Elizabeth A. Davis

I’ve been a little MIA…

I haven’t blogged. I deactivated my Facebook account, I deleted Twitter and Instagram from my phone. I dug in the dirt and planted an herb garden and am re-reading a book that feeds me. My hubby and I found a new restaurant. I’ve created space and hid away for a few weeks.

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To be fair, there has been a lot going on. We did go through tech, press week, opened a show and I’ve had lots of personal work demanding my time. I also thankfully had family in town for two weeks. I’ve tried to do dishes a time or two as well. But enough of my laundry list of excuses.

I’ve just felt very private and a low-humming, constant melancholy has been sitting with me for the past few weeks. Joy is mine regardless; there are innumerable things to be thankful for and rejoice over, but I think I’ve finally realized that I’ve been straight up METHOD about this Grusha stuff. She is staying with me and shaking her is proving to be easier said than done. More than that, I’m not sure I want to shake her.

Part of my Method madness includes my preshow routine: sitting next to my adopted child, Michael, played by a beautiful puppet that I’ve totally fallen in love with, and listening to my Chalk playlist. I don’t dare hold him as I can’t let myself get ahead of the story in my emotional prep but I will just touch his knee, his little leather shoe or sometimes hold his hand. It’s remarkable what power having that Michael Chekhovian ‘secret’ of touch can have as you venture onstage. Even though I can never get ahead of myself in this play, if there is not some sort of emotional rumblings of preparation that begin early, I feel I’m not doing my job to the best of my ability; I’ve entered the story without my proper framework. I also have pictures of my brother as a little boy on my dressing table. These little hints of attachment and belonging without having true motherhood ground me subconsciously. This is my brand of madness for Grusha prep.

In the converse, I find that if my emotional hooks are light that day, it doesn’t matter because the story still does all the work. The given circumstances are still there, it’s still a give and take with each actor and getting into that final courtroom scene with Christopher Lloyd and the gang is a Meisner game heaven.

Here’s the truth of it: in the past three weeks, I’ve found that being in THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE is like doing a gymnastics floor routine, then hopping over to the balance beam, then ending with the vault and praying I stick the landing. It’s an athletic and muscular demand. It requires engaging with the audience and feeling their energy, but always and forever focusing on the task at hand and never wavering until the last note is sung. It requires absolute trust in the other six actors playing 428 other characters (or is it 45?) and trusting that I can only play each moment as it comes. My job is reacting with honesty. I love my job.

Btw, I would tell you that all of Grusha’s physical action was Grotowski technique based, but then it may appear Grusha is grab-bag, mash-up technique madness: Diet Method, Michael Chekhov, Meisner, Grotowski. Hey…I say, use whatever is in your tool-belt and go with it. It all comes out in the wash. Acting is reacting no matter how you slice it.

And to boil it down to brass tacks, I’ve compiled…

A couple of things I’ve learned in THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE:

1. To not run my Russian lines on the train by myself out loud. People will think you have a couple screws loose. (Not that I mind, but you may scare some children.)

2. To expect to sweat during Act 1 and get my pretty floral dress rancid stinky. Be very glad wardrobe keeps vodka and water on hand to spray down costumes repeatedly.

3. Pre show: One actor will always be trying to tune an instrument while another is trying to vocalize in another key. It’s inevitable, but surprisingly makes for interesting atonal music.

4. Suitcases: They are like 3 year olds. They have a mind of their own. They might just close on their own, they might fall over and have a tantrum. They might snap shut or fall open for no reason and embarrass you in front of a crowd.

5. Potatoes as props are a very cool idea. I like them. Beware they might go rogue however and an “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” moment could ensue.

6. More theatres should have a coffee shop like Everyman Espresso attached to their front of house. And they should all sell the potentially addictive ginger molasses cookies. Win / win, y’all. CSC does it right.

7. Operating on guts and listening to the still, small voice about taking a risk is right. Do not fear. The rewards from this process are innumerable, but I never would have known if I didn’t say yes. So thankful.

8. I’ve re-learned that Liquiteria on 11th and 2nd is my jam. A pre-show PB & J, green juice and a Hot Shot with lemon, cayenne and ginger can’t be topped.

9. The actors in this show are wonderful. I’ve grown deeply attached to them. And I miss the amazing creative team now that I don’t see them everyday and we have a thumbs-up stellar crew and management team.

10. Getting to act with Christopher Lloyd makes me want to say ‘Great Scott.’ His Azdak is like, ‘whoa.’

The post Behind the Scenes: THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE appeared first on Classic Stage Company.

