A Peek Behind the Curtain - Part 1

"Into The Woods"

by Stephen Sondheim

Produced by Circle Ensemble Theatre and Co-sponsored by the Morton Theatre Corporation

July 12th and 13th at 7:30 pm and July 13th at 2 pm

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Part 1

            When the founders of Circle Ensemble Theatre here in Athens asked me to write this blog series, I was surprised.  I’ve never blogged.  I can barely operate a computer.  And I have little to no theatrical experience.  It’s like asking a polar bear to conduct your orchestra.  It’s different and he might have a novel take on what to do with the brass section, but I doubt Brahms would approve and he’s most likely going to wind up eating the viola player. 

            OK, better analogy—it’s like asking a confused but curious cricket to journey inside your grandfather clock and then wriggle free and tell you how it works.  He’ll observe the inner workings of the hundreds of cogs and wheels and pendulums, all of different sizes and with different functions, but all of which have to operate as one, seamlessly, in order for the entire mechanism to work and do what clock-watchers expect from a clock, the correct time. 

A play is a clock.  A high school play is a digital watch.  A play from a theatre company as well-run and experienced as Circle Ensemble Theatre Company is an elaborate grandfather clock in your crazy aunt’s dusty hallway, one that you can’t help but stare at and wonder what’s behind the face, the façade.  A complex musical, like Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical, “Into the Woods” produced by this theatre company and put together in as miraculously short a time as this group is doing it (six weeks), to be performed in Athens’ historic Morton Theatre, is Big Ben.   And I’d like to take you with me as I sit back in awe, experiencing all the things Circle will go through as they mount “Into the Woods” in 2013, the 25th Anniversary of the musical’s debut.

            I should go ahead and say, up front, that I’m not an actor or a director or a stage manager or a gaffer.  I don’t even know what a gaffer is, or if there are theatre gaffers, or if, in the theatre it’s pronounced gaffeaus, in the French style.  I did play the challenging role of The Little Pumpkin in a fourth grade production, to rave reviews, mainly from my mother, but I’m a novice.  I am, however, a fan of the theatre, and already a huge fan specifically of this particular theatre group, but a fan who had never known how much goes into making a play.

            I’ve only been a fly on their wall for a week so far, beginning with their audition nights. They amaze me. So does The Process.  So far, they’ve let me watch two steps in the mounting of any play, the planning and the casting. 

            The founding members of Circle are three talented and experienced actors/ directors/comedians/producers/writers who probably also have eight or so other apt job titles that I don’t understand.  Joelle Ré Arp-Dunham, Kathleen Hogan, and Lisa Mende (the founders) have all appeared on many stages as well as on television and in major motion pictures.  They know their stuff.  They can teach it, too.  And they know how to surround themselves with other talented people, classically-trained singers, publicists, seasoned musicians, the lovers, the dreamers and me.  I like Kermit the Frog, who will probably not be appearing in “Into the Woods,” but he might be the only one.  It’s a big show.  There are a lot of roles to fill.  And, after watching the auditions and the wide array of talent in our area, I don’t think Circle needs any Muppets anyway. 

PLANNING—I expected a lengthy dramatic production where men drew swords and slapped each other with gloves, where women swooned and fanned themselves with ornate Oriental fans and where everyone cried at some point and revealed some terrible secret about their mothers.  These people are actors, after all.  But, not only are they talented actors, they’re really efficient organizers, I mean Pentagon-efficient, Lucky Charms-marketing-efficient, the guy who sold the plastic tubes at the end of all shoelaces salesman-efficient.  They’re seriously efficient.  You get the picture. 

            The initial planning sessions are just big roundtable discussions where they come at the issue from multiple angles: what show they want to do, what their audience wants to see, what spaces are available, what props, what musical talent, what costume designers are available, where they can audition and rehearse, and about three hundred other things.  If this were any other group of people, business people or orchestral bear ensemble producers, just the process of making these decisions would take weeks, but these folks know how to cover a lot of ground in a little time.  And my first surprise was how, after about an hour of debate and discussion, once they’d made their decision, they just quickly assigned tasks to company members and sprinted off in twenty different directions to put it all in motion.

THE MORTON—I know that this theatre needs no description.  It’s the Morton for heaven’s sake.  But it’s just such a unique space, such an historically important landmark and such a good fit for this theatre company that I wanted to say something about it that might get me free tickets.  I’ve seen musicals there.  I’ve seen plays there.  I’ve even seen a circus there.  And it all worked.  They’re filming an historical retrospective about the theatre itself right now and raising funds.  A place usually has to have a long and interesting history before someone wants to document it.  This one does…but you knew that.  “Into the Woods” will be performed there July 12th and 13th at 7:30 pm and on July 13th at 2 pm, just like “The Diary of Anne Frank” was done there by Circle in the not too distant past.  Circle fits that space like a glass slipper fits Cinderella. More on her later.

AUDITIONS---I got to be a fly (let’s say a cricket) on the wall for a good portion of the audition process.  You have this idea in mind of what auditions are like, and some of it is right, but it’s not “A Chorus Line” and it’s definitely not “American Idol”, thank God.  First off, the judges don’t rip into any wide-eyed high school kids with big dreams and singing voices that could shatter plexiglass.  The auditionees, including some bona fide Circle Ensemble Theatre Company members such as Kathleen and Lisa, were a very talented bunch.  I heard them sing show tunes.  I saw them act snippets of dramatic and comedic pieces.  A few of the younger ones sang some popular songs, but they’re young and, in their defense, had good voices and vocal ranges. 

            There was a panel of judges (the founders, Joelle, Lisa, and Kathleen), but they’re less sadistic than Simon Cowell and not high-school-cheer-captain perky and clearly high like Paula Abdul (I haven’t seen the show in years, but only because it’s awful.)  Joelle, as this show’s Director, has a vision of what kind of people they wanted to cast, but to properly run an audition they needed to keep an open mind and be able to envision different actors/singers in different roles and see how they might play off other possibly cast actors in a few select scenes and musical numbers.  The musical director, Teresa Cipriana Ruiz, was present too, to evaluate the talent.  She had the actors sing not only from selected musical numbers from the show, but also according to what seemed to me to be a weird but effective grouping of scales of her own design.  It was a rising and falling series of “Me-Ah” where they sing “Me” on the up notes and “Ah” on the downs.  It might have been vaguely erotic if Ms. Ruiz didn’t conduct it so professionally. 

            Also, and this was what struck me the most, the audition room is a kinder place than I’d imagined.  The Circle folks know what they want, but they’re all decent human beings and have all been, and continue to be on, the other side of this process many times.  Not landing a role and getting a chance to fulfill your dream is going to be a shattering experience.  It just is.  And since there were almost a hundred people auditioning for this show, a lot of people aren’t going to be cast.  That’s just the way it is.  But the founders were loose, funny, sympathetic and kind.  This cricket on the wall was impressed and is insatiably curious about who they’re going to pick to fill these roles. 

            We’ll find out next week…