Center Theatre Group News & Blogs

How Dael Orlandersmith Speaks to People

Center Theatre Group — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 16:05:00 -0800

“Center Theatre Group has been so supportive. When we did Bones, other people wouldn’t touch it, and I will always be grateful to Michael Ritchie for that,” she said. Orlandersmith’s three previous plays at the Douglas include two World premieres. In 2010’s Bones she chronicled a difficult reunion among family members with a traumatic past, and in 2014’s Forever she told the story of her fraught relationship with her abusive mother.

“The content is very difficult,” acknowledged Orlandersmith of Until the Flood. “The challenge every night is to tackle that stuff,” she added. “But I have to do that.” She portrays eight different composite characters whose stories are based on extensive interviews she conducted in Ferguson in 2015. They include Hassan, a black teenage “street kid,” Dougray, a racist landlord, and Connie, a white teacher who tries to empathize with both Brown and the officer who shot him.

“I do what I have to do as an actor. Sometimes when we see certain people, they remind us of an aspect of ourselves that we don’t like,” said Orlandersmith of portraying these characters. “I wonder, am I seeing something about myself I don’t like? And then I tackle it. It’s my responsibility to be a storyteller and to be an actor.”

Until the Flood began during rehearsals for Forever, which was also directed by Center Theatre Group Associate Artistic Director/Literary Director Neel Keller. “The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis reached out to ask if Dael would create something that addressed what was happening in their city,” said Keller. “She asked me to collaborate with her on the new play. So, we have been working together on Until the Flood since the very beginning.”

Dael Orlandersmith in ‘Until the Flood.’ Photo by Robert Altman.

Keller and Orlandersmith first met in 1994, when he directed a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. “I love working with Dael. She always challenges me and, probably more importantly, always surprises me,” said Keller.

Orlandersmith, for her part, relies on Keller to help her take a step away from the material. “There’s certain things Neel has told me to do and suggested that I do that are now becoming clearer,” said Orlandersmith. “When you’re wearing both the actor and the writer hat, you need that second perspective.”

Both Orlandersmith and Keller weren’t sure what audiences would make of Until the Flood at first—particularly because it was premiering just miles away from where the story is set, in St. Louis. “I wondered what would happen with that community, and they took to that piece, my God they were wonderful, they were so glad they were there,” said Orlandersmith. “I don’t speak for people, I speak to people, and I made that very clear. I’m not a politician.”

Nine productions later—across America and in Galway, London, and Edinburgh, where Until the Flood won two of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s most prestigious awards— that still holds true. “It was very moving to see how strongly European audiences connected to this very American piece. Dael acknowledges the multiplicity of truth swirling around the events at the heart of the play. By allowing her composite characters to speak their often contradictory truths, she is able to capture something elemental about this very human, very complicated situation,” said Keller.

Added Orlandersmith, “I hope that people are listening, and I hope it invokes a certain kind of thought and communication.”

Listen to Dael Orlandersmith in conversation on our podcast "30 to Curtain"

Bringing the Class to the Stage, and the Stage to the Class

Center Theatre Group — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 11:00:00 -0800

At Center Theatre Group, many of our Teaching Artists move seamlessly between the classroom and the Los Angeles stages—including ours. Bernard K. Addison, a longtime member of our August Wilson Program faculty, appeared on our stages most recently in 2018’s Water by the Spoonful and 2017’s Citizen: An American Lyric; our 2017 Zoot Suit revival cast featured Teaching Artists Melinna Bobadilla and Rocío López.

Our Teaching Artists—we work with 40 or more each season—are also playwrights, directors, choreographers, and designers. They all bring a wealth of hands-on experience and real-world philosophy that benefit students across many different programs we offer, including Student Matinees, Disney Musicals in Schools, and our August Wilson program.

This year, two of the new Teaching Artists we welcomed to our Student Matinee faculty are familiar faces at Center Theatre Group. Actors Peter Mendoza and Matias Ponce were inspired to come on board after participating in the program during their own stints in leading roles on Center Theatre Group stages. Mendoza played the titular role in 2017’s Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue at the Douglas and appeared in last year’s production of Sweat at the Taper, and Ponce played Henry Reyna in our acclaimed Zoot Suit revival.

I was unprepared for how involved and engaged the students would be, recalled Mendoza of the Elliot Student Matinee performances, which were followed by Q&As with the cast. It was an amazing experience that I wanted to continue—interacting and getting students excited about great theatre.

