Skip navigation

Aaron Swenson on revisiting HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH

Aaron Swenson as Hedwig, the hostess-with-the-mostest at Plan-B's 9th Annual SLAM

Aaron Swenson as Hedwig, the hostess-with-the-mostest at Plan-B's 9th Annual SLAM (May 12, 2012)

Aaron Swenson has previously played Hedwig in HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH for Plan-B Theatre Company in 2003 and 2005.  He won awards from Salt Lake City Weekly, SLMetro and QSaltLake for his performance. In 2012, he’s also assuming costume design duties.

This blog post is late. Even though I am starting this a full week prior to the due date, I feel confident in asserting that it will be late. I wrote the first sentence with the tragic certainty of Cassandra, and I am nothing if not familiar with the concept of self-fulfilling prophecies, but still the outcome remains the same. This blog post is late.

Here is the current state of my union: I am tired and sore. I spent the majority of Saturday [hosting SLAM] in brutally non-ergonomic heels. My Achilles tendons have shrunk six inches; my buttocks have moved upward to make their home somewhere above the small of my back. I have bruises on my ribs from wearing a bra and two shapers over three or four pairs of tights. Black goo continues to work its way out of the corners of my eyes – a gruesome compound of eyeliner, eyelash glue, and good old-fashioned eye crud. My arms and torso appear to have been attacked by angry weasels; sequins are sharp. The last dress I wore onstage during SLAM lies in the passenger footwell of my car, where I took it off as I hastily changed into a new dress in the parking lot of Pioneer Theater Company so I could show my co-workers what I’d been doing for the last six hours, i.e., transforming my youthful half-breed male aspect into that of a middle-aged Aryan rock goddess. My habits have become those of a slattern, and I have lost my last vestige of bodily shame or modesty.

Aaron Swenson shopping for costumes

Aaron Swenson shopping for costumes

Right now I am writing this in bed, sitting braced against a pile of mismatched pillows on the half of my bed that is not occupied by costume renderings, laundry, makeup products, receipts, reference photos, a half-eaten box of Dots, a fingerless black lace glove, and a digital camera with a dead battery. Any of this and all of this would make a perfect, tangible metaphor for my brain. I maintain a space in it just large enough for the day-to-day processes of living, but the rest is devoted equally to work and to the avoidance of work.

I am not here. I am elsewhere, all the time, not only preoccupied but pre-preoccupied. I am never actually having a conversation with you; I am merely using a small fraction of my traitor brain to transcribe a sort of conversational voicemail to be relayed to the central processing center at a later time, via a game of Telephone/Chinese Whispers where every sentence winds up as some variant of “purple monkey dishwasher.” I am fully aware of this as it is happening, as if I had a neurological disorder that forces me to bear witness to the decline of my faculties from some unaffected crevice of brain-folds. This sanctuary is sadly disconnected from the part of my brain that tells my hands that my cell phone or car keys belong in the fridge – why not? –  because I am mentally composing an email or working out a to-do list for my lunch break.

Case in point: I heard about that diet that crazy people are using to lose weight for weddings and reunions where someone inserts a feeding tube through their nose that administers a constant drip of just enough nutrients for the body to continue functioning while causing it to go into ketosis and basically start DIGESTING ITSELF and all I can think about is how much time I could save if I didn’t have to feed myself every four hours or so.

Aaron Swenson as Hedwig with Dave Evanoff on guitar (2003)

Aaron Swenson as Hedwig with Dave Evanoff on guitar (2003)

In summary: I am on the verge of a mental/nervous breakdown. HOWEVER, I want to make it very clear that, while I may be complaining, I am totally at peace with this, with all of this. My deteriorating sanity is essential to my process. I would not give it up for the world. I’m about to play a role for the third time in a show that set the tone for the last half of my twenties, for better and for worse. No other role I’ve ever played comes with higher expectations attached, and I’ve spent most of my theater career in shows and circumstances that allow me to sort of dick around in rehearsal until I figure out how to make it funny.  I am terrified and exhilarated and basically disembodied, and it is just this sense of hovering above myself, vibrating like a plucked string, that has dislocated me enough to see the world through another character’s point of view, for real, for the first time.

It’s not always a pretty picture. Hedwig and I have armored ourselves in sarcasm and facile charm. Sincere moments are all the more precious for their rarity. We keep a distance from everything out of respect, out of fear, out of a desire for a clinical understanding of things that can’t be rationally apprehended, out of convenience so that loss leaves fewer marks on us. Distance, irony, wit – all of these sharpen our understanding while simultaneously making us question whether anything matters at all.

