Angels Rehearsal Photos

The rehearsals of Angels in America have been going on for three weeks already, but they've just moved into the theatre.  Cast member Rebecca Morris (Harper) took these photos, and Willie Repoley (Prior) edited them and shared them with us.  Enjoy the peek into Tony Kushner's masterpiece and our first play(s) of the Mainstage Season! 

Andrew Hampton Livingston as Joe Pitt, Michael MacCauley as Roy Cohn

Willie Repoley, Michael MacCauley, and Angie Flynn-McIver (Director)

Callan White as Ethel Rosenberg, Michael MacCauley as Roy

Callan White as Henry, Roy's doctor; Nathan Crocker as Belize

Dusty McKeelan as Louis, Andrew Hampton Livingston as Joe

Dusty McKeelan as Louis, Michael MacCauley as Roy, Andrew Hampton Livingston as Joe, Willie Reploey as Prior Walter

Dusty McKeelan as Louis, Nathan Crocker as Belize, and Willie Repoley as Prior

Michael MacCauley as Roy

Rebecca Morris as Harper Pitt, Callan White as Hannah Pitt

Vivian Smith as the Angel, Willie Repoley as Prior

Willie Repoley as Prior, Dusty McKeelan as Louis

Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches and Part Two: Perestroika run October 13 - November 13, in rotating repertory.  Tickets can be purchased online, in person, or over the phone (828.239.0263).  For more information on the play or the repertory schedule, check out our website: ncstage.org or call the box office (828.239.0263).

Why I'm excited to see Angels In America again.

Interview with Angie Flynn-McIver about Angels In America, Parts 1 and 2, and the challenges of directing such an epic play and what's it like to direct the same play for a second time.

Be a Witness to 'Witness'

Last night I was fortunate enough to go see the final dress rehearsal of the Flay Rock Playhouse production of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution.  Angie's directing it and a number of familiar faces from NC Stage were gracing the stage, so I went in expecting a good show.  This was only the second Flat Rock show I've seen, but they've both been outstanding, and also in non-traditional spaces.  

 

My first FRP experience was last summer seeing 12 Angry Men in the Historic Courthouse and Witness is in their new downtown Hendersonville space on S. Main Street, or Playhouse Downtown, as it's called.  Its setup is that of theatre in the round, so there's seating on every side of the set, and really, no matter where you're seated, you have a good view of the action.  And action there's plenty.  I hadn't read or seen any Agatha Christie prior to seeing the play, I'm sorry to say, but, wow, she was a talented writer.  And speaking of talent, the ten (or was it nine? There's some double-casting) actors really made the play pop.  

Angie asked us not to reveal the ending, so I won't, but, boy, are there a LOT of plot twists.  Kind of unbelievable how intricate and detailed Christie gets... it reminded me of a story I heard on NPR about her writing and the writing of some nuns that was analyzed to study the progression of Alzheimer's.  

But I'm getting off track... go see Witness for the Prosecution at Playhouse Downtown. You won't regret it. Trust me. 

Oooo... trust is a kind of creepy word after seeing that play.

Behind the scenes of "One Flea Spare" rehearsal

Check out the videos below to hear director Angie Flynn-McIver and cast members of One Flea Spare discuss the character of Bunce, the sailor. 

And in case you were wondering who's who in the videos and in the play itself, here you go:

Dramatis Personae
aka CAST LIST
Bunce.........................Chris Allison
Morse...................Bennie Matesich
Snelgrave.................Robert Lender
Darcy Snelgrave.........Callan White
Kabe................Michael MacCauley

Director: Angie Flynn-McIver
Assistant Director: Kat Martin
Stage Manager: Connie Silver

Keep checking back for more videos from rehearsal and other One Flea Spare related posts!  Or, make it easy on yourself and subscribe.

What does 'Angels' mean to you?

 We're now entering our third week of performances of our production of Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches, and we've heard wonderful responses from audience members afterwards. In fact, on Sunday, as a woman was leaving the building she told me in a whisper, "That was the best performance I've ever seen in my life." We've received great reviews from both the Asheville Citizen-Times and the Mountain Xpress, too. A lot of people, however, have told us, "I need some time with this one," and we understand. It's a doozy.

