All posts by Ruth Anne Baumgartner

About Ruth Anne Baumgartner

In love with the stage since playing "Lettuce" in the famous Salad Skit in fourth grade. Nonprofessional, college, and professional experience in acting; extensive experience as a singer; nonprofessional and professional experience in directing, especially Elizabethan and Jacobean plays; experience painting sets, building props, and building costumes. Sometime playwright. Member (past president), Board of Directors, Town Players of Newtown; Member (current president), Board of Directors, Westport Community Theatre. Forty years experience teaching at the college level (English literature, writing, and theater).

Rise and Fall, March 10 @ 8:00 pm

ETC Performances, In Production

FREE to the public! No reservations necessary.

Westport Community Theatre is presenting an original workshop production of a new play, Rise and Fall,  by noted media personality and former Westport resident, Eric Burns. Rise and Fall takes place on March 10th at 8 p.m. The one-night staged reading is part of WCT’s ETC staged reading series.

 

Rise and Fall

Playwright Eric Burns, Directors Lori Holm and Rachel Babcock, Producer Cindy Hartog

The March 10 reading is free to the public and includes a talk-back with Burns after the play, along with a dessert reception. It utilizes the talents of two directors new to WCT, Rachel Babcock and Lori Holm, and is produced by WCT board member and Westporter Cindy Hartog. The cast includes Westport residents Deanna Hartog, Danielle Hartog, and Ann Kinner, as well as Damian Long, Jeff Pliskin, and Cooper Ramsey.

Eric Burns, a well-known American author, media critic and former broadcast journalist, has won major awards in three different genres of writing. As an NBC correspondent in the 70s and 80s, he was named one of the best writers in the history of broadcast news by the Washington Journalism Review. A few years later, he won an Emmy for media criticism and his first play, Mid-Strut, won the prestigious Eudora Welty Emerging Playwrights Award.

His most recent book, Someone to Watch Over Me: A Portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt and the Tortured Father Who Shaped Her Life, soon to arrive in bookstores, has already received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. 1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar, was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2015 and two of his earlier volumes won the highest award possible for academic press books, being named the “Best of the Best” by the American Library Association.

Burns’ Rise and Fall is the unusual tale of the marriage between Jake and Suzanne Hollander, two successful, literate people who, at Suzanne’s insistence, end their union after thirty-five years. Some scenes break the time barrier and include the young, newly wed versions of the Hollanders, subtly planting the seeds of their eventual dissolution as they revel in love, lust and parenthood. The young Suzanne and Jake also meet the older versions of themselves, and, at times in the play, Jake, a historian, addresses his students (the audience) directly about events of the past, subtly managing to introduce scenes about his marital woes.

Rise and Falll

Danielle Hartog, Damian Long, Deanna Hartog

Rise and Fall also cleverly becomes a play within a book. The Hollander’s son Robby, having slammed against the wall of writer’s block after a highly regarded first book of his own, decides to tell the story of his parents’ break up, writing a book called Rise and Fall as the break-up unfolds on stage. The seriousness of the plot, which includes a tragic surprise at the end of each act, is leavened by a number of laughs that defuse the tension.

We look forward to having you join us!

 

 

 

Director’s Diary: Souvenir, part 1

In Production

With The Crucible closing in one more week, I’m turning my attention to the play I’ll be directing, Stephen Temperley’s Souvenir. It’s a new kind of show for me, but one that has already grown very close to my heart.

All my life I’ve toyed with the dream of becoming a professional singer—the latest iteration is blues, crooning in a dim club, my chiffon scarf floating behind me, my pianist and I communicating constantly, eye-to-delighted-eye. My sister and I used to make up operas (and languages!) and perform them dramatically to the bathroom mirror. As a child and as a teenager I sang in church choirs; in high school, college, and graduate school I was a member of numerous singing ensembles. The gift of a guitar gave me hours of solitary delight composing and singing. I was a soloist in church and school programs. I was selected to be part of the New Jersey Opera Festival, a state-wide high school project, one year. In other words, I could sing. Correction: I CAN sing, and I love to sing.

But really, I think everyone can sing. And I think everyone should.

