Audience responds to TIME STANDS STILL

Audience members have been e-mailing us to share their thoughts about Donald Margulies’s Time Stands Still, directed by artistic director Tracy Brigden, designed by Tony Ferrieri (scenic), Robert C. T. Steele (costumes), Ann Wrightson, (lighting), and Joe Pino (sound), and featuring Robin Abramson as Mandy, Andrew May as James, Tim McGeever as Richard, and Angela Reed as Sarah. Here are some typical responses from the past few days:

Katie A. calls the play “delightful and provocative. I mentioned the dilemma [photographing vs helping] to a professional photographer friend and he said this subject was discussed extensively in his journalism program at Point Park. The acting was wonderful; set was perfect.”

Barbara C. says Time Stands Still “was the most riveting play I have seen in several seasons. Margulies’ writing is superb in this and all four actors are perfectly cast. What a great play to open the 2011/2012 season! Please, Ms. Brigden, more, more, more like Time Stands Still. Outstanding work all around and a story that will be on my mind for a long time. Bravo to all!”

Mary Anne J. lauded “the merits of the play. I think that Margulies achieved a remarkable balance, short of preaching, in exploring the dissonance arising out of war/atrocity/disaster photography and reporting. My attention was thoroughly commanded. The dialogue rang very true to my ear and the cast was excellent and very well balanced. Hats off to Ms. Brigden.”

Fore more information, see our website. And purchase tickets here or call the box office at 412-431-CITY.

What did you think? E-mail us to tell us your thoughts.

City Theatre Presents ‘Time Stands Still’ by Donald Margulies

Time Stands Still

by Donald Margulies | directed by Tracy Brigden

Adventurous couple Sarah and James – a photographer and a journalist – share a passion for reporting from the world’s deadliest war zones…that is, until Sarah is seriously wounded. Her recovery thrusts her into the safe, comfortable world of New York colleagues and couples – a world that could prove more dangerous than a battlefield. The New York Times called Time Stands Still “the finest new Broadway play of the year.”

Tickets are moving fast… so purchase your tickets today.

SAM BENDRIX brings a song to our art

After a weekend of previews and a (well-deserved) day off, the Time Stands Still company was back in rehearsal yesterday afternoon on the Mainstage, continuing to refine the production for evening preview performances headed towards Friday’s opening. But yesterday we also welcomed Sam Bendrix at the Bon Soir—the first music rehearsal for that show, next up in the season, was underway in the rehearsal hall as Time Stands Still was rehearsing onstage. Music director Doug Levine and actor/singer Luke MacFarlane (best known for his role on ABC’s Brothers and Sisters, recently in the cast of the acclaimed New York revival of The Normal Heart) are clearly relishing the standards of the American songbook, as well as some lesser known but no less wonderful pieces, that playwright Keith Bunin has assembled into the “cabaret” performance of the character Sam Bendrix. Sam Bendrix at the Bon Soir will play in the Hamburg Studio, which we’ll be transforming into the legendary nightclub of the title. 

Luke MacFarlane will be playing Sam in SAM BENDRIX AT THE BON SOIR by Keith Bunin.

I intended to stay for just a few minutes at the beginning of the rehearsal yesterday but I ended up sitting and listening for a couple of hours. I noticed that playwright Keith Bunin was smiling along with me as we enjoyed the easy rapport that was quickly established between Luke and Doug, who will be playing Sam’s band leader, and the clear promise of a charismatic performance as Sam by Luke–who is a great singer. You can hear that for yourself by listening here to a couple of the tracks he recorded with his band “Fellow Nameless”  – I especially like “Ahead of Me,” “Bone Dry,” “Take You Home,” and “The Wild.” (By the way, you can find a link to purchase Luke’s album while you’re there.) Of course, Sam Bendrix at the Bon Soir is much different stylistically — it takes place in 1958 and Sam, backed by a three-piece ensemble, performs songs that were written more or less around the mid-20^th century: classics from the American songbook by such musical giants as Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein II, to name a few.

