Category Archives: Interview

Jackie Apodaca

November 8, 2012 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Actor, director and associate professor Jackie Apodaca directed Jose Rivera’s “Marisol,” which is playing this week at Southern Oregon University’s Center Stage Theatre. The production’s sensational staging, ensemble acting and stage movement blend bizarre and beautiful elements to create a compelling theatrical experience. Jackie and I met over breakfast at Greenleaf Restaurant in Ashland.

EH: What is unique about the theater experience?

JA: It is the live experience of it. Everyone is experiencing the exact same moment and will have the shared experience. There is something exciting about that fleeting and momentary experience. And you experience it as the actor, as the director, as the stage manager, as the run-crew, and as the audience. The experience is so close and intimate between the audience and the performers in that way.

Whereas in film, everyone experienced something, and then someone took it away, changed everything about it, and brought it back and showed you what it was. Film seems more intimate in that you see the actor’s face close up, but it has gone through so many processes before you got to see it. Did you really get to see what they did? Probably not.

I worked with filmmakers when I taught in the Film and Media Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I loved that, but film is completely the medium of the director and the editor. We would change the actor’s performance in the editing room. And we would talk about how we could make them seem to be doing different things. There is so much that can be controlled outside of the actor and outside of the moment. In post-production, the moment is gone and completely changed.

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Interview

Scott Kaiser

October 24, 2012 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Scott Kaiser is directing a new adaptation of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” by former Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Libby Appel. It opens Nov. 8 at Southern Oregon University’s Center Stage Theatre in Ashland. Kaiser is director of company development at OSF.

EH: How is acting in a Chekhov play different from acting in other plays?

SK: The two playwrights who are most revered by actors are Shakespeare and Chekhov. The reason is that they are so rewarding.

Everything you pour into Shakespeare, as an actor, as a director, as a designer, you get back. That is not something you can say about every playwright.

Most actors will tell you that they will travel anywhere and take any pay in order to work on Chekhov or Shakespeare. On a fundamental level they understand human nature so deeply that the roles are bottomless as you start to explore them.

The major difference between Shakespeare and Chekhov is that Shakespeare is much more forthcoming on the page about what the character is thinking or feeling. The characters often say exactly what is on their minds, and they often say exactly what they are pursuing in terms of objectives, what their interests are, and what their passions are. Shakespeare’s characters can be very articulate about what’s going on in their minds and their hearts. Chekhov’s characters, in contrast, sublimate all of that. Often Chekhov’s characters don’t talk about what they’re feeling or what they’re thinking; they may have a conversation about the trees outside while love is slipping away. Chekhov is subtle and fragile and understated. They are both rewarding in their own way.

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Interview

Judith-Marie Bergan: Part One

October 10, 2012 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor Judith-Marie Bergan has delighted audiences with her stunning portrayals of legendary characters in her 11 seasons with the festival. We sat down to chat over coffee one afternoon. This is the second column of a two-part interview. The first was published on Sept. 26.

EH: How did you become an actress?

JMB: When I was in grade school, I had a lisp and I was very shy. My mom took me to a speech therapist who said, “You know, it’s really basically shyness with Judith; maybe you should enter her into a dramatics class.” I happened to be going to a school with a huge drama department. I just took to it. I was a drama student in high school. I majored in drama in college. I transferred to Goodman Theatre in Chicago for the rest of my degree. It’s just something I always wanted to do.

What I felt was whereas I was shy in life, on stage I could be anything. I still feel that. I’m not as shy as I was, but I still feel that I would rather go out and do a show than speak in public. There are a lot of things that you can do that you can’t do in real life. That’s kind of the appeal.

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Interview

Judith-Marie Bergan: Part Two

September 26, 2012 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Oregon Shakespeare Festival actress Judith-Marie Bergan has brilliantly portrayed numerous iconic characters, including Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s “Anthony and Cleopatra” and Lyubov Ranevskaya in Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” But the role that has had audiences reeling is her stunning and haunting portrayal of the acerbic, drug-addicted Violet, the destructive matriarch of the overtly dysfunctional Weston family in Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County.” Bergan and I met over coffee one summer afternoon. This is the first of a two-part interview; the second will publish in this space on Oct. 10.

EH: How did the role of Violet affect you?

