Location, Location

Timur Kocak
ASC Set Designer and Technical Director

The world of a play only begins to take form in the words.  In order for an audience to be drawn in, to suspend disbelief and accept that what is on stage is worth being part of, the creative team must construct a context for the dialogue, a place where characters can come to life.  While the actors and the director will give life to the action, the action must be situated in a physical and atmospheric location that makes sense for that play and the director's vision of it, and it is the set designer who must create the first part of that locale.

For the ASC, the set design relies on Timur Kocak's sense of magic, which, he says, come from a kind of creative flying by the seat of his pants.  "The sets I'm happiest with depend as much on improvisation as any guiding principle," he says.  "I try to create sets that are flexible and, when necessary, invisible."  He aims to have the scenery show off the costumes and keep the audience's attention on the action as it unfolds rather than on his set. 

Many a designer will spend much time discussing with a director what the concept of the play will be, but Colette Rice, the Play Master at ASC, prefers to play to the text rather than to a concept, and the process is a bit different in her collaborations with Kocak, with whom she has been collaborating since 2000. 

Kocak''s last sketch of design and floor painting for Merchant of Venice (2008)

"For example, in the case of MACBETH (2012)," Kocak says; "Colette knew she wanted a stage in traverse, i.e., with the audience on opposing sides; she wanted a bowl of blood and a bowl of water at either end.  It was up to me to come up with set pieces that could create the desired settings: interior, exterior, castle or heath."  If we were outside, the minimal set had to clarify that, and when we were indoors, the set had to bring the audience into the castle.  According to Kocak, to create that effect, he required that floor be painted in colors and patterns that could let the audience imagine a muddy road or the great hall of a medieval castle, and then he worked with Lighting Designer Paul Hudson to get the most out of the effect.  

"All the paint colors and finishes that I use of course depend on lighting for their effect."  In true theatrical tradition, despite coordinated efforts begun well before the rehearsal process began, last-minute adjustments were necessary on Kocak's part.  When lights were fixed, it was clear that he would have to darken the floor and plinths a few degrees. . . "which I achieved with the application of a glaze."

Finding the appropriate set pieces was a challenge for Macbeth because of the director's specificity, but, with perseverance, the set designer triumphed. "It took much searching up and down the Bowery to find large bowls for the blood and water, glass in appearance, but sturdy and resilient.  For the plinths on which the huge bowls rested, I tried to create a faux finish to match photos of the Stone of Scone, which rests below the coronation thrown in Westminster Abbey but comes from the historical seat of Scottish kings, as mentioned in the play's last scene."

Michael Basile as Macbeth, with the Blood Bowl

One of the things Timur Kocak appreciates about working in the West Side Theater is that his sets cannot achieve their desired effect without the engagement of his audience's imagination and their complete submission to the conceit he presents.  He explains, "Settings must be suggested rather than presented in a small space like ours." And, given the vicissitudes of the pursuit of artistic excellence in the economic climate of today, budgets are necessarily small, so the set designer is forced to be more creative.  "I believe," he asserts,"that it is very important not to violate the world of a play.  That is to say that nothing must look, sound or even smell out of place.  If an actor steps onto a platform that is shaped as and painted to look like a tree stump, for instance, it must not sound hollow like a wooden box.  Nor should the smell of cleaner or fresh latex paint intrude on the notion that we are watching say, the French nobility carouse in their camp, the night before the battle of Agincourt."  

"In telling stories," he says, "details are important."   The minutia can make or break an audience's allegiance to the imagery of the scene.  "Small things like zippers and other often misplaced technology, the wrong car (I am from Detroit after all) and even casual contemporary phrases like "you guys" or "...I'm just sayin'... " in a period script can bounce me right out of an otherwise compelling story.  I especially appreciate the show Mad Men for its attention to detail.  I find myself searching every corner of the screen for something from my grandparents' house or wardrobe."  

Mad Men notwithstanding, Kocak believes that large set and costume budgets do not necessarily protect a production from huge mistakes.  The annals of theater and film are rife with those, and Timur Kocak is keeping track.

"My wife has forbidden me from starting my own 'Stage and Screen Historic Anomaly Blog' lest I ruffle the wrong feathers - or just appear silly." 

No theater (or film) director would think him silly. . . continuity matters!

COME ONE COME ALL

It's Saturday, March 31, and you've got just two more chances to see MACBETH at the ASC.

