Year in Review: PlayMakers in 2014

Here's a look back at some of our favorite PlayMakers memories from 2014.
(in no particular order)

1. Lisa Brescia's spirited ‘Last Midnight’ as The Witch in Into the Woods

Read more: “Becoming the Witch in Into the Woods“; Lisa Brescia, photo by Jon Gardiner

2. Roger Guenveur Smith in Rodney King, sparking community conversation during PRC² in the wake of the events in Ferguson, Missouri

Roger Guenveur Smith in Rodney King at PlayMakers

3. The elegant 1930s Café Society Supper Club set for Private Lives

Kristen Mengelkoch, Tom Coiner, Jeffrey Blair Cornell and Julie Fishell; photo Jon Gardiner

4. Ray Dooley’s Puck and Julie Fishell’s Nick Bottom as we’ve never seen them before in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Read more: A Conversation with A Midsummer Night's Dream's Ray Dooley and Zachary Fine; photo by Jon Gardiner

Julie Fishell and Ray Dooley; photo by Jon Gardiner

5. Crazy, carefree, sometimes ‘clothes-free’ Spike in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Read more: “Christian Daly makes his PlayMakers debut”; Christian Daly as Spike, photo by Curtis Brown

6. The beautiful healing and hope of Love Alone

Patrick McHugh and Jenny Wales. Photo by Jon Gardiner.

7. Associate Artistic Director Jeff Meanza trips the light fantastic in Assassins (and again as The Baker in Into the Woods!)

Jeffery Meanza; Photo by Jon Gardiner.

8. Joel de la Fuenta’s mesmerizing performance as Gordon Hirabayashi in Hold These Truths

Read more: “Meet Joel de la Fuente”; Joel de la Fuente, photo by Lia Chang

9. Mike Daisey explores America’s national obsession with guns in our commission and world premiere of The Story of the Gun

Mike Daisey, photo by Ursa Waz

10. The Summer Youth Conservatory’s Madison-dancing cast of Hairspray raises the roof of the Paul Green Theatre

"PlayMakers Summer Youth Conservatory presents: HAIRSPRAY"

And a 10 plus 1 we’ll never forget…

11. Adorable bovine Milky White stealing our hearts in Into the Woods!

Read more: “Working with Puppets” by Donovan Zimmerman, Puppeteer, Into the Woods

Michael Dempsey weighs in on scenic design

By Michael Dempsey, Scenic Designer, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Michael Dempsey

Scenic design is much more than a clever solution to the challenge of providing for the physical requirements of a text. Its purpose is often subversive, supporting plot, theme, rhythm, and style while creating a world unique to the production.

We are storytellers. As members of the ensemble we are active participants in the telling of the story. We provide location and context for the action.  As developers of the physical world of the production we can create obstacles and pathways for the movement of characters and action.

We endow spaces with specificity for both audience and actor. Scenic designers provide a veneer of authenticity and emotional connection. While sometimes only as deep as a coat of paint, when successful, heightens the experience of the viewer.

Not only are designers called upon to provide a space rich with context and emotional connection for the audience, one that speaks to viewers sometimes hundreds of feet away, we also have a responsibility to provide a similar experience for the performer who must believably inhabit the environment.

Scene from Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Photo by Jon Gardiner

The scenic designer sculpts the environment. In a larger context, the scenic designer composes a dramatic installation; one that echoes the composition of the text, story, and theme.

Finally it is important to note that the work of the scenic designer is nothing but ideas and it is only with the dedicated work of the artisans and craftspersons who bring those ideas to life, the carpenters, painters, properties artisans, and technical directors, that the world represented in the set exists as a participant in the storytelling.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers through October 5, 2014. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.

Costume sketches from Jan Chambers

No, you have not stumbled onto a Disney fan-site, these are sketches from costume designer Jan Chambers for PlayMakers’s production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. We won't give away why this production has a few Snow White-inspired costumes. Come to the play to find out!

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers through October 5, 2014. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website. 

Durang on Chekhov/Durang on Durang

Anton Chekhov

“I had the idea to write Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike a few years ago, when I realized that I was now the age that Vanya was (or seemed to be). And, like Vanya and other Chekhov characters, I started to reassess choices made in the past. I live in a stone farmhouse with my partner, the writer-actor John Augustine, on a small hill in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I choose to live here for the quiet and the trees, and there is a small pond where a blue heron comes and sees what is available to eat. But I started to think to myself, what if I didn’t live here with my partner but with my adopted sister, and the two of us had spent 15 years taking care of our elderly and eventually incoherent parents. What if we never left the house we lived in as children, and felt jealous of our older sister, who was a glamorous stage and film star? She sends us money, but our lives feel empty and unexciting. What if my life had been closer to a Chekhov play?

