Kirt Bateman, Actor
April 11, 2010

AMERIGO marks the fourth time (all with Plan-B Theatre Company) that I’ve been offered the opportunity to create a role (first was Nick in Aden Ross’ AMERIKA; then The Men in Mark Dickson’s EXPOSED; and then Judas in Matthew Ivan Bennett’s DI ESPERIENZA). It’s very liberating! There is nothing to compare my performance to (except my own performance). I don’t have to live up to so-and-so’s seminal performance of Hamlet…or the original actor and all the amazing performers that have put their spin on Sweeney Todd. Because of Plan-B’s commitment to new plays by Utah writers, there are many, many actors in this city that have been given this wonderful gift too (in no particular order): Jayne Luke, Jay Perry, Teri Cowan, Teresa Sanderson, Stephanie Howell, Jason Bowcutt, Mark Fossen, April Fossen, Joyce Cohen, Jason Tatom, Anita Booher, Tobin Atkinson, Ron Frederickson, Richard Scharine, Carleton Bluford – and many more.

Personally, I consider it a gift to have the opportunity to create a role. For better or worse, I get to be the first actor ever to play Niccolo Machiavelli in Eric Samuelsen’s AMERIGO. I know, by the quality of Eric’s writing, that I won’t be the last (Eric is a true poet).

But there’s another layer to this character (as with my experience in EXPOSED and DI ESPERIENZA): I’m playing someone who really lived (or in the case of EXPOSED, still living). It makes for some unique challenges. My first instinct seems to always be to try to find out as much as I can about the person and put together an accurate portrait of who they actually were. But I’ve found that, in my case, can be a trap. I get an idea of who this person was and I find yourself trying to become a mimic. In EXPOSED, for example, I played a larger-than-life-in-real-life person named Preston, a close friend of playwright Mary Dickson. In the play, I recreated actual conversations she had with Preston. I decided that I did NOT want to meet Preston before we opened as I would have found myself trying to mimic him (and since I’m not great at impersonations, it would have made for a scarily poor performance).

What I’ve learned: All I need to know about the character is in the playwright’s text. Last season, I kept thinking, “How am I going to play Judas…who knows what Judas was really like, etc.” Then, when diving back into Matt’s words, everything I needed to serve the character of Judas was right in the text. I wasn’t not REALLY playing Judas. I was playing Judas as envisioned by Matthew Ivan Bennett to serve as the antagonist for Leonardo Da Vinci as envisioned by Matthew Ivan Bennett. It sounds confusing but it’s actually quite freeing. Even just one word can help. Mary Dickson wrote in the stage directions of EXPOSED: ‘Preston has a persistent cough,’ which ended up informing so much of what Preston was for me.

Back to AMERIGO: I read Machiavelli’s major work, “The Prince,” and found it fascinating. Ultimately however, I discovered who this Machiavelli is in rehearsals by finding out who Eric sees him to be and how he serves this particular journey.

Does this all sound like pompous “actorly” babble? Well, it is, but bear with me. I am, after all, a pompous actor who often babbles. I’m not a writer, y’all! Nor a scholar. So haters back off!

Eric has written a jolly fellow. I would be tempted to see him as what he actually was: a diplomat and political theorist/advisor (rather like a medieval Karl Rove), serving both the Vatican and the Prince of Florence; a writer, who’s (often cold) manifesto on power wasn’t even published until after his death; and the human being that ultimately exemplified the modern definition of Machiavellian (an unprincipled schemer; devious, and sly). But Eric’s Machiavelli is not devious, sly, or all that power-hungry (although he is seeking a transfer to another afterlife, preferably the Hindu, he says). He’s actually quite a happy guy, enjoying his assignment to moderate this debate between Columbus and Vespucci. He’s not even going to judge the dispute…he’s asked a woman he respects for her ability to see what she wants and get it, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, to judge. He understands and admires power and those who wield it but he doesn’t seek power at any cost. At least not this Machiavelli. My vision of this historical figure as interpreted through the playwright Eric Samuelsen in this play directed by Jerry Rapier for Plan-B in April 2010 is that he’s a well-schooled Renaissance man with a inquisitive mind and a penchant for a good time.

