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It’s June and love is in the air!
Most importantly, Fault Line Theatre producer Melanie Hopkins is getting married this Saturday and we couldn’t be happier for her. From everyone at Fault Line Theatre: Congratulations Melanie! Our last two seasons could not have happened without your unending dedication and calming presence.
Image courtesy of PlayCo.
You may remember Fault Line Theatre actress, Rachel Christopher, as the protagonist in our recent production of The Faire. Now, you can catch her on stage in PlayCo’s amazing new production of The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise. The play also stars friend of Fault Line Theatre Susannah Flood. The New York Times has already given them a rave review and called the production “splendidly cast” and “without a weak link”. The show only runs 65 minutes, so really there’s no excuse to miss it!
May 24 – June 29, 2014.
Jack
505 1/2 Waverly Avenue (between Fulton St. and Atlantic Ave.)
Brooklyn, NY 11238
“What I’m relating now, what’s going through my head, I have never told anyone before. It’s a secret, no one knows it. I will say what the secret is…”
From the writer and director of the 2010 PlayCo hit Enjoy, Sonic Life… probes the everyday lives of urban adults. Everything seems comfortable – jobs, relationships. But beneath the surface runs a powerful undercurrent of longing. Sonic Life… is a quirky, dreamlike and poignant theatrical experience from some of the foremost theatre artists of the US and Japan.
Nate Frieswyk at work on the set
Just a reminder that our friends at The Guerrilla Shakespeare Project begin the run of their latest show And To The Republic this evening. We were on hand earlier this week to help build the set and the set-up is already looking pretty amazing. Nate Frieswyk, our technical director last season, is pictured here putting the finishing touches on one of the steel doorframes.
Tickets and more information can be seen here.
Break a leg!
Photo and model by Tristan Jeffers
Tristan Jeffers, John Eckert, Chad Raines, and Izzy Fields, our outrageously talented designers from last season, took a moment to chat with Davi Napoleon at Live Design about their work with Fault Line Theatre. The result: a fantastic article that provides a glimpse into their masterful attention to detail and storytelling.
Image courtesy of The Guerrilla Shakespeare Project
The Guerrilla Shakespeare Project and Fault Line Theatre are thick as thieves. After attending the Brown/Trinity MFA program together, the founders of both companies have supported each other since day one in New York City. Members of the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project have appeared in shows with Fault Line Theatre and vice versa. They produce their own, can’t-be-missed, unique brand of Shakespeare classics (and his lesser known works!). Their latest show And To The Republic, an American political thriller created by mashing up The Bard’s famous Roman plays (Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Titus Andronicus) is opening soon… we’ve already got our tickets, have you?
May 24 – June 8, 2014
The WorkShop Main Stage
312 West 36th St. 4th Floor
New York, NY 10018
An American Coup D’Etat.
Our American republic has weathered political strife, assassinations, even a civil war.
But what if the conspiracy comes from the top?
It happened in Rome on March 15th 44 BCE, and the most powerful country on earth, a republic that had endured for more than four hundred years, slipped into the waiting arms of empire.
Are we really so different? Could it happen here? What better way to grapple with these questions than through the lens of the most notorious political killing in history and through the words of the greatest writer in history?
We’ve taken Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra to the chop shop, stripped them down, and rebuilt them from the ground up as a modern American political thriller, tossing in a few spare parts from Coriolanus and Titus Andronicus along the way.
It’s his language.
It’s our story.
Back in February, we invited a group of students from Young Playwrights, the only professional theater in the country “dedicated to identifying, developing, and promoting playwrights age 18 and under”, to attend our production of The Faire. A few weeks ago we received a parcel of beautiful letters from some of the students congratulating us on our run. We asked their permission to re-publish some excerpts from the letters here:
“All the characters were distinct and fresh, with pockets of wisdom from the most unexpected of them”
“Theatre should always be an enjoyment, and the Fault Line Theatre makes art so enjoyable. I hope to see many more shows at the Fault Line Theatre outside of Young Playwrights, but I am always glad when companies donate tickets to assist young artists along such as I. It is always appreciated, and such generosity should not go without notice.”
“I loved how timeless yet timely the story was.”
“Thank you so much for providing tickets to see The Faire. I don’t get to see theater often, so when I am able to it is always a treat. Writing plays can at times seem to be a process far removed from performing plays, when the keyboard and the screen are more important than the actors or stage set up. It is therefore refreshing and invigorating to see the lines of a script become sound out of an actor’s mouth. I always feel like my writing improves after seeing a performance.”
It’s been a magnificent run, but yesterday afternoon Breathing Time was performed one last time at IATI Theatre. Within a few hours, the set had been removed and there remained little physical evidence of what had occurred.
The other night, I was speaking with a friend of mine who is also a talented and seasoned actor. He said that part of what makes plays so beautiful is the sheer fact that, unlike films, they do not last forever. They are an evanescent collaboration. An emotional, temporary shared event between artists and audiences. They are precious because they do not linger.
On a personal note, it’s been an absolute joy and privilege to work each and every day for the last few months with the artists who brought Breathing Time to life; I’d be hard-pressed to find more talented and hardworking actors and designers. Under the generous guidance of our fearless director Aaron Rossini and our new friend and playwright Beau Willimon, Breathing Time leapt off the page with honesty and clarity.
And with that, Fault Line Theatre’s 2014 Season has come to a close. Though it’s hardly been 24 hours since the metaphorical curtain has closed on Breathing Time, we’re already hard at work preparing next season and are excited to keep you posted as new developments arise! So stay tuned. Stay in touch. And stay excited!