In grad school I had a friend who was completely tone-deaf as far as producing notes went, but a real lover of music…. In those folky days, just about every get-together eventually wound up with the guitars coming out and everybody singing; and when Michael sang, his head moved up and down in perfect pitch. Of course back in his growing-up years he had been one of the many kids kindly advised by the chorus director to “just move your lips, dear” so that the harmony of the tonally able would be unimpaired. But I loved hearing him sing “O Danny Boy”—his heart was in his voice, and his face was blissful. Isn’t that what music is for?

Florence Foster Jenkins

Florence Foster Jenkins

So Souvenir is about such a person. She wasn’t tone-deaf, but she was definitely tone-impaired; and the operatic coloratura she believed poured from her was actually watery in quality and accuracy. But she had money, and influential friends who encouraged her. And so she became a performer, donating the proceeds of her concerts to charity. From small private musical evenings to larger performances for invited audiences, she had the encouragement and accolades of her friends. And somewhere along the line there she acquired a piano accompanist who entered the partnership for the salary and stayed out of respect, admiration, protectiveness, and a kind of love. A record company invited her to make recordings. Her crowning achievement was a sold-out recital in Carnegie Hall.

Whenever she performed, what she heard was cheers and sobs of appreciation; what it was was stifled laughter, muffled laughter, screams of laughter. Her Carnegie Hall concert sold out, all 2000 seats, in two hours, and they all came to laugh.

This was Florence Foster Jenkins. Her accompanist was Cosme McMoon. Stephen Temperley has written what he calls “A Fantasia on the Career of Florence Foster Jenkins,” and I get to direct it; and I dedicate it to the proposition that everyone should sing.

The wonderful actress and singer Priscilla Squiers plays FFJ; actor, singer, and pianist Greg Chrzczon plays Cosme. The play is full of music, and the two cast members have been working on that part of it since January. Last week we began blocking the scenes and developing the characters.

We open the second weekend of April. The audience will laugh—the play invites it—but they will also come to understand, we and the playwright hope, a remarkable partnership and a voyage into the heart of music. At this moment in February, to quote Milton out of context, the world is all before us.

The Seafarer Director’s Blog #6: the fleeting joys of the performing arts

The Seafarer

It’s wrong to call a production like The Seafarer a “fleeting joy” except in the most literal sense, but this week that’s the sense I’m experiencing. Sunday was our last performance.

What makes the performing arts so special, of course, is the very thing that makes their joys ephemeral. They are real at the moment of performance, and they are about the moment of performance. In that moment, the script and the actors’ embodiment of the characters and the place and time created by the set and costumes and the mood created by the lighting coalesce with each other and with the particular energies of the people sitting in the seats, the audience, to make truth, reality, passion…to make theater. (I have played in orchestras and sung in choirs, and have been part of the audience of dance performances, and I know the same can be said of those experiences too, all the performing arts—but here I’m speaking specifically of theater. The others will have to speak for themselves.)

That’s why every performance is different, to a greater or lesser extent, from every other performance. The energies are different; different moments emerge more brightly or resonate more deeply as a consequence. Every performance is itself; after every performance, we say “Wow, that was exciting,” or “Act 2 just flew tonight,” or “I’ve never seen that look in your eyes before,” or “let’s keep that new gesture.” There were people who came to see our production of The Seafarer three or four times, and remarked on the different textures of the various performances.

The production as a whole is ephemeral, too, alas. Whether it’s a term production in a community or repertory theater, or a show that will run for as many performances as there are ticket sales, it will eventually come to an end. The intense world of the play, the passionate collaboration of the actors, will dissolve. The set will come down. The props and costumes will be cleaned, sorted, and stored. There is a kind of post partum depression that hits me at the end of a show. All this focused energy, all this purposeful activity, all this love, become a page that is turned. I step out of the theater and feel as though I’m stepping off an unexpected curb: Oh! Where am I?

Some actors will roll into another production almost immediately (our Mr. Lockhart, Will Jeffries, has already begun to prepare for his upcoming role in Death of a Salesman although it is several months distant); others will move back into their ordinary lives and try to catch up on various domestic or work projects that were put on hold for the duration of the show (I’ll grade some back papers and prepare to administer final exams, and think about trying to clean the house, for example). The family and friends we portrayed, the house they lived in, all vanish.

