Exploring Sierra Leone

The Respective Journeys of Ken and Megan Through "From The Same Cloth"

Tonight’s blog will examine the respective African journey’s of Ken and Megan through Fault Line’s latest project, From the Same Cloth. When Ken received his Peace Corps posting he was stationed in Segbwema, a major agricultural and trading center in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone. As you can see from the map below, Segbwema is located northeast of the Provincial capital of Kenema in the southeastern portion of the country. The Mendes are the dominant ethnic group in this region, but Ken found that due to the commercial nature of Segbwema, its inhabitants primarily spoke English and Creole, the common market language between the surrounding tribes. Ken wanted to completely immerse himself in the Mende language and culture, so he moved to the tiny village of Pendembu Djegbla, where they spoke only Mende. Unfortunately, Pendembu Djegbla is so small that it doesn’t appear on our map, and according to Megan, is so small that it mostly likely never appeared on any map. Although a few modern towns in Sierra Leone bear the name Pendembu, we assume that Ken’s village was located somewhere in the outskirts of Segbwema.

Megan’s journey began in Teshie, a town just east of the Ghanian capital of Accra. This region is inhabited by the Ga people. A fascinating Ga custom is the construction of “fantasy coffins” when a loved one passes away. These untraditional coffins are constructed to reflect the personality of the deceased and serve as a vehicle to mourn their death and celebrate their journey to the afterlife. Some examples of these coffins can be found here.

Megan felt the need to escape the anglican lifestyle she was living in Teshie and headed northwest to the village of Ekumfi Atakwa in search of a more immersive African experience. As we learn from the play, she met similar dissatisfaction in her new destination.

Once Ken joined Megan, they first traveled to Ada, a small city in southeastern Ghana at the mouth of the Volta River. Ada was once a major trading hub when the Volta was used to transport goods, but now it is primarily a popular tourist destination known for its beaches and water sports. Ken and Megan then flew to Tamale in northern Ghana and spent time in Mole National Park. Although not directly indicated on the map, Mole National Park is the region west of Tamale that surrounds the Mole River. Western Africa isn’t famous for its wildlife like the southern portion of the continent, but Mole National Park is a rare exception. It is Ghana’s largest wildlife reserve and home to a resident population of 800 elephants.

It is imperative to note that the landscape of Western Africa changed dramatically in the years between Ken’s Peace Corps assignment in the 1970s and Megan’s trip in the early 2000s. Sierra Leone was ravaged by a civil war that tore families apart, left over 50,000 dead, and wiped out many villages, including Pendembu Djegbla. Many charitable organizations throughout the world have dedicated themselves to providing aid to Sierra Leone, and the links below offer some insight to the type of work being done:

OneVillage Partners

Street Child of Sierra Leone

Megan is also involved with the Theatre Arts Against Political Violence program, which is part of the International Trauma Studies Program at Columbia University. Theatre Arts Against Political Violence is “a community arts project using theatrical performance to provide a public space for testimony, witnessing, and conversation.” More information about the program can be found here.

From The Same Cloth, The Movie?

I love the movies. Many of my first memories are of going to see movies with my Dad on the weekends. It’s a tradition that we maintained throughout the time I lived at home and was the reason I first fell in love with acting. I was reminded at rehearsal this weekend of one of my favorite differences between theatre and film. There’s a moment in From the Same Cloth when Ken and Megan endure a long and arduous trek to a beautiful waterfall. I pictured in my head that the film version of the scene might look like something out of Congo or The Mission. At that moment, however, I realized what was happening in the room was far more compelling than the stock footage running through my brain. Jacques and Megan were bounding throughout the rehearsal space, jumping over furniture and one another to create the journey right in front of me. Creating the space in this way invites the audience to use their imaginations to fill in the blanks and invites them to participate in the theatrical event. I don’t need to see a treacherous trail or a gorgeous waterfall on stage because there are two very talented actors making me believe that they are there. I know they will make you believe the same.

About Ken Rosen: The Inspiration Behind From The Same Cloth

Ken Rosen (1948-2000) joined the Peace Corps in 1971, hoping he would end up somewhere completely different from his home country of the United States.  He was freshly out of college and frustrated with American materialism, and sought to immerse himself in a completely foreign culture.  His first choice on the Peace Corps’s checklist of locations was Africa.  When he received his acceptance letter and learned he was to be placed in Sierra Leone he was disappointed, as he thought that Sierra Leone was in South America.  He was thrilled when he looked at the globe and discovered that the tiny and then little-known West African country would be his home for the next two years.