Yikes! I’m scaring myself now. Another line in the play “A lot of pretentious toff, I’d say.” Yes, Kirt, yes I think you are heading in that direction. Wrap it up.

Seriously, it’s an honor. Again. I always feel so grateful to be in a Plan-B production. Truly talented people on every side that make you look much better than you really are. Jerry is a genius (and I’m not just saying that because we share a home, four pets, a bed, and a life together). Cheryl Cluff happens to be one of my very favorite people and incredibly talented and giving. Phil Lowe, our costumer, is – in my humble opinion – one of the best, if not the best costumer in town. Randy Rasmussen has repeatedly proven himself to be an artistic master with his simple yet insightful sets. Eric Samuelsen is not only an incredible playwright, but I dare you to find someone sweeter or kinder. Jennifer Freed is God’s gift to stage management and a dear friend. Jesse Portillo keeps proving himself on track to becoming this theatre community’s most sought-after lighting designer. The Studio Theatre itself even seems like a good friend. And these actors – it’s a wonderful challenge trying to keep up with them: who knew Matt Bennett was as talented on stage as he is when he writes for it; Mark Fossen is a force of nature – bold and beautiful and giving; and Deena Marie Manzanares – not only pleasant to the eye, but truthful in her role, professional, and a hellava lot of fun to hang with during rehearsals. All three of these actors are also hilarious…we’ve created a tribe that keeps me laughing and excited to work (even through a nice loooong case of bronchitis).

Dear Plan-B: I am so grateful once again to be a part of this little slice of theatre heaven. If my performance works, it’s because of you and this team of brilliant people you’ve assembled. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this opportunity. I just hope this ridiculous blog doesn’t preclude me from future productions.

Kirt Bateman has appeared with Plan-B in some capacity each of the past ten seasons. He portrays Niccolo Machiavelli in AMERIGO running through April 18, 2010. He is also Executive Director of Davis Arts Council.

Eric Samuelsen, Playwright
Sunday, April 4, 2010

So, this was my week last week: Monday: a rehearsal of Ibsen’s A DOLL HOUSE at UVU. Tuesday: a rehearsal for THE MYSTERIES OF MONSTER GROVE at BYU. Wednesday: a rehearsal for AMERIGO at Plan-B. Thursday, MYSTERIES again, Friday, A DOLL HOUSE again. And all of it, just about a year after I almost died.

Couple of years ago, I finally figured out how to write the Columbus play I’d had in the back of my mind ever since 1992, when everyone wanted to write about Columbus. Columbus got all politicized back then: heroic mariner v. contemptible genocidist, neither of which interested me. I loved the Columbus of the libro de los profecias, the Columbus who wanted to be one of the two prophets dying in the streets of Jerusalem as Jesus returned. But to write about him meant the play didn’t want to be about Columbus by himself. It also wanted to be about Amerigo Vespucci, and also Machiavelli, and also this amazing Mexican nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.

Now the play is done, and published, and in rehearsal, and everyone in the cast is astoundingly right and good and wonderful. Matt Bennett is Amerigo, and he sort of intimidates me – such a brilliant writer and actor and twenty years younger that I am. Kirt Bateman is Machiavelli, wonderful Kirt, so relaxed and charismatic on stage. When you read Octavio Paz on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, it’s clear Paz sort of fell in love with her. Reading her poetry, so did I. Now I can see her, meet her, in Deena Marie, who I think is sort of in love with her too. And finally, my friend Mark, bringing his own passion and commitment to Columbus. One thing is very obvious to me – if the play doesn’t end up working, it’ll be my fault.

And there’s nothing I can do about it. The play’s done – my attendance at rehearsal not exactly superfluous, but somewhat less than essential.

And then the rehearsal is over, and my son is driving me home, since at that point I still couldn’t drive. How did I feel? Apprehensive, melancholy, optimistic, exuberant and quite terrified. And above all, grateful. I was, after all, alive.

That actually got a little hit-or-miss. A year ago, I was fresh from the hospital, where I’d landed with my kidneys failing, congestive heart failure, and a complete inability to get out of a chair. That, it turns out, was the symptom that gave away my disease: polymyositis, a condition that mostly afflicts African-American women, a muscular degenerative auto-immune horror show in which your immune system thinks your muscles are enemies who need to be attacked. For a year I couldn’t drive a car, couldn’t walk fifty meters, couldn’t type more than an hour at a time, and could only teach my classes sitting in a chair, which I then couldn’t get out of. It sucked. It was also as hot a year as I’ve had as a playwright.

