To our dear Bard-a-thon readers, volunteers, and sponsors...

A note from the staff and leadership at NC Stage.

I can’t express my appreciation enough to those people who choose to help NC Stage achieve its mission of creating professional theatre and education programming that affects people. At NC Stage we believe, we know, that theatre can be life changing.  Plays show us the unfamiliar and make it relevant, and they show us the familiar and make it new. Theatre can also help us grapple with the big questions—religion, politics, existence.  We do not pretend to offer answers; instead, plays can be a catalyst to discussion and exploration.  And when theatre is used as an educational tool, students are given access to a rich world of imagination, collaboration and creativity that serves them beyond school and helps them synthesize the raw facts and figures taught in core subjects.

Theatre is about telling a story and telling a story is what the world uses to understand the world.  So we’re very thankful to have been a part of the creative landscape in Asheville over the past 10 years.  When you buy a ticket or make a donation -- be it time or money -- to NC Stage, you become a part of this process of growth in our community and create value in the cultural, economic, social and educational life of Asheville and make the world just that much better. 

We thank you for your continued support over the last 10 years and look forward to another 10, 20, 30 years with you!

- Charlie

P.S. - Care to donate? Use this link!

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.

Best of WNC 2011: Step right up!

Guess what?  It's time to vote once again!  No, it's not November yet (though there are City Council elections this year), but it is time for the Mountain Xpress' yearly poll: Best of WNC. 

We've been voted Best Local Theatre for the past five years, and won some of the best live performing arts events over the years as well.  Categories in which you might want to vote for us (or related people) are: Local theatre company, Local actor (male or female), and Live show of 2010: local performing arts event.

As for Best Local Actor (male or female), we have a lot of talented folks grace our stage, so I won't list names here, but if you care to come in and browse some old playbills or ask, "Who was that one actor in That One Intense Show and That Other Neat Play?" we'd be more than happy to help you out.

Eligible for Best Live Show of 2010 (and 2011 so far): Local Performing Arts Event, our 2010-2011 Mainstage Series included the following plays:

• Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner
• Boeing-Boeing by Marc Camoletti
• One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace
• The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (a co-production with Immediate Theatre Project)

With 'Local original production,' they mean productions of "locally written script[s] for a play or other performance," and while our Mainstage Series didn't have any plays that fit that category, our Catalyst Series had a few.

Perhaps you'd like to vote for...

• LYLAS Make Funny Long Time by LYLAS
• Dogfall by Sanguine Theatre Troupe
• Chrysalis by The Redundant Theatre Company Theatre and the Advanced Drama students of Hendersonville High School
• Grimm by Dark Horse Theatre
• Yugen by Anemone Dance Theater and Legacy Butoh. 

Also, Live from WVL Radio Theatre: It's a Wonderful Life by Willie V. R. Repoley and produced by our partner company, Immediate Theatre Project, fits that category, though it wasn't in the Catalyst Series.

We can't do the work we do without the support of our sponsors, so please think of them, too, when you're looking at the ballot. Below you'll find a list of our sponsors for our current 2011-2012 season.

• BMW of Asheville
• ARC (formerly Imaging Technologies)
• Bloomin' Art (florist)
• Colorful Palate Catering
• Computer Mechanix (computer repair)
• Freaks and Geeks Tattoo Sideshow (tattoo parlor)
• Jen Lepkowski Photography 
• Posana (restaurant)
• The Southern Kitchen and Bar 
• Purplecat (web design)
• Planned Parenthood

 As Jiminy Cricket once said, "Let your conscience be your guide."  If you feel our work deserves a 'best of' category, please vote... then tell your friends to vote, too!

So thankful. A visit from the ghost of theatre present.

I hope your holiday weekend was pleasant and stress free and that you were able to celebrate and commemorate the story that means the most to you. Asheville had a white Christmas, which was actually really pleasant and relaxing, considering the busy fall we’ve had at NC Stage!

How busy, you ask?

We started out with the news that we had been voted readers favorite theatre company in the Mountain Xpress readers poll right before we dove into the Bard-a-thon back in September and about 200 participants read 12 Shakespeare plays over a 48 hour period. And yes, it was fun! But it also raised around $9,000 toward our programming and it was a great kick off to an exciting season.

Immediately after that wound down, and I mean immediately, we started rehearsals for Angels in America. Angie directed that so I was hanging with our kids while she tackled that behemoth of a play. Nearly 2,000 people attended Angels. It’s a play we’ve wanted to produce for quite awhile and we feel very fortunate that we got to do it and that we received such a positive response from the audience.

Then, while that was going on, we started rehearsals for three, count ‘em, THREE productions of Live From WVL Radio Theatre: It’s A Wonderful Life. This adaptation of the movie is something we’ve been doing with our partners Immediate Theatre Project (or the ITPeeps as we like to call them) since 2006.

Production #1 was a partnership with Flat Rock Playhouse, with performances at the Historic Henderson County Courthouse. On December 4th that cast moved to Charlotte where we partnered with the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center for a 2 week run in the Booth Theatre, while a replacement cast rehearsed and opened at the Courthouse in Hendersonville (Production #2) . I directed those productions so I had 2 trips to Charlotte in as many days! Meanwhile, our tour version – Production #3, produced by Immediate Theatre Project, was rehearsing and then went out on a multi-state tour that wound up on December 23rd in Newton-Conover, NC after visiting Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. All told, more than 5,000 people attended these three productions and experienced the message that “one person’s life touches so many others”.

Then MEANWHILE, Angie was directing scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Asheville Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer at the Thomas Wolf Auditorium in mid November. It was a fantastic blending of actors, instruments, and voices.

We’re pooped. But it’s a good kind of pooped, and we are really enjoying the quiet of the snow before the storm of the second half of our season. More on that in the third email you will be visited by soon.

So as I reflect on the first part of the season with its great partnerships and collaborations and think to the next part, I’m reminded of something I read earlier today. (ok, I was perusing Twitter and came across this tweet); “Do NOT use this week to plan for 2011. Devote this week to thanking folks for support in the past year.”

If I don’t say it enough, let me say it now. Thank you. To all of the people who value theatre and NC Stage, to the hard working professionals that it’s my privilege to work with every day, to the board of directors, to everyone of you who’ve attended a play or convinced one of your friends to come see a play, and to every one of you who’ve contributed time, resources and money to NC Stage. Your support counts more than we can ever express and we are indeed lucky to be in such a beautiful, supportive place with people like you.


JustGive.org

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!

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.