The hardest part of my experience as an actor is always the isometric tension between my utter faith that what I am doing is essentially human and fundamental to the continuation of a sacred species-wide tradition of storytelling, and my absolute conviction that acting is not only frivolous and selfish but also that my specific contribution to a project will confirm the naysayers’ perception that theatre is dumb and boring (when it is not actually offensive and borderline pornographic).

Hedwig's Mugshot (2003)

Hedwig's Mugshot (2003)

There’s that Fitzgerald quote where he basically says that the mark of a first-rate intelligence is being able to hold two opposing ideas in your mind and still be able to function. I am still functioning, but I don’t think that says anything about my intelligence. Two opposing ideas in your mind often do nothing but pull the weave tighter, like a fishnet under tension, closing every space where good stuff might pass through, where bad stuff might fall out. Tension becomes stasis, and stasis is death for creativity. The answer is not stasis, but stillness. Pomposity and nihilism will both always lurk on the outskirts of any artistic endeavor, but they are the extremes, not the living center. The center is motion, discovery, opportunity, confidence in one’s abilities, courage in one’s convictions.

People ask how I, a lifelong procrastinator, get things done when I am working on multiple shows. Here is the secret: Over-commit, then spend all your days in terror, fleeing your responsibilities. But here’s the secret: THERE IS NO ESCAPE. As you flee from one task, you have surrounded yourself with obligations that are playing Red Rover with your attention span and waking hours. You run at them, full speed, and try to break through their linked arms. Nine times out of ten you cannot get through to the Internet, the TV-looky-box, or the places that sell pretty clothes you want to wear. For the ten percent of successful efforts to distract myself, I find that Post-it Notes with guilt-inducing messages go a long way toward steering me back on task.

One by-product of my constant preoccupation with the production and performance aspects of this show is that I am basically that friend in a new relationship who can’t stop talking about it. Anywhere I go, any conversation I have, Hedwig is there like an un-Holy Ghost. She refuses to be ignored. We have begun to overlap like the visual static of a Magic Eye picture, and a three-dimensional shape emerges when I cross my eyes just right.

Aaron and Hedwig (Courtesy Chris Detrich, 2006 and Dave Evanoff, 2012)

Aaron and Hedwig (Courtesy Chris Detrich, 2006 and Dave Evanoff, 2012)

Hedwig and I have much in common. Music saved both our lives on multiple occasions. We both weathered a childhood fraught with questions about gender-appropriate behavior and sexual identity. We both have the hands of a beautiful forklift operator, the hands of a heavy equipment operator who likes to treat herself. She likes to feel like a lady, but the elements, you know. And the drug use. By the end of the story, we both – I hope – realize that our regrets will not save or help us.

Hedwig wants people to respond to her with either empathy or awe. Preferably both: her audience needs to understand where she’s coming from, then either worship her or get the fuck out of the way. These imperatives are my polestar, my guiding principles for every choice I make between now and June 17th when I climb down from the heels, scrape the goop out of my eyes, retrieve my slutty dress from the passenger footwell of my car, and coat my entire body in Aspercreme before sleeping for 72 hours straight.

I started Tweeting as Hedwig on January 7th, six months to the day before the show goes into previews. Forcing myself to tweet for the last half-year as the character has encouraged me to spend time EVERY day thinking about her. What is her sense of humor like? How does she spend her time? What is the distance between how she presents herself to the world and how she behaves in private? And, to be honest, how many of these decisions really need to be made? I could fill the time between now and the heat-death of the universe asking myself character questions, trying to fill in the blanks intentionally left by the playwright.

Aaron Swenson as Hedwig (2005)

Aaron Swenson as Hedwig (2005)

I am going to find the truth of the character in the space between spaces; in the alchemy that comes of treating each piece of the process with the respect it deserves, and always remembering that you only have to see far enough ahead to keep moving forward. I am a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I am surrendering to the belief that everything – every single thing – is going to work out.  In the meantime, please know that I love and miss you. And if I forget what I was saying in the middle of a sentence, or if my eyes go vague and drift off to the left while you are talking to me, I can only offer a cliché so hoary that is must have some truth to it: it’s not you. It’s me. And also her.

Plan-B Theatre Company’s 10th anniversary re-boot of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH runs June 8-17, presented by the fine folks at Park City’s Egyptian Theatre.  Click here for tickets and more info (use promo code “planb” to get $17 tickets)!  You can catch Hedwig judging the Miss City Weekly Pride Pageant on May 31 and opening the Main Stage at the Utah Pride Festival on June 3.

