railway Theater from January 7-31.

Harriet Jacobs is inspired by the true story of Harriet Ann Jacobs, who wrote the most-read slave narrative by a woman, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, in 1861. Incidents vividly recounts Jacobs' harrowing experiences as a slave in pre-Civil War North Carolina, where she was driven to desperate measures to avoid the advances of her white master.
Perhaps you know the book? Still, you may not be aware of Jacobs' direct connection to our region. After escaping to the North she lived in a number of cities, among them Boston and Cambridge. She spent five years in Cambridge, including several at this house at the corner of Mt. Auburn St. and Story St.:
Today it's an apartment building, but squint a little and you can picture it 130 years ago.

You can also visit Jacobs' grave site in picturesque Mt. Auburn Cemetery:
Because of its heroine's relationship to Cambridge, Harriet Jacobs is the first mainstage production of the Central Square Theater "Cambridge Plays" initiative, which engages community by illuminating the history and contemporary life of Cambridge.

We are proud to have received a Mass Humanities grant to support an abundance of special programming around the production and to create special materials for the program notes and school study guide. Please follow this link to learn about all of the talkbacks and pre-show symposia, featuring an array of esteemed scholars, politicians, and community members sharing their knowledge about slavery and our community's connection to Harriet Jacobs' story. These events will also provide the perfect opportunities for you to gear up for and react to the play, which is bound to inspire dialogue.

In upcoming posts we'll share photos of the set design, maybe some sound recordings of songs from the production, more detailed information about our guest speakers, and materials related to Harriet Jacobs' topics and themes that connect to our local history. So stay tuned...

...and in case you hadn't heard, we have an AMAZING TICKET DEAL TROUGH TODAY: $10 tickets to any performance if you order before January 1st! Just follow the link below and use code HJ10 to take advantage before the offer expires.

Thanks to Mass Humanities for its support of Harriet Jacobs special programming

Tell us: What is your favorite holiday story?

2009-12-18T09:27:00.006-05:00

We've had such great response to The Loudest Voice and A Christmas Memory, the two stories that make up Tru Grace: Holiday Memories, that we're curious to know: What is your favorite holiday or wintertime story? Is it a classic or an obscure piece? Is it feel-good or bittersweet? Does it have music and magic or down-home traditions?

Michael Forden Walker and Debra Wise in A Christmas Memory

Wouldn't it be a treat to see your favorite story brought to the stage in the way we have with the Tru Grace stories? We'd love to hear your thoughts about what makes your favorite seasonal story so special that you think it deserves some time in the limelight.

And don't forget, Tru Grace runs through December 27th, so if at the moment you're buried under lists of Christmas presents that still need to be bought, up to your elbows in cookie baking, or working overtime to get through the mountain of paperwork in your office before you can enjoy a well-deserved break, fear not: There's an entire weekend of shows to enjoy even after Christmas Day has passed. Why not keep the holidays going a few days longer this year by taking in a show!

Michael Forden Walker with Sophia Kaufman and the youth ensemble in The Loudest Voice
Photos by Elizabeth Stewart

Shortcuts to ordering tickets for Tru Grace

2009-12-03T13:43:00.006-05:00

We've been having some trouble with our website today, and we apologize for any inconvenience. Until the issue is resolved, rest assured that there are still ways to order tickets for Tru Grace or any other show in our season:

You can view the calendar and order tickets online here.

For ticket orders by phone, please call TheaterMania at 866-811-4111

For further information, please call our office at 617-576-9278.

The most wonderful time of the year

2009-11-23T13:03:00.011-05:00

Michael Forden Walker and Sophia Kaufman in Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs

We've just finished our first week of performances of Underground Railway Theater's Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs. We're excited for the reviews to start coming out, but mostly for the holidays to truly be upon us. As Shirley Abramowitz says in Act 1's The Loudest Voice, "Goodbye Thanksgiving... Hello Christmas!" Next week, that is, when we finish digesting our turkey (or Tofurkey) and enter those high-anticipation weeks leading up to December 25th.

This is such a lovely set of stories to bring to life onstage. During the holiday season our thoughts often turn to our childhoods, and these short story memoirs are entertaining and moving explorations of their authors' formative years.

The youth ensemble of The Loudest Voice

In The Loudest Voice, Grace Paley's memories of growing up in a Russian Jewish household in the Bronx in the 1930s spring to life through our cast of youth and adult actors. The set features the most imaginative, fanciful uses you may have ever seen for basic materials like cardboard, evoking a humble but colorful Depression-era landscape.

Michael Forden Walker and Debra Wise in A Christmas Memory

In A Christmas Memory, we find Truman Capote, nicknamed Buddy by his dear older cousin, Sook, remembering the best days of his childhood in rural Alabama in the 1930s. He and Sook reenact their sweet, simple Christmas traditions, from baking fruitcakes to exchanging homemade presents. This is a real heartstring-tugger, underscored by piano accompanist Evan Harlan, who designed the arrangements for both plays.

With the holidays upon us, it's time to create new traditions. Why not make one of yours a trip to see Tru Grace at Central Square Theater, now through December 27th!

Want to make the experience even richer? Choose one of the performances that's followed by a special event, our holiday treat for you.

From the RSC to CST

2009-11-13T14:12:00.004-05:00

Last Friday and Saturday we hosted a special event, There, I've Broken My Neck! An Evening of Theatrical Disasters, in collaboration with North Cambridge Family Opera. The show's writer and solo performer, John Kane, is a veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company and author of more than 200 BBC comedy scripts. He played Puck in Peter Brook's famous staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream alongside Ben Kingsley, Alan Howard and Frances de la Tour (flashback to college theater history class!).

There, I've Broken My Neck! weaves together a hilarious assortment of stories reflecting the best and worst of times for actors and the theater.
This picture comes from the performance's final moments, when John reveals the origins of the play's title. The audience's response to the piece was rousing and it was a treat to have such an esteemed classical actor in our theater. Moreover, his generosity in donating his performances to benefit both Central Square Theater and North Cambridge Family Opera was above and beyond.

Sneak peeks of Tru Grace in progress

2009-11-05T14:27:00.008-05:00

November already! Where does the time go?

Thank you to everyone who came to see The Caretaker over the last five weeks! We received such tremendous feedback about the production, from the actors' performances to the direction and designs. We were very proud of the work ourselves, and the press also showered the play with praise. Did you see the review on WGBH? Check out the video here.

After changing the black box theater into a new seating and stage configuration this week and enjoying some rehearsal time on the stage after that, we'll be opening Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs on November 19th. This is a charming double-bill event, inspired in part by director Wesley Savick, who adapted the two short stories that comprise the production.

After working closely with author and activist Grace Paley on States of Grace (2007), Underground Railway Theater was interested in staging one of her short stories, The Loudest Voice. The Loudest Voice is the first act of Tru Grace, featuring a trio of seasoned Boston actors - Debra Wise, Michael Forden Walker, and Ken Baltin - as well as two rotating casts of youth actors who underwent a 6-week training program through Underground Railway Theater's Education program to prepare for the project.