When he returned to the U.S., disoriented and confident that he would return to Africa, he applied to medical school with the intention of providing aid to third world countries.  He went on to specialize in psychiatry and, as a psychiatric resident, he was awarded a Community Psychiatry Fellowship for his dedication to working with the underprivileged, inner-city population in New York.  It wasn’t until thirty years later, on his trip to Ghana, that he finally returned to West Africa.

He practiced family therapy for thirty years. He was accredited both through the Ackerman Institute and the Minuchen Center for Family Therapy.  In the 1990s, once Sierra Leone had fallen into civil war, he volunteered at a New York facility for granting refugees asylum. He assessed refugees with post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), speaking with them in a mixture of English, Krio, and Mende.  In 2001, one year after his death, an article was published in the New York Times Magazine about his work with Sierra Leonean refugees.

From the time he lived in Sierra Leone (1972-74) until his death in 2000, he worked on a memoir detailing his adventures in Sierra Leone, but was never able to bring it to completion.  Additionally, he was a singer/songwriter, travel enthusiast, loving husband, and father of three.

On Our Feet, From The Same Cloth

Hello, this is Matt Clevy, Fault Line Theatre’s Director of Communications. Starting today I’m going to be taking the Rehearsal Blog in a new direction: I’ll be posting my personal experiences of the rehearsal hall, bringing you, our audience, behind the scenes and sharing with you what it is like to create a story with Fault Line Theatre.

When I’m performing, I find the process of moving from table work to staging both exciting and daunting. Once I reach the final table read I’ve developed a level of comfort and camaraderie with the text, but getting up and beginning to stage the play threatens to dismantle that. I have learned many lessons working with Aaron Rossini, and one that is essential is to embrace the move away from the table. It is the moment when a play transforms from words on the page and ideas in our heads into a living, breathing piece of theatre. Leaving the table is terrifying because I can no longer hide behind the words, I have to create a physical life for the character. I have to make choices that involve my entire body. That’s a scary proposition, but it is also freeing and exhilarating. Last night Megan and Jacques got on the feet for the first time, and one moment in particular caught my attention. There is a point early on in the play where Ken relates a story to Megan about a friend that visited him in Africa. The friend was attacked by fire ants, and Ken describes how his friend was jumping around in the middle of the street in a panic, but the moment did not really come to life until Jacques physicalized what was on the page. I was struck by Jacques’ energy and commitment to his fire ant ‘dance’, but more so by the effect in had on the relationship between Jacques and Megan. It was a major step in making the story their own, and I felt as though I caught a glimpse of what Megan and Ken were really like together. Aaron excels in creating a rehearsal room where actors feel free to fail. That freedom makes for fearless actors, and fearless actors make the bold choices that create great theatre. I felt very lucky to be there when Jacques and Megan took their first brave steps toward creating the physical life of this play.

Two Rehearsals in the Books

Folks, we are underway! We’ve only had two rehearsals but it’s already clear that From the Same Cloth is going to be awesome, and we are thrilled to have so many fantastic artists working with us. We’re especially pleased to welcome Jacques Roy, Megan Auster-Rosen, and Sarita Fellows to the Fault Line family. They’re working hard on stage and behind the scenes to make this play great and we love them for it.

This production marks many firsts for Fault Line Theatre. From the Same Cloth is our first new play, our first contemporary play, and Artistic Director Aaron Rossini’s first time at the helm of a play that wasn’t written at least 400 years ago. We’re excited to rise to all of the wonderful challenges that this show will present, and even more excited to see you in the house on opening night.

We're Back, People!

Get Ready and Get Set for From The Same Cloth

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, theatre fans everywhere, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Fresh off the heels of the one year anniversary of our first production, the FAULT LINE THEATRE REHEARSAL BLOG RETURNS!! That means photos, insider info, and fun facts about our latest project, Megan Auster-Rosen’s From the Same Cloth will be coming your way beginning March 1st. Also, hopefully more pictures of Scott Raker sleeping. He’s not involved in this production, but we love him and pictures of a sleeping Raker are so adorable that they’re proven to reduce stress and lower cholesterol levels.*

As always check back here for information on all things Fault Line Theatre. Just in case you missed it on Facebook, here’s the breakdown for From the Same Cloth to whet your whistle:

Fault Line Theatre Presents

FROM THE SAME CLOTH

By Megan Auster-Rosen
Directed by Aaron Rossini
April 4-15th at The Shell Theatre
(300 W 43rd Street b/t 8th and 9th Avenue)

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration

Frogs in Show Business Weekly

Did you catch the great review of Frogs today on Show Business Weekly?