Click here for more information on THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE. Click here to purchase tickets.

The post VIDEO: A Conversation with THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE Composer Duncan Sheik appeared first on Classic Stage Company.

Lea DeLaria

Comedic Actress LEA DeLARIA will succeed Mary Testa, who has a previously scheduled conflict, as the Governor’s Wife for the extension weeks.

Click here for additional information and tickets.

The post THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE Extended Through June 23; Lea DeLaria joins the cast appeared first on Classic Stage Company.

Photos: Joan Marcus

Can you talk about playing Kaspar Hauser in the Handke play?

KASPAR was kind of, as they say, my big break. I used to go to the Chelsea Theatre with Robert Kalfin. There was a complex there with an opera, symphony, theatre, and he ran a company there. And I’d been up to see him, to audition for a number of plays over time. He was always very nurturing, very helpful, very supportive—whether I was hired or not. And then one time, I got a call. It’s funny, because I finally got a call to do an Off-Broadway play, a Lanford Wilson play. I got a call to do HOT L BALTIMORE. I was ecstatic. When we just started rehearsals for that, I got a call from Robert Kalfin, asking if I would be interested in coming in and reading for Kaspar Hauser. I went to the Drama Bookshop and I got the play, and…I didn’t know what the hell it was about. Some of those who have read the play have said “it’s spinach to me,” and it was spinach to me when I first read it. But I suddenly thought, my God, I understand this guy. So I went in and I auditioned for Bob Kalfin and the director happened to be an assistant director for Bertolt Brecht. So they called and said I got it. I was in the midst of rehearsals for HOT L BALTIMORE, we had a break, and I answered the call that said I got this part. I went back to rehearsal after the break and told Lanford Wilson and Marshall Mason, “I’m sorry but I’m going to go do this.” I really did not feel good about it, and they were not really happy about it. But Kaspar was just such an extraordinary role. KASPAR was just amazing and went very well for me. That kind of lifted me up a couple of rungs and I got more work, more steady work.

It’s interesting to note that the Meisner Technique and the Americanized version of The Method are your foundations and yet, some of these roles [Kaspar Hauser in Handke’s KASPAR and Azdak in THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE] require a different kind of performance technique. How do you tap into what you’ve learned from Meisner in relation to these types of performances?

Well what I learned is that Meisner is applicable to everything we were doing. Taking the reality of the situation that is written in the play, whoever wrote it, and keeping the reality alive, whatever kind of reality it is. If it’s comedy, drama, whatever, it’s just a way of working where you can maintain a reality and keep your character credible and alive on stage.

Can you talk about Azdak in THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE?

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With Azdak, it’s like clouds opened up and lightning struck and here’s Azdak. I have a long ways to go, but Azdak is a whole lot of things, from one moment to the next, there is no coherence. He’s a disenchanted performer; there is a lot of cynicism, but there is a lot of purity about him. He is very outraged by injustices. In his world, injustice is all over the place, he is surrounded by it. When I read the papers, it reminds me of Syria today. There are insurgents, beheadings, terrorist activity, and those who don’t care how many citizens die as long as they retain power, and it’s a nightmare. It’s not just in the Middle East, there are elements of that all over the world. So Azdak lives in the midst of that. He, as I say, deeply feels for the injustice that he sees around him. I wish I could think of it—there is a wonderful quote about Azdak from a book that I’ve read. By kind of an inadvertency, he ends up being a judge. Suddenly he is in a position now to enact justice, and a lot of it is haphazard. He’s not a lawyer, he’s not a judge, he’s a guy whose circumstances thrusted him into being a judge, so he is sort of figuring it out as he goes along. Not all his decisions make a lot of sense. But it finally comes down to a really deep profound issue of these two women who are each claiming the right to be the mother of this child. There is goodness about Azdak. He is able to see what is good, and it’s not always necessarily what the law says. It’s what’s just in terms of human issues, sometimes the law is not fair, or the law doesn’t really deal with the issue at hand in a just way. Azdak narrows it down, he fumbles, and in this instance he knows that, as he says, whatever there is should go to the people who are good for it, the children to the maternal that thrive. He sees this as his mantra. He sees that the biological mother is not good, she is not someone who is good for this child. The young woman who has taken this child, cared for this child, and loved this child, is the person who should have this child, because he will then grow up to be a decent human being. Azdak is a bit of a rogue. He’s a bit of a manipulator, a guy who has survived. I love it, and I still have a lot to discover.