But if you have seen it -- either our production or elsewhere -- 

 and you're ready to share, we'd like to hear from you:  

What does 'Angels' mean to you? 

 

If you haven't been following the blog, you can go back and read what some of the designers and other production people have said about their experiences with the play. Also, we have what actor Willie Repoley shared with us on the significance of the play not just on a large scale, but personally as well. (A similar post about Angels that Willie wrote after we read Millennium Approaches a couple years ago in the (For)Play Series caught the attention of someone writing an article about the resurgence of Angels productions for its 20th anniversary, and now you can find a quote from Willie in the most recent Newsweek!)

Basically, we'd love to hear from you. Anything you've got... and if you'd rather share in person, we have three community discussions with Western North Carolina AIDS Project coming up regarding the play and AIDS. They are Friday, October 29 after the show; Saturday, October 30 at 2 PM; and Saturday, November 6 after the show. Angie Flynn-McIver will be at this Saturday's discussion if you have any questions for her. And don't forget to tell your friends to come see the show! Send 'em our link to buy tickets online: ncstage.tix.com or they can call our box office at 828.239.0263.

Free Fall - Notes from Angie

Our first Angels blog post this season shared a bit from Angie about why NC Stage chose to produce the play in the first place. Today, the first night of our public performances (and Pay-What-You-Can Night), we have another snippet from Angie -- this time about how this amazingly talented ensemble has really come together in this project to put forth some stunning work. We had a smaller audience for our dress rehearsal last night, and our set designer, James Johnson, took some pictures. Keep your eyes peeled and you'll be seeing them in the very near future. For now, feast your eyes on the words of Angie Flynn-McIver, the director of Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches.

Free Fall

"When I start thinking about a play I’m directing, I begin with the cast. That may seem obvious.  For me, though, choosing the people I’ll be working with for upwards of thirty hours a week, spending days and nights, many meals, the requisite company-wide cold, the change of season…the decisions are crucial and can’t be fixed once we move forward. So I agonize and labor over casting, dragging it out for weeks.

 

And then it’s done. And we’re in rehearsal. And all the auditions and moving around of headshots and list-making start to pay off.  At the time of this writing, we are a little more than a week from our first performance. Rehearsals are going well, and we moved onto the set last weekend. But this play is huge, and even though we’ve had an extra week of rehearsal, I feel like I could use another week, or two; I’m afraid I’ll miss something. But aaahhh! The actors! They are smart, and they understand their craft.  I can throw myself off the trapeze, calling, “Heeeeey!  We have to fix this blocking but I’m out of ideas!” and one actor or another, or all eight of them, will swing by and grab me by the wrists, keeping us all aloft, or we all fall into the net and laugh and pick ourselves up again and tackle the dilemma of the moment together. 

 

Theatre is a collaborative art. We are all in this thing together.  The cast of Angels in America is a great example of this, in part because the cast is a mix of actors I’ve worked with before and some new faces. I love the rapport I have with an actor like Willie Repoley (playing Prior) because he and I have worked together half a dozen times—we know each other’s shorthand and trust each other implicitly. It’s also great to get to work with people I haven’t directed before, like Dusty McKeelan (playing Louis) because the newness keeps me on my game and pushes me to be better. The chemistry of the cast provides its own momentum, in many ways, and informs the process as well as the production."

Sneak Hear: Radio Ad for Angels

We just got our newly recorded radio ad in the other day - give it a listen!

Holy sh*t!

What productions have you seen that made you think just that?

We're shooting for that kind of reaction with Angels, so I would suggest that you order those tickets you've been thinking about...

Angels... Approaches

Greetings all! It's been quite a while since our last post, but as our Mainstage season is fast approaching, we wanted to give you a peek at what's been going on in preparation for our first production, Tony Kushner's Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes - Part One: Millennium Approaches. We'll be posting every Monday from now until when the show opens with all kinds of interesting stuff from designers, cast members, and (potentially) folks from the community, too!

To start off, Angie has shared a little about the play and why we chose to produce it...

"This play, first produced in 1990, was a catalytic theatrical event of the last twenty years and is generally regarded one of the finest and most influential plays of the 20th century. Though most of its plot points revolve around AIDS and gay life, the themes are much wider: loss, identity, home, truth. Tony Kushner masterfully explores timeless human concerns through the lens of the AIDS epidemic, specifically as it affects Prior Walter and Roy Cohn, two of the main characters.