The Loudest Voice tells the story of Shirley Abramowitz, a young girl growing up in the Bronx in the 1930s. Although she and many of her peers are Jewish, her school puts on a nativity pageant, in which she plays a very important role. Here are some scenes from rehearsals:

In just a couple of weeks you can see the play in its full glory, onstage with its imaginative and interactive set and actual props (as opposed to Elmo, who has dutifully filled in as Baby Jesus for rehearsals). Then, after intermission comes the touching second act, Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, featuring Debra Wise and Michael Walker in the holiday classic. Don't know it? You can read the story, watch a TV version narrated by the author himself or listen to Capote's radio reading to get ready.

Jet-setting

2009-10-20T13:16:00.006-04:00

Last Friday and Saturday, Catalyst Collaborative@MIT presented its first public readings of From Orchids to Octopi: An Evolutionary Love Story at MIT Family Weekend. The readings were designed to give playwright Melinda Lopez a chance to hear her new play in front of audiences and receive their feedback as she continues with script development. The readings were very well attended and Melinda benefited from all of the comments in the post-reading discussions. This new work is well on its way!

But it doesn't end there, no sir: Today, the group of actors and the director, playwright, and dramaturge headed Washington, D.C. (well, Bethesda, MD, more accurately), to read the play at the National Library of Medicine on the campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). From Orchids to Octopi is a commission of the NIH, and feedback from the D.C. contingent will provide Melinda with additional perspectives from the science community. The cast will share a brand new draft of the script, containing revisions resulting from MIT Family Weekend, and then David Carlini, a molecular biologist at American University, will lead the post-reading discussion.

From Orchids to Octopi will celebrate its world premiere as a Catalyst Collaborative@MIT production in the spring. It will enjoy another round of dual-city activity, running from March 31 to May 2, 2010, at Central Square Theater and also touring to the Washington, D.C. area. Stay tuned this season for more updates, and visit our website to learn more now about From Orchids to Octopi.

The Loudest Voice

2009-10-08T14:35:00.008-04:00

Photo Credit: Clara Rice

Education Programs at Central Square Theater are up and running this fall, and we're off to a great start! One nice highlight about this seasons education programs is The Loudest Voice Advanced Actor Training program.

This holiday season, Underground Railway Theater will present Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs, a performance of two one act plays based on stories by Truman Capote and Grace Paley. The first show of the night will be The Loudest Voice, a story about a young Jewish girl growing up in the Bronx, NY, during the Depression, adapted by Wesley Savick from the Grace Paley story of the same name. Wes also adapted the Capote story for the theater and is directing Tru Grace.

The story The Loudest Voice is primarily told from a child's point of view and because of this, most of the cast is young people! Thirteen young actors have begun training for the show in The Loudest Voice Actors Training program. They are currently learning all that they'll need to know to join the ensemble of professional actors when rehearsals for the show start later this month. The young actors meet at Central Square Theater with teaching artists every Tuesday and Saturday for two hours. Each participant in the training will have the opportunity at the end of training and rehearsals to perform in three weeks of the six week run of Tru Grace.

This past Saturday, all three of the professional actors in the show - Ken Baltin, Debra Wise, and Michael Walker - as well as director Wesley Savick, attended the training session to get to know the young actors and do some ensemble building exercises through warm-ups and work with the script. The young actors had a great time getting to know the professionals and said that it was great how the actors really made them feel the emotions and knew how to read the lines. They were delighted to be in the company of seasoned actors.

The ensemble, teaching artists and director chase after one another in a circle while trying to give a friendly pat on the back. Photo Credit: Clara Rice

Michael Walker leads the young actors in an exercise to warm up the body. Photo Credit: Clara Rice

Ken Baltin leads a warm up to explore moving in a way that expresses words such as free, relaxed, beautiful, and whole. Photo Credit: Clara Rice

This Tuesday, Ken Baltin came in again to lead the students in some movement and sound exercises in order to help them develop new ways to be creative, as well as to help them learn to trust one another's energies and actions. We hope you enjoy these videos and photos from the session - everyone had a lot of fun!

The Caretaker opens and events begin

2009-10-05T14:29:00.009-04:00

The Caretaker opened last week and we've enjoyed our first week events: a Harvard Night "Talk in the Box" discussion with psychologist and author Lauren Slater, our GLBT Night and Under 35 Night receptions, and our press opening and reception yesterday afternoon. We appreciate the great feedback we've been hearing about the show!

We also got an extensive set of press photos from the final dress rehearsal. Here's a sampling:

Michael Balcanoff as Davies, John Kuntz as Aston, and Joe Lanza as Mick

Aston, Mick, Davies, and the leaky roof

Aston delivers his haunting monologue

Intense! There's no lack of confrontation in The Caretaker.

Photo credits: Elizabeth Stewart

This week we have more Talk in the Box events:

MIT Night: Wednesday, Oct. 7: Special post-performance discussion guests are Professor Diana Henderson and Lecturer Anne Fleche of the MIT Literature Section, joined by director Daniel Gidron.
Artists and Audience Night: Thursday, Oct. 8: Meet the cast and director in a post-performance conversation.
Play it Forward Night: Friday, Oct. 9: A post-performance dialogue with Central Square Theater's leadership. As we undertake next season's planning, what are your visions for our theater?

So come out early and experience these additional events - they're a bonus on top of the show, and only occur in the first few weeks.

The Caretaker then and now

2009-09-23T16:19:00.006-04:00

It was clear early in The Nora's planning for this season that we wanted to produce one of Harold Pinter's plays, in tribute to his life and career. So we chose the one that put him on the map in 1960, The Caretaker, which was subsequently made into a 1963 film (and retitled "The Guest" for U.S. distribution), starring Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence, and Robert Shaw. Take a look:

Looks a little different than our production - we'll be in color and all - but it's an interesting comparison. Watch the video and then see the show, or vice versa. And stop back to the blog for more Pinter videos from time to time. Maybe we'll feature all 46 minutes of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech one day.

The set was installed today and it looks terrific. And by terrific we mean appropriately derelict and we wouldn't really want to spend a night there. Here are a couple of shots before the set dressing is loaded in, which will make the room delightfully crowded with junk:
More to come as the installation continues...

The Caretaker takes good care of classic Pinter

2009-09-21T16:57:00.014-04:00

Back on September 8, the same day Gioia De Cari arrived in town to prepare for Truth Values, another important event was occurring at the theater: Our first rehearsal for Harold Pinter's breakout psychological drama, The Caretaker. Now suddenly we are only a little over a week away from opening the show. Where DOES the time go?

Rehearsals have been filled with script analysis, blocking and scene work, mastering English accents with the guidance of our dialect coach, Liz Terry, and figuring out fight choreography with our fight director, Adam McLean. At production meetings we have pondered everything from the eccentricities of British light sockets and electrical plugs (and how to make them work - or at least appear authentic - on this side of the pond) to what a 1950's-era British unemployment card looks like and how to break a Buddha statue on stage night after night. Turns out that a set filled with "junk" presents as many challenges as any other.

