Author: Barry Willis

Director Ron Howard has delivered a Thanksgiving gift to America’s most-forgotten and most-maligned people—poor whites—with his solid cinematic treatment of Hillbilly Elegy, based on the best-selling memoir by J.D. Vance. The film enjoyed its Netflix debut on November 24.

While Howard and screenwriter Vanessa Taylor have taken some liberties with Vance’s material—and of necessity, left out his observations and speculations about what ails the heartland—the book’s essential survival story remains intact: a poor kid with roots deep in the Kentucky hill country manages to overcome the soul-deadening effects of continually moving from place to place with his drug-abusing mother, and a childhood without a father or father figure—unless you count his mother’s nonstop parade of drunks, addicts, abusers, whackos, and losers.

The kid—J.D. Vance, played as an adult by Gabriel Basso, and as an adolescent by Owen Asztalos, both of them excellent—survives mostly by his wits, inspired by his mean-as-hell no-nonsense chain-smoking grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close), the counterbalance to his mother’s reliably erratic behavior. Unlike in similar stories, there are no kind-hearted coaches or teachers to intervene and help him along. Mamaw, in fact, seems to be his only guide, an unsteady one at best.

By sheer determination, young J.D. manages to overcome his family’s collective madness and the unhappy cycle of alcoholism/drug addiction/crime/jail that seems to be the fate of many of his high school classmates. He joins the Marines straight out of high school, does a stint in Iraq, completes four years of work at Ohio State University in only two, and wins admission to Yale Law School. It’s a story that would have critics leaping for new superlatives were it about a poor kid from a different background—one from a clearly oppressed minority, for example, whose against-all-odds triumphs are standard fare in film and television.

The fact that Hillbilly Elegy is about poor white people rather than poor people of color has apparently given some critics permission to be unfairly dismissive of this film. Poor white people are the last ethnic group that can be attacked with impunity, whose plight can be ignored without paroxysms of guilt. In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton sealed her fate with her characterization of such people as “a basket of deplorables.” Trump won the election the moment those words came out of her mouth. There’s nothing working-class people hate more than condescension from Ivy League elitists.

Those who disparage this film are doing so largely from Ms. Clinton’s perspective, a perspective shared by a trolling lawyer at J.D.’s first interview for a summer law internship: “rednecks,” he says without irony, categorizing an entire family and subculture.

J.D. Vance became a Yale lawyer without forgetting where he came from. Many commentators apparently have little experience of life in the rural South or in the towns of the Rust Belt, whose populations in the 1950s swelled with Southern immigrants who went north seeking opportunity.

…Poor white people are the last ethnic group that can be attacked with impunity, whose plight can be ignored without paroxysms of guilt…

The decline of such towns caused by sending industrial production offshore, compounded by the opioid crisis, is a theme examined in depth in Vance’s book, but merely implied in Howard’s film—actually all the better, as the film remains tightly focused on the personal story. In many ways, Hillbilly Elegy is a great companion piece to 2017’s The Glass Castle, with Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts.|

For those who understand its premise and background, Hillbilly Elegy is a compelling triumph-of-the-underdog story, shot mostly in Georgia, with only a few exterior scenes actually shot in Middletown, Ohio, an appropriately-named generic town built in the shadow of an ARMCO steel plant. Taylor’s screenplay honors Vance’s book without mirroring it, and Howard’s direction is solid if a bit heavy on flashbacks and parallel flashbacks.

Haley Bennett is understatedly consistent as J.D.’s long-suffering sister Lindsay. Amy Adams is a totally believable wonder as his way-out-of-control mother Bev. Veteran actress Glenn Close disappears so far into her character that she’s initially unrecognizable. Her astounding performance alone recommends this production—one that, like the book that inspired it, is good, not great, but nonetheless important.

“Hillbilly Elegy”

• Streaming now on Netflix
• Directed by Ron Howard.
• Screenplay by Vanessa Taylor, based on the book by J.D. Vance
• Starring: Gabriel Basso, Glenn Close, Amy Adams, Haley Bennett, Owen Asztalos, Bo Hopkins
• Run Time: 1 hr 56 min

………………………………………..

Ratings:

• Overall: 3.5 of 5 stars
• Performance: 4 of 5
• Script: 4 of 5
• Cinematography: 3.5 of 5
• Score: 15/20

ASR Executive Editor Barry Willis was born in Ashland, Kentucky, his family’s ancestral home in the coal-mining region near West Virginia. His maternal grandfather was a coal miner and worked at an ARMCO steel plant across the river in Ohio. Barry grew up mostly in small towns in Indiana and Ohio and spent fourteen years as a so-called adult in the Deep South. He is president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle and a member of the American Theatre Critics Association.

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Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

Our goal is not to subject you the reader to extended portentous sermons of the guest’s views on Russian translations of lesser-known Mamet flash drama (is there such a thing?)

Too often the people who guide and make theater in the Bay Area are behind the scenes — fast-moving denizens of the curtain lines who mumble into microphones while invariably (always excepting Carl Jordan’s beret collection…) dressed head-to-toe in black. These interviews allow you, the reader, to get to know these amazingly talented people a bit more, as…people.

Offering some personal and professional insights: with a heavy dash of humor, this is Aisle Seat Review’s Not So Random Question Time.

***

Among the North Bay’s most prominent and prolific theater artists is Dani Innocenti-Beem, a phenomenal singer and delightful comic actress known for her ability to melt hearts, rattle walls, and provoke uncontrollable laughter with her improvisations. Recipient of innumerable nominations and winner of multiple awards—SFBATCC, TBA, MTJA, and Artys included—Innocenti-Beem in normal times is booked eighteen months out and often performs in one show while rehearsing the next one. The entire North Bay theater community looks forward to a return to normal so that we can enjoy her onstage again.

***

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

DIB: I was ten years old. My mom and dad took me and my brother Marco to the Belrose Theatre in San Rafael where they had a show called Kids in Vaudeville, a showcase featuring kids 8-18 doing skits, songs, dances etc.

There was a young girl, I’ll never forget her name, Hathaway Pogue, who came out on the stage in her blue Gunne Sax dress, sat on a stool, and sang “Rainbow Connection.” In Act Two she came out in a brown Gunne Sax and sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I tugged on my mom’s arm and said, “I want to do that.” She signed me up for classes the next day.

ASR: What was the first play you performed in for a paying audience?

DIB: It was The Miracle Worker at the Belrose. I played a little blind girl. I remember getting my first note from Margie Belrose. It was a compliment and such a high. I very rarely do plays. Funnily enough, I did this play twice. In a high school production, I played Annie Sullivan.

ASR: How many theater companies have you been involved with?

