Jim Edmondson, who is directing the “The Cyrano Project” at Southern Oregon University, is an associate artist at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he has been an actor and director for 38 seasons. We met one afternoon in the Center Square Theatre at Southern Oregon University.
EH: When did you discover that you wanted to do theater?
JE: It was about the time I was a junior in high school, as so many people do. I had always been a pretty imaginative kid. It just was clearly where I was happiest. We hear a lot of people say, “I found my tribe,” but I really did. They laughed at the same things I did; they accepted everybody. It seemed a good match.
Robin Downward’s Randall Theatre has been producing plays at a breathtaking rate while attracting an untapped audience through a pay-what-you-want policy. Downward also is a gifted actor, performing in his own productions and at other venues such as the Oregon Cabaret Theatre, where he sang and danced as Sherlock Holmes in “Holmes and Watson Save the Empire” and in Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave.” Downward also teaches an acting workshop called Character Creation. We visited at the Randall Theatre in Medford.
EH: What do you cover in your Character Creation class?
RD: A lot of what I do in the Character Creation class, drama therapists do from the standpoint of analyzing yourself as a person, and turning things that you have experienced into positive emotions.
Peter Quince played Roger Sherman in “1776” last summer at the Camelot Theatre. He later played Charlie in David Ives’ “Mere Mortals” at Ashland Contemporary Theatre. Now Quince is launching his own musical comedy, collaborating with composer David Gabriel, called “Divine Lunacy.” Quince and I met at Noble Coffee.
EH: You’re working on a new musical?
PQ: “Divine Lunacy” was done as a sketch comedy review in 2006 with two sold-out performances at the Black Swan Theatre. It was wildly and enthusiastically received. People thought it was both hilarious and thought-provoking. It deals with the whole notion of the line between divine inspiration and out-and-out lunacy. As any artist probably knows, you may cross that line over and over again. If you come back, it’s OK. If you stay across that line, it could be a problem, and you have to be locked-up, or at least helped in some way.
Where is the line? How easy is it to cross? What’s the role of the artist in society? Many prominent artists in the last decade have been praised and lionized. Artists are encouraged to let themselves go over that line. Suddenly they have gone over the line, and they’re really troubled. “Divine Lunacy” talks about all of that in the context of a strong, heartwarming and funny show.
Mental illness has become extraordinarily prevalent. There are some estimates that one out of four people, at some point in their lives, are on psychiatric medication. It’s a huge issue in our society, but it’s not often dealt with openly, and certainly not with comedy and music, which is a gentler way to open people’s hearts and minds, making them feel and think, by making them laugh and care. “Divine Lunacy” shows what it’s like to be in the midst of crises or bouts of incredible creativity.
When is it, the divine spark? And when is it the infernal fire? It starts the same way, and it looks the same. We need that divine spark. We need to make it come to life, but it can consume as well as it can illuminate.
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.
Ashland Contemporary Theater currently features Alonzo Moore in Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play. A principle dancer with Dancing People Company, Moore is also an actor and choreographer with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Next season, he will be dividing his time between Ashland and his home town in Texas, where he plans to build a community art center. We chatted over Sunday brunch at Larks.
AM: I live in a very rich area in Texas, where the culture and the heritage runs deep. The families have been there together since the 1840s. It used to be cornfields, open land, and cattle. Now it’s all subdivisions and strip malls. The economy is booming down there. It’s all urban.
Michael Wing, Camelot Theatre’s resident musical director, is acting in the musical “1776,” directed by Artistic Director Livia Genise and playing through July 22 in Talent. Wing plays Stephen Hopkins, a member of the Second Continental Congress, the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Wing and I met to chat about music, theater, “1776” and the founding fathers.
MW: “1776” plays to the brilliance of these men to come up with the Declaration of Independence. There was such a compromise that had to be done (with the whole issue of slavery) for them to agree that they would stand together, fight Great Britain and seek their independence.
The Constitution would not have had a leg to stand on, had there not been a well-written declaration that explained what we were as a nation. Later they added the Bill of Rights. In years since, they have added 27 amendments; that’s not many. The fact is that this is a darn good piece of work because people have been able to respond to it and make it work as the blueprint for government. Continue reading Michael Wing→
Actor David Gabriel is performing in “Broadway out of the Blue”, a new musical comedy review currently playing at BLUE-Greek on Granite in Ashland. David is also preparing for his as John Adams in “1776” at the New Camelot Theatre in Talent. We chatted about acting at Ashland’s Boulevard Coffee.
DG: Acting always seemed to me as a means to an end because I write songs and musicals. In order to learn about the musical genre, what better way to do it, but from the inside? I came at it as a singer, and learned acting as I went along.
EH: You’ve played some dark characters. How do you access those personalities?
DG: We’ve all experienced a lot of different people in our lives. We all have within us the potential for the qualities of all those characters. It’s just a matter of being permeable and knowing that we are all capable of all of that.
Ashland Theatre 