We've known some things right off the bat, however: Most importantly, that we have an amazing team working with a brilliant script. Take for instance, our cast: Michael Balcanoff (Gayev in last year's The Cherry Orchard) plays Davies (or is it Jenkins?), an old drifter given shelter by Aston, played by John Kuntz (the ever-popular actor and playwright last seen at The Nora in How I Got That Story), older brother of the mischievous Mick, played by Joe Lanza (did you catch SpeakEasy Stage Company's The History Boys in 2008 or Company One's The Pain and the Itch last season? Enough said.). And they're directed by Daniel Gidron, who has been at the helm of numerous Nora productions, including The Cherry Orchard, We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! and Buried Child. Danny's a master at teasing the comedy out of any script, and now he tackles one of Pinter's classics with the same expert sensibility, finding the author's humor in abundance. The Caretaker has dark undercurrents, but it's also rippling with laughs. We had a hard time keeping the giggling fits (man-giggles!) under control at the first table reading.

As we move from One Girl's Romp Through MIT's Male Math Maze to three men locked in a power struggle in mid-century England, take the journey with us and pay tribute to the late great Harold Pinter, father of the pause, performed in classic fashion: three acts, two intermissions, one unforgettable night of theater.

Truth Values EXTENDED

2009-09-17T14:39:00.007-04:00

We have had such a phenomenal response to Truth Values and have been selling out well in advance of each performance, so we are thrilled to announce that WE HAVE EXTENDED THE SHOW FOR AN ADDITIONAL WEEK, also adding in a Wednesday evening performance.

The Boston Globe says, "De Cari is an appealing and nimble-witted performer, showcasing her versatility ... as she races barefoot about the stage."

If you didn't get a chance to see it in the first two weeks, now you have another chance!
The new dates are:

Wednesday, September 23 at 7:30pm
Thursday, September 24 at 7:30pm
Friday, September 25 at 8:00pm
Saturday, September 26 at 8:00pm
Sunday, September 27 at 2:00pm

These performances will be held in our Studio Theater, which is right next door to the mainstage space and provides an even more intimate theatergoing experience. However, it does have a smaller seating capacity than the mainstage, and tickets for the extension are already selling, so hurry up and get yours to see what everyone is talking about:

Truth Values charms audiences and critics

2009-09-14T13:07:00.009-04:00

What an amazing first week of Truth Values!

Gioia played to houses full of energetic, responsive audience members, which is such a delight for a solo performer (for any performer, for that matter, but especially when you're up there on your own). There were standing ovations at curtain calls and great post-performance Talk in the Box discussions between the audience, Gioia, and our special guests (many, many thanks to Nancy Kopell, Nancy Hopkins, Michael Sipser, Janet Conrad, Elisabeth Drake, and Melissa Franklin!). And after Friday's press opening performance we celebrated with a reception and a cake for Gioia's belated birthday.

Now the positive reviews are rolling in:

From The Boston Herald: "This show is a straight-up slice-of-lifer... De Cari is an earnest performer and a snappy writer... She's an ace at taking on the story's 30-odd characters."

From EDGE Boston: "De Cari nails not only accents and postures, but the presence of each of her impersonations... [She] opts...for the more refreshing delights of humor, even compassion, and creates a rich and wry reductio ad absurdum."

From HubArts.com: "It was every bit as funny and serious and entertaining as I hoped... Like the best monologuists (monologists?), De Cari balances the deeper story arc with a stead stream of funny bits."

Don't miss out:

This special event production closes at the end of this weekend. Tickets are extremely limited for this weekend's performances, so please be sure to RESERVE NOW to experience Truth Values for yourself.

Truth Values in the Boston Globe: Larry Summers made her play

2009-09-04T15:41:00.005-04:00

Take a look at today's article in the Boston Globe featuring Gioia De Cari and Nancy Hopkins talking about Gioia's play, Truth Values: One Girl's Romp Through the MIT Male Math Maze. And make sure you read through the comments - there are many, and they are impassioned. This is clearly an issue many people take personally, whatever side of the fence they're on, and it's significant that people are already weighing in.

Many of the issues the commenters bring up are ones we'll be talking about in our Talk in the Box post-performance conversation series, so please stay and contribute your thoughts after the show. Gioia and our special guests will be happy to hear your inquisitive, constructive questions and comments.

Tickets are truly (no pun intended) starting to fly, so claim yours soon!

Next stop: Cambridge

2009-08-28T13:15:00.012-04:00

A 4-star review for Truth Values from
Time Out New York!
"De Cari is animated onstage, and inhabits no fewer than 30 roles with gusto. She bounds from moments of depression to those of elation and triumph, each rendered on an empty stage that hints at the countless stories similar to hers but untold."

Gioia De Cari is in her last few of performances at the New York International Fringe Festival this weekend and will then head up to Cambridge the week after next for her two week engagement with us. We're excited to hear that things went very well with Truth Values at FringeNYC, including a sold out performance the other night (and that's saying something - with 201 shows in the Festival, competition is tough!). Read more about Gioia and Truth Values in the FringeNYC publication as well as in our own interview with the multifaceted actor-playwright.

Once schools start back up, remaining tickets to the Central Square Theater run won't last long. Scoop them up before it's too late!

Truth Values: An interview with the artist

2009-08-24T10:11:00.014-04:00

In anticipation of the opening of Truth Values: One Girl's Romp Through M.I.T.'s Male Math Maze, I interviewed Gioia De Cari about her autobiographical solo show. Here, she talks candidly about the impetus behind the piece, weaving higher mathematics into theater, and her feelings about bringing a play that looks critically at her years at M.I.T. to the school's neighborhood.

Alison Klejna: What inspired you to create this play?

Gioia De Cari: Interesting question – maybe the best question would be why I ended up finishing the play, given that it is a piece I had been alternatively working on and setting aside for quite some time. But the history of it is that after I left math, I worked and trained as an actor/singer for a long time before I started keeping a journal just for fun. I wrote all sorts of things - poems, stories, diary entries, and some math stories. As I kept the journal, I began thinking it might be fun to write a solo show. Lo and behold, not long after that I was offered an opportunity to create and perform my first solo in NYC - I was living on the West Coast at the time. Somehow a director appeared, a spot in a festival, an ingenious set, a beautiful costume, a nice place to stay, as if by magic. This first show was a wild episodic Alice-in-Wonderland style fantasy, and my director and I decided to weave in a few snippets of the math stories as interludes. I was very surprised by how captivated audiences were with the math stories, which got me thinking about writing a second show that was all and only true-life math stories, which eventually became "Truth Values."

This second show took me a long time to write, though, because I just had to keep putting it away. I swore when I left math I would never talk about it again. But it was inescapable - every interview, every party, every time I met someone, the subject of my education would come up, and I would feel forced mention math, and that would captivate whomever I was talking to, and then they wanted to know my life story, etc. etc. I figured I had better just get on with it and write a show all about math so I would never have to explain my background again! There came a point, though, when it seemed to me that the whole women in science issue was so passé that I felt embarrassed to talk about my experiences - I was hearing about M.I.T., especially, being on the forefront of addressing these problems. Then as you may remember, Lawrence Summers made this outrageous remark about women perhaps being inherently inferior to men in math and science, and at that point I figured it was my duty as an artist and a woman and a "recovering mathematician" to speak up.