So tapping back into this idea that you get from your training, and the idea of maintaining a reality, what are you constructing?

Well there’s a lot in the script. It’s confusing and I’ve been going over it and over it, trying to connect the dots. If he says this here, why does he say that there? It seems to be contradictory. Why is he like this here and like that there? What ties them all together? It can still be conflicting and confusing to the audience, but I just feel that I have to come up with what his rationale is for why he does what he does. His plight. Azdak is like a firecracker, you don’t know when he is going to go off, who is going to get hurt, and who is going to get saved. I loved it.

You continue to come back to the theatre, in a lot of different roles, with different playwrights, and in different spaces. Why do you keep coming back?

I started out in the theatre long before film and TV, and it feels like home. The stage and all that. It’s a great high—when it works. I love doing it. I feel like I know what I’m doing, even if I don’t do it well. I know what’s expected. I love being in front of a live audience—feeling that symbiotic relationship. It feels very natural, like I’m going back to my roots.

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THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE runs through June 9, 2013. Click here for tickets.

The post WHEN THE CLOUDS OPEN AND LIGHTNING STRIKES: An Interview with THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE’s Christopher Lloyd appeared first on Classic Stage Company.

Elizabeth A. Davis

April 7th

So, this is the part in the process when you scrunch up your face for a third of the rehearsal as you hear lines come out of your mouth and doubt every instinct you possess. It’s the part when you feel scratchy from the inside of your skin and like your shoes are two sizes too big for your feet as you stumble through charting out your character’s physical life in the plotted-out rehearsal stage. You ask premature questions like, “Would Grusha do this?” Then you remember, “I’m the actor and should probably not be asking the room to do my homework for me.”

You’re losing it. Or maybe you should just chill out. Both are options.

On the 3 Train as you ride home, one irrational part of your brain might ask the other part, “ARE WE GOING TO GET FIRED?!” It might say that. I’m not confirming this happens one way or the other, of course. But if it did, the sane part of your brain would probably then shut yourself up with thoughts of thankfulness, joy and remembering that, “Oh yeah. This happens EVERY TIME.”

Welcome to the crunchy bits.

These bits and bobbles of rehearsal, strangely enough, despite my seemingly unstable neurosis, are my favorite part of the process. I adore the wading in the unknown of what could possibly happen in this tenuous season, letting the discoveries wash over me like sandy water over a cranky oyster. We’ll get to that pearl one way or another, I trust. The future Grusha glory is in the tide that will come in and out with each passing rehearsal. I watch as each of my castmates do the same, letting the waves of discovery crash over them. It’s a glorious sight to behold, this thing we do.

Despite this being my favorite part of the process, as aforementioned, I’m angsty. So I’m a contradiction in the rehearsal room. I’m not very good at giving myself the space to make a mess and let the mess stand for a while. I like to get to results quickly. I like to get off book immediately (even though I don’t) because I know my real work doesn’t happen until that’s done. I forget that it’s about process not product in reality, even though I know it in theory; that the truest discoveries happen in the messes I make.

Perhaps this contradiction is tied to my previously referenced Competiton vs. Empathy. Or perhaps I’m just human in need of grace.

Regardless, if graduate school taught me anything (and it did teach me many things), it affirmed that FAILURE IS MY FRIEND. So shall I remember this now as I’m feeling scratchy from the inside out and with shoes two sizes too big. If one can learn to fall down and turn to the Failure and shake its hand, smile and say, “Thank you, Failure. You have taught me much. I’m now going to move on with persistence because of you,” that person has won. They’ve figured out what a majority of the population has not.

This business (Heaven, help us), this craft, these rooms that consistently bring me face to face with my own patterns and ways of being and process and fear give me the opportunity to look at potential Failure, shake its hand and say, “I’m so glad you’re here. We’re gonna toe off and if I fall down, I’m gonna get back up. Cause that’s how this works. I know that now.”

I don’t suggest that one can truly fail in art, as it is a subjective organ and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course. That’s part of what makes what we do remarkable: 2 + 2 can = 5 in art. And it can be RIGHT. Just as well as 2+2=7. Even the failure is art.

But, let’s be honest. How many auditions have I gone on that I haven’t booked? How many rehearsals have I left where I felt like I still didn’t know what I was doing with a scene? Or what was the scathing review an actor received that finally made them stop reading them altogether? Is this classified Failure? Perhaps.