Colleen & Kyle Lewis on returning to SLAM

Colleen Lewis has appeared in PATIENT A, THE ALIENATION EFFEKT and four SLAMs for Plan-B. Kyle Lewis participated in the first five SLAMs (directing four, acting in one) and directed the Script-In-Hand Series staged reading of MESA VERDE in 2007.

Colleen Lewis

Colleen Lewis

COLLEEN LEWIS:  After spending the past three years hearing SLAM stories after the fact, rather than being in the heart of the experience, I am anxiously awaiting May 12th.  Although I have spent four years slammin’ on stage, my first experience was as an audience member. Having a new baby at home meant I hadn’t auditioned to be part of the acting pool so I was there to support my husband, Kyle, who was a director in this premier event for Plan-B in 2004.  As the evening unfolded I was completely entranced.  I could only imagine the level of stress this day must have produced in the fifteen actors on the stage.  I remember watching in awe as one actress rambled off particularly challenging monologue after monologue and like a fool my next thought was, “I have to do this!”

From 2005 to 2008 I happily became a SLAM cast member.  Fortunately the process wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as I had envisioned sitting in the audience.  It’s the perfect performance opportunity for a working, home-schooling mom like me.  Being able to spend time with so many wonderful theatre artists while rehearsing and performing the work of some of my favorite local playwrights makes for one of the best days of the year.

In 2009 we headed to Arizona so Kyle could attend grad school and I was no longer acting in SLAM. Instead, my SLAM experience became producing STUDENT SLAM with Plan-B and Theatre Arts Conservatory.  All of the stress I had needlessly imagined for SLAM now became a reality for STUDENT SLAM.  The level of stress I imagined for each actor on the stage during that first experience as audience member eight years ago became very much a reality in my head for every one of the twenty-five students in STUDENT SLAM.  It turns our wanting all of them to have a fantastic experience is much more mentally taxing than getting up there and performing myself.

So, as May 12th approaches, I realize coming back as an actor this year feels like more of a SLAM vacation than the three years I spent away.  I will happily spend the day focusing on myself and letting the rest of the cast do their own worrying while I enjoy new work and hanging out with some of the coolest people I know.

Kyle Lewis

Kyle Lewis

KYLE LEWIS:  I’m scared shitless.  It’s the evening of May 21st, 2004.  I am sitting at a table in Squatters with an intimidating collection of local theatre artists: Kirt Bateman, Fran Pruyn, Larry West and Robin Wilks-Dunn.  Damn, two of these people have been my college professors! We’ve just seen the set that we will be directing on, but we have yet to be introduced to the casts.  In fact, the plays haven’t even been written and opening night is less than 24 hours away.  The energy at the table is high, but I think the same could be said for the nerves.  Jokes are made about what could go wrong and who will “win,” but I think the jokes are being made to hide the fear of the unknown . . . or maybe it’s just me.

History is often altered by time and perspective, but that’s my memory of the night before that first SLAM.  It’s an experiment that I was fortunate to be a part of for the next four years, and I grew to love it so much that I referred to it as “Theatre Christmas.” It’s funny to look back on because my original fear of the event was soon replaced with a fear of not being invited to participate the next year.  Unfortunately that day was self-created when my family and I packed our bags and left the valley for a few years, in 2008.

For the last three years while I was away at grad school there has been no SLAM, no Theatre Christmas, and no reason to fearfully await a phone call or email allowing for the opportunity to participate.  The last three years have been watching from a distance. I noticed that in 2009 and 2010 instead of just SLAMming, it SLAMMED ON while being BANNED.  Salt Lake actors, directors, and designers were participating in a new form of “Theatre Christmas” and I was in Arizona looking at the pictures of other people’s presents online, usually long after the event.  In 2011 SLAM appeared to be a solo act once again but, regardless of the changes in format, I couldn’t help but feel the loss.

Colleen, Gavin & Kyle Lewis

Colleen, Gavin & Kyle Lewis

Now we’re back in Salt Lake City, and YES . . . I got the call!  Once again I’m fortunate to have been invited back to direct! I’m sure the energy will be high and the variables still unknown.  But for some reason this year reminds me most of an evening in 2004 sitting at a table in Squatters.  Soon it will be Theatre Christmas! . . . and I’m scared shitless.

Plan-B Theatre Company’s annual SLAM – where five short plays are created, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours – celebrates its 9th anniversary this Saturday, May 12.  Wine will be for sale to accompany complimentary finger foods from Cali’s Natural Foods.  Click here for tickets.

Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin on WTF and SLAM

Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin

Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin

Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin appeared in THE THIRD CROSSING earlier this season for Plan-B Theatre Company.  This is her first SLAM.

I know that I may seem on the surface like this off-the-wall, kooky , fly–by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl; but the reality is, I like to have, at the very least some preemptive knowledge about WTF I’m getting myself into before just jumping in.

This SLAM thing is like a trip to the dentist. You’re scared to death to go but you know that your teeth are going to be pearly white when you are done.  You have to get numb but you know its going to wear off.

I have a confession. I am a SLAM virgin. I KNOW! I can hardly believe it myself but there you go! Having never done SLAM or even seen SLAM I can only speculate what it will be like for me. I have heard about it from plenty of other actors and, I have to say, the idea of working with a director who has just been given a script (albeit a 10-minute play) and having to have actors learn the lines, blocking and deliver a meaningful interpretation is not my idea of a rollin the hay but I’m willing to try anything – once!

What’s more, compared to other really funny people, I honestly I don’t think I am that funny.  Don’t get it twisted I am in no way self-deprecating, but I know my strengths. I am not even good at this blog writing thing because I ask myself “Who gives a rat’s ass what I have to say about a process I have never seen executed!”

C’est La Vie!

Plan-B Theatre Company’s annual SLAM – where five short plays are created, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours – celebrates its 9th anniversary on May 12.  Wine will be for sale to accompany complimentary finger foods from Cali’s Natural Foods.  Click here for tickets.

Elaine Jarvik on avoiding SLAM

Elaine Jarvik

Elaine Jarvik

Elaine Jarvik was a member of the initial Plan-B/Meat & Potato Playwrights Lab (2008-2010).  She has had pieces read in two installments of Plan-B’s SCRIPT-IN-HAND SERIES.  She is a SLAM virgin.

I’m a morning person. I like the whole pristine day lying ahead of me, waiting for me. I am the kind of morning person who can practically jump out of bed, ready for the day. The corollary of this is: I am not a night person. And this is one reason why I said “No” for three years every time Jerry [Rapier] asked if I would write for SLAM.

If you are not night person, and it is, say, midnight, your mind might struggle to be articulate. It might become sluggish. And yet it is precisely at, say, midnight, that the SLAM writer must be at her best, when she must write witty banter and a cohesive plot.

Elaine Jarvik

Elaine Jarvik

I am a morning person. Also I am afraid of public humiliation. What if on the night of May 11 and the wee hours of May 12, my mind is blank? What if this is the first year that a SLAM writer turns in a blank page? What if, on the night of May 12, Jerry has to announce that we regret to inform you that this year there are only four plays because this year a writer failed. To. Think. Of. Anything.

It’s not that I can’t write a 10-minute play. I have written at least a dozen of them. I am a brief person, a person of few words, so the 10-minute form suits me just fine.

But I have never written a 10-minute play at night. I’ve never even written one in 12 consecutive hours. I’m a writer who likes to drag things out, who likes to tinker forever with her first page, who prefers, if possible, to do a load of wash when she gets stuck.

And yet . . . a person can’t be stuck in a rut forever without eventually expiring there. So this year, when Jerry asked, I only hesitated a short while. And then I said “Yes.”

Plan-B Theatre Company’s annual SLAM – where five short plays are created, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours – celebrates its 9th anniversary on May 12.  Wine will be for sale to accompany complimentary finger foods from Cali’s Natural Foods.  Click here for tickets.

Julie Jensen on preparing to write for her 4th SLAM

Julie Jensen

Julie Jensen

Julie Jensen has written for Plan-B’s SLAM in 2004, 2010 and 2011. Her play SHE WAS MY BROTHER was produced by Plan-B in 2010.

The weird part of doing SLAM is that it lives in your head for months before the date.  It’s threatening and scary:  What if I freeze up?  What if I can’t come up with anything?  What if it doesn’t make sense when I do write?

Then, too, in the months before the date, you’re aware of certain events, certain lines, certain ideas that jump in your mind, and you think, “Ah, maybe I could use that for the SLAM play.”  You never do, of course, but it’s part of the preoccupation of it all.

Julie Jensen

Julie Jensen

Then the date comes, and the threat is bigger and darker, because this is the day.  At 8:00 that night, you show up at the Rose, get the parameters and the instructions.  It seems overwhelming.  You drive home and promise you’ll never do this again.

When I get back to my studio, I try not to write.  I try to think about the possibilities.  I want to give myself maybe a half hour just to think.  (This is a hint I learned from people who give test advice for writing essay exams.)  I also try to think in metaphors or images:  this subject or predicament is like something else.