AK: Do you think that opportunities for and attitudes towards women in historically male-dominated academic fields have improved in the last 20 years?

GDC: As I mentioned, it has seemed to me, reading about M.I.T. from afar, that a great effort has been made to address the issue of equity for women in math and science. I don't have first hand experience to judge the effectiveness of this effort because I haven't been part of the math community for such a long time now. I do find, in talking to women scientists who have seen my show, that they say it reminds them of their own experiences. And I was very surprised to hear from one woman scientist who said it seemed to her that very little has changed at all with regard to the sexism she and her female colleagues face, that the sexism is perhaps more subtle now, but still relentless. All in all, I'm really looking forward to the post-performance discussions, because I expect there may be all sorts of differing opinions on this point.

AK: What is your approach to using mathematics in the play and making it relatable for diverse audiences?

GDC: I approached using mathematics in this play in couple of different ways. For example, I especially liked the idea of using the math research I was doing at the time as a central metaphor. The title, “Truth Values," is a technical term for the notion of true vs. false. My research examined the consequences of adding other values between true and false, sort of a formalization of the idea of nuanced choices. This resonated with the choices I was facing in my life at the time, as well as with the fact that it was very hard for me to know, when I was in the midst of those experiences, what was and wasn’t an example of sexism. None of it was black and white, yes/no, easy to pin down.

Another way I incorporated math was the mathematical dialogue. I have characters speaking about math, and I don’t try to explain it at all. In fact I wanted to give the audience a sense of being a fly on the wall, to give them an experience of how people rattle off this stuff that, to the outside observer who knows nothing, is incomprehensible, but to the people in that exotic world, is commonplace.

AK: What are the greatest challenges and rewards of performing a one-woman show?

GDC: The main challenge of this show is that it is very scary to reveal this much of myself. I mean, one of the sublime joys of being a character actor is to be able to transform yourself, body, mind, walk, talk, soul into a seemingly different person. In an autobiographical show like this, you're playing characters at the same time as revealing your own character as a human being. In a sense you offer not only your performance and craftsmanship, you also offer yourself and your life as a discussion topic, an example, good or bad, which I sometimes think takes the courage and presence of mind of a Zen master.

As to the rewards, in writing this show, I kept my goal very simple - to create theatrical art out of a personal history. But the show has also turned out to be something that people feel speaks to the issue of the continuing under-representation of women in science and math, a topic usually reserved for scholarly conferences. I would be tremendously gratified if my work as an artist can contribute something meaningful and different to the ongoing discussion and debate over women in science.

AK: You’ll be back in your old Cambridge stomping ground while you’re at Central Square Theater. Do you look forward to performing in the MIT neighborhood? Does it make you at all nervous?

GDC: Are you kidding? Of course it makes me nervous! But actually I guess I am a bit prepared, because last year when I did my first workshop of the show, I decided to invite the New York M.I.T. women's alumni group (AMITA), thinking they might find it fun and make a good audience. They came and seemed to have a fabulous time; I think they saw their own experiences in it. They also seemed to revel in every little inside joke about M.I.T., which was delicious for them and for me too. Thus I have high hopes that this show will be a lot of fun and a great conversation starter for M.I.T. audiences.

By Alison Klejna, Artistic Administrator

When Science Met Theater

2009-08-21T10:52:00.007-04:00

Science and theater make a great pair, and we've been deeply gratified by the outpouring of interest in Catalyst Collaborative@MIT productions over past few seasons. Recently, Central Square Theater was featured in a news story about science and art.

The author refers to Kirsten Sheperd-Barr’s book Science on Stage: From DOCTOR FAUSTUS to COPENHAGEN (Princeton University Press; 2006), which lists 400 years of science plays, and says, "Those four hundred years certain to stretch into five with the new Central Square Theater in the heart of Central Square, Cambridge." That's the plan!

This year CC@MIT is premiering a brand new science play by Melinda Lopez, From Orchids to Octopi: An Evolutionary Fantasy. Commissioned by the National Institutes of Health to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species", From Orchids to Octopi explores how we understand - or do not - the theory of evolution as a muralist's work is derailed by hallucinations, pregnancy, and yes, even dinosaurs.

Is There a War in Cambridge?

2009-08-20T12:00:00.009-04:00

Last Thursday after the final two performances of Swords Into Ploughshares, Youth Underground was joined by Officer Michael “Whitey” Daniliuk for their post-show conversations. The theme of the conversations was:

Is There a War in Cambridge: A Conversation about Turf Violence

At the end of each talkback, the audience was encourage to join us here on our blog for further discussion of the issues raised during the talkbacks. We'd love to hear your feedback on these issues and the opinions raised during the talkbacks.

Turf warfare is clearly a very real issue for the young people in the ensemble and the audience, but something that the adults in their lives seemed unaware of. A majority of the discussion revolved around the fact that this conflict is not on the news, so does that mean it isn’t a big deal or the larger public is simply ignoring it? Some highlights of discussion included:

-Whitey: "Between April and May there were 7 shootings in a 10 day stretch in Cambridge. I used to run a youth center. I kept asking if I could work with the youth of the community. And after this, they called me in and said, Whitey, you’re the new Outreach Coordinator with the youth. It woke them up. But it happened after the shooting. But that mentality of 'it’s not that bad'—you can’t wait. It will get bad. The issue is going to get bigger and it just grows. That is why I thought it was so important that kids say it is important."

-"OK, so I kinda see it as a huge deal—but I’ve also seen it as a huge joke. If I run into someone on the way to school, somebody will ask where I’m from and I’ll say Porter Square, and they’ll say, oh, I don’t think I can be your friend. I mean it’s a joke, but it’s not funny."

-"Older people (18 and over) are provoking us not to go into another neighborhood. They get us all fired up to fight, and that’s how it all gets started."

-"If he walked into the port I would have to fight him or he would get jumped or shot on the spot. I was 7 or 8 and there are kids younger than that doing it right now. I had to realize that I didn’t want that, and now I’m here showing good leadership so that kids below me will look up and say 'I want to be like him.'"

-"It’s dangerous, it’s something you have to consider. And adults thinking about it like little kids' trends or phases… it’s not. It affects where you can go and who you can look in the eye."

-Whitey: "there are kids who have not left a ten block radius, they haven’t left it in three years, not even to go to school."

- "I grew up in Cambridge knowing it was pretty liberal and accepting town and it was comforting to know I live in a town with so many cultures mixing. This can happen anywhere, it doesn’t matter how many politicians or teachers or idealists… this can generate in any place. It can be a clash of opinions; even in a town like Cambridge you aren’t safe from that."

- From one of the performer’s mothers: "I was born and raised here and I know this is not new. I lived in North Cambridge and there were places I couldn’t go. I had family all over the city and I had to make sure I was okay to go see my baby niece so that I wouldn’t get beat up. You have to make sure you’re cool with people just to walk. I had a friend 20 years ago who got jumped and stabbed and killed because of his jacket, and had a little article this big in the news. I still have it. To watch it now and know that my daughter goes through it, it’s really scary."

