Costume Designer Barbara Rains and Production Manager Roy Rains are two remarkable talents at Camelot Theatre. The couple met while performing in the “Trail of Tears” drama at the Tsa-La-Gi Amphitheater near Tahlequah, Okla. They’ve been in Oregon almost two years. We chatted on the set of Camelot’s “White Christmas” in Talent.
EH: Barbara, what productions are you designing?
BR: This coming season, I will be designing all of the musicals. The next one will be “Funny Girl.”
EH: Roy, fill me in on your production manager duties.
RR: My job is to make sure that artists have what they need to realize their visions. We’re in a transition period for this position.
Doug Rowe became the new artistic director of the Ashland New Plays Festival this year. The festival held a fundraiser at the Camelot Theatre, a reading of David Rambo’s “God’s Man in Texas” by Rowe, Bill Langan and Jamie Newcomb. It also reassembled the original cast of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s legendary production of “Death of a Salesman” for a dramatic reading and tribute at OSF’s Black Swan Theater.
In 2010, John Stadelman, Lenny Neimark, Carolyn Shaffer and David Salsa directed four original scripts selected from more than 200 play submissions. Over coffee at Bloomsbury Coffeehouse, Rowe spoke enthusiastically about ANPF’s mission.
DR: All of our lives, those of us who are in the business, owe everything to the writers. It’s their ideas, their words that we are putting in front of us. That we can now do something in return is fabulous. I would really like to see some local playwrights get involved big-time with it as well. We are working toward that end. We’re really trying to find a venue that is suitable.
EH: Is the Ashland New Plays Festival scheduled to take place in October?
DR: Toward the end of the (OSF) season, after the outdoor season closes, more festival actors become available. They all seem to feel strongly about participating, because they all believe the same thing: that the writer is really our essence. Everybody climbs on board with that. It’s quite wonderful.
EH: So this goes on for a week?
DR: A full week. Playwrights participate. This year the Ashland New Plays Festival itself went over quite well; we were sold out every performance, evenings and matinees. We met the playwrights and directors right at the very start. We had a dinner together. A wonderful bonding happened, so that all of the playwrights went to all of the plays, all performances. They got together afterward and talked back and forth. I’m sure a lot was gained by that interaction. I was delighted with the whole week.
The plays were well-received. Audiences were very enthusiastic. One of the nicest things is the discussion afterwards. It’s so exciting to hear the audience participate. Where else but in Ashland do you get such wonderful participation? We have very savvy theatergoers, interested in the same thing. They know that the essence of theater is the writer.
EH: The ANPF conducts a nationwide search for playwrights. How long does that go on?
DR: It’s already begun for next year. (Submissions for next year’s festival were due by Dec. 1.) I think they hold it open for approximately six months. Then they close it off, narrow it down and come up with the final four.
EH: What do you look for in a play? What makes a great play?
DR: There are several levels of success in terms of playwrighting. If an audience walks out of a play and questions a belief that they might have held, the writer has done something. If they come out totally entertained, the writer has succeeded. I think that if they come out of it having learned something, that is the most important part of attending plays.
When you put together a season you want a balance, so that theatergoers, who buy season tickets, have distinctly different experiences. We also have to look out for the sustenance of the organization. I just don’t think that all of the plays, about one subject, are going to be very attractive to theatergoers. You see many of the same people attending every performance, good solid audiences. Given that, you really want to make that week of play-going to be balanced, exciting and entertaining.
Evalyn Hansen is a writer and director living in Ashland. She trained as an actor at the American Conservatory Theatre and is a founding member of San Francisco’s Magic Theatre. Reach her at evalyn_robinson@yahoo.com.
You may have seen actor Dayvin Turchiano in “Deathtrap” and “Glenn Gary Glen Ross” at Oregon Stage Works. Most recently he starred in “I Hate Hamlet” and will be appearing in “A Few Good Men” at the Camelot Theatre which opens February 2, 2011. Turchiano is also a computer software entrepreneur and an Asst. La Cross Coach at SOU. With his B.A. in Theater, Dayvin studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater and film acting at Yale. Turchiano chose to live in Ashland where he could enjoy family life and still be involved in theater. We met over lunch at Dragonfly in Ashland.
DT: My dream is to work with a company of actors in repertory, do different shows and perform a wide variety of work, even a small company. It doesn’t have to be a huge organization. I enjoy working with the same actors time after time, developing ideas in rehearsal, that’s the fun part.
Presila Quinby has performed at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival,The Cabaret Theatre,and Oregon Stage Works. At the Camelot Theater, Presila played The Widow in “Zorba”, Mama in “I Remember Mama”, Peggy Lee in ”Spotlight on Peggy Lee” and numerous other roles. A veteran of Broadway musical theatre, the attractive diminutive Presila would be perfect to portray Anna in “The King and I”.
As we sat in the shade at Ashland’s Rogue Valley Roasting Company one summer afternoon, Presila, a former ballerina, told me about her current project: choreography for Ashland Community Theatre’s new musical, “Illyria” based on Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”.
Bob Jackson Miner plays Avram Cohen in “RAGS” now playing at the Camelot Theatre in Talent. Perhaps you saw his remarkable performances in “1776”, “Shenandoah”, and/or “Gigi”? A native of El Paso, Texas, Bob studied Music and Theater at the University of Texas while performing progressive country music in nightclubs. He came to Ashland to perform with the Oregon Cabaret Theatre and stayed. One morning, at his spacious music/video studio in Ashland, we talked about the actor, the audience, and the wonderful ride of theater.
BJM: From the moment we start, the audience is absolutely actively part of the artistic experience in theater. It is a relationship established between the artists on stage and the viewers in the audience. Their emotional input is actually the wave we ride. We can stir up the emotional wave, and we can ride it; but we do not own it. The audience owns it every bit as much as we do. Once they’re in, they’re like a cast member in the sense of what we co-create. It’s different every night because every audience is different.
You may have seen Don Matthews as Lancelot in “Camelot” or as Don Quixote in “Man of La Mancha” at the Camelot Theatre. You may have heard him on the radio; he’s the Classical Music Director at JPR. Don sings with the Siskiyou Singers, the Reparatory Singers, and the Rogue Opera. He teaches in the Music Department Southern Oregon University. Over opulent omelets at the Morning Glory café in Ashland, Don and I talked about how performing can be both terrifying and liberating.
DM: There’s nothing more personal than singing or acting. You are your instrument, you’re up there. There’s no place to go. You can’t hide. As a singer, when you’re standing there singing a recital or a concert, it’s just you. You’re a little more exposed because you don’t have a character to play. When you’re playing a character, you can let yourself be in that character. It’s still you, but you don’t actually own it in the same way. You get to be somebody else. You can be all these things that you can’t be offstage. It goes back to your ability to allow yourself to feel and experience things which would just not be acceptable in our society.
Katie Falk, plays Belle and the covetous Laundress in “A Christmas Carol” now at Oregon Stage Works. She began her acting career as a child under the direction of her mother, Dianne Warner. Since then, Katie has grown into an accomplished actress, singer, and vocal coach. She’s played numerous roles at Camelot Theatre, including Lily in “Carnival”. We got together one sunny afternoon at Starbucks next to Southern Oregon University.
EH: Have you thought of doing opera?
KF: I did for many years. But I wanted to move, and I wanted to be expressive. In opera you get to be incredibly expressive, but it’s literally almost entirely from your voice, like a violin. There expression doesn’t come from body movement, and that was something I wanted to do. It’s just a different kind of art. So, I decided I wanted to do musical theater.
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