Julie Jensen

Julie Jensen

Then I brew a cup of coffee, which I never drink at night.  But this night is different from all others, isn’t it?  And I go to work.  The writing is always less awful than the threat of it.  But of course, that will not be the case this year.  Because this time it’s really more threatening and scary:  What if I freeze up?  What if I can’t come up with anything?  What if it doesn’t make sense when I do write?  And on it goes . . .

Plan-B Theatre Company’s annual SLAM – where five short plays are created, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours – celebrates its 9th anniversary on May 12.  Wine will be for sale to accompany complimentary finger foods from Cali’s Natural Foods.  Click here for tickets.

 

What’s up at Plan-B between April and August

THE SCARLET LETTER | photo credit Rick Pollock

THE SCARLET LETTER | photo credit Rick Pollock

The sold-out, world premiere of Jenifer Nii’s THE SCARLET LETTER closes this Sunday.  Click here for information on stand-by tickets.

But fret not – we at Plan-B have quite a bit goin’ on between now and the first weekend in August!

So here’s the skinny on a trio of must-see events!

 


 

SLAM | photo credit Rick Pollock

SLAM | photo credit Rick Polloc

9th ANNUAL SLAM
Saturday, May 12

SLAM is this crazy thing we do where we spend 23 highly caffeinated hours slamming out five world premiere short plays by Utah playwrights.

You spend the 24th hour with us to see the results!

SLAM also features a cash bar with finger food by Cali’s Natural Foods…and the announcement of our 2012/13 season.

Playwrights:  Matthew Ivan Bennett, Elaine Jarvik, Julie Jensen, Jenifer Nii and Eric Samuelsen.

Directors:  John Graham, Alexandra Harbold, Kyle Lewis, Kay Shean and Christy Summerhays.

Actors:  Kirt Bateman, Carleton Bluford, Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin, April Fossen, Mark Fossen, Colleen Lewis, Stephanie Howell, Deena Marie Manzanares, Tracie Merrill, Lauren Noll, Topher Rasmussen, Latoya Rhodes, Jason Tatom, Kalyn West and Claire Wilson.

 

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH | photo credit Greg Ragland

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH | photo credit Greg Ragland

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH
June 8-17

Sex, drag and rock ‘n’ roll.
The anatomically in-correct, glam-rock musical returns to Zion.

Plan-B’s award-winning production gets a 10th anniversary re-boot courtesy of the fine folks at Park City’s Egyptian Theatre.

Transsexual East German rocker Hedwig Schmidt, victim of a botched sex-change operation, finds herself living in a trailer park in Kansas. So…she forms a band (The Angry Inch), sharing her life story on her cross-country tour stalking her rock-star ex-boyfriend Tommy Gnosis – a quest for her other half.

And it’s a helluva lot of fun.

Hedwig: Aaron Swenson
Yitzhak:  Latoya Rhodes
The Angry Inch:  Camden Chamberlain and Van Christensen of The Suicycles with Dave Evanoff and Adam Overacker.

 

8: THE PLAY

8: THE PLAY

8: THE PLAY
August 4-5

See what happens when discrimination is put on trial in the Utah premiere of 8, a docudrama inspired by the passage of Proposition 8 and the ensuing federal case for marriage equality.

8 is the real-life story of Kris & Sandy and Paul & Jeff, two loving couples who want to get married but can’t. Together with attorneys David Boies and Ted Olson and a host of expert witnesses, they take aim at Proposition 8.

Written by Academy Award-winner Dustin Lance Black (Milk), 8 is based on the actual Perry trial transcripts, first-hand observations of the courtroom drama and interviews with the plaintiffs and their families.

As 8 flashes in and out of the Perry court, watch both sides present the best evidence, arguments and witnesses for and against marriage for gay and lesbian Americans. See how the case affects the plaintiffs and their kids, and, following the performance, learn how you too can become involved in the fight for equal rights.

8 is a celebration of Plan-B’s commitment to unique and socially conscious theatre, 25% of ticket sales will benefit the American Foundation for Equal Rights; the balance will help fund Plan-B’s 2012/13 season.

Actors:  Tobin Atkinson, Kirt Bateman, Matthew Ivan Bennett, Anita Booher, Jason Bowcutt, Reed Cowan (director of the documentary film 8: THE MORMON PROPOSITION), April Fossen, Mark Fossen, Jonathan Scott McBride, Jay Perry, Topher Rasmussen, Teresa Sanderson, Aaron Swenson, Logan Tarantino, Jason Tatom and Sarah Young.