Buy your tickets to Sam Bendrix while you’re here to see Time Stands Still. Or before that at 412-431 (CITY) or online–before it sells out!

‘Time Stands Still’ Photo Contest Assignment 6: “I cannot live without…”

YOU get to play the role of photographer –

TIME STANDS STILL PHOTO CONTEST: 

Assignment 6 “I cannot live without…”

Win free tickets to City Theatre, dinner out, and other great prizes!

TIME STANDS STILL Tells the story of Sarah, a photojournalist.  To celebrate the play and the art of photography – we want YOU to be on assignment for City Theatre and enter the TIME STANDS STILL PHOTO CONTEST.

Every week we will post a subject to Twitter, Facebook, and our blog. It’s your job to take a great photo and submit it to our Facebook wall.  It’s that simple.

This week’s photo assignment is “I cannot live without…” Here is how it works.

1) Share a photo on our Facebook wall of  something you cannot live without.

2) Caption the photo with “I cannot live without…”  Then add extra details if you so choose in the caption.

3)  Get people to like your photo because the photo with the most likes wins.

4)  City Theatre will announce the winner on Tuesday morning October 25th.

Good luck!

Click here for more details on How To Play.  If you have any questions or comments please visit us on Facebook and submit your questions there.

If you are ready to submit a photo LET’S GET STARTED.

Time Stands Still: “these pictures are my testimony”

posted by Carlyn Aquiline, Literary Manager and Dramaturg

I mentioned in my post on Saturday about Time Stands Still—and Tracy (our artistic director, who’s directing) has been mentioning in the press—that the play’s heart is personal, about the relationship between the main character, Sarah, and her boyfriend, James. But playwright Donald Margulies was exacting in the character detail he created for Sarah as a conflict photographer and James as a war correspondent, and in certain references to how they operate in a war zone. One of the sources I came across early in my research that ended up being essential to all of us—Tracy and me during our pre-production preparation, and then the cast once they were here in residence—was a documentary film called War Photographer, about the photojournalist James Nachtwey, considered by many to be the greatest war photographer of all time. Much footage was caught by a tiny video camera attached to the top of his camera, allowing us to virtually see through his lens as he’s shooting photos in Kosovo, Jakarta, and the West Bank, among other places. In between, Nachtwey—a quiet, reserved man—speaks eloquently about the importance of his work, and the apprehensions that come along with it. On his website he says, “I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.” The theme of “witnessing” is huge in Time Stands Still, so it’s exciting that in War Photographer we get to witness the witness in action. See clips from the film, starting at this YouTube page, and exploring along the right margin for additional clips from there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3VoyjUP8hg&feature=relmfu

Nachtwey also wrote of suffering and of the conflicted feelings that many war photographers speak of in another of our key sources, an excellent book called Shooting Under Fire: The World of the War Photographer, edited by Peter Howe. In it he says:

It’s not easy to witness another human being’s suffering. There’s a deep sense of guilt—not that I caused the situation, but that I’m going to leave it. At some point, my work will be finished, and if I’m lucky, I’m going to get an airplane and leave. They’re not.

            It’s a hard thing to say, but there’s something a bit shameful about photographing another person in those circumstances. None of this is easy to deal with, but overcoming emotional hurdles is just as much part of being a photojournalist as overcoming physical obstacles. If you give in, either physically or emotionally, you won’t do anybody any good. You might as well stay home or do something else with your life.

            People understand implicitly when a journalist from the outside world shows up with a camera, it gives them a voice they wouldn’t otherwise have. To permit someone to witness and record at close range their most profound tragedies and deepest personal moments is transcendent. They’re making an appeal; they’re crying out and saying, “Look what happened to us. This is unjust. Please do something about this. If you know the difference between right and wrong, you have to do something to help us.” It’s that simple, that elemental.