Which is why I’m rehearsing three shows simultaneously. A month after getting home from the hospital, my friend James Arrington called and asked if I would be interested in translating Ibsen’s A DOLL HOUSE. I said ‘Sure.’ thinking it might cheer me up, which it did. Yes, gloomy old Ibsen: cranky, humorless, preachy, yeah, he’s gonna cheer me up. Thing is, I don’t think Ibsen’s like that at all. If you could read him in Norwegian, you’d be shocked at the wit, the keen sense of irony. And how sexy his plays are. There’s this great moment in A DOLL HOUSE (the more accurate translation of ET DUKKEHJEM) where Torvald says to Nora, ‘Hey, instead of you leaving, how about we just decide to live here as brother and sister.’ Nora’s response: “Yeah. We both know how long that would last.” Get real, Torvald. We’ve been married 8 years, we’ve had sex, what, 2000 times maybe? And we’re suddenly gonna go all celibate. Nice try.

James knows my translation approach, which is find an American idiom for the plays, instead of the British English into which the plays are usually translated. It works, because his approach is to set the play in America, in a ’50′s sitcom. Nora as Lucille Ball. It works better than it has any right to, not because A DOLL HOUSE is a comedy, but because “I Love Lucy” was essentially a tragedy. I mean, what was the plot of every episode? Lucy wants to get a job, Ricky forbids it, she does anyway, she fails, he condescendingly forgives her. Lucille Ball was one of the greatest physical comedians to ever live on this planet, but that plot’s not remotely comedic. And James has a great Nora; a young actress named Penny Pendleton. Gotta say, I don’t much care for the very ending of this production, but the rest of it works well.

Meanwhile, another friend, Rick Walton, has been working with me and a great cast to turn some unpublished short stories of his into a children’s play, THE MYSTERIES OF MONSTER GROVE. So it’s sort of Rick’s play – his name’s on it, appropriately – but the cast and I have helped create it, and I’m proud to say the big plot twist involving Frankenstein is my idea. Yes, the piece has Frankenstein, plus 7 other assorted monsters, facing an intrepid 11-year-old (the actress playing her is actually 27, but she’s very short, so it works), whose trying to find her accountant father, who has gone missing.

So that goes up in May. And I’ve got the play BUMPS I wrote for Colleen Lewis and her Theatre Arts Conservatory. And I’ve got two other small theaters in Provo who are doing new plays of mine over the next few months. And I’ve got BORDERLANDS, which Plan-B is doing this time next year. So this almost dying thing has worked out pretty well for me. It has been a good year for me. And also for Glenn Beck, so, you know, I should probably keep it in perspective.

So where’s my head: in Norway, in Purgatory, in Monster Grove? I’m mentally sort of in all three places, really, though often inappropriately, in Norway when I should be in Monster Grove, for example. But I only translated A DOLL HOUSE and I only sort of helped develop MONSTER GROVE. AMERIGO’s where my heart is. I’m really glad I didn’t die so I can see it. After all, if I had died, I’m plenty sinful enough to need a good millennium in Purgatory. And who knows what Amerigo and Columbus would have to say to me.

For Plan-B, Eric Samuelsen has written five short plays for SLAM and MIASMA in 2006. His AMERIGO opens April 8, 2010 and his BORDERLANDS will be part of the 2010/11 season.

Matthew Ivan Bennett, Actor
Sunday, March 28, 2010

For me, the joy of working on AMERIGO has been imaginatively exploring the edges of morality. A few months ago, after getting cast, I read Amerigo Vespucci’s so-called “Letter to Soderini,” which describes his voyages. The letter has a handful of fantastical passages which, no doubt, are exaggeration. I knew from the play that the authenticity of the letter had been challenged, but I purposely stayed away from academic reviews of it. I wanted as an actor to believe that he’d seen what he wrote – or, at least, that he saw MOST of what he wrote and added flourishes here and there in the name of creativity and salesmanship.