DIB: In my adult life, probably 15.

ASR: Did you anticipate that you would become as successful as you have?

DIB: Am I successful? Certainly not in terms of money. In the North Bay, you don’t do this for the money. I have a 9-5 to pay the bills. I never thought about being successful. It’s just become who I am—it’s what brings me joy, what makes me me.

ASR: Do you have a special focus, i.e., genre/historical period, contemporary, experimental, emerging playwrights, etc?

DIB: Musical theater, of course! Give me a big broad musical comedy any day!

ASR: Who has had the largest impact on your professional development in theater?

DIB: Three people have really had a true impact on my journey. My father Ugo—I get my voice from him. He was in the boys’ choir in Italy growing up. He and my mother insisted on classical training, which gave me the voice I have today.

Second is my singing partner and friend Julie Ekoue-Totu. I am never more myself than when I am on stage singing with her.

The third is Carl Jordan, who was the first director to have faith in me and pushed me out of my comfort zone of comedy when he cast me as Shelby in The Spitfire Grille.

ASR: With the ongoing pandemic, it will likely be several months until theaters reopen. How are you coping with the shutdown?

DIB: In all honesty, it has been a struggle. My joy is gone. Postponed, or canceled. My other family, gone. That intimacy that only those in the theater understand, gone. Those moments that give you life on a daily basis, be it in rehearsal, or memorizing a line, or hitting that note right in the pocket, gone. I would have closed three shows since Covid started. I am struggling.

ASR: How do you envision the future for the theater community overall?

DIB: I would like to say I have an optimistic outlook but some days are harder than others. I have hope that one of these days we’ll get back to what we had, more or less. How many theaters survive will depend on just how long that takes.

ASR: What are some of your favorite dramas? Musicals? Comedies?

DIB: I spent most of my life being in shows rather than attending them, and those were 99.9% musicals. It is just in these last few years that I have been able to attend more theater and have started to broaden my knowledge.

So, from what little I have seen, my favorite dramas tend more toward the classics, such as Streetcar and Death of A Salesman, although I did very much enjoy the 6th Street Playhouse productions Faceless and The Revolutionists.

Comedies must really make me laugh out loud for me to truly enjoy them. A little chuckle won’t cut it. The Mystery of Irma Vep, Noises Off, and one that teetered between them both, Drumming with Annubis.

Musicals? Oh boy! The list is long for different reasons, from performing in them, to the score only, to being an audience member. Lumping them in the same list, a few would be: Gypsy, Into The Woods, Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, Hello Dolly!, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Man of La Mancha, Urinetown, Mame, Falsettos. I could keep going but this Q&A has to have an end sometime!

ASR: Name some all-time favorites that you have worked in.

DIB: Man of La Mancha—to be able to tell such a wonderful story, with a cast that was brilliantly talented, was tops for me for sure. Hands on a Hardbody—It felt like an honor to bring these real people to life. It spoke to our hearts as a cast.

Great American Trailer Park Musical—We had lightning in a bottle with that show. Everything clicked and it was the most fun I have ever had on a stage. Merman’s Apprentice—stepping into the shoes of Ethel Merman. Need I say more? Nunsense, in 1996—my castmates Julie Ekoue-Totu, Kayla Gold, Diana Bergala, and Gail Gongall, truly became my sisters and lifelong friends. I would not be who am I am in the theater without that show and those women.

…Great American Trailer Park Musical—We had lightning in a bottle with that show…

ASR: What are some of your least favorite productions? Care to share titles of those you would never do or never do again?

DIB: Expiring Minds Want to Know, a horrible little musical. Annie. I love the role of Miss Hannigan and loved my cast when I did it, but the show itself is not a favorite.

ASR: Which rare gems would you like to see revived?

DIB: Triumph of Love is such a gem. The Drowsy Chaperone is another one that is just pure fun and so rarely done.

ASR: What is Shakespeare’s most over-performed play?

DIB:  Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Yes, you shadows have offended, too many times!

ASR: If you had to do a whole season performing technical work—sets, lights, projections, sound, props, costumes—which would it be and why?

DIB: I would love to do props and set dressing. Creating the world the actors are playing in. Bringing a vision to life and making sure it keeps with the time period, aesthetic, etc. That would super fun and creative.

ASR: How do you warm up before a performance? How do you relax after?

DIB: I sing the show through in my car on the way to the theater. Warm up the voice in the shower of course. But other than that, I just try to relax and remember my lines. I like to get into the theater at least two hours before showtime. Just to be there and settle in. After the show, I enjoy a milkshake at Shari’s or Chinese food at Yet Wah or just hanging out in the lobby with the cast and some friends enjoying each other.

ASR: If someone asked to be your apprentice and learn all that you know, what three things would you tell them are essential?

DIB: Hmmm…

1. Be on time.

2. Be humble.

3. Be a team player.

ASR: What theater-related friendship means the most to you? Why?

DIB: Julie Ekoue-Totu, my singing sister. I have known her since 1989. She’s been my performing partner and my giggle gal all this time. She taught me how to take chances vocally and helped me tremendously in developing my style. She’s one of the most honest people I know. I trust her more than anyone else on that stage. She has had my back in so many ways over these years and I am forever grateful and will love her and sing her praises until my last note!

ASR: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen a guest do at the theater?

DIB: I was in the audience at Lucky Penny’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when three women got up and walked across the stage—actually through the scene, explaining to the audience why they were leaving (one of them wasn’t feeling well).

ASR: Do you have a “day job?”

DIB: Of course I do. I have to pay the bills and I am extremely lucky to have mine during this horrible time. I am an escrow officer.

ASR: Do you follow other arts—music, film, dance, painting/sculpture? Do you actively do any other arts apart from the theater?

DIB: No, not really. I appreciate art and enjoy listening to music but I am not a follower per se. When I am not performing I enjoy being with my family and my fur babies.

ASR: You discover a beautiful island on which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What are the first three rules you’d put into place?

DIB: Ahhh, here:

1. No cigarettes or cilantro.

2. Kindness is key.

3. Popular vote wins.

ASR: What would be the worst “buy one get one free” sale of all time?

DIB: A home enema kit.

ASR: You have the opportunity to create a 30-minute TV series. What’s it called and what’s the premise?

DIB: If All the World’s a Stage, I Want My Own Damn Dressing Room, a show about the lives and times of a regional theater group of course!

ASR: If you were arrested with no explanation, your friends and family might assume you had done what?

DIB: Beaten up someone who was being cruel to animals.

ASR: What three songs are included on the soundtrack to your life? And why each?

DIB: Soundtrack? That is tough. I have certain artists or songs from my childhood that will always be on repeat in my heart. Those tunes you go to when you need a lift. Does that count? Narrowing them down to three? Hmmm?

