Category Archives: Interview

Dennis Smith

May 22, 2013 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Theatre Arts professor emeritus Dennis Smith has directed more than 30 plays during his 28-year career at Southern Oregon University. Currently he is directing Tony Kushner’s “The Illusion,” based loosely on the play “L’Illusion Comique” by the 17th-century playwright Pierre Corneille. It’s the story of a father who enlists a magician to search for his long-lost son. The play is filled with visions, transformations, time shifts and twists of fate. I visited with Smith at his office in the Theatre Arts Department one afternoon.

EH: Tell me about the qualities of the adaptation.

DS: The style is very contemporary. Tony Kushner has made the characters very accessible, highly articulate and in tune with our contemporary ears.

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Interview

Chris Sackett

May 8, 2013 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Southern Oregon University Theatre Arts Professor Chris Sackett is directing “Avenue Q,” a Tony Award-winning musical that opens Thursday, May 16, at SOU’s Center Stage Theatre. Sackett and I walked to the Stevenson Union on the SOU campus to discuss “Avenue Q.”

CS: It’s smart; it’s fun. It’s rife with political satire and irony; that’s part of the attraction of the play. The humor at times is extremely biting; sometimes it is coarse; but it all holds together pretty well. Overall, it’s really smart how they’ve taken this irreverent approach to a deep reverence for the human condition, and how we might pragmatically have a greater scope of tolerance for our fellows.

EH: What’s the message of “Avenue Q”?

CS: Get over self-pity; quit thinking about yourself, and get engaged with life.

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Interview

Michael J. Hume

April 24, 2013 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Michael J. Hume, along with Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner, wrote “Dogpark: The Musical” now playing at Oregon Cabaret Theatre. The trio has written other musicals, including “Holmes and Watson Save the Empire,” which Hume directed. He is currently in rehearsal for “The Heart of Robin Hood” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We chatted one afternoon about the process of writing musicals with friends.

MH: It was like “Singing in the Rain.” Malcolm would be on the piano; we could just sit there writing songs and creating riffs. Then I’d come home and write, and we’d send computer stuff back and forth.

EH: It’s nice that you can collaborate; writing alone can be daunting.

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Interview

Richard Heller

April 10, 2013 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Richard Heller is the Artistic Director of Theatre Convivio, the new community theater hosted by Ashland’s Bellview Grange. The first production of Theatre Convivio will be “The Fantasticks” to be produced this August. Richard and I sat down to talk at Noble Coffee in Ashland one sunny afternoon.

EH: What is the job of an artistic director?

RH: A good leader brings people in who can do a really good job and lets them do their work. As the sea is the ruler of a thousand streams, because it lies beneath them, the artistic director has to hold space for the community, be a consistent and calming presence, weave the various elements together, and work cohesively and collaboratively with others, being a guiding influence, never a dominating influence.

There is a hierarchical structure to theater. On the creative side, a play’s director has a vision about a certain work and wants to bring that to the stage. The artistic director of a company has to make the choices of plays so that they bring a consistent message about what the company is about.

As Artistic Director of Theatre Convivio, I want to choose projects that emphasize humanness, transformation and the actor-audience relationship. It means touching the hearts and souls of the actors and the audience so that everyone is transformed through the magic of theater. It’s a beautiful collaborative work.

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Interview

Libby Appel

March 27, 2013 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Libby Appel retired as artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2007. She says of plays she directed, “They were controversial in a sophisticated, interesting way.”

Appel’s productions are elegant and sparse, and she approaches her work with a deep sense of conviction. This is the second of a two-part interview; the first was published in this space on March 13.

LA: People see themselves on the stage, even if it’s something from Shakespeare. I remember I directed “Richard II” outdoors in its own period. George Bush was president, and we had begun the Iraq war. David Kelly played Richard, playing up the prideful and vainglorious Richard II, who fell by his own dreams of glory. When the first act was over, a man and a woman (who I didn’t know) were talking to each other. She turned to him said, “Boy, I wish George Bush could see this.” I thought that was just incredible. Here it was, in its 13th-century grandeur, and they saw a contemporary parallel. That’s why you do it. People recognize themselves and the people around them and it changes them.

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Interview

Libby Appel

March 13, 2013 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Libby Appel, the fourth artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, served for 12 years and directed more than 25 plays. She championed ethnic and gender diversity in casting, and she placed a strong emphasis on production of new works before retiring in 2007. She continues to guest direct at the festival.

We visited one afternoon in her exquisite home overlooking the Ashland hills. This is the first of a two-part interview; the second will publish in this space on March 27.

EH: When you began directing theater, there were very few women directors.

LA: When I was young, women didn’t do a lot of things. The role of women in the ’50s and early ’60s was just terrible. I can see that now, but I don’t know that I understood that then. My mother’s motto for me was always to “fulfill your potential,” and that’s what it was about. I had to do the best I could. It’s only when I look back, that I see what the challenges and the glass ceilings were.

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Interview

David McCandless

February 27, 2013 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Southern Oregon University associate professor David McCandless is directing the premiere of his play “Invisible Threads,” which opens Thursday in SOU’s Center Stage Theatre. We chatted in his office in the Theatre Arts Department.

DM: The premise is, a mysterious figure recruits some down-on-their-luck actors to apply their thespian skills to rescue some people from real-life crises. It preys upon that ethic angst that a lot of actors have: that they’re not contributing to the world; that they’re not really doing anything to help people; and that they’re just indulging themselves.

It explores the thin border between illusion and reality. It has to do with that theater and life continuum. It’s meant to be an examination of role-playing and identity, and the joys and the limits of theater.

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