- "Central Square Theater is like a haven to us. When we’re here we’re safe, we’re just actors doing our thing."

Conversations about Peace and Violence

2009-08-20T11:06:00.013-04:00

After each of last week's performances of Swords into Ploughshares, Youth Underground led talk-back sessions with the audience, exploring key issues raised by the play.

Here are the highlights:

Performance one, the topic was “What Does Peace Mean To You?”

Some responses included:

-"As long as you have religious extremists and greedy business men you won’t have peace; business men will piss people off, and religious extremists will blow people up.

-What’s wrong with not having peace? There has to be good and bad, yin and yang, to balance everything out."

-"I forget if it was in the 20’s or 50’s or 60’s – some psychologist thought that society has a subconscious death wish, weather it was from cigarettes sales or world wars. I think people are violent by nature. I don’t think war was something created by the media or business men trying to make money. When you really get down to it, I think that people wouldn’t be happy with world peace in some sense."

- "I think non-violent action, in order to be truly effective, needs witnesses, and when you’re in a setting where there are no witnesses, does it have the same effect, or is it somehow rendered impotent? You need your newspapers, you need your people."

Leave YOUR comment—what does peace mean to you?

The second night the topic was “When is violence justified?”

Special guest Brian Corr, Executive Director of the Cambridge Peace Commission, encouraged the audience to consider the difference between willingness to die and willingness to kill in violent conflict. Some responses:

– "It makes me think about something said in the show, that there are causes worth dying for, none worth killing for. When you kill someone, you end someone else’s life and being willing to die is risking your own life. It’s similar but it’s also a very different kind of courage."

- "I think sometimes the desire to kill is simply out of fear, the thought that by killing someone else, they themselves will then be safe. 'I will kill and then they will be scared to kill me.'"

- "What strikes me as the focus on the willingness to die is that I always hear that it is propaganda. To say, 'I’m willing to die,' is giving you the right to kill. I believe it’s used as propaganda to get people to go and fight."

- "Something I remember was a fascinating fact I learned when I was in school. When they analyzed battlefields after battles, most of the soldiers were not shooting to kill. Their bullets were going over [the enemy] and they were over-firing. They studied battlefields and came to the conclusion that most people were not shooting to kill."

What do you think—what’s the relationship between a willingness to die and a willingness to kill?

Swords into Ploughshares Sparks Community Conversations

2009-08-18T14:30:00.010-04:00

This past week marked the end of the summer for the Youth Underground program at Central Square Theater. This year, the youth were charged with putting up a performance of Swords into Ploughshares, a play adapted from the Bhagavad Gita. Through the story of a prince whose armies are about to go into battle, the play explored the reasons for conflict and warfare, and the benefits and draw backs of both violent and non-violent resistance.

The youth in the program worked hard throughout their time here to understand what peace and violence meant to them, and what roles those two idea played in each of their lives. Through group discussions and experiences such as hosting youth from the Al-Rowwad Theater Troupe from the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, Palestine, the performers explored the roles of non-violent resistance in the world as well as the violence that affects both the world and their individual communities.

We asked a few of the participants in this years program to share a reflection on what the process meant to them:

From Emma Munson-Blatt:

We had a great group of kids, all from different places, cultures, ect. When we all came together and offered our ideas it created a much stronger insight than just one of us could have come up with. In these past 6 weeks I grew so close to each and every kid in the program and our directors. Through all the games we played where we were forced to let loose, and trust games we played I came to trust all of them. People have always said a strong ensemble means a family. Up until this summer I never really fully understood that. Now I do.

It was super easy being around each other because, aside from our differences, we had one main thing in common which was the idea of “peace”. The second week of the program we spent with Al Rowwad. Learning about their lives was sort of a slap in the face that made me wake up and realize how great my life really is. I’m so lucky. After they left we all agreed it would be spectacular to have them come back someday. I hope we might be able to see them again. Either way I know I want to stay connected to the group. I got their contact info and one girl in the group, Salam, and I exchanged e-mail addresses.

Each discussion our group had helped us dig deeper and deeper into the topic of peace. By the time we performed the play, we really knew what we were talking about. We had done research on each of characters and shared the information we had found with the group. Having the talk backs after the performance was especially rewarding, not only for us but for our audience. They got to see what Youth Underground is all about.

From Shakeem Nicholson:

Swords to Ploughshares was a slightly altered version of Voices in Conflict (last year’s Youth Underground show), in my opinion. The only dissimilarity is Swords to Ploughshares leans in one direction, aiming for non-violent resistance. Whereas both input various ideas about patriotism and tranquility, Voices in Conflict seemed more diverse rather than just one sided.

My experience with this year’s play was better. Performing and rehearsing the play was easier, I was more able to get into character because I can relate to the play’s symbolization of a non-violent, peaceful mankind. I am not a violent person at all and my character, who was Charles Sumner, has a lot of the same ambition I do. Charles Sumner (1/6/1811-3/11/1874) was an American politician from Boston, MA and accomplished plenty during his lifetime. For example: Sumner believed violence should always be a last resort.

In addition, the last night after the cast performed the piece, there was a discussion about the awareness of youth violence in the area and the audience was welcomed to express their opinions. Trinidad and Luke hosted the chat, this is not a word for word quote, but the audience was asked if they were aware about the “Cambridge Turf War” and a lot of people did not raise their hands. Possible reasons why: nervousness, not aware, etc. I’m not sure but in all honesty…that was sad. LOL. I didn’t understand, I mean I just assumed people weren’t aware. Innocent or not, an ample amount of people are dead or dying behind the war. A lot of civilians dismiss the cataclysm because they feel “it’s just a bunch of kids being kids” or because “it’s not that serious”. Two weeks or a week before the play, the cast, the directors and Maggie [Education Director of Underground Railway Theater] planned this discussion and I had to walk out because I was starting to choke up on how factual the “Cambridge War” is. It’s odd because you don’t hear about this on the news, yet you hear when a celebrity shaves their head. People are fed up and we want more people to become aware to commence a change.

What I take from the play is life is short and you can lose a lot behind inconvenience. I’m the type of kid who has a Lazy (from LeToya’s sophomore album “Lady Love” =+) heart but I am learning to take a stand for myself and be more open. A lot of the lost youth are in despair because of the influence and the impact of this conflict that they’ve experienced. They may not be, or feel like they aren’t, fortunate enough but I think if some of them came to see they play the could’ve had a change in thought because of the play’s non-violence resistance. I just hope at least one lost soul takes a portion of what I’ve learned from the play and applies it to themselves.

Sorry for the drawn out message but I just wanted y’all to know about my experience from the play and to raise an awareness about the Cambridge War. Note: this war happens everywhere in the country. Disclaimer: Peace begins with yourself and if you want a better place to reside start with you and work your way up.

Aight, I’mma holla at cha’ll, thanx. If you guys want to converse more, leave a comment!

From the one and solely, Shakeem

Leave comments on the blog entry or on our twitter feed, http://twitter.com/centsqtheater. Join us soon for discussions of peace and violence, and the issues of conflict that are present in our own community.