Luciano Pavarotti singing anything. He was my background music as a child.

Helen Reddy—“Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)”—As a kid, I never knew what it meant but it made me smile (especially the horns) and I would sing it at the top of my lungs.

John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain Christmas.” It just isn’t Christmas without it.

ASR: A fashion accessory you like better than others?

DIB: I love boots. Nice comfortable boots. Combat, Ugg, Booties, Go-Go, Cowboy, Dress, Rain, All the boots!

ASR: What would be the coolest animal to scale up to the size of a horse?

DIB: I love turtles. I would like to see a turtle the size of a horse! Prehistoric and beautiful. I could ride it!

ASR: Theater people often pride themselves on “taking risks”—have you any interest in true risk-taking, such as rock climbing, shark diving, bungee jumping, skydiving?

DIB: When I was younger, I liked to climb everything—trees, towers, you name it. The only thing I could climb right now is the walls.

ASR: Favorite quote from a movie or stage play?

DIB: “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.”—The Outsiders

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ASR Executive Editor Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com.

Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

Our goal is not to subject you the reader to extended portentous sermons of the guest’s views on Russian translations of lesser-known Mamet flash drama (is there such a thing?)

Too often the people who guide and make theater in the Bay Area are behind the scenes — fast-moving denizens of the curtain lines who mumble into microphones while invariably (always excepting Carl Jordan’s beret collection…) dressed head-to-toe in black. These interviews allow you, the reader, to get to know these amazingly talented people a bit more, as…people.

Offering some personal and professional insights: with a heavy dash of humor, this is Aisle Seat Review’s Not So Random Question Time.

***

Seafus Smith

Seafus Chatmon-Smith is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, music director, sound designer, and scenic designer. He is a recipient of a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle “Excellence in Theatre” award for his 2019 scenic design of Admissions for Los Altos Stage Company.

A California native who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the Central Valley, his career in entertainment spans from onstage to behind-the-scenes. In the mid-to-late 2000s, he played in various bands before going on to front his own band, Vasco Skys, formed by him and drummer Richard Messenger III. In 2010 he joined the band Dallas, (now known as Bryan Dallas) as keyboardist and background vocalist. After playing FM 107.7’s Bone Bash X concert, he decided to take a break from the music stage.

Seafus’ first work in theatre was as a student, in Las Positas College’s 2006 production of Macbeth, as a sound designer. He began working in entertainment staging and lighting in 2012, which ultimately led him back into the theatre, first as a sound engineer/designer, then into music directing and scenic design.

After sound designing Bay Area Children’s Theatre’s Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas in 2016, he began music directing with James and the Giant Peach JR, 2017, Junie B Jones JR, 2018. Dragon Theatre’s 2018 production of Equivocation would bring him to his first scenic design. His next design was Lohman Theatre’s 2018 production of She Kills Monsters, followed by Los Positas College’s 2019 production of Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Odd Stupid Tales.

Seafus is currently designing the Steel Magnolias set for Los Altos Stage Company, originally slated for the spring season of 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been pushed to the spring of 2021.

***

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

SS: Though I have worn many different hats in theatre, and still do, my introduction into the inner workings of the theatre was in college where I took acting and technical theatre classes. I fell in love with the process.

ASR: What was the first play you worked in for a paying audience?

SS: The first show I did was a production of My Son Pinocchio, as a sound engineer.

ASR: How many theater companies have you been involved with?

SS: I’ve been involved with five different theatre companies—from children’s theatre to high school, to college and community theatre. I’ve been working in theatre in various capacities since 2013.

ASR: Did you anticipate that you would become as successful as you have?

SS: Truthfully I don’t know what I’m doing, other than trying to do my best. Not sure what kind of success I’ve achieved just yet, but having received an award from SFBATCC, I have hope that I’m headed in the right direction.

ASR: Do you have a special focus, i.e., genre/historical period, contemporary, experimental, emerging playwrights, etc?

SS: I’ve worked for companies that have a specific focus, but I myself strived to work on any and all projects that tell great stories. Hopefully inspiring new dreamers like myself, to create new worlds we’ve yet to experience.

ASR: Who has had the largest impact on your professional development in the theater?

SS: It’s two people really: Michael Rinaldi and the late Jeremy Hamm, educators that have done amazing things in their lives to enrich the lives of others as well as my own.

ASR: With the pandemic, it will likely be several months until theaters reopen. How are you coping with the shutdown?

SS: As an independent artist, this time has and continues to be difficult for me, as I’m sure it has for our entire community both on the small and large scale. Right now it’s hard as shows have been postponed with the uncertainty that they will ever go up, though I remain positive and hopeful that in time things will get better.

ASR: How has the crisis affected your planning for the coming seasons? How do you envision the future for the theater community overall?

SS: Well to the first question.. . All of my shows that were in progress that aren’t canceled, have been postponed until the 2021 spring season. And to the second.. . I’m hopeful that in the future things will pick back up, though I know it’s going to take some time.

ASR: Almost forgotten with the pandemic is the crisis caused in the performing arts by the passage of Assembly Bill 5, requiring most workers to be paid the California minimum wage. There are multiple efforts in Sacramento to get performing artists exempted from this. Has AB5 affected your theater company’s plans?

SS: AB5 was passed just before the COVID-19 crisis, so I have yet to really experience its impact, though I’m sure it will bring about many changes to the contractual agreement side of things. I’m sure we will work out a way for art to continue as it should.

…I’m also a sucker for amusement parks…

ASR: What are some of your favorite dramas? Musicals? Comedies?

SS: From the first time I heard the original cast recording, my favorite musical of all time is Phantom of the Opera. From the score and story to the dancing and technical theatrical gymnastics, to me it is all that you could ask for.

My favorite comedy is Noises Off. As someone who has spent so much time backstage as both a performer and crew member, I can give first-hand accounts of the hilarity that inevitably comes from behind the curtain. As for dramas… Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail is one of my absolute faves, though I really like most all of his shows.

ASR: What is Shakespeare’s most over-performed play?

SS: Romeo and Juliet would be the most over-performed and yes, it could be put in the vault.

ASR: If you had to do a whole season performing technical work—sets, lights, projections, sound, props, costumes—which would it be and why?

SS: It would have to be sets. One of my favorite things to do is to imagine the world in which the story takes place and bring what’s in my mind to life. It can be a powerful thing giving a visible voice to a story. Look at Hollywood!

ASR: As hard as it may be to pick just one, can you name a Bay Area actor who you think does amazing work?

SS: Given the current climate this may be an unpopular opinion but . . . Tom Hanks. The talent he poses in emoting is something striking, both on the surface as well as in the depths of the characters he chooses to portray.