Here we go!
It’s the last week of performing Breathing Time off-Broadway at IATI Theater. I got to the theatre a little early today so snapped this picture of the backstage area where Craig, Whitney, and myself await our entrances. It’s not much to look at, but hey, it’s cozy!
Only one week left to check out Breathing Time by Beau Willimon (creator of House of Cards). Use the discount code FRIEND for $15 off ticekts
We love our Shakespeare. We also love when Shakespeare is done by companies we love! Conveniently, Happy Few Theatre Company is mounting a contemporary adaptation of As You Like It at Theatre Lab. It only runs Thursday-Sunday each week in April, so don’t delay and “Come hither, come hither, come hither.”
April 10 – April 27, 2014 (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday only!)
Theatre Lab
337 West 36 St., 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10018
Set in a contemporary world, this production takes a fun, fresh look at Shakespeare’s timeless comedy about love, transformation and the roles we play. Rosalind, the daughter of an exiled Duke, falls in love with Orlando, who is downtrodden by his elder brother. The two separately flee the watchful, media-saturated world of the court, seeking refuge in the Forest of Arden. But when Rosalind, now dressed as a man to protect herself and her cousin Celia, bumps into Orlando, their courtship becomes a game that subverts traditional romance.
An ensemble of seven actors explores this vibrant story of power, freedom, rural and urban communities, and intersecting sets of lovers—with more than one gender-bending twist! The production uses video and live original music both to explore what is ageless and what is contemporary in how we tell stories and to provide a thoroughly entertaining evening for audiences of all kinds.
Image courtesy of Nathaniel Bell/Netflix
Check out this excellent interview with Breathing Time playwright Beau Willimon in The Wall Street Journal today!
By Barbara Chai
Long before Beau Willimon became a showrunner of the hit Netflix series “House of Cards,” he was a playwright.
He wrote the 2008 political drama ” Farragut North ” (later adapted into the film “The Ides of March”) and followed it with “Breathing Time,” a play about two bankers sharing a Financial District office and the fateful events that lead their family members to meet in search of answers three weeks later.
Mr. Willimon completed the first draft of “Breathing Time” in 2004 and workshopped it around the country over the next few years. It is now being staged by the Fault Line Theatre, its first full production.
“The most I’d ever done was folding chairs and collapsible tables in rehearsal rooms,” Mr. Willimon said of “Breathing Time.” “They got the play. They had a vision for it.”
From his “House of Cards” writer’s room, coincidentally in the Financial District, where “Breathing Time” takes place, Mr. Willimon spoke with the Journal about both “House of Cards” and “Breathing Time.” Edited excerpts follow.
Unlike “Farragut North” or “House of Cards,” “Breathing Time” isn’t about politics. What inspired it?
The original seed for the play was a banker that I knew. There was a speakeasy I used to go to on Second Street in the East Village, an honest-to-God speakeasy where you had to knock on the black door, and the guy who ran it was a former mob guy.
There was this banker that I knew, he was a friend of a friend. I really only ever hung out with him when he was there, and he was the sort of guy that would talk your ear off for a couple hours.
He knew how to spin a yarn and was this tornadic-life-force individual, so I would get to chatting with him. He would go on these long monologues about whatever was passing through his mind in a given moment.
I think that’s where the character of Jack started to formulate. You don’t have a play if there’s no one to speak to, so I simply had him walking into an office hung over and beginning his day with his co-worker, who immediately presented himself as someone who’s the polar opposite.
Is it challenging to dramatize a workplace and the relationship between colleagues?
Minute human behavior and the rhythm of dialogue in and of itself provides a structure that can be compelling and balletic. There’s something really wonderful about seeing two people in a space that they’re so familiar with, in the midst of a relationship which already has its own contours, and dropping into it as though you’re a fly on the wall.
I simply had to keep tabs on the reality of that space, that there’s just two desks. That one guy is hung over, and the other guy is an early bird. And pay attention to the truth of the geography of that room, of where they are in their bodies, and who they are as people, and simply record.
Part of the joy of it was letting them go and letting them enjoy each other’s company or letting moments of silence sit there the way they do in real life. The naturalism of all of that is as compelling as staging a big battle scene in Shakespeare, if it’s done right.
Shifting to your other major project, did your “House of Cards” team have regrets about killing off Kate Mara’s character?
None whatsoever. I knew I was going to do that in the first episode of season two, well before I even started writing season one. Kate knew it too. This is before we had even cast the character. It got harder, of course, to stick to one’s guns. We all loved Kate, but we felt if we retreated from the original plan, became precious about our characters, then we weren’t being truthful to the story of Francis Underwood.
What’s the status of season three?
We’re several months into the writing process, and in a few more months we’ll begin filming.
Does the show have many more places to go now that Underwood is president?
There’s only one way to find out, right? I don’t talk about any upcoming seasons.
Do you keep viewers’ habit of binge-watching in mind as you make the show?
Yes and no. Honestly, the writing of the show is no different than if it were released week to week. The reason for that is because a lot of people don’t binge-watch. A lot of people watch one episode here, one episode there.
So it has to be able to work both ways, as a binge and as something that a person could watch over the course of weeks or months. You can’t write toward the binge, at least not for a serialized narrative like ours.
At the same time, we sometimes have faith that our audience will remember something from several episodes ago that we don’t feel the need to constantly hit on and remind them of if you were releasing it week to week.
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