Video Update #2

Last week, Matt Clevy and I rented a car and took a road trip to Ithaca, NY to attend the opening night performance of From White Plains at The Kitchen Theatre.

We present, another Fault Line Theatre video update documenting our journey.

An Interview With Crystal Finn

Even though From White Plains is still enjoying it’s critically acclaimed run at The Kitchen Theatre, there are still plenty of developments with our upcoming production of The Faire (coming in February of 2014).  Feel free to check out our The Faire show page for updates on the production as they develop.

Additionally, I sat down with Crystal Finn, playwright of The Faire, to chat a little bit about her work, her life, and working with Fault Line Theatre:

Tell us a little about The Faire and the inspiration behind it.

I spent a large part of my childhood at a Renaissance Faire, working with my parents selling pottery.  It was an early education in what theater is. Even as a very young kid you had a sense that this place was totally magical and totally absurd. I remember years later reading “Barthalomew Fayre”, the Ben Jonson play, and thinking: I know these people! I became very interested in the idea of a Fair as a kind of in-between place where normal social rules don’t matter. The setting in my play is not the literal Renaissance Faire I grew up in–it’s more of an imagined space.

Many people are familiar with your excellent work as an actor, but perhaps less so with your excellent work as a writer. Was writing something you found later in your artistic life or something you’ve been doing all along?

I was always very interested in writing and did a lot of it on my own. When I moved to New York I took a writing class with Tina Howe at Hunter college and she opened up my thinking about so many things.  She was the first person who I think instinctually knew that my writing was an extension of my acting–that they were part of the same muscle.  But writing is much harder than acting, for me.  You’re alone struggling with this thing–and the thing is basically you.  It’s terrifying.  But also rewarding because of that.

What was your most important discovery about The Faire that came out of the development process with Fault Line Theatre?

I learned so much about the tone of the play.  About how the style reads off the page. Mostly we focused a lot on the main characters journey–an actress who works at the Faire and wants to get out.  Aaron [Rossini, director of The Faire] and I talked a lot about how to make that character’s journey reflect the journey of the structure of the play as a whole. The process helped me make some crucial changes.

Your husband, Andy Bragen, is also a playwright. What’s it like having two playwrights in the house? Do you bounce ideas off one another or do you tend to keep to yourselves when you’re working on project?

We do bounce ideas off each other.  He is very supportive and I think has been the main person who has given me the confidence to keep writing.  He understands what it is to really wrestle with a play and that has been the best model for how to approach trying to do this.

What’s next for you? Do you have any plays that you’re currently developing?

I just finished a first draft of a play about two best girlfriends who are high school debate partners.  The play is interested in female friendship, which I guess is becoming a theme for me. I’m also trying to write this play about a dystopian future where nature has disappeared and some people get to live forever.  I think it might be as bad as it sounds. I have been too scared to re-read it.

October Video Update

We’ve been hard at work the last few weeks working on a new project with Michael Perlman, the director and playwright of From White Plains.

In case you missed it on our Facebook and Twitter pages, today’s blog post is a video update from Co-Artistic Director Aaron Rossini.

From White Plains (re)Opening

Today I’m up bright and early, ready to hit the road towards Ithaca, NY with Matt Clevy, Fault Line Theatre’s Director of Communications.  After several weeks of rehearsal and months of planning, From White Plains begins it’s latest reincarnation at The Kitchen Theatre with the same cast and design team from our previous run in New York City.

Tonight, Matt and I will be attending the opening performance and reception. I’ve seen this show close to 100 times (literally), yet each time I see it I discover something new: sometimes I’m moved by an unexpected moment, other times a passage of writing jumps out at me in a way I never noticed.  I think that is one of the joys of great theatre: when all the elements of drama (acting, design, writing, etc.) are functioning together cohesively to tell a poignant story, it can never get old.

Happy opening!  And I’ll see you in Ithaca!

From White Plains is back...

Welcome to the shiny, new Fault Line Theatre website!