Even though I’m a generally liberal person, my sense of right and wrong is sharp in relation to the world of advertising. Like a lot of you, I can’t watch TV commercials because their logic is so ridiculous and offensive to me: “this deodorant will get you laid,” “this fast food will make your children love you,” “this drug will deliver you from your demons.” So it’s strange to me to play a man who was so comfortable, and felt justified, in telling white lies for a dollar (or…gold piece).

But it’s fun! Everyone is, of course, a little selfish. And Amerigo is honest about it. He announces freely in the play that he’s out for gold. It’s freeing to play someone so selfish and so honest about it — and also so life-loving. Selfish and honest and life-hating is interesting too (like Scrooge in A CHRISTMAS CAROL), but it’s harder, I think, to fault someone who loves life so much even if they’re egotisical and brusque.

Exploring the edges of morality – which means, for me, being openly selfish and clean of conscience (more or less) on stage – has given me a new understanding of the political right. A rightist would probably resent the characterization of their politics as selfish, but that’s how I’ve always seen it. The business philosophy of the right seems to be: “Do anything you want within the law.” The right’s philosophy is concerned more with legality, or accepted behavior, than ethics. One of Amerigo’s very telling defenses in the play is, “You condemn for acts committed by every nation on earth.” In effect, at this point, he’s saying, “Look, everyone else was doing these things you call evil, so why are you singling me out?” I understand this way of thinking in a way I didn’t before. To understand it, I realized, I have to think as a society and not as an individual.

Having that realization I hit upon a weird paradox of American politics: the right is generally individualistic, but to understand the right you have to think in terms of the group; the left is generally socialist, but to understand the left you have to think in terms of the individual.

Amerigo is a great individualist, but his individualism is justified by “Hey, I’m just like everyone else!”

Matthew Ivan Bennett is Plan-B’s resident playwright. He portrays Amerigo Vespucci in the world premiere of Plan-B’s AMERIGO, running April 8-18, 2010.

Deena Marie Manzanares, Actor
Sunday, March 21, 2010

Who knew I’d find myself looking so forward to Purgatory?

After spending nearly every day there for a week, I’m falling in love with it. Purgatory is of course, the setting for AMERIGO, where I am lucky enough and extremely humbled to step into the shoes of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Sister of the Immaculate Conception. Poet and playwright. 1648-1695. She was centuries ahead of her time, teaching herself to read and to speak Latin, cutting off her hair when she wasn’t learning fast enough.

Upon entering the convent where she remained until her death (she died of the plague after caring for her sick sisters), Sor Juana amassed the largest library in Mexico. “I knew what I wanted and discovered how to get it.” A great beauty, writer, scholar, lesbian, and defender of womens rights, she was eventually pressured into silence, and all of her books and belongings were taken from her. She then repented of having lived so long without religion in a religious community.

Today, the woman who was then silenced is highly revered.

I want every acting experience possible, and I’ve never played someone who really lived. It was something I was very much hoping to do, and look who I got! I am in awe of Sor Juana. I want to let her find me rather than play any preconceived notion of what she must have been like. I can feel my version of her starting to sneak in, in the way I stand, in a strength and stillness I’m finding, In my voice. I want to do her great justice…and then some.

What an interesting element, too, to not only be portraying real people but real people in a great what if. A fantasy.

I love words. The beauty and power of words. Eric Samuelsen has written a rich and stunning script. Sometimes just hearing another character speak is enough to make me teary eyed…and as I start to realize the passion behind it, I’m even more astonished.

It’s not every day you’re having a conversation with Christopher Columbus one minute, Amerigo Vespucci the next, all while sharing a glance with Niccolo Machiavelli. It gives me chills.

And this is just the beginning. They’ve been in Purgatory for quite some time, clearly not with their first choice in company and must settle the dispute of who discovered the new world. Sor Juana is the judge and Machiavelli mediates as Amerigo and Columbus plead their cases. All four are strong and smart. Different and similar. They may or may not know why they’re there and they may or may not be surprised at what they learn not only about each other, but themselves…

Deena Marie Manzanares plays Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz in the world premiere of Plan-B’s AMERIGO April 8-18.

