Ashland Contemporary Theatre Artistic Director Jeannine Grizzard will perform some hefty roles in upcoming Ashland productions. On Halloween, at the Playwright Actor Atelier, she will read the title role in “Dr. Foster,” a modern adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus.” In November she will perform in Terrence McNally’s “It’s Only a Play” at ACT. We met for lunch at Sesame next to Lithia Park.
EH: Why did you decide to direct theater?
JG: I wanted to express what really great thinkers were trying to say. I knew I could translate that into rooms and actions and environment. I wanted to manifest great writing, greatly done.
Designer and director Doug Ham’s recent work has included some remarkable set designs.
At the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater, his design for “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” consisted of colossal, colorful, multi-dimensional pyramids on which were played wide-ranging scenes in far-flung locations. The Next Stage Repertory Company’s “Tally’s Folly” was set in an exquisite, delicate and decaying boathouse to portray a pervasive psychological landscape. “Chicago,” at Ashland High School, was placed in a cavernous speakeasy with an orchestra on bleachers center stage.
Ham is preparing to direct “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” at the Craterian theater, and is designing sets for “The 39 Steps” at Ashland High School. Last week, we chatted at Bloomsbury Coffee.
EH: What makes a good stage set?
DH: If an audience can look at it, understand it, accept it, and know where they are, then it becomes a backdrop for the actors. The most important thing is that the set is an establishment of the location but doesn’t overtake the show. Every show is a new challenge: to do the research, figure it out and understand how it’s going to work for the space. In a small space, you have to be imaginative to make a show work. I designed for a professional company in California with a 50-seat theater. I put a two-story set in there. You have to be creative.
When I read a script, I start imagining where it’s at, what it looks like and what I can do to give the director a lot of choices. As a director, you want different areas, different levels on which to place the actors for a more dramatic scene. If you just have a plain stage and you don’t have a way for them to move to another level, the stage pictures can get boring.
For “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown,” there are six characters, but I will add an ensemble of 12 more, all Charles Schultz’s characters, like Pig Pen and Peppermint Patty. It will be visual choreography — some fun stuff. It will have a pen-and-color feel to it. I want it to look like the comic strip. There will be a level stage, but upstage I will have a stair unit for the glee club scene. When they’re at the ball game, I can use it as bleachers.
Ashland Contemporary Theatre’s July production, “Local Produce 2,” featured veteran actress Katherine Ross. Ross graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1955 and recently earned a master’s in psychology from Southern Oregon University. She currently co-facilitates grief groups at WinterSpring Center in Medford. Katherine freely admits to being an octogenarian. We lunched on the patio at Blue: Greek on Granite in Ashland.
EH: What is it about theater that is so magnetic?
KR: It’s make-believe. People love make-believe. That is why I love Ashland. You can be walking down any street, and get into little playlets with people, just on the spur of the moment. That happens all the time in this town. It’s a great town to be in.
Next Stage Repertory Company, housed in Medford’s Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater, is the brainchild of Artistic Director Doug Warner, formerly the producing director of Camelot Theatre; Peter Alzado, former artistic director of Oregon Stage Works; Kate Sullivan, co-director of Ashland Children’s Theatre; and Stephen McCandless, executive director of the Craterian.
The new theater opened with a three-day run of Lanford Wilson’s “Talley’s Folly” this month and will offer three more shows for its first season.
I chatted with Warner one afternoon in the spacious lobby of the Craterian.
EH: What is it about theater that we find so stimulating?
DW: I think it is storytelling. What happens in the process of telling stories and hearing stories told is that you identify with the characters. With good stories, you identify with what the characters are going through. And by the end of the story, you’ve got some clues about your own life that you can apply. When I direct or act, I approach it from that angle. It’s never about the surface structure of the story; it’s always about the psychological underpinnings. “Death of a Salesman” (which I did years ago) was called, “Inside Willie’s Head.” That was the original name. Of course that is not a great title, but it does tell you that the fathers of modern theater, people like Arthur Miller, thought of the stage as a psychological space.
A great way to go in putting a story together is breaking down the psychology and then presenting it. Then the audience is actually getting something that’s deeper than just entertainment. They’re getting something of value that they can actually walk away with, something tangible. There’s nothing wrong with a good belly laugh or good, solid entertainment; but theater can be more than that. It can be something that you can savor, and use, and hopefully could improve the quality of your life.
Great stories are compressed, bigger than life, concentrated. There’s usually some big change that takes place. In directing I try to make sure that every actor is aware of where they are in the beginning of the play and where they are at the end. If you set it up right, the audience can also go through a change. Theater is unusual in that sense. Hopefully theater can offer more than straight entertainment.
On the other hand, I think theater has gotten a little too full of itself — a little too pretentious. It tends to attract post-graduate-educated people instead of the face of the community. We’re trying to overcome that by making sure that you will be entertained. First and foremost, you should be entertained.
Right now Medford might be on the edge of a cultural awakening or reawakening in the downtown area. It’s pretty exciting to be part of that. Hopefully we offer something a little bit different than what we see in Ashland and around the Rogue Valley.