Frogs

By Carey Glitter

“Children have teachers to teach them; adults have playwrights,” says Aeschylus in Aristophanes’s Frogs. The statement strikes us as bizarre today, but it may not have seemed so unreasonable to Athenians in 405 BCE, when the play debuted. The idea of a whole society’s turning to its dramatists for moral and civic guidance was conceivable then. Fault Line Theatre’s energetic staging of Frogs strives to recreate that world.

Lest all of this sound too lofty, remember that this is a work of Aristophanes, which means that its elevated themes coexist with his signature brand of raucous comedy. The god Dionysus (Haas Regen), distraught over conditions in Athens, and the dearth of good poets there, ventures to Hades with his slave, Xanthias (Blake Segal), to find a dead playwright capable of saving the city. Their journey is filled with absurd set pieces, like the singing Frogs who exasperate Dionysus on his ferry ride to the underworld, and lots of scatological humor (“My … cup runneth over,” he says after soiling himself out of fear).

Fault Line Theatre’s mission statement identifies the company’s chief principle as fidelity to the text. This may account for the production’s most notable quality: its earnestness. No ironic commentary or radical interpretation here—just a straightforward, enthusiastic presentation of an ancient Greek entertainment. Under Aaron Rossini’s direction, this fresh-faced approach is ultimately winning.

Regen, as the effete and shallow Dionysus, and Segal, who channels an early twentieth-century slapstick comedian in his portrayal of Xanthias, work up an amusing master-slave rapport. The rest of the small cast do double duty in the many other roles. Karl Gregory’s austere Aeschylus and Craig Wesley Divino’s populist Euripides bring excitement to the poets’ contest that occupies the final third of the play: which dead tragedian will Dionysus take back to rescue Athens?

The showdown between the two playwrights is both the funniest and most stimulating section of Frogs. One gets to see the great Aeschylus and Euripides behave like bickering children, as Aristophanes uses their conflict to air provocative questions about aesthetics and politics. The first two thirds of his text, which rely heavily on silly gags, aren’t nearly as compelling as the last.

Fault Line launched a year ago, and the group manages with the material resources it has. Tristan Jeffers’s simple set, featuring a wooden platform with a red curtain, links ancient comedy to a more recent, familiar form: vaudeville. The Frogs’ outfit—green bathing suit and cap, yellow goggles, brown flippers, orange arm floats—is the highlight of Allison Crutchfield’s varied costume design.

The folkish, upbeat original music by Eric Thomas Johnson suits the production’s good-humored spirit. Indeed, it’s odd, and weirdly novel, to see a show put together by young people who seem totally unconcerned with being hip or edgy or knowing. They just want to do right by Aristophanes. His 2,500-year-old comedy, if not always hilarious to us, holds historical and political significance, and offers a rousing climax and, yes, some laughs, too. Here’s a nice way to experience it.

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Frogs in The Happiest Medium

Our production of Frogs received a lovely review in The Happiest Medium!

Frogs – Ambitious, Auspicious and Amphibious

By Karen Tortora-Lee

Fault Line Theatre’s new production of Frogs - the Ancient Greek play written by Aristophanes – is reminiscent of Cupcake Wars.  Wait… stay with me here – I promise this will make sense in a second.  So, Cupcake Wars is all about taking the basic ingredients and saying “There … there you go.  You all have the same items.  Now go create something magical and wonderful that I would never have expected from this.  And make it radically different from the guy standing next to you”.   That’s the challenge of taking a play written in 405 BC and making it both exciting, relevant and modern while still keeping the time-honored tenets in tact.   Director Aaron Rossini and company not only succeed in creating something magical and wonderful, they excel.

The plot itself isn’t very complicated;  it begins with Dionysus (Haas Regen) and his devoted – if overtaxed – servant Xanthias (Blake Segal) hatching a scheme which involves Dionysus pretending to be his half-brother Heracles (Matt Clevy) in order to gain safe passage to Hades to bring Euripides (Craig Wesley Divino) back from the land of the dead. So, think Crosby and Hope in “Road to Hades” where the goal isn’t so much to get the girl in the end as it is to get the dazzling poet who (one hopes) will come back topside and make everything right because if there’s one thing everyone knows … the only way to stop civil unrest is with a poet.

Photo by Jacob J. Goldberg

There’s a lot of hijinx but really … let’s get to the part you’re waiting for.  I know it’s the part I was waiting for: the frogs.  Are there frogs?  Of course.  Frogs abound as Charon ferries Dionysus across the river and out they pop in their green glory with a chorus of Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax and all manner of instruments (ukulele, guitar, accordion) and soon there’s a rollicking good time as the troop in their emerald swimmies frolic around like a 1920s musical review while still holding true to the original theme.