Obama weighs in

2009-08-17T11:58:00.006-04:00

There's been a lot of "he said, she said" about former Harvard president Lawrence Summers' 2005 comments about women in science and mathematics. Did he insinuate personal beliefs that innate differences cause men and women to perform and advance to different levels in these fields? Or was he quoting literature from other sources as a purely academic exercise? The world may never know. If one thing's clear, it's that there are two sides to this story and a lot of gray in between.

But no matter what was actually said and what was truly meant, the point is it created a huge outpouring of reaction from the academic community and the public. You can find a quite comprehensive history here. And it inspired Gioia De Cari to finish Truth Values, her solo show about her experiences as a woman in elite mathematics at MIT.

Well, Larry Summers has left Harvard and, fittingly, the university now has its first female president. Meanwhile, he's on to new endeavors. Summers has gone from being a president to working for THE President as Director of the White House's National Economic Council. But that doesn't mean people have forgotten the 2005 controversy, not even the Commander in Chief himself:

Here's one group's reaction to the Cabinet pick.

Want to weigh in? Comments are welcome here and at our post-performance talkbacks (we'll soon have one scheduled after every show). We want to hear your thoughts on this subject, first digitally and then in the flesh.

If she can make it there, she'll make it anywhere

2009-08-14T09:21:00.007-04:00

Just in time for Gioia De Cari's opening performance of Truth Values at the New York International Fringe Festival tonight, we've received a message from her about the FringeNYC experience:

The FringeNYC staff and volunteers are fabulous, but the performing aspect is a wild ride - in and out of the space once really quick for tech and then you're on. There's a 15 minute set up and 15 minute strike for each performance.

We had tech Tuesday - this was the first and only time we were allowed in the space before the first performance. Nice venue - one in the 45 Bleecker complex, has interesting large metal pillars in the playing area - looks very historic, actually, and nicely renovated. Our tech was delayed for a fire inspection, which went OK, I guess, but afterwards the fire-marshall-approved new exit sign started catching fire during our rehearsal!!

Given that we can't rehearse in the actual venue, we have been rehearsal-space hopping. Everywhere I go lately, it seems, people are saying to me, "Oh you're the math lady!" The other day the gal at the studio reception desk wouldn't even let me in to the space because she had so many questions: "You're the math lady! Wow the fringe. This is such a cute picture. You were a math major? Ph.D.? I mean wow, I couldn't handle algebra. Can I have one of these postcards? Definitely I want to come. It's musical? Oh it's a play? You're an actor?! Are you some kind of genius or something?" I told her I was definitely not a genius, but that she should definitely see the show!

You really do have to wonder what you're getting into when you're doing a show about the world of higher mathematics, and you are in the same festival with . . .

"Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party"
"Bargains & Blood (How to Succeed in Home Shopping)"
"Bitch!"
"Don't Be Scared! It's Only a Play"
"George and Laura Bush Perform . . Our Favorite Sitcom Episodes"

and

"Spermalot: The Musical"

Actually there's a huge selection of really great fun shows at FringeNYC (check it out at www.fringenyc.org), and we are absolutely delighted to be part of it.

Sounds like a thrillingly unpredictable whirlwind - One of those times you just have to jump on board and hold on tight.

Don't miss your chance to see Truth Values in Cambridge, September 10-20. Tickets are on sale! To learn more about the show, you can read an interview with Gioia here.

Going solo

2009-08-13T13:17:00.010-04:00

NPR has been broadcasting this series of stories called How Artists Make Money. For those in the arts, this is an endlessly fascinating topic. Glad to see it interests a broader audience, too!

With our first show of the season in mind, I took particular note of this one story about solo performers and Fringe festivals. When actress Gioia De Cari arrives in Cambridge in a few weeks for the CST run of her autobiographical one-woman show, Truth Values, she'll be fresh off of a two-week gig at the New York International Fringe Festival (a.k.a. FringeNYC). As one of the major Fringe festivals in the country (is "major Fringe" an oxymoron? We'll, it's a fact: It's the largest multi-arts festival in North America), FringeNYC is an important breeding ground for performing artists, including many solo acts.

So just what does it take to pull off a solo performance? What are the challenges, luxuries, and thrills of being alone on the stage, all eyes on you? Those are some of the questions I've posed to Gioia, and when she has a moment's peace (riiiiight...) in the midst of the festival, we hope to hear how it's going in NCY and learn more about the experience. We'll share her responses here on the blog.

I'm also concocting the perfect question for audience input, similar to our symposia talkback questions for The Life of Galileo and the popular "If you could travel to any place and time, where and when would it be, and why?" from On the Verge. I'm thinking this one will have something to do with your [hypothetical] solo show...

-Alison Klejna, Artistic Administrator

Photo: Gioia De Cari in Truth Values

The Truth is out there

2009-08-11T13:19:00.003-04:00

News from the Big Apple: Truth Values has been picked by Producer's Perspective, a New York theater producer's blog, as one of the top ten shows that stood out to him in this year's NYC Fringe Festival lineup. In his words:

"I like true stories. This country likes true stories. All thanks to what I call the "lean forward factor". Truth Values is a true story about an underdog, and this country also loves underdogs (partly because this country WAS an underdog). It's about a woman pursuing her PhD at MIT. It's got a Good Will Hunting meets Legally Blonde type of feel, from what I can tell. We'll see what makes this one different."

Good Will Hunting and Legally Blonde were set in Cambridge, so here's to the hometown theme! Can't wait to see it in our theater, where the "lean forward factor" will be in full effect.

Truth Values = Must See

2009-08-03T14:22:00.005-04:00

Does the delay in summer weather that mean that refreshing, crisp autumn air will also arrive late and be all-too-brief? Well, however the weather decides to shape up, transition seems to be the theme around here. As many of our employees return from vacations and such (the Education Department staffers scratch their heads and say, "Funny, I didn't get a vacation"), it's remarkable that the next play is just a little over a month away - and it's only just begun to feel like summer outside!
The 2009-2010 Season at Central Square Theater kicks off with the first of our Special Event productions, Truth Values: One girl's romp through MIT's male math maze. Written and performed by MIT alumna Gioia De Cari, this one-woman show is a personal account of her experiences as a graduate student in MIT's Department of Mathematics in the late '80s. By turns hilarious, alarming, poignant, and charming, Gioia's impassioned performance - which includes 30+ impersonations of students, professors, staff, and other esteemed intellectuals - is sure to get you thinking: How much has academia changed in the last 20 years? What does equality and diversity in education really mean, and how can it be realized? And what great taste Gioia has in shoes!

We want to entertain you and get you thinking, and we also want to get you talking. So we're planning a series of post-performance discussions around the subjects explored in Truth Values. Stay tuned for the lineup, then come lend your ears and voices to the conversation.

In the meantime, here are some articles about MIT's diversity initiatives to get those mental wheels turning. After all, September's almost here, and that can only mean one thing: Back to school!