But even with that, I rejoice. The trick is to welcome the fiend with open arms into the room. In facing the fear we are free.

With that, I’ll climb off the soapbox and let you into a bit of the realities of this week’s personal joys and challenges.

#1. Absentee Scene Partner.

Grusha loves the baby, Michael, and all. She climbs mountain passes for him, goes without food, risks her life crossing rickety bridges and marries near-dead men for this kid. But… as for a scene partner? Michael sort of sucks. Not gonna lie.

He doesn’t talk back or really look at you. His eyes are glossed over and you can forget about trying to get Michael to play Meisner games with you. Not gonna happen.

You see, our Michael (another spoiler alert) is a gorgeous, hand made puppet which is most certainly a superior artistic decision.

My Grusha, however, is having a tricky time in the short monologues wrapping her head around what it really means to talk to him, handle him, simply be with a baby that isn’t a baby. Act, are you suggesting? Good idea.

Even still, I find myself doing this vague talking AT him instead of trying to look into his painted on eyes and really talk TO him. Working on it. Reversion to a four-year-old’s tea parties when I would talk to my imaginary friends and my doll, Sarah, is probably about to kick in. I KILLED those tea parties. Advanced Acting was being thrown down. Childlike-ness: much to be gleaned from it.

#2 Laugh lest we cry? Or is the other way around? A word on TONE:

We’re finding that this play is actually lots of little plays put together. Isn’t that what every play is, you ask? Yes and no. It’s more than just the classic distinction of ‘French Scenes.’ THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE has a deceptively large amount of mini scenes and transitioning sinew. Though perhaps smaller/shorter than a meatier courtroom scene, say, they still want the same attention. In addition to the complexity of that, each scene and mini scene may require a very distinct tone and un-apologetically require an about-face to get there. Thus: mini scenes and potential tone blind spots along the pathway. The job is not for the weak of heart, or those without Brian Kulick as tour guide.

Brecht has given us the beautiful task of building characters who feel what they feel, when they feel it, and sometimes no segue. In truth, it’s very liberating for an actor: Now, Grusha is a kitchen maid. Now, Grusha is a sexual being. And now, Grusha is a mountain climber. Those are concrete tasks that any actor would be thankful to hang their hat on in building a character. Navigating the twists and turns of the road, however? That is the next challenge of the week. How did she emotionally get over there so suddenly? What is my bridge from ‘here’ to ‘there’? The key is knowing that there doesn’t have to be a bridge. Just pick up and plant. Simply: I was ‘here’ and now I’m ‘there.’ Let that be and enjoy the simplicity of it.

From a dramaturgical and/or theatre history perspective, or perhaps from one that just enjoys Brecht, this is the very thing that makes him brilliant and why we continue to love and enjoy him. When I step back, I see the tapestry for what it is and admire it from afar. In the midst of the strings strung all over me right now, however, I feel more crunchy bits and floppy shoes than anything. Even still, this is my favorite part and this cranky oyster is loving the discovery crashes.

Ok. I’ll stop mixing an obscene amount of metaphors and go to rehearsal.

Talk soon, y’all.

The post Behind the Scenes: THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE appeared first on Classic Stage Company.

Today’s prize: one (1) copy of the two-disc 2013 New York cast recording of PASSION. Three (3) winners will be selected at random.

Visit CSC’s Facebook page and click on the tab “PASSION FINAL WEEK GIVEAWAY” to enter and for details.

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The post PASSION Final Week Giveaway – April 19 appeared first on Classic Stage Company.

Today’s prize: one (1) Playbill signed by the cast of PASSION. Three (3) winners will be selected at random.

Visit CSC’s Facebook page and click on the tab “PASSION FINAL WEEK GIVEAWAY” to enter and for details.

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The post PASSION Final Week Giveaway – April 18 appeared first on Classic Stage Company.

Today’s prize: one (1) PASSION window card poster. Three (3) winners will be selected at random.

Visit CSC’s Facebook page and click on the tab “PASSION FINAL WEEK GIVEAWAY” to enter and for details.

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The post PASSION Final Week Giveaway – April 17 appeared first on Classic Stage Company.

Today’s prize: one (1) copy of the PASSION libretto, by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. Three (3) winners will be selected at random.

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The post PASSION Final Week Giveaways: Tuesday, April 16 appeared first on Classic Stage Company.

Today’s prize: one (1) copy of the vocal selections from PASSION. Three (3) winners will be selected at random.

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