 

Please visit our website for details on and tickets to all events (except THE LAB RECITAL – it’s full)!

Lauren Noll on portraying the iconic Hester Prynne in THE SCARLET LETTER

Lauren Noll as Hester Prynne (with David Fetzer as Arthur Dimmedale) in THE SCARLET LETTER | Photo credit Rick Pollock

Lauren Noll as Hester Prynne (with David Fetzer as Arthur Dimmedale) in THE SCARLET LETTER | Photo credit Rick Pollock

Prior to THE SCARLET LETTER, Lauren Noll appeared in Plan-B’s LADY MACBETH and the SCRIPT-IN-HAND SERIES staged reading of A DOLL HOUSE.

I could stand to learn a lot from Hester Prynne. Everything she does is for someone else.  She bears the weight of a forced public shame with the strength that neither of the male characters in the world of this play could do, seeing as how they both hide their own shame.  She stands up for her rights as a mother when the men in religious and political power wish to take them away, and she ultimately upholds them.

Perhaps her guilt is legitimate.  She did commit adultery.  However, her moral sin is treated like a public crime as a tool to scare others into behaving the way a select few sees fit for the whole.

Lauren Noll as Nora in the Script-In-Hand Series reading of A DOLL HOUSE | Photo credit Rick Pollock

Lauren Noll as Nora in the Script-In-Hand Series reading of A DOLL HOUSE | Photo credit Rick Pollock

How much have we changed?  The Scarlet Letter seems to be ever relevant today, with the name calling women get from what appears to be an entirely male group of people who want to make decisions concerning their health and reproductive rights.  Our playwright, Jenifer Nii, posed the question to us: “Why does one group of people that has very little in common with another group of people get to determine what that group can and cannot do, and what behavior from them is shameful?” In these ways, Hester and her scarlet “A” can serve as a great moral symbol to make us ask ourselves how much we’ve really progressed.  I hope people see this production, and take these questions with them.

My job as an actress tackling this role, however, is to humanize her.  Not to play a moral symbol.  She is also flawed.  She is, at times, hypocritical and contradictory in nature, as we all are.  She is afraid.  Her stakes are high.  Fortunately, the cast I’m working with gives me three other very dimensional characters to interact with, and we have a world in which real people are dealing with their respective secrets and guilt.  In addition to the great moral questions this play poses, it also poses questions about humanity and how we deal with complex individuals.  Everyone is carrying his/her own weight.  How do we treat each other?

Lauren Noll as Ophelia (with Michelle Peterson as Lady Macbeth) in LADY MACBETH | Photo credit Rick Pollock

Lauren Noll as Ophelia (with Michelle Peterson as Lady Macbeth) in LADY MACBETH | Photo credit Rick Pollock

The great thing about this story and Jenifer’s script is that the audience gets to decide.  Whose sin is greater?  Do you see the current political parallels or do you look at the complex individuals and into their humanity?  This is what I’m most excited for in entering the stage of our process in which we get to share what we’ve been working on with the public.  I’m excited for the reactions.  A lot of it has crossed my mind throughout, but the truth of the matter is I have to throw it away while I’m on stage and listen to who is speaking to me and respond to him/her as honestly as I can.  Now, I get to turn it over to you to make decisions about what to take away from that, and I can’t wait to hear what that is.

Plan-B Theatre Company’s world premiere of Jenifer Nii’s THE SCARLET LETTER,  featuring Claire Wilson as Pearl, runs April 12-22, 2012.  Click here for tickets and more information.

Claire Wilson on being a teenager and tackling the role of Pearl in THE SCARLET LETTER

Claire Wilson

Claire Wilson

Claire Wilson makes her Plan-B debut in THE SCARLET LETTER.  She is a fifteen-year-old student at the Theatre Arts Conservatory and Salt Lake School for the Performing Arts.

Sometimes I wonder if most of me is actually about ten years old. Right now, this can be both bad and good. Good, because I am playing a child—a brilliant, fantastic child who seems to see things so much clearer than the people around her, but still just a child, and I feel the need to embrace my inner kid. Bad, because suddenly, abruptly, I have to grow up a little bit.

Trying to get my mind around the role of Pearl in THE SCARLET LETTER has been one of the most challenging things I’ve been able to work on. I’m pretty fascinated by her, and the way she seems to have this incredible ability to understand things and make sense of a life that was so complicated that anyone else her age would have stared blankly past it. I feel really lucky—for lack of a better word—to have been given this opportunity, but I often find myself wondering what to do.

