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Senior theater critic Chris Rawson talks with Stuart Carden, associate artistic director of City Theatre, about his production of Mary’s Wedding, the intimate epic about love and loss, running at City through April 5.
To listen to the interview click here :
I’m not an experienced blogger as evidenced by my extreme neglect of my blogging duties…but my inability to find the time to compile some thoughts more regularly throughout the rehearsal process is a great testament to the tremendous amount of attention this play requires! I knew the simplicity on the page was deceptive – but I didn’t know how deceptive. It’s one of the more complex shows I’ve worked on and demands a good deal of imagination, focus, and technical facility. There are only two actors on stage the whole time so just memorizing the lines is a job in and of itself!
It’s been an absolute blur of activity since we started rehearsal… as we’ve begun to pull the layers back on the show, the depth of the text continues to reveal itself in fantastically surprising and continually challenging ways. As we discover those new challenges, the magnitude of the amount of work involved (on all levels of the production) is daunting but invigorating. I couldn’t be more excited about the team of artists compiled by City Theatre for Mary’s Wedding…it’s an honor and a privilege to be counted amongst them. Every day at work is a joy…there is something so wonderful about this play that inspires very unique and individual responses…and everyone involved has a great passion for the telling of this story.
We’ve begun previews of the show – which means we’re rehearsing for about 5 hours during the day and then performing the show at night. Those rehearsals allow us to continue crafting the show to best fit into the space as well as add new technical layers of lighting, costumes and sound to flesh out the dream world we dwell in. We’ve been learning a great deal about the show as we’ve had our first audiences…and one of the things I’ve learned is that it is physically and mentally exhausting – in a good way!! It’s a nightly workout and I appreciate that from a show…It continues to grow nightly as we settle into the space and the technical elements combine with the work we did in the rehearsal hall…
This is a fun time for an actor…the whole things starts to come together and the technical elements that have been living only in your imagination throughout rehearsal are suddenly vibrantly alive in the space. Our designers and crew have done a fabulous job of complimenting the work we’ve done in rehearsals and – in many ways – elevating it to another level. I cannot rave enough about all of their work…
And I can’t wait to see how it’s received by people…I think we’ve got something really lovely on our hands and am excited to share it with City Theatre’s audiences!!
Here at City Theatre we are in the heart of technical rehearsals for Mary’s Wedding - this is when all of the technical elements of the performance get added to the hard work the actors have done in the rehearsal room. Director Stuart Carden and actors Braden Moran and Robin Abramson have moved into the theatre where they are joined by lighting designer Andrew Ostrowski, costume designer Susan Tsu and sound designer/composer Andre Pluess. Everyone is working hard to put the finishing touches on the play before the doors open to the public for previews.
(If you want to learn more about Andre Pluess and Susan Tsu, click on their links to the right under “Designers”)
Posted by Christine Pini, Artistic Assistant
The technical crew has been working tirelessly to build the set for Mary’s Wedding. They have made great progress as can be seen in the photos below, taken only a week apart. What began as a skeletal structure of platforms and ramps has been fleshed out with facing made of rough-hewn “barn” wood, a textured treatment on the floor that resembles cracked, dried mud, and the beginnings of the photographic paper sky being hung. With previews only days away, the pace and hard work will continue and Tony Ferrieri’s stunning set will be fully brought to life.
Posted by Christine Pini, Artistic Assistant
Early in the rehearsal process, director Stuart Carden and actors Robin Abramson and Braden Moran explored how to physically express several key moments in the play. In addition to generating ideas for the physical vocabulary for the production it also gave the actors and director the opportunity to explore the stage space. One of the exciting parts of this process was testing how the moments in the play that take place on horseback might be realized in a theatrical way on stage (there will be no live horses in this production!). You will find some snapshots of this part of the rehearsal process below. In addition, there are some great photos of the actors on a special horseback riding trip.
