Theatre

Act I, Scene I

(FOSTER is seated. Lucian is pacing, angrily lecturing him.)

LUCIAN: Damnit, Foster! Damnit, what were you thinking? You embarrassed yourself... You embarrassed Gridley... But most of all, you embarrassed the firm. It's unacceptable!

Most people think a firm has no soul, that it’s just a legal fiction. That may seem true at first, when a firm is newborn, but even then there’s a soul present – it’s just unformed. After a few years, you can sense it; it’s a flavor, a taste on the tongue. It does get stronger with age, and it does change people.

During her career at the Grand-Guignol, Maxa, "the most assassinated woman in the world," was subjected to a range of tortures unique in theatrical history: she was shot with a rifle and with a revolver, scalped, strangled, disemboweled, raped, guillotined, hanged, quartered, burned, cut apart with surgical tools and lancets, cut into eighty-three pieces by an invisible Spanish dagger, stung by a scorpion, poisoned with arsenic, devoured by a puma, strangled by a pearl necklace, and whipped; she was also put to sleep by a bouquet of roses, kissed by a leper, and subjected to a very unusual met

New Perspective Festival PosterYou can start with the best written material, accumulate the finest cast, rehearse your heart out, and achieve a show and performances worthy of off-off-Broadway, but without an audience, what's the point?

Everyone loves dressing up, and actors are no exception. On the day when costumes are first tried and fitted, you can hear the giddy giggling from even the most jaded performers. Part of it has to do with the additional flesh on the bones of the characters provided by proper dress, but truthfully, it's just fun to try on odd clothes and see how different you look.

One of the biggest challenges facing most theatre groups here in San Diego and in most urban areas is finding space. There are far more aspiring theatre companies in this city than there are venues in which to perform, let alone make a permanent home.

In theatre, sound is a way to enhance the suspension of reality. You as the audience want to believe you're in an English manor house at night, or in a train station, or on a cruise ship. Sound helps you do it.

There was a time when all theatres had extensive collections of devices for the production of sound effects such as boxes of glass, creaking hinges, and such. Today, though, the sounds, from the music that plays while you read your program awaiting the start of the show to the effects that imply phantom locations, are recorded. Every theatre company has one or more

Stephanie Timm, author of the New Perspective Play Festival productions Li'l Heroes, Every Girl's Dream, and Rocky Road is a prolific playwright with numerous one-act and full-length play credits including:

• Crumbs Are Also Bread, performed by Washington Ensemble Theater in February 2007
• Break My Body
• W(h)acked: An Immorality Play, performed at the Willamette University Theatre, February 2007

These blog entries describe the festival from an actor's perspective -- my own observations on the process. This page used to say that they were not sponsored in any way by the Festival organizers, but I see that the official Festival site now has a link to this page, so I guess I'm now pseudo-blessed.

You've been through auditions, you've survived callbacks, and you've gotten the role; these are stressful but fun activities. They have all, though, just been preparation for the first reading; this is magic. The first time you read through a scene with the other actors who will be playing the roles in performance, you finally get to live the show. It's not exactly what it will be, but its form is discernable and its substance tangible. It may still be a golem formed of mud, but it lives.

Bob Korbett, director of the New Perspective Play Festival production Bottled In by Babytori Rice, is manager and artistic director of Korbett Kompany Productions, home to Poor Players, a company specializing in Shakespeare.

Sara Angell-Isom, director of the New Perspective Play Festival production That Day by Craig Abernethy is a playwright herself, author of E.D.G.E., performed at the 2004 U. C. Santa Cruz Chautauqua Festival.

Craig Abernethy, author of the New Perspective Play Festival productions That Day directed by Sara Angell-Isom and Choices, Choices, has created a body of written work described at his web site, http://www.craigabernethy.com/, including

• State of the Art
• A View Unassisted
• Absolutes
• The Sort of Happy Ending to The Sad Tale of Mr. Ali Ali, Or:

Jessica Seaman, director of the New Perspective Play Festival productions Falling from the Stars, written by Terence Burke, is a San Diego-based actor and director. Her directing credits in San Diego include:

• A Christmas Carol with the La Jolla Stage Company

Jeanne Becijos, author of the New Perspective Play Festival production Ex Texting has written a number of shows performed in San Diego including:

• Heartquake, performed by Stormy Weather Players
• The Storm, performed at the Actors Alliance of San Diego Festival 2006

The scheduling of rehearsals is a seemingly simple task that is actually quite complex. Any number of factors make it difficult including the individual actors' outside schedules, the kind of show it is, scene rehearsals involving only part of the cast, and (in this case) multiple simulaneous shows.

Robert Salerno, director of the New Perspective Play Festival production Li'l Heroes is Artist in Residence at New Works/Vantage Theatre. He is an accomplished director and playwright who wrote and directed Cadenza: Mozart's Last Year and wrote Orpheus Rox, directed by Dori Salois with Vantage Theatre. His directing credits including:

Dori Salois, director of the New Perspective Play Festival productions The Thing and The King's English is Artistic Director of New Works/Vantage Theatre.

Carla Nell, director of the New Perspective Play Festival production Supression is Artistic Director of Inner Mission Productions:

Terence Burke, author of the New Perspective Play Festival productions Falling from the Stars, directed by Jessica Seaman and Taxco Mixto is also an actor who has appeared in the recent Golem: Man of Earth at the 6th @ Penn theatre, The Wedding at the Eiffel Tower with New Works/Vantage Theatre, Joseph Grienenberger's Get A Clue with

I talked about callbacks earlier, but I'll revisit the subject now that I've just returned from a second callback session with a different director. The previous callback I discussed mirrored the process of the original auditions for the New Perspective Festival in that each group read only for the evaluators; the other actors did not see the earlier performances. Today's callback session was held at Hoover High School in the auditorium, and the assembled actors had the opportunity to see each other perform. This makes for a very different audition environment.

The single most common question I get from friends who don't do theatre is, "How do you learn all those lines?" Though glib, the real, honest answer is "One at a time, over and over." While auditioning can be scary, rehearsal exacting, and performance exhilerating, learning lines is the slogging through the muck that the army does before the battle is joined. It's all about getting there.

New Perspective was a brand-new Festival for San Diego Theatre Artists meant to showcase not only local actors but directors and playwrights as well. It was held Friday through Sunday, June 20-22, 2008, and Friday through Sunday, June 27-29, 2008.

After auditions come either offers or callbacks. Accepting an offer is easy -- you wouldn't have auditioned if you hadn't wanted a part. Occasionally you are offered a part you hadn't anticipated, but as Ned Beatty said, "There are no small parts, only short actors." Or something like that. When I auditioned for "The Crucible," I had aspirations to play the Reverand Hale, a major tortured character. During auditions, though, they liked my "Cheever," a small comic relief part, and that's what I was offered.

So, let's talk about auditions. You can, and actors do, spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on training and workshops to learn how to get the edge in auditions. It's no different, though, than any other job interview. The only real difference between an acting audition and other "evaluations" is that the evaluator is accepting or rejecting not something you've done but you as a person, or so it seems. Never mind that they needed someone in their mid-30s over 6 feet tall.

I walked into Starbucks on Mercy Road last summer, and the young barista there said, "Weren't you the guy in 'The Crucible' at OnStage in Chula Vista?" We little theatre types just live for those moments.

The information linked here derives mostly from Google searches of the Internet; additions or corrections are welcomed either via comment or email.

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PROGRAM ONE: Friday, June 20 and Saturday, June 28 - 8 pm

Play	Author	Director
Ex Texting	Jeanne Becijos	Michael Clark
Random image Countdown 179 days since Transition Day.