Unify the Stage

For those of you who know me, you know I do both. Or at least I try to. And the two art forms, while similar in foundation of competition on a stage, creating a unified world with design and acting, etc., are also incredibly different. So this may be the first of a series of blog posts dedicated to considering those differences. I had a meeting the other day with some really nice people who run Wolf Trap Opera company. They happened to be in town for their audition tour, and they were kind enough to put me on their schedule. And Kim Witman, the General Director of WTO asked me what is one of the most important questions to ask someone who is primarily a theater director who has directed some opera: "What, to you, are the challenges or things you do differently when you approach an opera." Awesome question. I think about this a lot. I think about the challenges that the best theater directors can't seem to overcome when they bring themselves to the world of opera. Obv...

Theater in India! Shah talks about his theater company in Mumbai, among other things... http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/a-conversation-with-actor-naseeruddin-shah/?smid=tw-share

The opening of La Tempesta. 1978 production.

Everyone says that they don't have enough time. That they wish they had a few more days before opening. That if they only had another week... well, it's sort of a joke how much we all wish that. We also all have subscribed to an art form with a definite dead line: opening. The day the critics come and the show is immortalized in print. The day that the director puts down her pen and stops giving notes, making changes. On a new play, the day no more script changes will be made. There are rules about these things. But time is the essence. And this is particularly true in Chicago if you're ever comparing an equity show to a non-equity show. I've been lucky enough to direct a lot of equity theater in the past year. Most of it in small equity situations, or big houses in which I'm directing the small project. And then I've gone back to do some non-equity theater. My first show after a year and a half of equity was small, it was The Receptionist at Steep Theatre. ...

This is playing at the New York Film Festival, a detailed look into the opera rehearsals for Traviata http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/arts-entertainment/new-york-film-festival-becoming-traviata-297450.html I hope it comes to Chicago.

Well, at least headway is being made? http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/more-often-these-days-the-director-is-a-she/

For some reason, this is a constant debate in the world: what are directors to do with classic texts? They stick around because they reveal something that seems timelessly relevant to our culture. But how do we best present these plays? Is it important to uphold the playwright's intent, even if the play was written over 100 years ago, and that playwright was being true to their own era? Or do we need to ensure that these plays retain their relevance by expressing them in our own time and place? And, when has a director gone "too far" in their production? Is there such a thing as "too far"? How beholden to the text are we, really? This is something we constantly see in opera. Because the repertoire is so limited compared to theater, the constant recycling of the beautiful classics of Mozart, Puccini, and a handful of other composers has lead to an onslaught of "creativity" among directors. Sometimes I hear about productions that sound absolutely intol...