JMB: I did warn my husband, “I don’t know what mood I’m going to be in this particular year.” But as it turned out, I didn’t carry it home. I was concerned because you are digging into some really deep, weird, dark, hard places. You conjure up stuff that you usually keep buried in yourself. I guess I must have gotten it out all on stage. When you’re doing a role like that, you think about it all of the time. The challenge of the actor is to go deeper and keep within what is directed.

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Interview

Levity Improv Comedy

September 12, 2012 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Levity Improv Comedy delighted a hefty audience last month with its premier production of improvisational theater under the trees at the Grizzly Peak Winery in Ashland. I visited with director Lyda Woods and troupe members Cynthia Rogan, Mig Windows and Jeffrey Hayes, and we reminisced about the exuberant evening.

LW: I really like improv because it teaches me to be a better person. Some of the guidelines are: You’re trying to say “yes” as often as you can. And it’s important to be openhearted, to be kindhearted, to be lighthearted, to be really available and supportive of your teammates, and really in the moment. And those are all things I’d like to be in my life. The other thing is that it encourages me to fail big. When I do improv, I’m always trying to get myself to take the risk, and that means risking failure.

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Interview

Peter Wickliffe

August 29, 2012 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

Peter Wickliffe portrays the young Woody Guthrie in the Camelot Theatre’s production of “Woody Guthrie’s American Song,” a musical tribute to a consummate American artist. Peter and I sat down one afternoon to chat about performing musical theater and about his next project, which is to direct his own adaptation of “Dracula” at the Randall Theatre in Medford.

PW: I love to sing. There’s so much that can be learned from songs and singing. Deeper messages sometimes are conveyed through song.

While I’m on stage, I’m having a good time with the people on stage and with the audience. Even in shows where you’re not acknowledging the audience, you can still feel them, when they’re with you, when they’re following along, when you’re breaking their heart, when you’re making them laugh. You can feel that you’re entertaining them.

Things will happen, things will go wrong, things will get mixed up; somebody will drop a line, but you’re all in it together. You’ve got to roll with the punches, and you’ve got to figure out how to keep things going forward, keep creating that story, and stay on the same flow, without getting flustered and letting it affect your performance or what you’re ultimately there to do: entertain.

Whenever I’m on stage, I’m not thinking about anything that is related to my life, or the hardships I’m going through, or the work that I have to do, or any of that. There is such a connection with the audience, your troubles just melt away, and you’re just there together.

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Interview

Tami Marston

August 15, 2012 Evalyn Hansen Leave a comment

The Camelot Theatre Company’s current production of “Woody Guthrie’s American Song” is a profound evening of music and theater. Tami Marston, along with the rest of the outstanding cast, makes the delivery of Peter Glazer’s exuberant and complex script and score seem effortless. Marston and I met for lunch at The Grotto in Talent to talk about Woody Guthrie’s legacy.

EH: What makes Woody Guthrie unique among folk singers?

TM: Woody never wrote about himself. He was a voice for the disenfranchised. When he made music, it was either to make them feel better or to give voice to what they were feeling and were too angry, or too sad, or too scared to say. He wanted to write songs that made people feel empowered and that they were worth something, that their lives had meaning. His perceptions were so acute. They were simple songs, they were honest, and he captured people’s emotions. Woody charted a new course as a troubadour.

He used familiar melodies, folk songs of the oral tradition and of unknown authorships. The oral tradition of music in America came from the Pilgrims, from old English ballads and work songs from the days of slavery. They were easy to sing and they captured people’s emotions. He wrote his own words. They are simple songs but the words are honest and real. He was a very modest man. He really did feel that he was just being a mirror to other people. That seemed to be his function in life.

There’s a passage that Woody wrote, “There’s a feeling in music, and it takes you back down the road you have traveled, and it makes you travel it again.”

If it had not been for Woody Guthrie, there would not have been the folk music revival of the 1960s. He was chronicling his times as he was traveling with his instrument among the people. He ended up in New York, in the place where there was a bohemian presence. And people became aware of his music even though it was not prevalent yet. What happened with the folk boom was people were picking up songs of Woody’s and the groups he played with. Those were the roots of the folk music revival. He was a unique man in a unique time. He was a true troubadour, a balladeer. He was a real man of the rails who managed to end up in an urban center and have an influence.

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