Claire Wilson

Claire Wilson

Coming into this, I was pretty positive that I would have less than a firm clue what I was doing.  It didn’t take me long to realize that even though this process is different from anything I’ve ever done before, and everyone around me is at least ten years older than I am, it’s still a show.  Before we got started, I was mentally preparing myself to get up and sing an entire opera while juggling five balls and riding a unicycle instead of just going to rehearsal and doing my best.  It’s still a lot of work, but at least I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time preparing.  It took me about five minutes to calm down a bit.  And a few days to settle in.

Of course, it helps a lot that, everyone has been supportive and encouraging as I learn my way.  I hate to be stereotypically pathetic, but when you’re a teenager taking on something hard, you tend to think everyone is going to hate you. Going from being in a show with a lot of my closest friends less than a month ago to one where I knew almost no one was more than a little bit intimidating for me.  Not that I would ever admit it.

Claire Wilson

Claire Wilson

Through everything I’ve been doing while working on THE SCARLET LETTER, only one thing has really surprised me, and one thing is making me go a little nuts: I was surprised by how easy it is for me to just sit there and watch everything happen.  I’m like that little kid watching their older brother do a cool flip on his bike and only being able so say, “Whoa.”  So often I stand back and think, “This is just completely brilliant,” and I want to absorb every instant of pure genius in front of me, and learn from it.

The thing that’s knocking me a bit off my rocker?  Well, I’m a teenager, juggling school, homework, and rehearsal.  Good thing I hadn’t planned on having a social life.

Plan-B Theatre Company’s world premiere of Jenifer Nii’s THE SCARLET LETTER,  featuring Claire Wilson as Pearl, runs April 12-22, 2012.  Click here for tickets and more information.

David Fetzer on switching gears from (1) film to stage acting and (2) THE THIRD CROSSING to THE SCARLET LETTER

David Fetzer

David Fetzer

Prior to THE SCARLET LETTER, David Fetzer appeared in Plan-B’s THE END OF THE HORIZON, SCRIPT-IN-HAND SERIES and THE THIRD CROSSING.

I’m currently undergoing a Plan-B theatrical boot camp.  For the past two years I’ve been doing more film acting than stage acting.  I developed a lot of bad habits.  The nature of film acting basically requires that you embrace everything that you should NOT do on stage.  With a camera and good sound equipment, you can get away with poor diction, speaking quietly, learning your lines the day of the shoot, etc.  So for the past little while I’ve pretty much been defamiliarizing myself with all of my theatrical instincts and sensibilities.  And here I find myself in my second play in two months, playing Arthur Dimmesdale, a proper-English-speaking fellow from 17th century New England – an eloquent minister, to boot.

I struggled with excising most of my film acting habits while performing in Plan-B’s THE THIRD CROSSING, which closed a couple of days before THE SCARLET LETTER‘s first rehearsal. It really hadn’t been that long since my last theatrical performance, and yet I’d already fallen out of the habit of enunciating and projecting, and the concept of learning my lines “word-perfectly” was comically abstract.  One of my worst acting habits is paraphrasing.  But when you’re dealing with world premieres, which Plan-B specializes in, there is an added obligation to honor every word, ellipsis, every “um” and “uh, well” that the playwright has written.

David Fetzer as Franklin in THE THIRD CROSSING - photo credit Rick Pollock

David Fetzer as Franklin in THE THIRD CROSSING - photo credit Rick Pollock

I was expecting the vernacular of THE THIRD CROSSING to be easier and more approachable from a memorization standpoint, because it was mostly contemporary – we weren’t dealing with Old English or iambic pentameter or anything.  But when you’re shooting for getting it word-perfect, suddenly all those little linguistic crutches, the “ums” and “uhs” and “wells” become really difficult.  (Well, for me, anyway.)  At one point in rehearsals, Jerry Rapier suggested that I would benefit from a good shot of Shakespeare.

I was surprised to find that the language of THE SCARLET LETTER, while significantly more proper and formal, has, (for those reasons, ironically), been significantly more approachable than I’d anticipated.  Jenifer Nii, our playwright, has written an original adaptation that is not just Nathaniel Hawthorne copy-and-pasted into the format of a stageplay; she reworded everything, making the language a bit more immediately-comprehensible, while at the same time retaining its elevated constitution typical of the period.  It’s liberating in a way – you can’t paraphrase this stuff convincingly.  You’re either all in or all out.