                                       Today (3/31)               3:00 PM
                                        Tomorrow(4/1)          3:00 PM
                                            At the West Side Theatre

Tickets and information at http://www.ascnj.org/box-office/ or by calling 201-200-2390

Dressing the Show

ASC actors Colin Ryan, Patrick Harvey and Elizabeth Belzoni in Costumes by Eva Lachur-Omeljaniuk
Photo by Cindy Boyle, Boyle Images

In her review of ASC's Macbeth, Ruth Ross cited the costume design by Eva Lachur-Omeljaniuk, complimenting the designer's choice of "appropriately medieval" garments worn by the authentically 11th C characters and citing how the "addition of a tabard, a cloak, a hat or a robe" creates the illusion of an actor changing roles entirely.  Ms. Ross has astutely brought attention to one of the more salient backstage roles in any theater production, that of the Costume Designer/Mistress.

Eva Lachur-Omeljaniuk Adjusts a Costume for A Midsummer Night's Dream
Photo by Cindy Boyle, Boyle Images

 Often a director will choose to set a Shakespeare play in another time or place than that which was designated by the playwright, and it is important for the costumes to reflect the director's vision of the play as well as the underpinnings of the characters .  Having conferred with the director, it is the costume designer's responsibility to know each of the roles in the play well and to research setting, then to find a way, within the strictures of the budget allotted for costumes, to create a costume plot, a series of costumes that are "in character" for this particular production.  The costumes must fit the both the text itself and the direction of the play as well; that is, the costumes must enable the actors to play their scenes authentically while they are maneuverable within the confines of the director's blocking so that they never get in the way or draw attention away from the action of the play.

Costumes do more than simply create resonance of time and place.  They serve to enhance characters' personalities, pointing out taste, mood, social class, maturity, mores, etc., in such things as color, fit, and style of the garment.  An effective costume designer must be creative, knowledgeable, skillful and collaborative.

Working in concert with one another, the costumer,  the lighting designer, hair dresser, the set designer create the world of the play, enabling the audience to suspend disbelief in order to be swept away from their "real life" world and into the life on the stage.

Your Last Chance to See Macbeth at the ASC

Friday evening, at 7:30, closing weekend begins for our production of Macbeth at the West Side Theatre.

 Tickets are onsale at the box office for Friday (7:30), Saturday (3:00) and Sunday (3:00) shows.  Don't miss this exciting show!

Photos by Cindy Boyle

The Work Behind the Scenes - Thank a Stage Manager

Jennifer America 

Jennifer America, ASC Stage Manager, deserves a huge round of applause.  She is the stage manager, responsible for a flawlessly smooth production, where props are where they are supposed to be, actors make entrances on cue, lights illuminate at exactly the moment they are needed, stage is a safe place for actors to work, scenery stands still when it needs to and moves when appropriate to do so, etc., ad infinitum.  A multitude of tasks comprise the Stage Manager's job, and she must be a master of many trades to do it well.  There is no more critical person in any play than the Stage Manager.

Ask any high school theater director, and h/she will tell you that the single most consistently and successfully employed graduate of the program is the kid who learned how to be a responsible, dedicated Stage Manager.  The youngster who graduates from high school and enters a tech ed Bachelor's program and dedicates him/herself to the arduous work will never ever want for a job.  

 The stage manager's work often begins in the preproduction planning and audition process, where s/he is important to the director in all kinds of ways. The SM is likely to be the one who organizes all the auditions, contacts all the actors to return for callbacks, and creates and keeps track of every schedule for every member of the company.

In rehearsals,  the director and stage manager work side by side.  The stage manager records the director's blocking and notes for the actors, which s/he will later compile into the production book, the director's book and the SM's book.  The SM keeps track of logistical and scheduling details and communicates what goes on in rehearsals to the rest of the team. This enables the director to concentrate his or her full attention on staging the show and directing the actors.

Stage managers' key responsibilities include:

• scheduling and running rehearsals
• communicating the director's wishes to designers and crafts people
• coordinating the work of the stage crew
• calling cues and possibly actors' entrances during performance
• overseeing the entire show each time it is performed
• marking out the dimensions of the set on the floor of the rehearsal hall
• making sure rehearsal props and furnishings are available for the actors
• attending all rehearsals
• notifying the designers and crafts people of changes made in rehearsal
• keeping track of hours worked, abiding by union rules if applicable, keeping pay records

In rehearsals the stage manager also records all blocking, plus all the light, sound and set change cues, in a master copy of the script called the prompt book. The information in the prompt book also allows the stage manager to run the technical rehearsals, calling each technical cue in turn to determine precisely how it needs to be timed to coordinate with the onstage action.

The stage manager and the technical director also work out a smooth and efficient plan for the stage crew to follow during set changes. Furniture and prop plans for complicated sets are drawn up by the stage manager and technical designer to show exactly where the furniture and props are to be positioned on stage at the beginning of each scene and  sometimes in the wings.  The stage manager directs the crews' movements and tasks in much the same way a director directs the play and the actors.