Ashland resident David Hill’s play “Larry’s Best Friend” recently won the national 2011 McLaren Memorial Comedy Play Writing Award. I had the pleasure of directing the play when it premiered with the Ashland Contemporary Theatre in 2010. In his college years, Hill was mentored by screenwriter Rod Serling of “The Twilight Zone.” We chatted at Boulevard Coffee on Siskiyou Boulevard early one afternoon.
EH: What is the dramatic action of “Larry’s Best Friend”?
DH: A man’s whole world view is challenged when his dog turns into a beautiful woman.
EH: “Larry’s Best Friend” had a tinge of the “Twilight Zone”?
DH: It’s finding extraordinary in the ordinary. We all experience a little disconcerting touch of unreality in our reality. Ambrose Bierce did a lot of that. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was of that genre. George Bernard Shaw did that, too, unreality mixed in with the ordinary.
Greg Younger’s visionary play “Just Cause” was given a dramatic reading last month at the Ashland Playwrights Actors Atelier, a monthly workshop that allows local playwrights to hear their work. It was received by a delighted audience. Even though acting has been Younger’s primary career for decades, he considers himself first and foremost a playwright. We chatted on the terrace of the Nom Yen bubble tea house on Siskiyou Boulevard one sunny afternoon.
GY: I read recently that every playwright should have a group of people; that’s definitely the case, you need one. I’m very fortunate for the Atelier reading, although performance is a different animal altogether.
EH: Why are some of us passionate about theater?
GY: It’s the creative spirit. There’s very little banality in it; and it’s exciting. That’s why I’m there, to create, to get invested. I’m not putting on product. I’m putting on something that will move people in one way or another.
The Greeks understood that the stage was the window of the soul. To examine one’s humanity, and relationships, and what that’s all about, is one of the greatest reasons that we’re here. I find it the most grounding thing ever.
Theater allowed me to examine parts of myself I never would have been able to do in any other venue. I certainly couldn’t do it in any of the zillion jobs that I’ve had to support it. Going to the depths of your soul and screaming from there: Delight. There is just a joy that I feel when I’m present and alive on stage which is unequaled anywhere else. The same is why I write theater.
Theater is about spatial relationships. When you see the actors in person, there is a dynamic; the distance between them speaks. That is something that you cannot put on the page. So it takes a very astute reader of plays to know what a good play looks like, rather than a talking drama. I advise every single playwright to get on the stage and do a show.
Paramount is the play. The play is more than the script; it’s more than the actors; it’s more than the director; it’s all those together. It’s give-and-take. It’s very much a communal process. There’s a saying, “When you enter the rehearsal hall, leave your hat at the door.” It’s not about you. It’s about the play; it’s about what we’re creating. Leave everything behind.
EH: What makes a great actor?
GY: Versatility, openness, humility; the mind of a psychologist or a psychiatrist, somebody who is actually interested in the human condition, interested in other people, and curious.
For me, the ultimate actor is the Lawrence Olivier type, who stretches his boundaries, who can do anything.
The ability to witness: put awareness above and back of yourself. The ability to inhabit a world, inhabit it in front of other people and respect what that fourth wall is all about.
EH: The imaginary world?
GY: When you’re on stage, it’s not imaginary. It’s more real than this world is. It’s more profound, it’s deeper, certainly, and it smacks of poetry, the best kind of poetry. It’s not: “I’m just pretending on stage.” No way. Acting is being. What is essential for great acting is that you understand that: This is heightened reality. You’re in the thick of it, and it’s a beautiful thing. But it’s not pretending.
The Ashland Playwrights Actors Atelier brings together Rogue Valley writers and actors to read and analyze new plays. Readings take place the last Monday of each month. The next scheduled reading will be 6:30 p.m. Aug. 29 in the Gresham Room of the Ashland library with “The Angel Capone” by David Copelin. For more information, visit http://playwrightsatelier.org.
Peter Alzado (Oregon Stage Works’ former Artistic Director) is engaged in the creation of a new theater called the NEXT STAGE Repertory Company. One afternoon, we met at Medford’s Craterian Theater, where Alzado is currently in rehearsal for Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer prize-winning play, “Talley’s Folly.” We then settled down with tea at nearby Grilla Bites.
EH: What makes a good director?
PA: I think great directors want an ordered world. They need to be able to have a real feeling for space, and how to communicate through space. They need to have an empathetic response to their actors. And they need to have a real sense of literature, and how to communicate those themes through the words that the writer has given them.
I’m not a big fan of, “Let’s do a concept.” I can see the value of it on occasion, but I’m much more aligned with getting out of the way and letting the material speak. If you find a way to allow the material to speak for itself the ideas that you have will enhance the material, and you’ll be dealing thematically with what the play is about. If you do that, I think you’ll have a real visceral impact depending on the writing and the themes. If you don’t do that, the impact and the audience response is intellectual and self-congratulatory. I sometimes find it off-putting. It’s like having somebody in an audience laugh at everything a friend does. I think that directing now is very much aligned to the technical aspects of the theater and less so to the acting.
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