1st MIT Leadership Diversity Congress, fall 2008
MIT President Susan Hockfield's address, 2009 MLK Jr. Day Celebration
Physics tackles a complex problem: how to diversify

Day Two at YU

2009-07-07T22:44:00.007-04:00

What a busy day of rehearsal! Today, we began examining our performance script, Swords into Ploughshares. As we read through it, we considered a number of questions related to peaceful and violent forms of resistance. We asked: "what would it take to drive you to violence?" Here are some of our answers:

"If someone hurt my mom"

"It's never appropriate to hurt someone, but if someone were to hurt my family I might go against my own morals"

"I'd have to be in a place where I was a little crazy or out of it"

"If someone were to hurt my family or friends"

"I would think about WHO I am going to kill, and maybe that would change my willingness to do it"

"If you're brought up a certain way, you might not think violence is a bad thing."

"For me it's not about my family or not, it's whether they deserved it ... if someone innocent is being hurt on the street ... I'm not going to let that happen."

Let us know what YOU think!

Greetings from Youth Underground!

2009-07-07T22:36:00.004-04:00

Today was the second day of Underground Railway Theater's Youth Underground program, and we are already hard at work!

Our theme for this summer is peaceful resistance, a topic which has sparked the interest of our ensemble and the community. On Monday we asked: "peaceful resistance, or not?" Here is what our ensemble is saying:

"Sometimes you need to make a bang."

"Is what you're fighting for worth someone else's life?"

"Sitting down with a sign that says 'I'm angry' doesn't do anything."

"When it turns into a brawl, neither side gains respect."

"When you are being attacked...you have no choice."

"There is a difference between violence to protect people and violence to protect ideas...There should never be violence for an idea. I don't think idealistic violence is right."

"You need to stop the violence from one side without creating more violence on the other."

"There is a double standard for governments in my opinion....The government has a responsibility toward society."

"As a human, it is your duty to have your own code of morals."

What do YOU think? Please leave a comment with your thoughts and help us to continue this dialogue!!

A Saturday by the river

2009-06-16T14:20:00.006-04:00

What a gorgeous day for the Cambridge River Festival this past Saturday! We were out on the shores of the Charles River bright and early at our table, and had a blast at our afternoon performances in the Theater Tent. Thanks to everyone who signed up for our mailing list and entered themselves to win a 2009-2010 season subscription to Central Square Theater's inaugural subscription season - and good luck!

Photos from the day:

The ever-tempting candy bowl was most definitely empty by the end of the day, causing dentists everywhere to shudder.
Across the street, an old familiar face, the Grand Duke puppet from The Life of Galileo, pointed the way to the Theater Tent...

...where the actors held a last-minute rehearsal, then took to the stage to perform excerpts from our upcoming 2009-2010 season:

First up was The Nora's Artistic Director, Mary C. Huntington, performing a scene from next spring's The Lady With All The Answers, a one-woman show about the famous advice columnist, Ann Landers.
Next, a reading from The Loudest Voice by Gracey Paley, part of Underground Railway Theater's Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs during the winter holidays. Here is Rosa Munson-Blatt as the Young Shirley Abromowitz.
Finally, an encore of Underground Railway Theater's "Page to Stage" program's Sharp, by former Kennedy Longfellow student Joe Donofrio. Here, the snake (Tinidad Ramikissoon) slithers around the defenseless cactus (Stephanie Clayman). But wait:
The Porcupine (Ezra Flam) generously donated some quills to the cause. And now you know how the Cactus got its spines.

Looking forward to River Festival 2010!

Girls' LEAP visits On the Verge

2009-06-11T12:29:00.003-04:00

Hope you enjoyed the glimpse of our office hi jinx in the last entry. Now back to the news that's fit to print:

On Sunday, June 7th, The Nora Theatre Company was proud to host a group of young women from Girls' LEAP, an amazing Boston area nonprofit that trains at-risk girls aged 8-18 in verbal and physical safety skills and self-awareness. The girls enjoyed lunch with Nora board and staff members at one of our favorite neighborhood eateries, The Middle East Restaurant,
before walking down the block to Central Square Theater
to catch the matinee of On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning). After the show, the cast came out to talk with Girls' LEAP and answer their questions. It was a great afternoon and we hope to do it again soon.

The Girls' LEAP visit was part of The Nora's initiative to launch its new "Leading Ladies" program. The program is designed to provide marginalized women and girls in the local community with opportunities to experience live theater performances, as well as enriching that experience with pre-show, post-performance, and workshop activities. We're excited to kick off the program and continue it next season.

We will be holding a salon discussion about the Leading Ladies initiative on Sunday, June 14th following the 3pm matinee of On the Verge. The discussion will be led by Judy Norsigian, executive director and a founder of Our Bodies Ourselves (a.k.a. the Boston Women's Health Book Collective). For more information about the salon, please contact Development Coordinator KC Forcier at kcf@centralsquaretheater.org.

Office crimes and misdemeanors

2009-06-10T11:48:00.007-04:00

Today, a most troubling report was filed via interoffice e-mail. The victim: Ezra Flam, Education Associate and Teaching Artist. Here, in Ezra's own words, is his disturbing account:

I don’t know what this means, but I have had at least 4 or 5 sticky note pads disappear from my desk in the classroom in the last couple weeks. At first I thought I was losing my mind, and using sticky notes at an alarming rate, but I pulled a brand new pad out midday yesterday and now it’s nowhere to be found. So… if you happen to see someone in a brand new pair of pants made entirely on post-its, can you please let them know I’ve been going crazy because of them? Seriously, I can’t imagine someone is stealing sticky notes, but if anyone has any clues e-mail them to me at NancyDrewFlam@undergroundrailwaytheater.org.
-Ezra

Sorry, Ezra, no post-it pants have been spotted. But Tracey, our Operations Director, was concerned that her swanky new post-it shirt might raise some alarms:
The more pressing question: Fashion risk or fashion forward?

Check it out

2009-06-09T15:24:00.012-04:00

Credits: In photos: Barlow Adamson, Deanna Dunmyer, Alicia Kahn, and Anna Waldron. Audio: Wesley Savick. Photos by Elizabeth Stewart.

Things to love about "On the Verge"

2009-06-05T09:37:00.010-04:00

A selected list of things to love about On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning) (because, you know, we could go on and on):

Intrepid women
Eggbeaters (marsupial's unicycle?) and "rotoring"
Pith helmets
Victorian colloquialisms
1950s slang
Willy and the Hand Jive
Time travel
Ridiculous wigs
Unexpected uses for umbrellas
One-upsmanship
Accents
Snowball-throwing Yeti
Crooning lounge singer
Pop culture references up the wazoo
Anthropological smut
A canopy of fallout from the future
A monologue of fortune-cookie fortunes
Whacking the recalcitrant crock
The infinite cerulean
One man, eight characters
Native chop, manioc and cannibals
Osmosing
Cool Whip
Go-go boots
I Like Ike
Burma Shave jingles
Rhyming Gorge Troll on a chopper
And let's not forget: Optimism for the future!

Curious? Just plain confused? That's why you need a ticket!

Photo: Deanna Dunmyer and Anna Waldron in On the Verge. Credit: Elizabeth Stewart.