Though the website lay dormant for the last couple months, we certainly have not.  There’s so much to talk about, but it seems fitting to begin right around where we left off…

Almost 18 months ago (back when I was still an intern), I sat in a small rehearsal room in Downtown NYC with the cast and creative team of what would become From White Plains for the first time. Michael Perlman (our fearless director and playwright) had brought along nothing but a few pages and some ideas about where they would go. We were set to open in just over a month.

As many of you know, the rest is history…

The run at La Tea Theatre in June of 2012 was an incredible success and the remounting at the Pershing Square Signature Center brought the show to an even wider audience.

In my opinion, the process of writing is almost an impossibly magical task; a writer must conjure characters out of thin air.  Until these characters are embodied by actors, they exist only on the page and in the minds of those who read the play. By developing From White Plains with the actors and designers in the room from nearly Day 1, we were able to literally see the characters take shape in reality, rather than in our heads. The actors and the characters they played were in a dialogue with one another, each influencing the actions of the other. The task became not figuring out who these characters were, but instead, what would these people do if placed in these circumstances. The process felt immediate. A thousand versions of From White Plains were staged in that rehearsal room and it was the job of the artists to filter, distill, and decide which version told the clearest, most necessary story.

So where are we now?

It’s been 7 months since From White Plains closed at the Signature Center. Our goal in producing this show (as with any show) has been to share it with as many people as possible. We feel that it tells a story that needs to be heard at this moment in time. We feel like it shows the grey areas of an issue many people paint black and white… And we’re thrilled that audiences who have seen it feel the same way.

From White Plains now has a life outside of New York City.  A remounting of the show, with the same cast and crew as our NYC production, opens THIS WEEKEND at The Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY.  In February, Fault Line Theatre Co-Artistic Director Craig Wesley Divino (who normally plays the role of John in the show) will be directing a production at Xavier University.

Productions of the play are also being produced by other companies across the country.  The show can be seen in Chicago and Boston in the coming months (as well as other cities to be revealed soon…).

If you find yourself in Ithaca between now and November 11, head over to The Kitchen Theatre:

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE!

What We're Seeing: Grasses of a Thousand Colors

Artistic Associate and co-founder of Fault Line Theatre Tristan Jeffers has assisted set designer Eugene Lee on Grasses of a Thousand Colors by Wallace Shawn, a co-production between The Public Theatre and Theatre for a New Audience.  The play is part of a retrospective celebrating the 40 year artistic collaboration between Wallace Shawn and André Gregory that also includes the first New York revival of Shawn’s The Designated Mourner.

October 7 – November 24, 2013.
The Public Theatre
425 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10003
212-539-8500

A LITTLE ABOUT THE PLAY

Shawn’s most outlandish work to date, GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS, is a disturbing and anomalously beautiful play that explores the role of human beings in nature and the role of nature in human beings, sexuality being as Shawn says, “nature’s most obvious footprint in the human soul.” The play’s central character is a doctor who believes he has solved world hunger when he figures out how to rejigger the metabolisms of animals to tolerate eating their own kind. This has unexpected consequences. The play tells a story about the doctor, his wife, and his lovers, that is also a story about human beings and animals and the planet we live on.

CAST:

• Julie Hagerty
• Emily Cass McDonnell
• Kristina Mueller
• Wallace Shawn
• Jennifer Tilly

PRODUCTION TEAM:

• Playwright - Wallace Shawn
• Director - André Gregory

4th of July

From everyone here at Fault Line Theatre, have a glorious Independence Day!

Happy Canada Day!

“I’ve been to Canada, and I’ve always gotten the impression that I could take the country over in about two days.”

- Jon Stewart

As the lone Canadian in Fault Line Theatre, I just wanted to wish everyone a very happy Canada Day, especially to those fellow Canadians who couldn’t be at home celebrating with us in the Great White North!