And this is just the beginning of the romping.  Once Dionysus sets about making his way through Hades in search of Euripides the musical numbers  keep coming — and with all of the company doing double- and triple-duty as actors, singers, dancers and sometimes even musicians there’s no doubt that this talented bunch is both show-stopping as well as downright foot-stomping.  Each musical number is performed with incredible energy and conviviality; this is a likeable bunch and they win you over at every turn.  All the original music, by Eric Thomas Johnson, is catchy, upbeat and rousing. It moves the story along and gives it a playful and bouncy edge which is in perfect balance to the longer scenes which play out later.

Back to the story …

Once in Hades after more hi-jinx and switch-a-roos (and, I’ll admit, a few too many scatological jokes for my particular taste) we find that Dionysus has stumbled into a pre-existing mess … while unrest abounds up top seems like there’s a little rivalry going on down below as well.  Oh, this bickering.  Can’t it ever be escaped?

AEACUS: Fighting and arguing. Screaming and debating. There’s serious trouble among the dead at the moment … the best artist, best singer, best playwright, whoever is the best in each of the Fine Arts disciplines has the right to have his dinner or whatever in the Great Hall right up next to Pluto’s throne.

Euripides has only just died, but as the new kid on the block with a chip on his shoulder he sees no reason not to try and oust the (in his estimation) stuffy and overblown Aeschylus (Karl Gregory) from his place. Since Dionysus is down there to gain a poet, it’s only right that he watch the competition.  Sure, he came for Euripides but since there’s a competition going on anyway, maybe he’ll leave with Aeschylus instead. So, in essence, he becomes the guest judge on American Idol. (Or, you know … Cupcake Wars.)

Watching Aeschylus and Euripides verbally spar for the title was absolutely where Frogs turned the corner from delightful musical romp to brilliant theatre.  Just one would be fine but to have both in one evening is absolutely a gift to theatregoers.  Gregory’s Aeschylus is all pomp, circumstance and arched eyebrow … he’s got a smugness that you both want to revel in as much as you want to slap it off his face.  He’s like that showoff in class who always has his hand raised and while you’d rather have anyone but him answer the question you know he will give the most eloquent answer.  Of course, this is exactly Euripides’s issue:

From beginning to end, it’s gibberish … Scamanders, sepulchers, bronze-clad vulture-eagles, words like the wall of a fortress, impossible to batter your way into.

Divino’s Euripides is much smoother.  Still full of himself, sure, but in a 60s jazz hipster poet hep-cat way.  He’s rebellious, questions authority, and it is this exact behavior that Aeschylus feels makes Euripides unfit.

AESCHYLUS: Decent women, married to decent men driven to suicide in your plays.
EURIPIDES: Did I invent the story of Medea? Phaedra?
AESCHYLUS: No, but you put them onstage. Didn’t hide them. Children have teachers to teach them, adults have playwrights. We must set good examples.

All turtleneck and leather jacket, Euripides acts like he couldn’t care less but of course he couldn’t care more about this competition.  He needs to win.  He needs to have his words be deemed weightier (which is how they are being measured, and which is how, ultimately, the competition is to be won).

Dionysus is at odds:

 “I don’t know what to do. I like them both so much. I want to be friends with both of them. How am I to judge? How can I? One is so clever, the other so satisfying. One a master, the other I just love.”

Well, you know, we’ve all been torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool … you’ve got to choose.  And he does of course.   I won’t give the ending away … (It’s a 2500 year old play, but still, I’ll play along) but suffice it to say, Dionysus leaves with his poet and the chorus asks “Let his majestic brain help us end war and pain.”

From start to finish the entire ensemble is winning; while the main characters certainly steal the show at times there is no doubt that without the buoyancy of the hugely talented group creating a full, rich night this would be quite a different piece.