ASR: How do you warm up before a performance? How do you relax after?

SS: As a performer, I try to practice my craft as much as possible, then I do a full body and vocal warmup. All dependent on what part I’m playing of course. And to relax after. . . I love a good gathering with friends. I don’t really sleep much, maybe go to a movie or chill on the couch with a nice bottle of wine.

ASR: If someone asked to be your apprentice and learn all that you know, what three things would you tell them are essential?

SS: Really it takes more than this, but if you don’t have these three things, you won’t be able to get very far with me. So…

1. Focus

2. An understanding of conscious learning.

3. Flexibility.

ASR: What theater-related friendship means the most to you? Why?

SS: The relationship between myself and the story, as well as everyone involved. My belief is, if you have a great story and a wonderful team, then anything is truly possible.

ASR: What’s the most excruciating screw-up you see onstage?

SS: When someone has cast an actor that can’t sing in a musical. Nobody wants to hear a cat being tortured for two hours, and we all know it happens.

ASR: Do you have a “day job?”

SS: Due to COVID-19, I am currently out of work. Normally when not working on a specific show I work for an entertainment lighting and staging company, as well as in various personal music endeavors.

ASR: What are your interests outside of theater?

SS: As a singer-songwriter and record producer I’m usually making music when not working. However, now with so much more time on my hands, I’m learning the craft of screenplays. I’m also a sucker for amusement parks, beaches, and hiking.

ASR: Do you follow other arts—music, film, dance, painting/sculpture? Do you actively do any other arts apart from the theater?

SS: Music-making would be number one on the list. I love to dance and have been a choreographer for multiple projects. Cinema is one of my all-time great loves, I would love to direct and be in a film one day. In my late teens, I was a magician. From painting to building, sculpting, and most things in between. I have either done it, do it, or enjoy watching it being done.

ASR: You discover a beautiful island on which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What are the first three rules you’d put into place?

SS: I’d say…

1. No making noise before 10 a.m.

2. Bring your own bottle of sauterne.

3. No acts of hate or violence!

ASR: What would be the worst “buy one get one free” sale of all time?

SS: A circumcision.

ASR: If you were arrested with no explanation, your friends and family might assume you had done what?

SS: Been caught sneaking into a concert.

ASR: What three songs are included on the soundtrack to your life? And why each?

SS: 1. Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” because I love the choreography in that video and love to dance to it.

2. Prince’s “Partyman,” because as a kid I wanted to be Batman, and still do!

3. “Stuck,” a song I wrote about how I feel during this COVID-19 pandemic.

ASR: A fashion accessory you like better than others?

SS: Sunglasses are a must at all times. As long as I have a pair we’re ok.

ASR: Theater people often pride themselves on “taking risks”—have you any interest in true risk-taking, such as rock climbing, shark diving, bungee jumping, skydiving?

SS: I have a healthy respect for human life so the only thing for me in this category would be rock climbing! You have to take risks in life to move forward. I believe you take risks whether you choose to or not. Daring to live is risky, and sitting on the sidelines is to risk never having lived at all.

ASR: Favorite quote from a movie or stage play?

SS: “It’s working, it’s working”—Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars.

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ASR Executive Editor Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com.

Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

Our goal is not to subject you the reader to extended portentous sermons of the guest’s views on Russian translations of lesser-known Mamet flash drama (is there such a thing?)

Too often the people who guide and make theater in the Bay Area are behind the scenes — fast-moving denizens of the curtain lines who mumble into microphones while invariably (always excepting Carl Jordan’s beret collection…) dressed head-to-toe in black. These interviews allow you, the reader, to get to know these amazingly talented people a bit more, as…people.

Offering some personal and professional insights: with a heavy dash of humor, this is Aisle Seat Review’s Not So Random Question Time.

***

Anthony Martinez is an actor and musician based in Santa Rosa. He most recently appeared in David Templeton’s critically acclaimed Drumming With Anubis, a production that won a 2019 “Ensemble” award from the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.

Film credits: Donovan Reid, The Last Hit, Quick, Ghettoblaster, The Animal, Cheaper by the Dozen, Bottle Shock. Television: Love Kills (Investigation Discovery), World’s Astonishing Stories (Nippon TV), World’s Crime Mysteries (Nippon TV), 13 Reasons Why, numerous commercials and industrials for clients such as Polaroid, Apple, Save Energy, Food Network, AARP, and many more. Theater: Left Edge Theater (Zombietown- TBA nomination, This Random World, Drumming with Anubis, Sweat), Spreckels Theater Company (Guys & Dolls, Forever Plaid, 1776– TBA/SFBATCC nomination), 6th Street Playhouse (La Cage Aux Folles, Kiss Me Kate), Lucky Penny Productions (Funny Girl), Novato Theater Company (Next to Normal, Into the Woods– TBA and SFBATCC nominations), Cinnabar Theater (Forever Plaid, Fiddler on the Roof, Man of La Mancha), 42nd Street Moon (Girl Crazy, On a Clear Day, Dear World).

In addition to his stage and film work, Anthony is a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who performs with his own band “The Core,” tours nationally as keyboardist for Cash & King, a Tribute to Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, and Petty Rocks, a Tribute to Tom Petty, and is the founder and tenor vocalist with “Comfort & Joy,” the Bay Area’s premiere a cappella holiday vocal quartet.

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

AM: I was actually a musician before becoming an actor. As a kid, I took piano and guitar lessons and played in rock bands. I never did theater as a kid. Right after high school, I got into a car accident and, while I was recuperating, most of what was on TV in the middle of the day were soap operas. I remember watching them thinking “I can do that.”

My sister had a co-worker who was a part-time commercial actor in the Bay Area, and said “OK, prove it.”

Through her co-worker, I got hooked up with SF on-camera training classes and casting agents. From there, I got my first agent and first acting jobs (a national commercial and a small part in a movie in LA) without ever having set foot onstage. I then met a theater artist from LA with a theater company and fell in love with live theater.

ASR: What was the first play you performed in or directed for a paying audience?

AM: That would be Holy Ghosts by Romulus Linney. Good play. I wish more companies would produce it. I have never seen another production other than the one I was in. I think the reason it’s seldom produced is because it calls for live snake handling!

It’s about a religious snake-handling congregation in the south and, yes, for my first play I had to take up live snakes onstage every night. What an introduction to live theater!

ASR: How many theater companies have you been involved with?

AM: Wow. Let’s see… I think 17 different theater companies in the Bay Area.

ASR: Who has had the largest impact on your professional development in the theater?

AM: That’s a great question. I have to say Marvin Klebe, the founder of Cinnabar Theater. He not only gave me my first professional job, the moment I met him he was so kind, so knowlegable, so supportive… he really inspired me be the best I could be.