We held our closing party on the set, in the home of Richard and Sharky Harkin, where the poker games and the family arguments and the moments of despair and redemption had taken place. It felt like home. And then we packed our makeup kits and party leftovers and gifts…and drove off in the directions of our actual homes. There will never be this experience again. But there will be other experiences.

At the end of every production I’ve ever been part of, I think, well, this is one of the most wonderful experiences I’ve ever had. At the end of this one, though, I can say that I am certain this has been one of the most wonderful experiences I’ve ever had—possibly the most wonderful. I’m so grateful to everyone involved, and to Conor McPherson, that this could happen. Could have happened.

I don’t care how many theories are put forward about the “person who REALLY wrote Shakespeare’s plays”: they’re all a bunch of hooey. Only someone for whom the theater was the most intense part of his life could have written those plays. Only someone who knew the joy and pain of the ephemeral, living theater could have written this:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors
(As I foretold you) were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind.…

 

 

The Seafarer. Director’s blog #5: Ensemble

On Stage, The Seafarer
"The Seafarer" at Westport Community Theatre

Cast of "The Seafarer" at Westport Community Theatre

As I noted in my blog on auditions, I always say I cast “to ensemble.” That means I cast to get good combinations onstage, not to get a collection of shiny individual actors. One of the categories in the SAG (Screen Actors’ Guild) Awards is “best ensemble,” meaning best cast as a whole, and I think that’s a category that should be included for all awards.

The world of a play is just that: a world. The set is the physical expression of that world; the costumes reveal the time, place, and socioeconomic class of the world; the lights create its day, night, and shifting shadows. The sounds are its sounds, and the actors create its people. Some of those people may be loners or egotists, but the actors mustn’t be. After all, the characters in a play know each other in that world, have relationships, have reactions, have histories separately and together. A good ensemble cast communicates that collective reality to the audience and thereby makes the experience of the play real, credible, substantial.

I do what I can to foster a strong sense of ensemble (French, after all, for “together”) in every cast I work with. We talk together about the play, about the scenes, about the characters, about the relationships, about the emotional and narrative arc. We relax together as ourselves before and after rehearsals when time permits. The more the actors bring to this endeavor, the more interesting the rehearsals are, at least for me, and the more genuine the performance ultimately is.

I have always been fortunate in my casts. Perhaps the fact that I choose serious or otherwise significant plays draws serious and intelligent actors, people who are more interested in the work than in the social life offstage. Not that they’re not “fun” people; but my college theater director, David Brubaker, used to begin the first rehearsal of a play with this: “If you’ve come here to have a good time, please leave now. We won’t have a good time until the second performance. Before that, we work; and if we don’t work, we’ll never have a good time.” This is a good message for college students who aren’t theater majors: don’t horse around. But it’s the truth too, I do believe—except that working hard together on a worthwhile project is its own kind of fun. The process is fun, intellectually, emotionally, artistically, personally. Those are the kinds of actors I get, the ones who value that kind of fun.

I’ve worked with a lot of effective ensembles, but I have to say that the ensemble of The Seafarer is one of the very best. They respect, like, and support one another. They work out ideas together and show them to me. They give my ideas their serious effort. At rehearsals they seem both easy and intense with one another. And they all love this play and its world.

A lot of audience members have spoken with me after the show and specifically mentioned the actors as an ensemble. They’re drawn into the play because the actors so fully inhabit it as the people they embody. They express the characters’ relationships, affections, grudges, dependencies just as fully as they portray them as individuals. They’re alive up there all the time, expressing with subtle glances as well as larger gestures the characters’ inner lives, inner narratives, bonds. I’m crazy about them.

I hope everyone in the world sees this show. I think it’s very good. The script is strong; the story is compelling and real; the craftsmanship in the lighting, set, costumes, props, and backstage management is smooth, and so good it seems to just be.

And the ensemble, superb.

This is theater.

 

Director’s blog #4: “It’s a Theater Miracle!”

In Production, On Stage, The Seafarer, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

That’s one of my niece’s sayings. For many years in her childhood and early teens she spent a week to ten days with me in the summer, helping to get my summer show up. She learned to sew hems and buttons, to paint textures, to sponge paint on, to take rehearsal notes, to be “on book” for the actors, and to hold my hand when the amount of work remaining seemed impossible to fit into the tiny amount of time remaining. On opening night she’d smile and say, “It’s a theater miracle!”