            I try to connect with people in a very respectful manner, to let them know that I appreciate what they’re going through. I’m not there to threaten them. I’m not there to exploit them. I’m there to give them that voice, and I want them to understand that I feel respect for them and for what they’re experiencing.

            But it takes a toll. You carry a weight, you carry a sadness, you carry anger and guilt. And it doesn’t go away; if you have a conscience, you carry it with you, always. Sometimes I think it’s ruined my life, and other times I think it’s given my life meaning.

To hear more from James Nachtwey—and to understand why he had such an impact on the artists of our production—check out this 20-minute video where he accepts his 2007 TED Prize, shows his life’s work, and asks TED to help him continue telling the story with innovative, exciting uses of news photography in the digital era:

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_nachtwey_s_searing_pictures_of_war.html

And to see Nachtwey’s photos, see his website at http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/

TIME STANDS STILL poses questions for our time

posted by Carlyn Aquiline, Literary Manager and Dramaturg

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” Legendary war photographer Robert Capa dispensed that famous piece of professional advice to his fellow photojournalists. As I sat watching our final dress rehearsal for TIME STANDS STILL on Friday I found myself thinking about that quote and how apropos it is to theatre-making too. We’ve all seen productions that are technically proficient, that look really slick but that somehow lack a soul—they’re all surface, no depth. If we don’t grapple with the really puzzling and difficult questions in the rehearsal hall, search into the depths of the characters to find what makes them tick, dig into the events and moments that make up the action, struggle with the ambiguities and the complexities of a play, it’s not possible to get to its heart and soul. It’s only a really close exploration that can make a play live onstage. Tonight we step back and invite the audience in for a new season of close exploration with us at City Theatre, as TIME STANDS STILL by Donald Margulies starts previews.

Capa’s aphorism could be the catchphrase of Sarah, the photojournalist in TIME STANDS STILL. Sarah and her journalist boyfriend James have spent their careers getting as close as possible to the kind of action most of us are thankful to be far from: war. The play’s many questions and issues resonate in our day and age when mass media is pervasive, news coverage is as instantaneous as the Twitter feed (five years ago did we imagine it could get more direct?), and much of the world—literally several dozen countries, at least—is consumed in armed conflict. Like any conflict photojournalist, Sarah is confronted with questions of why and how she can do conflict photography and the issue of intervention: whether a photojournalist should ever step into the frame to change what she sees. But TIME STANDS STILL is not a “war play” (the playwright himself has said there is no political agenda), and the questions are about much more than the ethics of photojournalism. Rather, the play is about the personal—the relationship between Sarah and James after circumstances bring them back home from a war zone. It’s also about two relationships in contrast to one another—that of Sarah and James, and that of their friend Richard and his new girlfriend, Mandy. The play makes us reflect on personal questions about love, relationships (romantic and friendly), marriage, parenthood, career choices. It also poses big questions of morality and responsibility towards ourselves, those we love, and those suffering and less fortunate than us—“What should (or can) I do with the information I receive through the media—whether photo, print, or TV journalism?” “Does popular culture package real-life suffering as a consumable presentation, and do spectators assuage their own guilt by watching, thinking that’s ‘doing’ something to help?” “How does a person of integrity reconcile the desire for comfort and personal happiness with the knowledge that much of the world is afflicted with daily tragedy and woe?”

Those are just a few teaser questions—though the play at its center is about a relationship, it is also swirling with many ideas. And Margulies, without judgment on the characters’ choices, leaves the answers up to us.

Which brings me back to a quote by another famous photojournalist, Philip Jones Griffiths. “I’m a photographer because I want to find out.… That’s the main reason for doing what I do. The second is when I’ve found out for myself, I want to share my findings.” Once you see the play, share your findings with us: let us know what you find out, what questions and themes come to the fore for you, what ideas are most striking.

See you at the theatre!

‘Time Stands Still’ Photo Contest: Assignment 5 “I was here…”

YOU get to play the role of photographer –

TIME STANDS STILL PHOTO CONTEST: 

Assignment 5 “I was here…”

Win free tickets to City Theatre, dinner out, and other great prizes!