Once the show opens, the director's work is essentially complete, and the stage manager takes over, making sure that every aspect of the production runs just as the director intended time after time, until the production closes.

Most schools with extensive drama departments offer training specifically toward becoming a Stage Manager.  Equity has a membership category for stage managers.

 Jennifer America, ASC's resident Stage and Production Manager, is a graduate of the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she also studied directing and design.  She often serves as Play Master at the ASC and directs plays in neighboring theaters as well.  She is a member of the Actors Equity Association.

Photos of Jennifer America, by Cindy Boyle, Boyleimages.com

A Most Excellent Beginning!!!!!

Apparently the ASC has evaded The Curse of The Scottish Play . . . but one can never be too careful.  Below is another suggestion for warding off its effects, courtesy of Blackadder.

Meanwhile, CONGRATULATIONS to the entire ASC Macbeth Company on a successful, well-trafficked first weekend!   Good marketing (Thanks, Peter!)  plus strong production (Kudos, Colette, Cast and Crew!) equals a triumphant entrance!


Wishing you all Merdre! for next week. . . .

May all your legs be broken.

Angels and ministers. . . . .

You know where this is going.

Elizabethan Theatre

A small treat by way of YouTube -- a play goes up at the Globe.  As you dress to go to see the ASC production of Macbeth at the West Side Theater, from now through the first of April, you can imagine you will see it at Shakespeare's Globe.

Lady Macbeth -- a man playing a woman becoming a man?

Sometime around the Sixth Century B.C., when theater was ritualized, women were banned from the stage and were almost universally prohibited from performing in Western Europe until 1660.  So Lady Macbeth, like all the great Shakespearean roles, was written for a man.

In one of her most dramatic moments, Lady Macbeth pleads, "Come, you spirits/That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty!"suggesting that cruelty and "thick blood" are characteristics only attributable to a man.


In order to spur her husband to bloody murder, she must become the man within her and eschew her softer instincts lest he be inclined to be somewhat womanlike and consequently afraid of action.

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'

Scenes from Macbeth

To whet the appetite for The ASC production of Macbeth opening tonight and running through April 1 at the West Side Theater, we chose The Thane of Glamis and Thane of Cawdor Macbeth's single most famous soliloquy and chose two outstanding actors' renditions to present to you here.

The differences are in the nuances, and each illuminates a slightly different Macbeth, a Macbeth with singular perspective on life.  Take a look.  Which is the Macbeth that most closely resembles the Macbeth you envision?

Then come to the theater, and hear Michael Basile's take on the speech.  Half the fun of seeing a Shakespeare play is hearing what you have heard a hundred times done just differently enough that you can hear what you never heard in the speech before.  Somewhere in this monologue,  you will realize that Basile's take has opened a curtain and has shed light on an aspect of the character or the play or/and on your perception of life itself that you had not examined before.

Patrick Stewart as Macbeth

Give us some music; music, moody food. . .(Antony & Cleopatra)

One of the best traditions in the Elizabethan/Jacobean theater, one to which Shakespeare was very sensitive, is the use of music to create mood, heighten or relieve tension, to create an audio backdrop or simply to entertain.  Productions of Shakespeare's plays often included vocal and instrumental music, especially when the plays were performed as special occasions before royalty.

In many of the plays, though not necessarily in Macbeth, dances enliven the action in much the same way a fight scene does.  The music and the dance, then, underscore the characters' intentions, their motivations.

Minor characters were often chosen to sing vocal selections, and instrument players were members of the ensemble; they played such instruments as the viol, the trumpet, the hautbois -- our oboe -- and the lute.

Anthony Bez, ASC Music Master, is responsible to see that our production of Macbeth continues the tradition and does the Bard proud.

Countdown to Opening. . .

Only three more days till the curtain goes up on The Actors Shakespeare Company at New Jersey City University's production of William Shakespeare's Macbeth on March 16th!  We hope you're getting so excited you're telling all your friends to come see the show with you.  It runs through the first of April, and the schedule of performances is as follows:

March 16 – April 1, 2012

7:30 p.m. Friday

3:00 p.m. Saturday

3:00 p.m. Sunday

Remember, as you prepare for your journey to the theater to see the show,  memorize Hamlet's invocation, so that you can recite it before the lights go down, and the first scene begins.
"Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!" to protect the production from The Curse!

Below some names of people to watch for when you attend the performance.

Macbeth is directed by Play Master Colette Rice.  Fight choreography is by Mark McCarthy. Production Stage Manager is Jennifer America.