Cheryl Ann Cluff, Sound Design
Phil Lowe, Costume Design
Randy Rasmussen, Set Design
Sunday, January 31, 2010

Cheryl Ann Cluff, Sound Design
Designing sound for two shows at the same isn’t so bad. I have to put the work in sometime, right? Why not both at the same time?

As I’ve been working the last few weeks, I’ve found myself thinking of a new idea for the second show while I’m working on what I think is a good idea for the first show. Then I leave the work on the first show and work on the idea for the second show. Bad idea. I tend to get immersed in the second idea and lose some of the energy flow that was happening with the first idea. Best to just write down the idea for the second show and follow through with the initial idea I was working on for the first show. This designing for two shows at once can really bring out the A.D.D. in a person.

Multitasking is all fine and good, but for things like sound design, it’s best for me to get at least a first draft of a concept down before I move onto a different concept for a different show. I find with projects that are a little more left-brained I can jump in and out randomly and finish portions of the projects piece-meal. But I have to follow through to the end a little more with right-brained projects.

So I’ve got two distinct styles happening for WALLACE and AMERIGO.

I’ve picked two major sounds for WALLACE; one for Stegner and one for Thurman. These two sounds represent major influences in their lives. I chose forest sounds, specifically Fish Lake (or my version of it) for Stegner and jazz/blues clarinet for Thurman. I’m using them combined in the first few minutes of the show and they aren’t necessarily related to what the characters are saying – the sounds aren’t literal. Then the two sounds repeat again, separately later in the show, and in this case, they are used literally, when Stegner revisits Fish Lake and when Thurman is in Harlem.

For AMERIGO I’ve been wondering what does purgatory might sound like? And why are these people there? It’s not heaven, it’s not hell – it’s this kind of in-between place that’s not necessarily good or bad. So I’ve come up with some ambient drone sounds with pulsating bells. Various versions of this drone will underscore the entire show. It’s the energy of purgatory, and this energy reacts to what is happening in the show. Uh, yeah. Something like that. We’ll see what happens in tech rehearsals.

Phil Lowe, Costume Design
It has been a fascinating experience sitting in production meetings talking about one of the shows, and then switching gears and talking about the other one. As a designer one gets so submerged in the visual world of the play; the time period, location, social status, the individual characters and all of the other iconic images that the play evokes. WALLACE is so biographical and, from the costume angle, a photorealistic piece, while AMERIGO, deals with historical characters and subject matter, but is conceptually much more abstract.

To turn around in the middle of a meeting and jump from the world of one play to the world of another presents an interesting challenge inasmuch that one has to leave behind all of the ideas and images that were just being discussed, and internally “clean the slate” in order to enter the very different visual world of the other play. It’s one of the things I like most about design. Every project is different. The means by which the costumes are created or obtained is always the same, but the subject matter and design process are always new experiences.

Randy Rasmussen, Set Design
When the extra spring slot became available a couple of seasons ago I first thought, “Oh no, another spring show!” But what has evolved is the chance for us to work in a whole new way, repetory theatre. It’s like our own little spring season and due to the slightly compressed schedule we kinda work the shows into each other. And then, on top of that, WALLACE is kind of like two shows in one. The last production meeting was fun. We actually were working on three shows at once, as we did bring AND THE BANNED SLAMMED ON into it.

It’s also nice to get back to a ground-cloth-focused-kinda-show for a change, back to something a little more like the shows we did in the past: focus on the acting kinda stuff, love that stuff! When I was 18 I saw a production of KVETCH in a 33-seat theatre in Los Angeles, seated three-sided like we are doing with both WALLACE and AMERIGO (but with 75 seats). Seeing the actors that close up really changed the way I thought about live theatre, hope it does the same for you.

The fabric for the ground cloths can out of a production at the LDS Conference Center. I’m sure they are happy to be supporting Plan-B.

Cheryl Ann Cluff co-founded Plan-B in 1991 and is currently Managing Director and Resident Sound Designer, having designed sound for nearly every production since 2000. She was also the driving force behind Plan-B’s five RADIO HOURs. Phil Lowe has previously designed Plan-B’s ANIMAL FARM, BLOCK 8 and THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER (at Kingsbury Hall). Randy Rasmussen is Plan-B’s Technical Director and Resident Stage Manager, having designed every Plan-B set since 2001 (and a slew between 1991-2000).