Posted by Christine Pini, Artistic Assistant
Last week was a busy one at City Theatre, with a workshop of our final show Speak American and our next mainstage show Mary’s Wedding vying for use of the rehearsal hall.
After initial introductions, the first rehearsal of Mary’s Wedding began with a presentation by set designer Tony Ferrieri, who shared his vision for the set with the aid of his color model (seen in earlier blog posts), pictures he used for inspiration, and plenty of grass harvested from around town.
Costume designer Susan Tsu was up next; she talked about her ideas for the two characters and passed around fabric samples and beautiful paintings she created to showcase her designs.
Lighting designer Andrew Ostrowski and Sound Designer/Composer Andre Pluess were finishing up other projects and could not join us for the first rehearsal, but we look forward to hearing from them soon to round out the design elements for the show.
Finally, we heard a few words from playwright Stephen Massicotte, who made a special trip to be with us for the beginning of the process. He gave unique insights into his experiences with past productions and a deeper understanding of the play. We all then sat down and the actors – for the first time together – read the play aloud.
We’re off to an exciting start!
Posted by Christine Pini, Artistic Assistant
Scenic Designer Tony Ferrieri just snapped a few images of the color model for Mary’s Wedding. While the actual build of the set is taken from very detailed construction drawings and elevations the model serves as a small scale representation of what the scenery will eventually look like. Typically the director is given the model to reference as s/he begins more detailed work on the blocking — and help her/him determine where certain moments will take place on the stage and how best to have the actors relate to one another and the space. And as you can see in these images the model also gives you a sense of how light and color might interplay with the sky backdrop which is made of painted and textured photographic paper.
The model also helps the actors envision what the world of the play will look and feel like. For the first three weeks of the process the actors rehearse in our rehearsal room with the outline of the set taped out on the floor. But as you can see in the model there are dramatic sloping levels in the design. The model helps the director and actors imagine how these slopes and height differences in the set impact physical relationships. From the front of the stage to the back there is a six foot rise as well as a trench that goes three feet into the floor. The model helps keep these dynamic height differences in perspective.
Braden Moran, who will play Charlie in our upcoming production of Mary’s Wedding, shares some thoughts on his approach to beginning work on a new role:
The moment before jumping into a new text is always an exciting time. Its full of so many mixed emotions - I’m thrilled and terrified and anxious and intrigued…and honestly – there’s just a basic joy that comes with every new play and that is the feeling of being very grateful to have a job (as an actor, that’s generally the case – but in the current economic climate, its a sentiment many can agree with, I’m sure…) So I always want to take as full advantage of the opportunity in front of me and do my best to prepare for the monumental task at hand.
I’ve rarely met an actor who doesn’t approach a new text with some form of trepidation and concern. Making a play work is like alchemy…there are so many things involved and so many different people striving to create one singular piece of art made up of so many individual efforts. It’s a lot harder than one can imagine. I feel good about this one…I’ve worked with Stuart Carden (the director) before (both when I was at school with him here in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon and also in Chicago where I now live) and have a tremendous amount of respect for his abilities. It always alleviates some of the anxiety when you know you’re in very capable hands. AND I think the text is fantastic – simple, yet deceptively challenging. So I look forward to jumping into it with everyone involved.
One of the things I do before first rehearsal is just sit with the play as much as I can. I go to a coffee shop and I read it and re-read it (oddly, working at home is difficult for me – I find that being in a public place allows my mind to wander in a productive way – latching onto various people’s walks and tics and rhythms can sometimes give tremendous insight into the people on the page in front of you…just simply observing human behavior is one of the joys of being an actor) Sometimes I do nothing but soak the play in – I try not to “work” on it, but rather let it work on me. Sounds a little “hippy trippy” I know, but that’s the best way I can describe it. I let the images of the words start to play on my imagination. I ask questions about the world of the play for me to answer (immediately…or eventually…or perhaps, never) and I just try to figure out who these people are that are having these experiences…AND who are the people that use these specific words to convey and understand those experiences.