We have been attracted to this play for years. I saw it on Broadway in the mid-90s, and the characters' stories and the piece's inherent theatricality stuck with me. Its intimate scenes are well-suited to our space and our aesthetic, and its theatricality is an exciting challenge. Kushner, like Shakespeare, often works with pairs--opposites, complementary pairings, and things that look like opposites but really aren't...we are using this structural inclination to inform our design choices and the approach to this sprawling, gorgeous play.

We are thrilled to be working on this piece. The designers, cast and I have been working for weeks already to distill our approach to this play, and to define our theatrical language. Already, many people have asked, 'How are you going to do the Angel?' All I can say is wait and see. It's gonna be awesome."

---

And now you can meet some of the people involved! Pictures are from a reading of the play we had a couple weeks ago with most of the cast (including one castmember in Los Angeles via video iChat!), designers, and NCSC staff.

Angie - Director, Rob Bowen - Lighting Designer, Charlie, Michael MacCauley - Roy Cohn, Vivian Smith - the Angel, Willie Repoley - Prior Walter, Rebecca Morris - Harper Pitt

Andrew Livingston - Joe Pitt, Jessica Kammerud - Props Designer

Michael MacCauley - Roy Cohn, Willie Repoley - Prior Walter

Rebecca Morris - Harper Pitt

To meet the rest of the cast not pictured, you can check out the Angels page on our website.

If checking out these pictures has piqued your interest in what it would be like to sit in on a reading, you're in luck 'cause next Monday, September 13 at 6 PM we kick off the first reading of our (For)Play series at the Carol Belk Theater on the UNCA campus by reading Angels in America: Millennium Approaches.

So you've never been to a (For)Play reading? Here's the deal: The (For)Play Series is a series of free readings of our Mainstage plays before rehearsals begin. If you enjoy watching the artistic process unfold, we encourage you to come to this initial reading and then buy a ticket to see the fully realized production. For an even more in-depth look, buy a copy of the script at Malaprop's Bookstore, which is stocking all of NC Stage's plays this season.

More to come... just wait 'til next week!

Oh crap! There are PEOPLE out there!!!

True West is opening up this week and we're really excited to get this one up and running. Scott Treadway and I are having a great time working on stage together. He's a very generous actor and a real joy to hang out with. Also in the cast are Kay Galvin, who you might have seen on any of the various stages around Asheville, and Lance Ball, an actor who has worked with our good friends at Immediate Theatre Project in their production of Copenhagen last year.

Had an invited dress rehearsal on Tuesday night with about 40 people in the audience. It went really well but it's always interesting the first time you perform a play you've been working on in front of people besides the artistic team of the theatre. Sometimes you discover things that are funny that you didn't realize were funny. You hear a laugh and think, "the hell???". Then, when you have a chance to think about it, you realize that it is funny. On the other hand, you do something during performance that consistently made the director and the sound designer laugh and then you do it in front of an audience and...nothin'. So you cut it. Oh well.

The most important aspect of the first audience is to see if the way you've crafted the show makes sense as a whole and that it's impacting an audience the way you intended, those little individual aforementioned moments aside. It allows us to gauge what the audience is noticing and responding to. It let's us punch up those elements that need punching up and get rid of the things that aren't working. So each afternoon this week we'll be gauging the response to the show from several audiences, taking notes and then rehearsing the bits that help us make the show as a whole more meaningful. By Saturday night this process should be finished and then it's official opening night and no more rehearsal during the day except for line brush ups with Scott and the other actors prior to the show.

In other news, I asked Amanda to take a little video tour of the set with Angie, who directed the production. The set was designed by Rob Bowen, whose head of the Department of Dramatic Art at UNCA and construction was headed up by Sylvia Pierce of Scenery Concepts. Enjoy!

Angie takes me on a tour of the Beauty Queen set

Had a great opening weekend with lots of people attending Beauty Queen and some great performances turned in by some really talented and skilled actors. Check out the Asheville Citizen-Times review! Good review. The headline is "Delicious staging shows off 'Beauty Queen of Leenane'" and it speaks about the set and technical elements as well as the performances. So, since Actors' Equity Association won't let me show you the performers doing what they do in the show, I thought I'd show you the set! I made Angie take a break from the office and tour me around the set and show me some of the cool things about it. So I hope you'll check it out!