Playmaster Colette Rice confers with Michael Basile, the actor playing Macbeth
Photo by Cindy Boyle

Macbeth cast

Macbeth               Michael Basile

Lady Macbeth      Denise Hurd (witch, Seward, Fleance)
Malcolm               Patrick Harvey (Lenox, Young Macduff, witch)

Macduff               Terrence MacSweeney (Seyton, Bloody Captain, witch)

Ross                     Colin Ryan (Witch, doctor, murderer)

Duncan                Jonathan Dewberry (Porter, murderer, Mentieth) 

Michael Basile and Jonathan Dewberry rehearse a fight scene for ASC's Macbeth
Photo by Lauren Casselberry

           
Macbeth Creative Team 

Set Design                 Timur Kocak
Properties Design      Michael Hajek
Costume Design        Eva Lachur-Omeljaniuk
Lighting Design        Paul Hudson    
Music Master            Anthony Bez
Wardrobe Mistress    Cindy Boyle  

West Side Theater Manager is Colleen Conwell      

Another Openin' . . .

Excitement is building.  This is the week that Macbeth opens!

All hail Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis.  All hail Macbeth. Hail to thee Thane of Cawdor.  All hail Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter.

Macbeth (Michael Basile) does battle with Young Seward (Elizabeth Belzoni) on his way to fulfilling his prophecy
Photo by Lauren Casselberry

"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air/ Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself/Unto our gentle senses."

Jonathan Dewberry, as King Duncan
Photo by Cindy Boyle - BoyleImage©

"Our tears are not yet brewed . . . Not our strong sorrow upon the foot of motion. . ."

Banquo(Elizabeth Belzoni), Ross (Colin Ryan) and Malcolm (Patrick Harvey) discuss the state of Scotland
Photo by Cindy Boyle

Entertaining with Blood and Guts

"kill a little kid or two a prince

                                                              or something they like
                                                              a little pathos along with
                                                                         the dirt" 

"Pete the Parrot and Shakespeare"

Don Marquis

ASC Rehearsal of Lady Macduff's Assassination
Pictured here: Jonathan Dewberry, Elizabeth Belzoni, Colin Ryan
photo by Lauren Casselberry

Nothing sells like violence, and William Shakespeare understood that better than anyone.  His objective was to put "bums on seats," as they said at the Globe (or the Rose or whichever venue they were playing) and get sell the standing room around the stage.  Shakespeare knew that he was competing with the most compelling entertainments of his day: bear baiting and executions.  And both were gruesomely bloody and attracted audiences in droves.

So knowing that he must lure his people away from the hangings, beheadings and drawings and quarterings at venues like Tyburn, Shakespeare wrote in his scenes a fair modicum of blood and gore, and he employed the best stage tricks of the day to ensure that the audience would get the most for their money.


According to the history of fencing, Shakespeare was the first playwright to recognize how compelling an onstage sword fight could be, and he incorporated a fencing school into his company, requiring that all actors partake of the instruction; in the school they learned how to use daggers as well as rapiers, the most popular swords of the day

Rapiers and Daggers

Before performing a violent play, Shakespeare's actors would fill vessels such as pigs' bladders with blood or a liquid resembling blood, which would then be concealed beneath their costumes. Onstage, a character had only to pound a fist against a bladder to release the blood and thus die a visually gruesome death. Truly fortunate groundlings would be splattered with the "blood" and could return home with vicariously gained spoils of slaughter on their clothing.

At the Globe

Violence is, of course, far more effective if it's loud.  In Shakespeare's day, stagehands in the wings simulated thunder by striking a sheet of metal or pounding a drum. They occasionally exploded fireworks during battle scenes and  lit torches during night scenes. Simple theatricalities such as these could fire up an audience's imagination and stir untold excitement.

Michael Basile and Elizabeth Belzoni
Photo by Lauren Casselberry
Fight Scenes choreographed by Guest Fight Director Mark McCarthy

In the upcoming ASC production of Macbeth, both Denise Hurd, the company's fight director, as Lady Macbeth, and Michael Basile, as Macbeth, along with the assassins they hire will be yielding deadly weapons in this production of Macbeth, and the passion with which they will wield their weaponry is just the right stuff with which to titillate the audience's desire for stage savagery.

.......

Who's to Blame Here?

"There was a time," sings Annie Lennox, "that we used to say that behind every great man there  had to be a great woman. . . ."

Critics have been arguing back and forth about who's to blame for the evil in Macbeth.  Are the witches responsible for reeking havoc on the House of Cawdor?  Did Lady Macbeth lead her docile, vulnerable man into temptation and then unleash his furor on the kingdom of Scotland?

Michael Basile, who plays Macbeth in the ASC's production of the play that bears his name, says that the Lady spurs him on until he has actually killed Duncan, and then he takes the wheel of the machine that is careening out of his own control.

It's a question for the ages. See the play, watch Denise Hurd as the Lady, and then weigh in for yourself.

                                                     Denise Hurd in rehearsal as Lady Macbeth