ASR: What are some of your favorite dramas? Musicals? Comedies?

AM: For drama, I love Angels in America, The Compleat Female Stage Beauty, and A Steady Rain. Comedies I love are Lend Me a Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo, and Vanya, Sasha, Masha and Spike. Musicals… Next to Normal, Falsettos, and everything and anything by Sondheim.

ASR: Name three all-time favorites that your company has produced.

AM: I’m currently an Associate Artist at Left Edge Theatre in Santa Rosa, so I’d have to say Drumming with Anubis, Hand to God, and A Steady Rain.

ASR: Which play would you most like to see put into deep freeze for 20 years?

AM: The Music Man.

ASR: Which rare gems would you like to see revived?

AM: A musical called Triumph of Love. It had a very short life on Broadway in the 90s, but it is so wonderful. My old theater company in Marin did it and it was so charming. The audience loved it. I am always astounded that more companies don’t do it.

ASR: What is Shakespeare’s most underrated play?

AM: I would say Titus Andronicus, but I am a horror movie fan, so I’m biased!

ASR: Shakespeare’s most over-performed play?

AM: A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, for sure.

The dog took center stage and… followed its natural instincts… …

ASR: If you had to do a whole season performing technical work—sets, lights, projections, sound, props, costumes—which would it be and why?

AM: Sound design. I am a musician so I really vibe with the impact sound and music can have in evoking mood.

ASR: As hard as it may be to pick just one, can you name a Bay Area actor who you think does amazing work?

AM: Wow. That is so, so hard. I personally know so many astounding actors, but I will pick someone I know only from their work. I am a big fan of Craig Marker. He is always amazing.

ASR: How do you warm up before a performance? How do you relax after?

AM: For musicals, I do vocal exercises and light physical warmup. For plays, I do a physical warmup and go over my lines! After a performance, I like to unwind with an adult beverage, but if I have a performance the next day, never tequila. It shreds my voice.

ASR: If someone asked to be your apprentice and learn all that you know, what three things would you tell them are essential?

AM: Hmmmm…

1. Be on time.

2. Be off book ASAP.

3. Always be helpful and cooperative to everyone involved in the production, even if you’ve had a bad day.

ASR: What theater-related friendship means the most to you? Why?

AM: I have to say the one with my sister, Vicki. She is a stage manager at Left Edge Theatre and it’s nice to be able to work together and share that common interest.

ASR: What is the funniest screw-up you’ve seen on stage in a live performance?

AM: It wasn’t technically a screw-up, but during a production of Camelot I was in, the dog playing Pellinore’s dog proceeded to completely steal a scene doing… something dogs do. The dog took center stage and… followed its natural instincts, looking right out at the audience. The audience was roaring with laughter and the stunned cast onstage was just frozen. I wasn’t onstage at the time (thank God), just watching from the wings, but I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

ASR: The most excruciating screw-up?

AM: Probably when I split my pants completely onstage during a performance… in a theater in the round! No wings to dash off into!

ASR: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen a guest do at the theater?

AM: I was in the audience of a local musical when a drunk person climbed onstage, waving at the audience and then at her friend in the cast on stage (who was mortified), and trying to conduct the orchestra. It seemed like she was up there for an eternity and I kept wondering “When is someone gonna do something?” Finally, an ASM came out and got her offstage. So awkward.

ASR: Do you have a “day job?”

AM: I worked as an administrator at a community college for many years. Now I am lucky enough to be able to work for myself as a consultant and teacher.

ASR: What are your interests outside of theater?

AM: I am an avid martial artist and instructor, as well as a musician. I also sing, play keyboards and guitar, and work as a sideman for many local and touring artists.

ASR: Do you actively do any other arts apart from the theater? Do you follow other arts—music, film, dance, painting/sculpture?

AM: I do lots of music (live and recording) and on-camera work (industrial films, commercials, and movies). I also practice martial arts. Does that count?

ASR: You discover a beautiful island on which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What are the first three rules you’d put into place?

AM: Ahh…

1. No talking in the audience during a performance.

2. No nuts in brownies or cookies.

3. Kindness to all animals.

ASR: What would be the worst “buy one get one free” sale of all time?

AM: A colonoscopy.

ASR: You have the opportunity to create a 30-minute TV series. What’s it called and what’s the premise?

AM: I’m still working on that. ;)

ASR: If you were arrested with no explanation, your friends and family might assume you had done what?

AM: Protesting or used martial arts in self-defense (maybe at the same time).

ASR: A fashion accessory you like better than others?

AM: I have many, many pairs of shoes.

ASR: What would be the coolest animal to scale up to the size of a horse?

AM: A French Bulldog.

ASR: Theater people often pride themselves on “taking risks”—have you any interest in true risk-taking, such as rock climbing, shark diving, bungee jumping, skydiving?

AM: Nope. I am not a daredevil. I have had enough life-threatening excitement in my life already and lived to tell the tales—those are stories for another time—so I now crave calmness. But I do love rollercoasters!

ASR: Favorite quote from a movie or stage play?

AM: “Just because they could, they never stopped to think if they should.”- Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park. Good life advice.

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ASR Executive Editor Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com.

Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

Our goal is not to subject you the reader to extended portentous sermons of the guest’s views on Russian translations of lesser-known Mamet flash drama (is there such a thing?)

Too often the people who guide and make theater in the Bay Area are behind the scenes — fast-moving denizens of the curtain lines who mumble into microphones while invariably (always excepting Carl Jordan’s beret collection…) dressed head-to-toe in black. These interviews allow you, the reader, to get to know these amazingly talented people a bit more, as…people.

Offering some personal and professional insights: with a heavy dash of humor, this is Aisle Seat Review’s Not So Random Question Time.

***

Winner of a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle award for Transcendence Theatre Company’s 2019 production of A Chorus Line, Daniel Weidlein is a music producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and music director based in Los Angeles.

Originally from Boulder, Colorado, Daniel has enjoyed a diverse career spanning many parts of the entertainment industry, from acting in Academy Award-winner Whiplash, to performing and music directing on season 3 of NBC’s The Sing Off, to writing and producing Billboard charting music for artists like Blake McGrath, Stan Taylor, and Miss Peppermint. He owns and operates BioSoul Music, a boutique recording studio in LA. In addition to his work as music director and orchestrator for Sonoma County-based Transcendence Theater Company, Daniel has been integral in the development of new musicals such as The Mollyhouse by Richard Hanson and Divya Maus, and Bottleshock by James Sasser and Charles Burwell.

***

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

DW: From a very young age I acted in musicals, and always loved film musicals in particular, so it’s in my bones. But as I grew older, I felt the call to avenues of performing music.