TIME STANDS STILL Tells the story of Sarah, a photojournalist.  To celebrate the play and the art of photography – we want YOU to be on assignment for City Theatre and enter the TIME STANDS STILL PHOTO CONTEST.

Every week we will post a subject to Twitter, Facebook, and our blog. It’s your job to take a great photo and submit it to our Facebook wall.  It’s that simple.

This week’s photo assignment is “I was here…” Here is how it works.

1) Share a photo on our Facebook wall of a special place you visited.

2) Caption the photo with “I was here….”  Then add extra details like the name of the place and why it is special to you.

3)  Get people to like your photo because the photo with the most likes wins.

4)  City Theatre will announce the winner on Tuesday morning October 18th.

Good luck!

Click here for more details on How To Play.  If you have any questions or comments please visit us on Facebook and submit your questions there.

If you are ready to submit a photo LET’S GET STARTED.

‘Time Stands Still’ Photo Contest Assignment 3: “The bane of my existence.”

YOU get to play the role of photographer –

TIME STANDS STILL PHOTO CONTEST: 

Assignment 3 “The bane of my existence.”

Win free tickets to City Theatre, dinner out, and other great prizes!

TIME STANDS STILL Tells the story of Sarah, a photojournalist.  To celebrate the play and the art of photography – we want YOU to be on assignment for City Theatre and enter the TIME STANDS STILL PHOTO CONTEST.

Every week we will post a subject to Twitter, Facebook, and our blog. It’s your job to take a great photo and submit it to our Facebook wall.  It’s that simple.

This week’s photo assignment is “The bane of my existence.”  Here is how it works.

1) Share a photo on our Facebook wall that represents the bane of your existence… be clever and have fun.

2) Caption the photo with “The bane of my existence….”  Then add extra details if you so choose in the caption.

3)  Get people to like your photo because the photo with the most likes wins.

4)  City Theatre will announce the winner on Tuesday morning October 4th.

Good luck!

Click here for more details on How To Play.  If you have any questions or comments please visit us on Facebook and submit your questions there.

If you are ready to submit a photo LET’S GET STARTED.

‘Time Stands Still’ Assignment 2 Photo Contest Winner!

Congratulations to David Bennett for winning the second assignment of our Time Stands Still photo contest.

In honor of City Theatres’ first play of the season Time Stands Still, the story of Sarah a photojournalist, we asked our Facebook fans to go on assignment.  The second assignment was “That is so Pittsburgh.”, and  our fans responded with great photos and captions, but David’s goose was the resounding winner with 34 likes.  Thank you to everyone who participated… but that’s not all folks we have more assignments. Click here for the third assignment and a chance to win more great prizes from City Theatre.

‘Time Stands Still’ Photo Contest: Assignment 2 “That is so Pittsburgh.”

YOU get to play the role of photographer –

TIME STANDS STILL PHOTO CONTEST: 

 Assignment 2 “That is so Pittsburgh.”

Win free tickets to City Theatre, dinner out, and other great prizes!

TIME STANDS STILL Tells the story of Sarah, a photojournalist.  To celebrate the play and the art of photography – we want YOU to be on assignment for City Theatre and enter the TIME STANDS STILL PHOTO CONTEST.

Every week we will post a subject to Twitter, Facebook, and our blog. It’s your job to take a great photo and submit it to our Facebook wall.  It’s that simple.

This week’s photo assignment is “That is so Pittsburgh.”  Here is how it works.

1) Share a photo on our Facebook wall that you think embodies the attitude, mindset, and spirit of Pittsburgh.

2) Caption the photo with “That is so Pittsburgh.”

3)  Get people to like your photo because the photo with the most likes wins.

4)  City Theatre will announce the winner on Tuesday morning September 27th.

Good luck!

Click here for more details on How To Play.  If you have any questions or comments please visit us on Facebook and submit your questions there.

If you are ready to submit a photo LET’S GET STARTED.