David Wheeler reflects on the Galileo Murals

2009-05-29T12:49:00.009-04:00

One of the painful parts of letting go of a production is striking the set to create a blank slate for the next show. Even after 9 weeks of rehearsals and performances, a we all winced regretfully when the murals that were painstakingly created on the walls for The Life of Galileo had to be painted over. It had to be done, but still, it didn't feel right to let the moment pass without commemorating that beautiful artwork. Here, some closing thoughts from director David Wheeler, reflecting on the Galileo Murals by David Fichter:

David Fichter's murals were a total inspiration, insisting that we push ourselves into the world of the17th century even as we spoke Brecht's (and David Hare’s) 20th century language to a 21st century audience. The murals reminded us all, insisting that before and after the atomic bomb of 1946 we were all unmoored, spinning and whirling in space, like the monks mocking Galileo in the 5th scene of Brecht's play. We delighted daily as huge imagery of Italy emerged on the long walls above our heads. David Fichter and two assistants worked steadily, transforming Mass. Ave. into Renaissance Italy with a dash of the WWII bombed-out world. While we rehearsed, we delighted in the magical images of Italy, topsy-turvy, chaotic, vibrant, Romulus and Remus sucking the Roman she-wolf, the majestic lion of Venice, the tall Paduan tower, the planet Jupiter, the moons' surface, and a 1950 Buick and the MIT dome, all floating in space, carried across centuries by an image of the atomic bomb blast, everything cascading through time and space, uniting Galileo’s 1610 world with the disasters of Brecht's 20th century. David Fichter created a spectacular world for the audiences to contemplate but also a huge stimulus for the actors' imaginations, looking everyday with a new sense of awe and delight in his designs. We were all sad to foresee the end of the great Fichter murals.

From the beginning of a life cycle...

...to the end.

You said it

2009-05-21T09:45:00.013-04:00

Responses to our On the Verge question, "If you could travel to any time and place, where and when would it be, and why?" are coming in:

Boston, MA, April 18, 2050. Because the future is an undiscovered country full of promise, and I'm impatient to get there. - David

I would travel to Hangzhou, China, and be there on July 22, 2009, to witness this century's longest total solar eclipse (6 minutes, 38 seconds!) from the hotel rooftop of the Hangzhou Hyatt on the banks of the West Lake. Why? Because viewing a total solar eclipse is a magnificent, unforgettable experience. - Yleana

I'd travel to Paris in the 20s to enjoy all the writers and thinkers from that era; or the Russian Revolution in 1917 to see the revolutionary process unfolding, to see socialist revolution. - Catherine

1968. I want to experience a population that is passionate about stopping the war. I want to see the Beatles. I want to be part of the Summer of Love in San Francisco. I want to participate in the Democratic National Convention protest in Chicago. - Keren

I would like to be present at my birth, to experience the joy and wonder of new life in a very personal way. - David

I would go to - believe it or not - the Big Bang, birth of space, time, and the universe...to
study it, and then go back to...NOW. After all, I AM an astronomy geek, and On The Verge? well, MY MOM HAS A LEAD ROLE (as Mary Baltimore). - Harper, astronomer

Send your answer to blog@centralsquaretheater.org and you too will receive a discount for tickets to On the Verge!

Time travel: Where would you go?

2009-05-19T13:02:00.012-04:00

Hard to believe, but we are down to our final production of the 2008-2009 season! The Nora Theatre Company brings Eric Overmyer's kaleidoscopic adventure, On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning), to Central Square Theater's Mainstage from May 28-June 21.

When three intrepid Victorian women adventure into Terra Incognita, they don't know where - or when - their next steps will take them.

Alicia Kahn, Deanna Dunmyer, and Anna Waldron
rehearse a scene from On the Verge

The play is an indulgently quirky, refreshingly celebratory romp through space and time. It has the kind of energy we all need to breathe into our lives these days. So in honor of On the Verge, we pose this question:

If you could travel to any time and place, where and when would it be, and why?

E-mail your answer to blog@centralsquaretheater.org and we'll post it on the Front & CENTRAL blog AND you'll receive a DISCOUNT CODE for tickets to On The Verge. A little fame and fortune - what's to lose?

Going...going...almost gone!

2009-05-15T15:34:00.003-04:00

It's been a tremendous run of The Life of Galileo. After three weeks of rehearsal and six weeks of performances it's started to feel like a permanent part of our activities. But alas, all good things must come to an end, and end it will on Sunday afternoon. We're almost sold out for the final performances, so we hope you have had a chance to see the show already, and if not, hurry hurry!

In addition to its dozens of performances, the production has also featured special guest talkbacks and wildly popular Saturday pre-show symposia. We want to hear from you: Share your thoughts about the play, the conversations, the symposia, the miniature theater introduction that kicks off each performance in the lobby...anything that struck your fancy, made you think twice, or challenged you - anything at all. What worked for you? What didn't? Let's send this show off with some final reflections. Comment with the icon below.

Here we are!

2009-05-12T13:01:00.004-04:00

Technology is great, but it's not always perfect. Case in point:

This week the Central Square Theater address on Google searches reverted to The Nora Theatre Company's former administrative office at 1208 Massachusetts Ave. in Harvard Square. But The Nora moved out of those digs almost a year ago and is settled in its new home at 450 Massachusetts Ave. in Central Square. Until last week Google results were up to date, so we're as perplexed by this mixup as our patrons who tried to see The Life of Galileo at 1208 Mass. Ave. last weekend.

We haven't uncovered a clear explanation for this error, and a correction on Google could take several weeks or longer, so we're doing damage control by publicizing our true location on our blog, e-blasts, website, and your ticket order receipts. Our apologies for this mishap; we are working to resolve the issue quickly and look forward to seeing you at the real Central Square Theater (one more time for luck: 450 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139) in the coming weeks.

Where to find us this weekend

2009-05-08T11:38:00.009-04:00

In addition to our performance, symposium, and talkback schedule for The Life of Galileo, Central Square Theater will be popping up at a couple of other events this weekend:

Saturday, May 9th

Join us at the Clay Center Observatory in Brookline for
National Astronomy Day
Free admission!
3:00 - Outdoor events begin with rockets, kites, telescopes
4:30 - Indoor events run from 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm
7:00 - Indoor Kite Flying in the Hockey Rink 7-9 pm
9:00 - Full Moon rises, night telescopes until 10 pm
They've planned far too much to mention here, and it's really worth investigating, so explore their website in advance to strategize your plan of attack.

AND

Dive into Cambridge Open Studios - Central
The Cambridge Arts Council joined forces with North Cambridge All Artists Open Studios and Cambridgeport Artists Open Studios to create three weekends of open studios tours around the city in April and May, and this is our neighborhood's weekend!
Stop by Central Square Theater during your walk to take a self-guided tour of The Life of Galileo set and get to know your local theater up close and personal. Saturday only, 1pm-6pm!

We love introducing our work to the community, so come explore with us this weekend. The weather's shaping up just perfectly, so head out of the house and take in one -or both! - of these fabulous free events.