Professionally, I have worked as a music producer, arranger, music director, instrumentalist, and singer. In almost every single one of those capacities I eventually was brought to the intersection point of the Venn diagram of music and theater.

A major turning point in that regard was the work I did with Morgan Karr in the pop music realm, but ultimately it led me to the work I do in the Bay Area with Transcendence Theatre Company.

ASR: What was the first play you performed in or directed for a paying audience?

DW: The Grifters—a musical theatre adaptation of the book-turned-film with book and lyrics by Joe Giuffre, with music (and musical direction) by yours truly in 2013.  Imagine—a theatrical concert of original music from various shows with Transcendence Theatre Company in 2015.

ASR: How many theater companies have you been involved with?

DW: Ahh…Transcendence Theatre Company (Sonoma County), Fogg Theatre Company (San Francisco), NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts (New York City).

ASR: When was your present company formed?

DW: TTC set down roots in Sonoma in 2011 and has been growing ever since!

ASR: Does your company have a special focus, i.e., genre/historical period, contemporary, experimental, emerging playwrights, etc?

DW: Bringing the Broadway experience to the Sonoma Valley!

ASR: Who has had the largest impact on your professional development in the theater?

DW: My fiancé! Divya Maus is an incredible composer and lyricist (wrote The Mollyhouse with Richard Hanson and is in development on a new show, Elijah, that she has written herself).

I serve as the music director, orchestrator, and general editor for her shows. Being able to build her vision from the ground up has helped me grow faster in this business than any “gig.”

….Les Miserables had its place, but we don’t need to keep beating it over our own heads.

ASR: It will likely be several months until theaters reopen. How is your company coping with the shutdown?

DW: Transcendence has been putting on a wonderful online season of shows comprised of highlights from the past ten summers of shows in Jack London State park. There’s one more online show this coming weekend, Sep. 11-13, to commemorate their annual Gala fundraiser!

ASR: How has the COVID-19 crisis affected your planning for coming seasons?

DW: Phew…where to begin? Let’s just hope we can all be back in person in the theater next year…

ASR: How do you envision the future the theater community overall?

DW: I truly believe that theater is going to come back stronger than ever. Nothing replaces an in-person theatrical experience, and the kindling that’s keeping the drive and passion of idle performers all across this country is going to ignite into a brilliant blaze once those hearts and voices and feet are unleashed on the stage again.

ASR: What are some of your favorite dramas? Musicals? Comedies?

DW: West Side Story is a no-brainer. I love Parade. I love Angels in America (I so wish I could have seen the recent revival). I love Hadestown!

ASR: Name three all-time favorites that your company has produced.

DW: Transcendence has only done one full musical so far (the rest are handcrafted reviews and concerts from the Broadway lineage)—A Chorus Line—but it was a blast! Chicago was slated for 2020…

ASR: What are some of your least favorite plays? Care to share titles of those you would never produce—or never produce again?

DW: Les Miserables had its place, but we don’t need to keep beating it over our own heads.

ASR: Which play would you most like to see put into deep freeze for 20 years?

DW: I love Rent, but it’s become that song that’s been played one too many times. I think it may actually age really well if we just hit pause.

ASR: Which rare gems would you like to see revived?

DW: I’m a huge fan of Cole Porter’s music, and yet I will bashfully admit that I’ve only seen Kiss Me Kate. The rest of my experience of his music is through the jazz world.

But I think this is the perfect answer to your question…because his musicals don’t get staged enough!

ASR: What is Shakespeare’s most underrated play? Why?

DW: Seems hard to call any of them underrated…but I’d say Much Ado About Nothing. The tragedies get the credit they deserve, and have deep themes that still very much resonate today, but I think what stands out about Much Ado is that it feels so current, and so modern.

Not just thematically, but in the actual writing. Update the language and the writing and humor feel like they’re part of the canon of indie comedic film writing that I love so much.

ASR: Shakespeare’s most over-performed play?

DW: Hamlet. It’s great…I often feel like I just want to read it though. If you’re going to put it on, please give me a fresh reason to do so!

ASR: If you had to do a whole season performing technical work—sets, lights, projections, sound, props, costumes—which would it be and why?

DW: Light and projections. I’m fascinated with how much you can influence the audience experience with lighting.

I remember seeing Fun Home and being so captivated by how powerful the lighting and projections were. Super simple, yet so powerful.

ASR: As hard as it may be to pick just one, can you name a Bay Area actor who you think does amazing work?

DW: I can’t say her name enough—Lexy Fridell. One of the most brilliant comedic actresses I’ve ever seen in any context, and you Bay Area folks have her all to yourself now in Sonoma after her return from stints in LA and NY.

ASR: How do you warm up before a performance? How do you relax after?

DW: It’s all about building adrenaline so it doesn’t slam into you when the performance starts. So I like to have a little coffee, move my body around a lot, and do a few mental run-throughs of exciting moments of the show.

Afterward, I eat. A lot. All that adrenaline burns calories!

ASR: If someone asked to be your apprentice and learn all that you know, what three things would you tell them are essential?

DW:  Great question.

1. It’s all about relationships. Great work is meaningless if you don’t do it in conjunction with all the other people and moving parts that make a show possible.

2. Learn what makes your work unique, and do everything to exploit and celebrate it, rather than try to adapt it to the “norm.”

3. Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Make bold choices—make interesting choices—and let the work and/or the people around you (but not the critics!) inform whether those choices are working or need to be altered.

ASR: What theater-related friendship means the most to you? Why?

DW: There are so many valuable friendships that I have developed through theater. I think the beauty of the theater world is the work requires you to go deep on a personal level with the material—and you’re spending exorbitant amounts of time with one another—so inevitably you end up going deep with your peers during the process.

Compared to most other spheres of my life, I’ve definitely developed more deeply consistent relationships in theater than in any other.

I’ll highlight one great friendship with Tony Gonzalez, a frequent director and choreographer at Transcendence. Tony and I were both new to the creative team in 2016 and were tasked with co-designing and leading the high octane dance show of that year.

The entire process was a masterclass in “yes, and” from the creation side and still to this day is one of my favorite shows I’ve ever put on a stage. With that foundation, Tony has become someone I can share any thought, any concern, any emotion with freely, and he’s always the most supportive and caring friend anyone could ask for!

ASR: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen a guest do at the theater?

DW: I’ve seen audience members try to get hand-on with actors coming through the aisles on numerous occasions…please don’t…

ASR: Do you have a “day job?”

DW: I do not! I write and produce music (mostly for other artists…so it’s KINDA a day job…) all day every day when I’m not music directing or playing saxophone and piano.