I'm Back!

Hey! Been a bit of a break, but we're getting ready to open up the brand new season. First, I want to share a shameless self promotional video of an interview with a person buying a subscription to our 2009-2010 season. I happened to be in the lobby when this person came in to buy her subscription and I asked if I could whip out the Flip Video Camera (man I love that thing. So handy) and ask her a few questions. She didn't disappoint!

Second, check out this post from Angie Flynn-McIver, director of our first production, Beauty Queen of Leenane. They are two thirds of the way through the rehearsal process. Angie comes home from rehearsals both exhausted and exhilarated and from what I know about the play and the people in the cast, I can totally see why. Check out the cast bios. You'll see some people you will recognize from some of best productions as well as a face you might remember from 1980s TV (She's in the middle of the back row between Bruno and Shorofsky). Perhaps those of you NOT watching the Cosby Show.

Director speaks about rehearsing "Beauty Queen"

I asked Angie Flynn-McIver, director of our first production of the 2009-2010 season, co-founder of NC Stage and my wife of 9 years as of October 14th, to write something about her experience while directing "Beauty Queen". Hope you enjoy and come see it!

Just a collection of thoughts about The Beauty Queen of Leenane as we head into the final week of rehearsal:

Twelve days into rehearsal. We’ve got Monday and Tuesday of the coming week to continue to work scenes and polish moments, then we start running the show, then tech, then first preview the 21st. This thing always happens when I’m directing—by the second day of rehearsal, I’m bone-tired. I don’t know if it’s because of the extra hours at work or the intense focus it takes, but I can’t get enough sleep. The actors say they are having crazy dreams—we’re all being taken on quite a ride by this play.

Here’s some stuff I’ve spent time thinking about the past two weeks:
• Who is lying?
• Who isn’t lying?
• How would the world of the play be different if this lie were true?
• How much sex has the main character had?
• What is the ideal ratio of perceived threat to unquestioned actor safety that can be achieved in front of an audience (in other words, how real can it be before it’s too real?)
• What outfit says “I’ve given up” versus “I may give up soon”?
• How do you pronounce “Leenane”?

Mag and Maureen Folan are mother and daughter. They live together in a small cottage in a small town in Ireland, and they spend almost all of their time together. However, instead of, say, taking up cooking or cross-stitch or volunteering at the church food pantry, their mutual hobby is tormenting each other. Mag nags at Maureen constantly, insisting that she be waited on hand and foot though she’s capable of doing many, if not most, things for herself. Maureen takes petty revenge by only buying cookies her mother hates at the store and leaving lumps in her nutrition drink. Thank god for the funny moments in this play—there are a lot, and they can’t come too often for me!

This play is challenging. It’s different from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead—that was a very heady play, plus a hell of a lot of blocking and problem-solving. “Beauty Queen” is tough because it's all heart, no head--the main characters are stuck in a terrible relationship, and they are not people you want to spend a lot of time with in real life. And in fact, though their behavior is extreme, I can still see myself in it. I am a mother and I have one; I am a daughter and I have one. I am not the caretaker for any elderly relatives, and I certainly don’t plan to emulate any aspect of the relationship depicted in this play. I do think, though, that anyone can find themselves behaving badly towards those closest to them, indulging in petty comments, striking at the most vulnerable places because we can. There’s a reason this play was an award-winner and has had many, many productions in many countries—the rhythms of domestic annoyance are familiar to us, as familiar as the faces of our loved ones. The way they play out in this story is extreme, even epic, but their structure is repeated in homes of every size and location.

I didn’t go into theatre with the goal of learning about myself, or questioning my own behavior, or analyzing my relationship with my kids or my parents or my husband. But the incredible gift of this kind of work is that it happens anyway. The cast and I are sitting around talking about the play, figuring it out line-by-line, and parallels spring up in my mind, and in the minds of the actors. Everyone has an illustrative story to share, a metaphor, an “oh, yeah, that happened to me”. And when we make these links, we learn. Maybe we identify an aspect of our own interactions that isn’t all it could be, or we think more about kindness, or, frankly, we just become better theatre artists because we’ve expanded our experience.