Becca Weighs In on Day Three

Today was our last full day of rehearsal before opening tomorrow and needless to say it was an action packed and productive day.  My day began in a frenzy of baking several batches of cookies while scenes from “Taming of the Shrew,” “Twelfth Night” and “The Tempest” were rehearsed in the next room.  Then I had to quickly clean the cookie dough off of my hands and launch into rehearsal for my scene from Henry VI, part 1.  I have known our director Elizabeth and my scene partner, Matt Minnicino for five years now (wow).  So, while I’ve never acted with Matt and Elizabeth has never directed me, I have felt so comfortable in rehearsal these past three days.  Elizabeth knows me, and all my bad acting habits, so well that she is easily able point out what’s wrong and helps me fix it in a matter of minutes.

 Working on Miscalled Simplicity has felt a lot like coming home.  Yes, it’s been an opportunity for me to spend time with old friends, but I’ve also had the opportunity to work with several people I barely knew before now.  It’s been comforting to see this ensemble come together around a common goal and shared passion for Shakespeare.  I forget sometimes that this community is so strong and it’s always nice to be reminded  

Samantha's Take on Day Three

Today we had a cooking party! I walked into rehearsal and was greeted by the wonderful smell of baking chocolate chip cookies. We spent the day "being domestic" as Elizabeth put it and making delicious goodness for showcase guests. Some of them we have termed "crisps," as it is a more fitting label than "cookies," but we did take care of most of those to spare our attendees the crunch.

We began rehearsal today with a work-through of our opening scene (from Taming of the Shrew). Over the course of this rehearsal, which was all together too restrained at the outset, I was told to throw a temper tantrum, Mark was told to pick up Matt (but not like a princess, as was the original method), and Caroline was told to "act less." Ah, direction. All in all, it was an excellent time, and we actually had quite a bit more fun with that scene by the end of rehearsal than we had at the beginning.

Next came Twelfth Night: poetry, schmaltz, and guitar playing lulling melodies in the background. But with humor and invisible rose petals. After that, Adriana's monologue from The Comedy of Errors: Elizabeth and Becca worked on the extraordinarily rapid transition between Adriana vituperating her husband and pleading for his continued affection.

The Tempest scene was adorable. Elizabeth introduced us to the technical term for a theatrical illness: "the Disease of Pauses." She rapidly cured it and is sure to be known worldwide as a medical marvel within the coming decades.

We also picked our costumes today and did a stumble-through! The costumes took about fifteen minutes and were easy and colorful. The stumble-through also went amazingly smoothly, and we stopped only to plan entrances and exits. It took so little time that we were left with hours to figure out music to be used in the performance. Fiona Apple and others will be the basis for our serenades. :) Rehearsal ended on a musical and mellow note.

Day Two with Matt and Mark

MATT

I’m sharing today’s post with fellow Showcase-actor Mark Tucker.

I’m always fascinated by working with Elizabeth – this will be my third time and it’s always a great learning experience. Even for a process as short and as (comparatively) small-scale as this showcase, she insists on a high level of dedication to every line, movement, inflection, etc. while rehearsing. While working on a scene from The Tempest, Elizabeth goaded us (me and actress Caroline Brent, playing Ferdinand and Miranda respectively) to make honest discoveries about the characters and avoid the normal histrionics of Shakespeare. Elizabeth is always wary of actors working too much “in their heads,” which is something I think [and hope] any aspiring actor would appreciate. Rehearsal atmosphere with Elizabeth is always interesting and fun. By request, I won’t speak of some of the more amusing events of the day.

On a random personal note: it was strangely comforting to jump into a role I’d played before for Empty Chair (I was lucky enough to play Richard in Elizabeth’s Richard III in 2008). In the showcase scene from Henry VI, Part III, Richard is only a creepy bystander to the actual conflict of the moment, acted out brilliantly by Mark (as King Edward) and Lee Havlicek, but Elizabeth encouraged me to rehash the physicality she had dictated for the same character years ago, which was a way to instantly recreate the character. It was a nice stroll down memory lane.

 MARK

I’ll be finishing the second half of this wonderful shared blog post.  Today I worked on the Taming of the Shrew scene, with Samantha Sheahan and Caroline Brent.  We ran over it several times, really working on listening to each other.  As Matt already mentioned, we worked on the Henry VI, Part III and, despite me having an awful time listening to the simple direction of “walk here, now,” it went extremely well.  Lee, playing Lady Grey, was able to do some excellent scene work despite my bumbling around the space.  We also made decisions about four of Shakespeare’s beautiful sonnets, which we are incorporating into the Showcase.

While I wasn’t working on scenes, I had a wonderful time watching everyone act, direct, laugh, and occasionally cry (but only when the scene called for it.)  Every person working on this production loves the work we are doing, which makes watching everything come together, surprisingly quickly, an absolute treat. I’m sure everyone who gets the chance to come out to the Showcase will see all of the passion involved in the process appear on stage.

Women We Admire

Literary Associate Joan Cummins on the woman who inspires her: 

The woman who inspires me most right now in the theatre field is Monica Payne, a graduate student in directing here at UCLA. Intelligent, unafraid to stand up for herself, driven, and downright fiery, Monica makes me wish I had such steel in me. I really admire her ability to continue working until she gets what she needs, whether it's out of a curriculum that can be overly rigid, out of the production manager who insists there isn't space to do a pre-show warmup, or out of actors who are young and struggling. But within all that strength, there is a beautiful glowing heart, which leaves tendrils of light on those she connects to. She cares deeply for her actors, for her show, and for those around her. She offered to help me through difficulties I'm currently having with the curriculum, extending a hand of care and friendship which has been extremely valuable to my psyche, if nothing else.There is such grace within her, accompanied with such strength. She is also immeasurably talented as an artist, and I look up to her as a model for being a woman in the arts who can create, and do so successfully, with passion, confidence, and drive. Monica is the kind of woman that makes womanhood worth celebrating.