ASR: What are your interests outside of theater?

DW: Hiking, cooking, basketball, my dog Puri Bhaji.

ASR: What three songs are Included on the soundtrack to your life? And why each?

DW: “John Boy” by Brad Mehldau — it feels like the perfect expression of the curiosity I was talking about earlier.

“Bad Religion” by Frank Ocean — this is the song that can freeze me in my tracks anywhere at anytime. It explores life in a raw, painful way that is so relatable. And Frank’s voice is the ultimate vehicle for expressing that quest.

“Fire in the Sky” by Daniel Weidlein — thought it would be fun to include one of my own. This is the title track off of one of my jazz albums and is really accurate example of how I sometimes can articulate my thoughts and emotions better musically than verbally.

ASR: A fashion accessory you like better than others?

DW: I’m a big jewelry fan in general. Earrings, rings, necklaces. I love making them all work within my wardrobe.

ASR: What would be the coolest animal to scale up to the size of a horse?

DW: An ant. Sounds scary, but it’s insane how much they can carry at their current size. Just imagine…

ASR: Theater people often pride themselves on “taking risks”—have you any interest in true risk taking, such as rock climbing, shark diving, bungee jumping, sky diving?

DW: I’ve done a bit of rock climbing. I’m not great with heights, so I feel like I need to conquer that at some point and go sky diving.

ASR: Favorite quote from a movie or stage play?

DW: “I’m curious what makes you so curious,” from Django Unchained. I’m notoriously curious, and one of the things that captivates me most is what drives other people!

-30-

ASR Executive Editor Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com.

Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

Our goal is not to subject you the reader to extended portentous sermons of the guest’s views on Russian translations of lesser-known Mamet flash drama (is there such a thing?)

Too often the people who guide and make theater in the Bay Area are behind the scenes — fast-moving denizens of the curtain lines who mumble into microphones while invariably (always excepting Carl Jordan’s beret collection…) dressed head-to-toe in black. These interviews allow you, the reader, to get to know these amazingly talented people a bit more, as…people.

Offering some personal and professional insights: with a heavy dash of humor, this is Aisle Seat Review’s Not So Random Question Time.

***

Among the Bay Area’s few married couples who are equally immersed in theater, Michael Scott Wells and Danielle DeBow frequently appear together onstage. Both are Associate Artists with Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions, but their art frequently takes them to other venues. They also work together away from the theater, and have a toddler—the very definition of togetherness.

Michael Scott Wells: Born in Southern California and raised in the Bay Area, Michael has been a part of the theater community for the past fifteen years as an actor, director, fight choreographer, sound designer, casting associate, and musician.

He has appeared on stage recently for CCCT (Bright Star), Sonoma Arts Live (Gypsy, Always Patsy Cline, Hello Dolly). Performances with Lucky Penny Productions, where he is an Associate Artist, include I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change; Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (TBA Award – Featured Actor), Clue: the Musical, Hands on a Hardbody, Annie, The Tasting Room, and Forever Plaid.

Outside of the Bay Area, he was fortunate enough to be a part of the first national tour as Big Anthony in Strega Nona the Musical!, and worked for that production as Associate Technical Director.

Danielle DeBow: Danielle grew up on the stage and studied Theatre and Dance at UC Davis. Dancer turned film actress, turned musical theatre enthusiast, she fell in love with the immediacy and fellowship of the theatre.

She was most recently seen as Alice in Bright Star at CCCT and Rebecca in The Tasting Room at Lucky Penny. You may have seen her at Sonoma Arts Live as Irene Malloy in Hello Dolly, Patsy Cline in Always, Patsy Cline (TBA and Marquee Theatre Award), and Louise in Gypsy.

Danielle is proud to be an Associate Artist at Lucky Penny, her home away from home. When she’s not on stage, you’ll likely find her outdoors chasing her one-year-old and fur babies or finding new ways to turn 90s pops song into folk with her hubby.

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

MW: I’ve always loved to tell stories. My family can regale you with the multitude of puppet shows and make-believe plays I made them sit through as a child. I participated in a number of church plays as well. Then I took a hiatus to focus on sports. All the sports. In high school, a friend asked if I could help stage manage a show he was working on. The bug re-bit me and I never looked back.

DD: I spent much of my childhood on stage dancing. In fourth grade I moved to a new elementary school that focused on learning through musical performance and that is where I fell in love with the art and immediacy of theatre.

ASR: What was the first play you performed in or directed for a paying audience?

MW: Miss Saigon in 2005 at Diablo Light Opera Company

DD: The Nutcracker, 1992, Bolshoi West

ASR: Who has had the largest impact on your professional development in the theater?

MW: I don’t think I can say just one person or company. Every member of the theater community I’ve had the opportunity to work with has helped shape my life in ways I can truly never thank them enough for.

DD: Many amazing, talented, and compassionate teachers, directors, and crew members have impacted me in ways I’ll be eternally grateful, but I must thank my parents for believing in me and encouraging me to do what I love. They instilled confidence in me that allowed me to pursue opportunities and take risks leading me to where I am today.

ASR: It will likely be several months until theaters reopen. How is your company coping with the shutdown?

DD: The shutdown has been a great challenge. The theatre is where we go to escape, to fill back up when the world drains us. While we miss our theatre family more than words could ever properly describe, we’ve been able to fill at least some of the void jamming in our living room with our one-year-old.

ASR: How do you envision the future for the theater community?

MW: The arts by nature are innovative and revolutionary, so I have no doubt that while this current situation is extremely disheartening for the community, we will all come out of this stronger, more passionate, and more in-tune with who we are as artists and performers.

This time away from the stage, and more importantly, my theatre family has reaffirmed my true love for it. It’s not something that can be created over a zoom call—it’s the tangible aspects I’m craving: the energy exuding from the audience, the jitters in your stomach pre-show, the rush of joy as the overture starts, the sweaty hugs post-show, and the unforgettable conversations in the wings with cast and crew. I know we will get back to it, and I’m proud of the community and companies that are finding ways to bring opportunities for us to share our craft and stories in new ways while we’re restricted from gathering during the pandemic.

ASR: What are some of your favorite dramas? Musicals? Comedies?

DD : While many shows stand out for me, the three shows that top my list are Godspell, Always Patsy Cline, and Bright Star.

MW: Godspell, Big River, and Evil Dead, the Musical.

ASR: If you had to do a whole season performing technical work—sets, lights, projections, sound, props, costumes—which would it be and why?

DD: Costumes, without a doubt. I’m in constant awe of the men and women who pour their hearts and souls into the costumes we wear on stage. They’re tasked with near-impossible requests and somehow end up making us look beautiful (or hideous depending on the requirements), period-appropriate, and tailored, all while ensuring our frocks can handle our quick changing, jumping, falling, dancing, and sweating through them.

