Cynthia Caul Everybody!

Sorry. Believe it or not I have a lot of content to share with you regarding Kit Marlowe. Unfortunately I am lacking the time to do timely updates this week. I have a couple of more Get to Know the Cast a Crew pieces on deck right now and I even have the shows post card image to shae with you next week.

Tonight I am sharing the observations of Cynthia Caul. We are lucky enough to have Cynthia helping us this season. She is a bright young college student and we are all hoping she will help the rest of learn something about theater while she learns from what we know. I hope we serve her well. Meantime, Cythia has contributed her first blog entry. Read and enjoy. She gives a real flavor as to what is happening on Columbia Road right now.

Hello. My name is Cynthia. I’m the Assistant Dramaturg/Intern for Rorschach’s production of Kit Marlowe. You are currently witnessing my blogging debut, so don’t judge me too harshly.

There are three-ish more weeks of rehearsal until the opening of Kit Marlowe, and things are going well. All the aspects of the production seem to be coming along. Every time I enter the theatre there’s a new set piece perfectly assembled and in place, as if it just magically appeared over-night. I haven’t completely ruled out the possibility of Rorschach elves.

The cast is great. Working with a cast entirely comprised of men has been…interesting, and…educational? Just kidding. I actually don’t have anything bad to say about it. It’s been a great process thus far. This play definitely requires a level of comfort among the actors, and the cast has definitely achieved that. There’s a good bit of sword fighting, stabbing, nudity, cauterizing of wounds, and rolling around on the ground (to put it oh so eloquently), and it’s handled with the utmost grace and maturity. Well, at least 99% of the time, and that other 1% I just attribute to the actors’ ability to stay in character (many characters in Kit Marlowe are not exactly noted for their maturity or grace) even when they’re not in character. It’s really more of a theatrical feat, than anything that could be misconstrued for a personality flaw. The actor’s ability to capture and maintain the immaturity and grotesque nature of their characters is just uncanny. That sounded like a jab. It’s not. Really, the cast is wonderful and extremely talented.

As for the play itself, it’s kind of, sort of about the life of the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. David Grimm doesn’t really aim for historical accuracy as much as an artistic and/or interpretive melding of Marlowe’s life and his works. It’s set in Elizabethan times with an added flare of modernity. It’s a little edgy, a little racy, and an overall good time. I have high hopes. You should too.

I'm Rachel Miller and You're Not!

Today we continue with our series of guest bloggers. This time it is dramturg Rachel Miller who gives us a play by play of the whats and the whens of this mad project called Myth-Appropriation: The Brothers Grimm. Click here for tickets to either of Saturday's performances at 8pm or 10 pm.

Quick word from me though before I give you Rachel's goodness. Went to the read through of all 6 plays last night and this stuff is good. I mean tasty-tasty good. Each of the playwrights has found a way of bringing their stories into the present and leaving the morals and ideas of the stories intact, while bringing their own voices to the pieces. I will have more to say about this tomorrow plus a couple of teases, but for now here is what Rachel saw and did on Day 2:

September 3, 2007
MYTH- Appropriation Day 2: Writer’s Workshop

As a burgeoning dramaturg and proverbial “friend of the Rorschach” I was kindly invited to serve a dramaturgical role in this, the very first MYTH-Appropriation project. Since the agenda for today was to read and workshop each new play, I obligingly volunteered to recount Day 2 of MYTH- Appropriation for all of you out in the Rorschach Blog-o-sphere!

So today we had the opportunity to hear six new plays that were less than a day old. The challenge to our writers was to adapt a randomly selected tale by the Grimm Brothers into an 8 to 15 minute play– in less than 24 hours. What ensued today was (I guess you could say) “speed dramaturgy.” In the same manner in which the playwrights had less than twenty-four hours to write their plays, today we had less than six hours to read and provide constructive feedback to the playwrights.

As facilitator of the discussion, I felt most fortunate to be able to explore with and learn from such marvelous playwrights as Norman Allen, Anne M. McCaw, Randy Baker, Jacqueline E. Lawton, James Hesla and Gwyidion Suilebhan, each one whose piece touched upon or invoked a vibrant familiarity with some form or subset of Americana. Across the spectrum of these adaptations, we, witnessed contemporary folk-life where it exists in a gay-run bridal shop to a small town in the middle of Nowhere; a hospital room to a vaudevillian stage; a trailer park in Washington State to the war-torn Middle East.

I like to think that the work we explored today and the work that will be developed this week is a continuation of an oral tradition which has gone on—and will continue—for thousands of years. Beyond adaptation, each play is essentially its own fairy tale—using the familiar motifs and character archetypes that we know and recognize—but also making something entirely new from them. Much like the tradition of the “wonder tales” that inspired the Grimm Brothers, each story teller makes his or her version a little different; if not to reflect certain morals and values of a greater community, then even simply for the pure artistry pours out along the way.