With historical plays I always like to do a good deal of research on the historical context of the play. MARY’S WEDDING is set in Canada before and after WWI. So I’ve been checking in on that world – looking for films and books and poetry and letters and music from the time to get a sense of the emotional landscape.
For me, creating a character is a bit like solving a mystery – there are all these clues in the text as to who this person is and its the job of the actor to seek them out, analyze them and put your findings to use in fleshing this person out. So, that said, I’m going to go bury my head in the script and see what I can find out. We’ve got a few weeks to go before first rehearsal – but it never feels like enough time.
I’m really looking forward to this journey…it should be a good one.
In-Process Mary's Wedding Set Model (Top View)
1. Mary’s Wedding is a “dream play.” How is designing this type of play different from other styles?
The biggest difference is that I would say a “dream play” allows you so much more freedom of expression in the design. Unlike a realistic play, a “dream play” affords you the permission to create an environment that is much more fluid and abstracted. This also means the design will have far less limitations, as far as time and place, allowing the design of the space to have greater flexibility and be a more adaptable playing space for the actors and for the director to create movement within.
2. From the deck of a gun-metal grey ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, to the intimacy of a weathered barn, to a late-night horseback ride across the star-lit plains of Canada the action of the play travels to many, wildly different locations – how did you create a design that evokes all of these places?
I tried, within the design, to include all the bits of the realistic places in the world of the play. But they are, for the most part, taken out of their realistic context and proximity to each other. The melding of all these elements, although in a non-realistic way, gives you a presence of time and of place without being to limiting in their placement onstage. This gives flexibility for the playing and for the placement of various scenes and locations throughout the playing space instead of limiting it to a specific location on stage.
3. We have two basic configurations for our mainstage space, proscenium (with audience on one side and the stage on the other) and thrust (with audience on three sides of the stage) — why did you and director Stuart Carden decide to use the thrust configuration for Mary’s Wedding?
Mary’s Wedding is an intimate and personal account of the relationship between our two characters Mary and Charlie. Their story wants to be told in close proximity to the audience. It also is a story which chronicles their journey through both vast open pastoral country fields as well as the vast open battlefields of the First World War. I think with the use of the thrust configuration verses the proscenium, allowing us to have the audience on three sides lets the whole audience be closer to the action of the play and also allowed me, in the design, to envelop them, while also giving the audience the sense of the vast openness of the fields by the use of our “sky surround.”
4. What has been the most exciting part of the design process for you so far? The most challenging? Can you walk us through the process a bit?
Well the most exciting part, first off, is that I really love the play! I think it is romantic and heartfelt as well as being a kind of sweeping epic. The play is so beautifully written and the characters of Mary and Charlie are both so endearing. I guess my big challenge was creating the very large “sky surround.” Stuart Carden, the director, and I were looking for something less usual and more dream-like, something that had saturated vibrant color as well as movement and texture. We were interested in using paper as the material – given all the letters in the play that material made total sense – and were also interested in crinkling or crumpling the paper to give it even further texture. But it still needed to be transparent enough to allow Andy Ostrowski, our Lighting Designer, to light it from behind to give it depth and layering. We ended up using a photographic backdrop paper normally hung and used by photographers.
5. Was there a particular moment, piece of dialogue, or image in the play that sparked your design approach? What was your first design impulse after reading the play?
I guess the biggest image that has driven my design approach has been the sense of movement in the play. It has movement in its constantly changing stormy sky, the movement of riding a horse (whether through country fields in a rain storm or charging through battle fields), the movement through time that the journey takes us through, as well as the movement through the play’s different locations. My first design impulse after reading the play was that I felt the set needed to have a strong sense of this movement – graceful elegant lines and simplicity that can serve the play with seamless transitions so as to not interrupt the advancement of the story.
In-Process Mary's Wedding Set Model (Front View)
Posted by Stuart Carden, Associate Artistic Director and Christine Pini, Artistic Assistant