Fault Line Theatre is both a relatively new as well as a relatively young company but beyond a doubt they have a clear vision, a strong voice and a talented ensemble. After seeing Frogs I look forward to more productions.

~~~

Frogs
Written by Aristophanes
Directed by Aaron Rossini
Fourth Street Theatre
83 4th St. (b/t 2nd Ave. and Bowery)
November 4—19, 2011

Click here to Buy Tickets or call 212.868.4444

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Frogs in Blog Critics

We're so happy Blog Critics like our production of Frogs! Check out the review from today.

Frogs - Who Needs Euripides?

By Kate Shea Kennon

Apparently there is a classics craze going on in Manhattan these days, a Greek one. Perhaps in reaction to real world economic issues, we find solace and strength in old world masterpieces;The Iliad prepares to wage war at the New York Theatre Workshop, and Lysistrata opens up on Broadway as a musical. And speaking of Aristophanes, because, really aren’t we always when it comes to comedy, it became very clear during the croaking of the Frogs, a rarely produced comedy, that the Fault Line Theatre Company is making an impact in the cacophony of off Broadway theatre companies.

Although only in its second production, Fault Line, through ambition, talent and dare I say a dramaturg, is taking some old routines and never failing as the first line of Frogs goes. Their first effort was Doctor Faustus to a great reception. This time around is something only less weighty in that it is a comedy. But remember, comedy is hard! Musical comedy is even harder: “What do you do when the good comics are gone and the present ones are dim” and the European Union teeters? Sing and dance.

The basic plot of Frogs (sometimes called The Frogs) in case you missed that day of Greek Civ in college: the god Dionysus, who we usually think of as being the deity of drunkenness, puts on his crocus yellow scarf to be the god of drama. He tries to rescue the playwright Euripides from Hades (the afterlife) to “pull off some dirty work” as the Fault Line loosely translated text explains. The dirty work in question is rescuing Athens in the Peloponnesian war – heavy lifting for a playwright to try and stop the downfall of one of Western Culture’s great democracies (Are you busy in Heaven right now, Mr. O’Neill?)

Dionysus is played by the entertaining Haas Regan (above, rowing, with Craig Wesley Divino as a demonic Charon) whom I saw as a memorable Lady Bracknell a few years back. There is an archness to this performance, indeed to the whole production, but then again, this is a play with an undue amount of flatulence jokes, enough to make Two and a Half Men seems like a somber study in behavioral science. Perhaps archness is just what’s needed to balance out the scatalogical references.

The comic journey of god and servant (the mere mortal Xanthias played by the divine Blake Segal) culminates in the land of Pluto (Scott Raker) where a contest brews between the talents of Euripides and Aeschylus. Imagine, if you will, an Ancient Greece Has Talent and it’s all down to two playwrights. Sophocles, probably the playwright that is most well known to a modern day audience, is not invited into the verbal brawl because his resurrection would inconvenience his struggling writer of a son. Talk about the anxiety of influence.

Karl Gregory is the yummy character of Aeschylus. Aeschylus would probably not want to be described as yummy but his pomposity is delicious comic fodder, just ask any fan of Monty Python’s stuffy bureaucrats. Craig Wesley Divino is a yummier Euripides – all leather jacket and long Tom Brady hair with the added conceit of a Williamsburg inhabitant. The contest comes down to whose words are weightier, and to quote the playwright, I couldn’t stop laughing although I was biting my lip in two.

The rest of the cast includes a realistically substantial Heracles (Matt Clevy), Rachel Christopher as a Frog which isn’t as dubiously amphibious as it may sound, Rebecca Gibel as the Landlady, and Rudi Utter as Aecus, a kind of groundskeeper for Pluto. All work well together as a chorus whether amphibian or as the well-fortified Bacchanalians.

Making Frog into a musical has been done before. There is a Sondheim version with typical Sondheim music, something along the lines of Out of the Styx. Frankly, no matter how much that version protests, there is nothing adorable about Sondheim’s frogs. Here they actually are adorable: green Speedos, yellow goggles and fins. Comedy is hard to repeat myself, but it’s harder to dance in fins. The original music, by Eric Thomas Johnson, is pleasantly familiar in a show tune way but not cloying or cliche.

Under the direction of Aaron Rossini, who along with Mr. Divino and Tristan Jeffers are Fault Line’s originators, Frogs has lots of relevant, seemingly modern touches. Many of the cast and crew are recent graduates of Brown University’s Trinity Rep. While there, did they see “The Younger Generation, Scribbling away, churning out plays by the hundreds of thousands. Miles more words to the minute than Euripides.”? Is this the twitter generation that Aristophanes refers to?

I don’t even need 140 characters to say it: The Fault Lines’ Frogs. I’m mad for it.

Frogs runs through Nov. 19 at the Fourth Street Theatre. Photo Credits by Jacob J. Goldberg.

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Frogs is Open!!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re open! Weeks of hard work and collaboration on Frogs culminated in a great opening Sunday night. The cast and crew killed it, the audience was incredibly generous and our good friends at Stillwater Grill across the street provided a wonderful opening night party venue. It was truly a FROGTASTIC time. We couldn’t have asked for a better evening. Don’t fret if you missed us on opening because there are plenty of opportunities left to catch this amazingly talented ensemble in action! We play through November 19th.