“Les Miserables,” directed by Renee Hewitt and playing now at Camelot Theatre in Talent, is a stunning production. Lasting more than three hours, with 33 cast members, the production is so powerful that you barely notice that all of the dialogue is sung.
Although she is an accomplished actor, this is Hewitt’s maiden voyage as a director. We visited at the Camelot Theatre one Sunday afternoon.
EH: How did you get such great performances from your cast?
RH: It’s such an incredible story and it is very moving. I think that I let myself be vulnerable and I let them see how much intention I have. It’s such a great cast. They’re such great people.
Actress, director and choreographer Vanessa Hopkins will be starring in Ashland Contemporary Theatre’s next production, “Mr. Williams and Miss Wood,” written by Max Wilk and directed by Jeannine Grizzard. It opens Saturday, June 14, at the Ashland Community Center. The play is based on the relationship between Tennessee Williams and his editor Audrey Wood. Hopkins and I visited over lunch at her attractive Ashland cottage.
EH: What forms of theater attract you?
VH: I do like experimental theater. I love avant-garde theater. I’ve done a lot of Brecht and Beckett. It pushes you. The audience isn’t just lulled and just satisfied. They walk away saying, “What was that?” I don’t want to alienate people, either. There is some avant-garde theater that is too extreme, and nobody gets it. It is just for the performer, and it’s just self-indulgent.
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.
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.
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.
Camelot Theatre’s Artistic Director, Livia Genise, is directing “All The King’s Men”, which opens Friday, February 3rd, at Camelot’s newly constructed theater in Talent. After building the new Camelot Theatre facility, in addition to her daily routine of acting, directing, and producing, Genise seemed remarkably rested and resilient. We chatted over coffee at Starbucks near Southern Oregon University one sunny afternoon.
LG: I’m doing what I think I was supposed to do with my life; and when you do that, you’re happy.
EH: Did you always know that you wanted to be an actress?
LG: I always knew what I wanted. But my focus shifted from wanting to be a star (which I think was more about low self-esteem) to wanting to make a difference. When I was given a George Bernard Shaw quote that said: “This is the true joy in life –being used for a purpose, recognized by yourself as a mighty one,” it changed my life. My life then became more about service.
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.
Ashland Theatre 