By the way, I also have cherry trees around the house. About nine of them, I’d say. Very pretty two weeks a year.

My play is not a parody. It is set in the present day. Once I finished the first draft, I started to say to people, “The play takes Chekhov characters and themes and puts them into a blender.”  

--Christopher Durang

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers through October 5, 2014. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.

Christian Daly makes his PlayMakers debut

Christian Daly in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Photo by Jon Gardiner

Christian Daly is making his PlayMakers debut in our Mainstage opener, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. He performs the role of Spike in this Chekhov-inspired comedy by Christopher Durang.

Christian Daly

When asked what he enjoyed about his first time on the PlayMakers’ stage, Christian responded, “My favorite thing about my first time at PlayMakers is obviously the people. It would be hard to find a more talented and humble group of actors, directors, and technicians. Not to mention the Paul Green Theatre is such a fun space to play in.” He loves working with director Libby Appel, the Artistic Director Emerita of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He says, “our director has such a maternal energy she makes the space feel so safe for myself and the other actors. Such a wonderful quality for a director!”

Christian Daly as Spike. Photo by Curtis Brown

The character Spike is a wannabe actor and Masha’s boy toy. Christian explains, “Working on Spike has been a rush if only because most of the time he is completely unaware of the consequences of his own actions. He lives in a sort of clown world, which in my experience quadruples the amount of freedom an actor has on stage.”

Christian, a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, was recently in Sanguine Theater Company’s New York premiere of Exit 27 and the Dutch indie film All Those Sunflowers, following on appearing as Romeo in Cygnet Theatre’s premiere of Joe Calarco’s Shakespeare’s R&J.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers through October 5, 2014. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.

About "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike"

ARIELLE YODER as Nina (standing), JULIE FISHELL as Masha, CHRISTIAN DALY as Spike, JEFFEY BLAIR CORNELL as Vanya and JULIA GIBSON as  (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

As Christopher Durang points out, Anton Chekhov’s work appears both under and on top of the text of his Tony Award-winning play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. There are numerous parallels, quite beyond the three siblings and their neighbor Nina’s names, to Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and Seagull. At the same time, however, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is quite clearly Durang not Chekhov. 

Where Chekhov gives us a deeply perceptive human comedy, Durang romps through the lives of his characters with a different sensibility. It is a U.S.-based gusto and brio that draws heavily upon contemporary culture both for its laughs and its poignancy. Durang understands Mark Twain’s comment that “the source of all humor is sorrow” and carefully roots the ridiculous aspects and actions of his characters in a deep comprehension of the Dark Night of Their Souls. Durang also understands Chekhov’s statement, “men dine, they just dine—and in that moment lives collapse, and worlds are destroyed,” with its profound insight that the truly important events in our lives happen without our noticing them. We live them, we don’t comment upon them.  It is only years later, perhaps lying on the analyst’s couch, that we begin to comprehend the confluence of our own actions, attitudes, and emotions that created those moments and their repercussions.  

JEFFREY BLAIR CORNELL as Vanya and ARIELLE YODER as Nina. (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

What Durang creates in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a contemporary, funny, dysfunctional family with--like all families--its own particular rhythm.  In the process the play investigates what it is to be human, what it is to be in a relationship, what it is to be in a family, what it is to have meaning in your life.  Perhaps the most fulfilled life is the one in which a person is capable of stopping: sitting and watching the elegance and stillness of Durang’s blue heron perched majestically on one long leg as it surveys the pond and searches for its next meal.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers September 17, 2014 - October 5, 2014. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike: dress rehearsal

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike opens this Saturday! Here are some photos from the dress rehearsal last night.

 JULIE FISHELL as Masha and CHRISTIAN DALY as Spike. (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

JULIE FISHELL as Masha. (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

 ARIELLE YODER as Nina, JULIE FISHELL as Masha, CHRISTIAN DALY as Spike (standing), JEFFEY BLAIR CORNELL as Vanya and JULIA GIBSON as Sonia (in background).  (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

ARIELLE YODER as Nina, JULIE FISHELL as Masha and CHRISTIAN DALY as Spike. (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

JEFFEY BLAIR CORNELL as Vanya, ARIELLE YODER as Nina and JULIA GIBSON as Sonia. (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

JEFFREY BLAIR CORNELL as Vanya and JULIA GIBSON as Sonia. (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

 KATHRYN HUNTER-WILLIAMS as Cassandra. (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

KATHRYN HUNTER-WILLIAMS as Cassandra and JEFFREY BLAIR CORNELL as Vanya. (Photo by Jon Gardiner)

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be performed at PlayMakers September 17, 2014 - October 5, 2014. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.