What We're Seeing: rogerandtom

Our friends at Personal Space Theatrics present Julien Schwab’s critically acclaimed, mind-bending comedy rogerandtom on the Mainstage at HERE for an extended summer engagement. rogerandtom is a comedy whose only boundaries are between imagination and infinity. The play uses a twist to challenge the conventions of theatre while raising a series of profound questions about the role of theatre in theatre itself. PREVIEWS BEGIN SATURDAY JULY 6TH, OPENING SATURDAY JULY 13. Join them for an opening night reception immediately following the performance. Half price tickets available during previews July 6 – 12 use promo code “Preview2013″. Here are some more details about the show:

July 6 – August 24, 2013.
HERE MainStage Theatre
145 6th Ave. (enter on Dominick)
New York, NY
212-352-3101

Fault Line Theatre mailing list subscribers receive a $10 discount on tickets!

CAST:

• Suzy Jane Hunt*  (Dead Accounts)
• Eric T. Miller*  (Sweet Storm)
• Richard Thieriot*  (Clybourne Park)

PRODUCTION TEAM:

• Playwright - Julien Schwab
• Director - Nicholas Cotz
• Stage Manager - Taylor Alyssa Marun*
• Scenic Design - David Esler
• Lighting Design - Nastassia Jimenez
• Sound Design - Chris Rummel
• Costume Designer - Holly Rihn
• Properties Design - C. Alexander Smith
• Production General Manager - Rachel McMullin

*Appears courtesy of the Actor’s Equity Association

 

• Nicholas Cotz – Artistic Director
• Mel Wadle – Production Director
• Jacob Boller – Marketing Manager
• Ethan Van Auken – Business Manager

A LITTLE ABOUT THE PLAY

Julien Schwab’s rogerandtom was first produced by Personal Space Theatrics in 2003, as the company’s inaugural production. Since then, the show has been produced in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, at the Edinburgh Fringe, and, most recently, at the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre at HERE. Director Nicholas Cotz has worked with Schwab on many versions of the show, helping him polish the script and preparing it for its return to NYC.

“The writing and direction is brilliant and the production is flawlessly executed. I highly recommend checking this one out before it slips into a reality that we’re not privy to.”

- NYtheater.com

Samuel Beckett and Andre the Giant

A couple fun facts about Samuel Beckett to get you through to the end of the work day:

First, Fault Line Theatre co-artistic director and co-founder, Craig Wesley Divino, has a framed quote from the famous playwright in his New York apartment. The quote reads:

“Ever tried.  Ever failed.  No matter.  Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.”

Second, I came across this article today by James Plafke at geekosystem.com about the unlikely friendship between Beckett and Andre the Giant.

“We don’t normally post many “today I learned” posts, but this one is just too awesome. Anyone who has ever watched wrestling back in the good ol’ days or has seen The Princess Bride knows that André the Giant was a massive, humongous — ahem, giant — guy. The famous Hulk Hogan was billed as 6 feet 7 inches tall, and everyone should remember this iconic moment between he and André, in which André made a guy who billed as the average height of an NBA player look tiny. When André was 12, he was already over 6 feet tall and weighed 240 pounds. He was too big to fit on the local school bus and his family didn’t have the money to buy a car that could deal with his weight if it drove him to and from school.

Samuel Beckett, Nobel Prize winner (literature) and esteemed playwright, probably most noted for Waiting for Godot, bought some land in 1953 near a hamlet around forty miles northeast of Paris and built a cottage for himself with the help of some locals. One of the locals that helped him build the cottage was a Bulgarian-born farmer named Boris Rousimoff, who Beckett befriended and would sometimes play cards with. As you might’ve been able to guess, Rousimoff’s son was André the Giant, and when Beckett found out that Rousimoff was having trouble getting his son to school, Beckett offered to drive André to school in his truck — a vehicle that could fit André — to repay Rousimoff for helping to build Beckett’s cottage. Adorably, when André recounted the drives with Beckett, he revealed they rarely talked about anything other than cricket.”

I think it’s safe to say we can now all rest easy knowing that Fezzik from The Princess Bride and the Irish eccentric who wrote Waiting for Godot were at one time close friends.

Happy Monday everyone!