David Fetzer as Franklin in THE END OF THE HORIZON (with Debora Threedy) - photo credit Jennifer "Z" Zornow

David Fetzer as Franklin in THE END OF THE HORIZON (with Debora Threedy) - photo credit Jennifer "Z" Zornow

Cheryl Cluff, our director, is steering us toward a sort of “heightened” performance quality – deliberate, bigger, grandiose . .  basically, everything that film acting is NOT.  In general, I’m more at home with subtlety, dry humor, understatements, et cetera.  So I’m a bit intimidated.  Especially in my current, rusty state, with the lingering naughty influence of those not-so-long-gone film projects.  But I’m stoked for the challenge, I’m surrounded by a uniformly bad-ass cast, and we’re in the good care of some super leaders.  Really, it’s a pretty ideal scenario for a re-education.

Plan-B Theatre Company’s world premiere of Jenifer Nii’s THE SCARLET LETTER,  featuring David Fetzer as Arthur Dimmesdale, runs April 12-22, 2012.  Click here for tickets and more information.

Jerry Rapier on selecting – and Cheryl Cluff on preparing to direct – THE SCARLET LETTER

Jerry Rapier

Jerry Rapier

Jerry Rapier has been Producing Director of Plan-B Theatre Company since 2000.

I was a weird kid.  I know it.  I embrace it.

You see, the house I grew up in was ten minutes outside a town of 700 people.  We only got the four major television networks via our rabbit ears.  Every Sunday afternoon, we’d sit down with the TV Guide and schedule eight hours of television time for the coming week.  Yes, eight hours total.

The 2,000 people living in a 30-mile radius were serviced by a single-room library that was only open a few days a week. Over the course of my adolescence, I read every book in that library.  The summer between sixth and seventh grade I read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER.  For fun.  *See first sentence above.*

It remains my favorite book.  Ever.

I was drawn into the world of THE SCARLET LETTER from page one.  I completely visualized every scene, every moment. Hester, Pearl, Roger and Arthur became my friends.  I cannot pinpoint exactly why THE SCARLET LETTER is the book that made the single greatest impression on me among the hundreds of books I read from ages eight to seventeen.  Maybe it was because the world I knew was one where, for better or worse, everyone knew your business and had opinions about it.  Maybe it was because, as a young gay boy in a doesn’t-get-more-rural-than-this community, I identified with trying to hide the unhideable.  Maybe it was because, in its depiction of the smothering all-knowingess of a small town, I learned that my world could be bigger than what I then knew.

Or maybe it was because THE SCARLET LETTER is arguably the great American novel.

Since joining Plan-B in 2000, the idea of creating a stage adaptation has been rattling around in my brain.  But the timing was never quite right.  Until I encountered playwright Jenifer Nii four years ago.

Jenifer has a gift with language that baffles me.  She’s too self-deprecating to know how good she is, which is part of what makes her so good.  It is impossible to tell what language is hers and what language is Hawthorne’s in her adaptation.

She.  Is.  That.  Good.

Director Cheryl Cluff has the perfect sensibility to guide our exceptional cast, design team and you to the top of the scaffolding and back.  I’m like a giddy kid in a candy store, counting the days until we at Plan-B can share our version of THE SCARLET LETTER with you.

Cheryl Cluff

Cheryl Cluff

Cheryl Cluff co-founded Plan-B Theatre in 1991 and is the company’s Managing Director.

I love literary adaptations for the stage.  I’m not sure why, really.  I don’t especially enjoy seeing a favorite novel turned into a movie.  Maybe it’s because in a theatrical adaptation there’s still a lot left to the imagination whereas with movies, everything is pretty much spoon-fed to you.

In preparation for directing THE SCARLET LETTER I’ve just finished my second reading of the novel since last summer.  Read it first in high school.  I really had to push myself to get through it.  Now I appreciate it.  I especially love Pearl.   She cracks me up.  I think I have a different appreciation for her now that I have a rather precocious four-year-old daughter who sometimes seems to have an intuition beyond her years.

I’ve been thinking about the classic elements of gothic/dark romance and how I’d like them to impact the style and tone of the show.  I’ve also been thinking a lot about how people cope with various forms of alienation and the impact of that on one’s soul.

Here’s an interesting tidbit you may not know. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials.  Nathaniel added the “w” to his surname in his early twenties.   That adds a little twist to everything if you think maybe Nathaniel might have also been trying to work out a few issues related to that with THE SCARLET LETTER.  He probably wasn’t, but it’s still interesting.

We’ve got a fantastic cast and a wonderful adaptation by Jenifer Nii.  I’m excited to start this new adventure.

Jenifer Nii‘s adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER runs April 12-22, 2012.  Click here for information and tickets.