 

Some pages and some pillows: Day One in Showcaseland

Hi everyone! This is Katie Logan. I am the Director of Education for Empty Chair, and I'll be posting sporadically this week to give you an observer's perspective on all that's unfolding in rehearsals for the showcase. Here's a taste of today's rehearsals:

The proceedings would have startled any visitor to the rehearsal: actors with pillows in hand pummeling a couch. Wallops, whacks, and womps ensue for several minutes before the cast, breathing a bit more heavily, resumes its work on a scene from Henry VI, Part 1. 

The slumber party-reminiscent warm-up was not the only unusual part of today’s preparations for the Minds Wide Open showcase, opening on Thursday night. The cast doesn’t get into the space until a few hours before the first performance, so rehearsals spaces are more makeshift--the great outdoors (when it doesn’t rain), a cozy living room. Without a formal space or elaborate props, the rehearsal I watched today focused on the most important tools we have at our disposal as a young company of good friends--our curiosity about powerful pieces of text and our respect for one another’s talents. As Empty Chair has spent the last year dreaming and reaching bigger, today’s work, all the laughter and discussions, felt like a return to our roots. The energy bouncing off the walls (and off the couches in the form of fluffy pillows) bodes well for the rest of the week. 

Look for my posts later in the week!

KML

Day One, An Actor's Perspective

Company member Samantha Sheahan discusses her first morning of rehearsals for the showcase:
"Today began with rehearsal for The Taming of the Shrew. I'm playing Kate (Katharina), Mark is Petruchio, Caroline is Hortensio, and Matt is our Vincentio. After trying the scene for about two minutes, Elizabeth had me play one of her favorite "games," soon to be a feared activity for me. She had me hit the couch on her porch with a pillow, with all my strength, until I was "more on my breath." Well, I was definitely out of breath when I finished. Then we could actually start rehearsing. The scene we're doing, 4.5, is all about Kate learning to play Petruchio's twisted game of manipulating the world to fit his fancies-- but learning how to play it in a way that is fun for her, too. Petruchio has to learn how to deal with Kate's way of playing. We spent about an hour trying to strike the balance between power struggle and play, and I think we got something fun out of it by the end.
     Next, we rehearsed Twelfth Night 2.4, a scene in which Viola, disguised as a male servant, pines after the Duke Orsino, and Orsino pines after Olivia, confiding his musings in his lovesick servant. This scene went much more quickly. My favorite moment was probably when we were debating what to do with an invisible rose on stage: should Matt (Orsino) pluck it, or just twirl his finger through the air and watch it spiral to the ground? Needless to say, we talked somewhat about the schmaltz and poetry of the scene. But there's also a great element of awkwardness to it, which brings out the comedy in a more obvious way."
We'll hear more from Samantha later in the week!

Meet an Actor: Matthew Minnicino

Full name: Matthew Isaac Minnicino

Born: October 27, 1989

School: University of Virginia, Class of 2012

Have you ever been involved with Empty Chair before this event?
Joined Empty Chair Winter of 2007 (acting and editing the Winter Season production of The Taming of the Shrew)


What about this project excites you?
I'm excited for this project because I usually hate things like this -- Showcases -- but I know that a company like Empty Chair will make it a unique, cohesive, and enjoyable experience like no other. More than that, I'm really looking forward to bonding with a cast of incredibly talented people I've worked with before, but in a closer-knit setting. And this is the first time I've ever done a show for a charity.


What pieces are you working on for the show?
Vincentio; Gloucester; Orsino; Suffolk; Ferdinand


What do you love about theatre? What does it mean to you?

For me, theatre has always been about relationships. Art, at its core, is the relationship between artist and concept, between concept and audience, between audience and artist. Theatre, one of the few truly fluid, living art forms, is the purest expression of the bond between the spectator and the creator. I believe that theatre is one of the purest things in the art world if properly executed, able to use either humor or pathos to pull outsiders into a completely different world in a way that other art forms can only do in varying degrees. When I try my hand at creating theatre, I always work towards building new and powerful worlds with characters and staging, exciting, dangerous, or simply absurd. The beauty of theatre is how alive it is, how much of a risk it takes by its very nature. Onstage, I am a firm believer that every gift that can be given or accepted should be, and actors, directors, and audience members should embrace the wild variables of breathing art with open arms.



Tell us a little about you:

I was born and bred in Leesburg, Virginia, lucky enough to be brought up by two people who loved theatre and art with the same passion that I do now. I started working with Shakespeare (at parental encouragement) very early on, and was acting in it voraciously by middle school. I consider my participation the American Shakespeare Center’s Young Company a turning point in my artistic life—after performing in it from 2005 to 2008, I began a much more serious pursuit of theatre and literature. I am currently studying English Literature (with a Shakespeare/Early Modern focus) and Theatre Arts at the University of Virginia.



Career highlights:
Directing The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), playing Richard in Empty Chair’s Richard III, playing Doctor Chasuble in a UVA student production of The Importance of Being Earnest, and a career-defining double-role as a female prostitute and a lecherous septuaginarian in the Young Company’s Henry IV, Part II, under direction of Benjamin Curns. I also enjoy long walks on the moonlit beach, with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and a copy of “Troilus and Cressida.”