Theatre is such a giving and inspiring art form that connects you to the world and your community.

Both Mendoza and Ponce began their Teaching Artist experience helping immerse high school students into the world of John Leguizamo’s Latin History for Morons. Their work on the program includes team-building exercises with staff and fellow Teaching Artists, Educator Conferences with participating teachers, and in-school pre- and post-show visits.

They know firsthand how valuable it is to provide opportunities to students to see and engage with live theatre, especially those who may never have considered getting involved in theatre, performance, or art as a whole. Ponce described the Student Matinee Program as the perfect opportunity to share my love for theatre and how it can revolutionize the minds of youth through freedom of expression and break the stereotypes our youth have been taught.

But perhaps the most important asset the Teaching Artists can bring to their efforts is their firsthand knowledge of the power of theatre to change lives for both the actors/creators and the audience. Theatre is such a giving and inspiring art form that connects you to the world and your community, explained Mendoza. It gives you a voice and the ability to play. There is nothing that can compare to the connection between the audience and the characters/actors.

Within This Concrete O

René Auberjonois — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 16:08:00 -0800

I write this on “opening day”—a term which may put most people in mind of the baseball season in April, but for actors it means those few vulnerable hours before we face the event more vulnerable hours of “opening night.” It’s opening day of Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, not on the Taper’s stage, but very much on what I consider home turf—the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, The Music Center—and very much the embrace of everything that is the Taper. That is: working under Gordon Davidson’s direction, with colleagues and friends, all of us having known each other on and backstage for 20 years.

20: a cardinal number, two decades on which so many things hinge. Under the most benign circumstances opening day, waiting for The Night, is a rarified time. But looking back over 20 years of opening days and nights with members of this same family, images surround me, etched into me like the images on the walls of the drum that is the Taper—that concrete O, a circular fortress squared by its own moat.

20 years ago, after an opening night, I leapt into that moat and frolicked about, overcome by youthful exuberance, and, I suppose, eager to be baptized in the Taper’s own water. A new theatre, a new actor, a new life in the theatre in Los Angeles. All of that is gone now. We’ve all grown into something else. This morning I listen as Gordon gives the cast notes, comforting us through this jittery time. So familiar, the same chip-tooth grin, the same concentration: to concentrate, to bring together—to draw a common center. We listen. My son listens (12 years old and already a veteran of three Taper productions). I watch him listen, watch him drawn into the circle.

On other opening days I’ve paced round and round the circle, the perimeter of the theatre, running lines, preparing, trying to concentrate, and then crossed the most, into the circle. The first time I did that, 20 years ago, I was acutely aware of the absence of ghosts backstage: the Taper smelled like a new car. Now, after 20 seasons, the place has a patina and plenty of ghosts; some of them are me.

The building, as everyone is quick to point out, was not meant to be a theatre so much as a concert hall. There are no closets for costumes, no wings for sets, no space for the crew, no green room for the actors. Yet over the years, people have burrowed in, nested, made space—struggling for every inch—and settled.

Within the curve there are two sets of stairs leading from backstage to the dressing rooms. There are 22 steps in the flight, 22 steps down to the stage, trying to breathe calmly on opening night, 22 steps up, gasping with exhilaration after the night’s work.

Over the years the youthfulness, the challenge of uncharted territory has evolved into something else, but the exhilaration never fades. Spending the decades working on everything from Shakespeare to Stoppard, working as a fool, a hero, a fop, a Russian, a Spaniard, in France, in England, in velvet, in rags, insane, in love, involved, and always in the circle, the drum. I’ve been embraced by the curve.

I remember most vividly a lull between matinee and evening, sitting in costume backstage watching the TV that is mounted—always on—above the desk of stage doorman Ross-Adrian Brown. It was a Molière play, most distant in style from the present-day surroundings—a war in Southeast Asia, a moral and ethical upheaval at home. And as I sat contemplating Molière, facing the back wall of the Taper that keeps away the outside world, I heard Lyndon Johnson announce that he would not seek another term as President. In that momentary clash of the contemporary and the classical, the real world penetrated the walls of that theatre just as it always seems to at crucial moments. Past and present collided, and fact and artifice played off one another in that special way that is uniquely the Taper.

Community, Empowerment & Being Human in August Wilson’s 'Jitney'

Center Theatre Group — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 11:00:00 -0800