Thoughts On ‘Dramaturgy’ from the Dramaturgy Corner...

Rachel Miller who recently worked with Rorschach on Arabian Night returns to Dramaturg the hell out of Rough Magic. I wish I had a better picture of her than the one at your left but times is hard here in the hood. Besides Cesar's expression makes hers seem normal. Any way, Rachel has taken some time to write us a love note of sort on dramaturgy, a term I am sure many of you non-theatre types have often heard but ignored completely. This is timely, because our story features a Dramaturg with wonderful powers, but I will let Rachel explain all of that. Enjoy!

This is Rachel reporting from the Dramaturgy Corner of the Rorschach Theatre’s production of Rough Magic. Yes, I am the dramaturg of the play! Not to be mistaken with Melanie (played by Tracy Lynn Olivera), the dramaturg in the play who has the magical ability to set characters free from dramatic texts. Now I do not profess to harbor any powers like hers– and if I did I would probably feel compelled to cast all dramaturgical aspirations aside and spend my days being fed Chilean grapes by Duke Orsino as Viola skulked in the background playing Mozart Concertos on the harpsichord. (But that’s just me.) Fortunately my commitment to dramaturgical practice remains in tact as I exist (in the literal sense at least) sans magic.

In the context of this production, my job is to perform research and text analysis for the director (Jenny McConnell Frederick) as well as the cast and design team. Part of my job is also to help set the scene for the audience by assembling a stellar lobby display out of construction paper and scotch tape and posting self-indulgent – yet informative– essays/musings on the Rorschach Theatre Blog. Let’s dive in, shall we?

The subject today is Dramaturgy! (Who would have guessed it eh?) After littering the paragraphs above five million times with that word, indeed, I am here to shed some light on the subject. It is, after all, the true profession of our protagonist and quite possibly (as this humble student of the play would argue) the source of her powers.

So, most people who have any familiarity with the word “dramaturg” (and seriously, there are many out there who hear the word and are like– “Isn’t that a dirty word or something?”), but most people recognize it as the person in a theatre production whose job it is to look up all of the references within a text and provide background information to the director and cast. That’s part of it. The role of the dramaturg within any given theatre production can actually vary quite drastically depending upon the type of play being put on and the type of theatre producing it.

According to Celise Kalke’s description of The Dramaturg’s Role in a Production, a Dramaturg’s responsibilities include but are not limited to:

“ 1. A thorough text/story analysis.
2. Research into the prior productions of the text as needed.
3. Historical research of various sorts.
4. Attendance at at least one quarter of the rehearsals, the first read-through, and as many run-throughs as possible.
5. Oral or written notes for the director.
6. Attendance at some pre-production meetings.
7. A loyalty to the basic mission and ideas of the production and the text. Maintaining that loyalty in the midst of technical difficulties.
8. Program contributions.
9. Flexibility.”

Kalke goes on to list several other additional responsibilities that are usually contingent upon the play itself or the venue. For example, if the play were an Ibsen or a Chekov, or based upon a work of prose, a Dramaturg would be highly instrumental in adapting the text for the stage or at least working with the “translator/writer” throughout the adaptation process. Productions of Shakespearean plays depend especially upon a lot of dramaturgical attention throughout the process of cutting the script to best realize the director’s artistic vision while still staying true to the text. Many large theatres will employ a full time Dramaturg to fulfill more institutional functions such as organizing play-readings, selecting the season or providing input for marketing purposes.

Though Dramaturgy has a strong and well established history in England and Europe, it is still considered very much a burgeoning field in the United States. The introduction of one of the quintessential text books on the subject, Dramaturgy in American Theatre , talks about how the need for Dramaturgs began to emerge some thirty plus years ago as the Regional Theatre Movement began to take hold throughout the country. Over the years, Dramaturgs came to be relied on heavily by theatres to provide support and constructive criticism to directors and to help foster artistic development in up-and-coming playwrights. Also, many dramaturgs have come to play key roles in upholding and reinforcing their theatre’s mission, which is important especially for not-for-profit theatres.

You’ll find in Rough Magic that very little of this background detail about the field of dramaturgy really gets explored. And that’s okay. And it isn’t because the fact that Melanie is a dramaturg isn’t relevant. Quite the opposite actually.

Very early on, after reading the script for the first time, I found myself asking the question “why a dramaturg?...Couldn’t an actor, a theatre director, a librarian, a Shakespearean Scholar with a PhD just as easily assume this power?” Perhaps. But the unique thing about the role of the dramaturg is that it is her (or his) job to know the text, to understand it and support it so that the playwright’s vision can literally be brought to life on stage. Seen from this light, magic and reality blur together as we begin to recognize how Melanie’s power to set characters free from dramatic texts is deeply akin to her work in the theatre. The only difference is, with her magic, all of New York is a stage.