The community theater “model” depends heavily on the work of volunteers, and thus depends heavily on the existence of a supply of volunteers. In the late ‘forties, ‘fifties, and ‘sixties, when community theater was in its heyday in the U.S., whole families participated in productions, with daddy on the building crew, the kids helping to manage the stage or run the lights, mommy in the cast…or daddy in the cast, mommy working on costumes, the kids doing gofer work…or any other of a large number of variations. Of course the company would also include retired professionals, college grads with extracurricular theater experience, and people new in town wanting to get involved in the life of the community.

Nowadays we’re looking at a different picture. If the kids have time left over from the organized activities designed to get them into a good college, they want a paying job. Mommy and daddy might also need to use their “extra” time to make some extra money, or their employers may expect more than 40 hours’ work a week from them. College grads and youngish adults who enjoy acting may be doing paid work as film extras or trying to break into professional theater. On top of that, there are more community theaters, at least in this part of Connecticut, than there used to be, so the people with time and energy to volunteer are hot commodities, with companies competing for their help.

That’s why so many community theaters find themselves scrambling for personnel, especially backstage personnel, when production time rolls around. Good designers and crews are hard to find.

I was lucky with The Seafarer to have a truly great set designer, Al Kulcsar. He’s done a lot of sets for shows of mine, and they are always genuine places of habitation for the characters in the play, inviting art works for the audience, and good working environments for the actors. He himself also acts (he’s in The Seafarer!) and directs, so he knows what the needs of a cast and a show are. I also was fortunate to have an offer from Jeff Klein to design lights. Jeff is both experienced and in demand, but what I prize most are his artistic eye and collaborative grace. He was inspired by one of the moments in the play to design a special lighting effect that deepens the emotion and effectiveness of the scene in a way that we could not have otherwise accomplished. And I had a wonderful costumer, in the person of Al’s sister, Mary Kulcsar. We’ve done more shows together than I can count, and it’s always a good experience. Rob Pawlikowski, also in the cast, collected and created necessary sound effects, something he is good at and enjoys. My young neighbor Gregory was also helping me at rehearsals, following the script for the actors and helping to deal with props.

Late in the process Joan Lasprogato stepped in to serve as producer for the show. I often work in tandem with my producer, because I like some of the tasks myself, but it’s great to have somebody good to oversee the whole endeavor, support the cast and me, supplement my efforts in the Props department, and sometimes just be there with a cheerful resourcefulness.

But ten days out, there we were. No Stage Manager. No one to execute Sound and Light cues. No one to run props during the show. Needless to say, those people are really important!

Cindy Hartog, who’s on the WCT Board, contacted me to say she could run props for some of the performances and her husband Marc could run lights and sound for those same performances. She also gave me the name of someone who might be able to do lights and sound for the rehearsals and other performances, Kristian Correa. Paul Lenhart came in and loaded the Sound cues and merged them with the Light cues Jeff had written so that everything could be run from one board, by one operator. Ray Stephens came in for some extra help with the board. Cindy also sent me Rachel Rothman Cohen to fill in on Props at the dress/technical rehearsals. And I woke up in the middle of the night just a few days before opening and exclaimed, “Ward Whipple!” Ward has acted in a few shows with me, and I’ve known him for many years. He had asked, when auditions were being held for The Seafarer, if there was anything I needed help with. Aha. I flew down to the computer and sent him an e-mail. He had never done backstage work before, but he said he’d give it a try. As it turns out, he seems to be a natural Props master, and he was able to fill almost all the gaps in the schedule. And then…we got Bethany Schalow. She was another “find” of Cindy’s. She has a solid theater education, good experience managing stage, and a calm and efficient demeanor. Best of all, she was available for most of our performances, plus our tech rehearsals.

So scant days before opening, I had nobody backstage, and now I have a competent and cooperative crew doing as wonderful a job backstage as my actors are doing onstage. The program had to be printed before many of these people materialized, so I wanted to be sure to celebrate them here.

Believe me, it’s a Theater Miracle.

P.S. Opening weekend went smoothly, with three fine performances presented to enthusiastic audiences and me thrilled in the shadows. Seven performances remain. I really think this is a production not to be missed.