MW: That’s a tough choice. It’s a toss-up between lighting and sound for me. There’s something about creating the atmosphere of a moment to make not only the audience but the storytellers feel that moment deep in their gut. That’s what excites me.

ASR: As hard as it may be to pick just one, can you name a Bay Area actor who you think does amazing work?

DD: Dyan McBride is one of my favorite people to watch on stage. Not to mention, one of the most supportive, humble, and passionate actors to work beside. She’s reliable, devoted, and brings out the best in those around her. Her attention to detail, poise, and comedic timing are impeccable. I aspire to captivate an audience as she can.

MW: It’s been a while since I’ve seen in him in anything, but Joel Roster is truly one of the finest actors I have ever witnessed on stage. I could watch him read the phone book. He is never anything but 100% genuine in everything that he does. I have never laughed harder or felt so deeply than when Joel tells a story.

……. asking a stranger to borrow their popcorn bucket to throw up in.

ASR: How do you warm up before a performance? How do you relax after?

DD: My warm-up varies drastically by the show, but once I get a routine, it must not be broken (kidding/not kidding). I always do a few push-ups right before I hit the stage to shake the jitters and get my blood going. Sometimes my opening costume makes this a challenge, but I’ve yet to find one that’s thwarted me. My last two performances were unique in that my pre-show routine also included breastfeeding my newborn backstage. The two companies I had the privilege to work with made it possible for me to continue to pursue my dreams and share the experience with my baby. I will be eternally grateful to Lucky Penny and CCCT for those unforgettable and cherished memories.

MW: Most people will say you’ll catch me cracking jokes right up to the curtain. This is part ploy to hide my nerves and part enjoying the heck out of my job and the people I’m with. I am always nervous before any show, no matter if it’s opening night or closing night. I try to take a moment or two to stretch and get my mind centered. But when it comes down to it, frivolity is truly the best medicine for preparing myself to go on a nightly journey. After a show—that really depends on the show, but it all generally ends with a late-night snack and binging something on Netflix.

ASR: What theater-related friendship means the most to you? Why?

DD: The cast and crew of Cowgirls at Lucky Penny will forever mean the world to me. The relationships I built during that show continue to enrich my personal and stage life. The theatre became our home. Michael proposed to me there, Barry married us on stage and in real life, and Taylor, Dani, Staci, Dyan, and Heather are some of the most important confidants in my life.

MW: There are many individuals I truly cherish in the theater universe. And while I may not see some of them as often as I’d like right now, the cast/crew of Godspell from a 2014 production will always be in my heart. You’ll never see a group who sweated more, loved harder and supported one another through every trial and tribulation. I can never thank that group of humans enough for the joy and love they brought into my life.

ASR: What is the funniest screw-up you’ve seen on stage in a live performance?

MW: During a production of Into the Woods, Little Red missed her entrance for a scene with Jack. In this production, they used a live chicken for Jack to carry around in this scene. This turned into a hilarious 3-4 minute improvised scene between the actor playing Jack and this live chicken. When Little Red finally showed up, out of breath having clearly run from the dressing room, the audience gave Jack a rousing round of applause for his show-stopping improvisation skills.

ASR: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen a guest do at the theater?

DD: Performing in the wine country comes with its perks, and one of them is often a well-oiled audience. This can make for some wonderful laughs and energetic claps, as well as wine glasses shattering in front of you while singing a tender ballad, or a drunken audience member turning on the house lights while bickering with her partner across the theatre. Yes, that all happened during a single performance.

MW: It’s safe to assume that when you perform in the heart of wine country, most audience members will typically, and hopefully in a responsible fashion, enjoy an adult beverage before coming to the theater. But in some cases, “responsible” can be taken many ways. In one example, it wasn’t just one person but a party bus that decided to over-serve themselves before a show. This resulted in several hilarious moments of call and response, clumsily attempting to leave the theater in the middle of a heartbreaking ballad, and topping off the evening with asking a stranger to borrow their popcorn bucket to throw up in.

ASR: Do you have a “day job?”

DD/MW: We work as the sales and marketing team for a digital workspace consultancy in Davis, CA.

ASR: What are your interests outside of theater?

MW: I’ve been a musician since I was old enough to hold an instrument. The guitar is my main muse but I can play just about anything if you give me twenty minutes to figure it out.

ASR: You discover a beautiful island on which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What are the first three rules you’d put into place?

DD:  Hmmm….OK…

1. 1. Chew with your mouth closed.
   2. Be nice.
   3. Chew with your mouth closed. (Yes, I repeated #1; Misophonia made me do it.)

ASR: If you were arrested with no explanation, your friends and family might assume you had done what?

DD: Attacked someone for chewing too loudly.

ASR: Theater people often pride themselves on “taking risks”—have you any interest in true risk-taking, such as rock climbing, shark diving, bungee jumping, skydiving?

MW: I am a total thrill-seeker. Who wants to go skydiving?

ASR: Favorite quotes from movies or stage plays?

DD: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

MW: “May the force be with you.” – Star Wars

-30-

ASR Executive Editor Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com.

Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

Our goal is not to subject you the reader to extended portentous sermons of the guest’s views on Russian translations of lesser-known Mamet flash drama (is there such a thing?)

Too often the people who guide and make theater in the Bay Area are behind the scenes — fast-moving denizens of the curtain lines who mumble into microphones while invariably (always excepting Carl Jordan’s beret collection…) dressed head-to-toe in black. These interviews allow you, the reader, to get to know these amazingly talented people a bit more, as…people.

Offering some personal and professional insights: with a heavy dash of humor, this is Aisle Seat Review’s Not So Random Question Time.

***

Hailing from the Creole/Cajun bayous of Louisiana, Clay David has enjoyed a wide-ranging professional career in theatre arts. Spanning London, Broadway, off-Broadway, regional theatre, national tours and educational theatre, his work has embraced advocacy, acting, directing, and design. His achievements in the theater have been recognized with five San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards. David has also earned an AMCO Kennedy Center National Award, the Victor Borge Legacy Award, a TITAN Award for Theatre Excellence (Theatre Bay Area), the Dean Goodman Choice Award for Best Director in San Francisco Bay, the Lee Hartgrave Fame Best Play Award, and the Bravo Award for Outstanding Innovation and Excellence in Arts.

Notable directing highlights: L’ours et la Lune, and Birth of the Son (Off-Broadway, Blue Heron, NYC), Wives as They Were/Maids as They Are (London Theatre Royal, St. Edmunds, Regency Rep), Romeo et Julieta, (Campamento Lomas Pinar, Cuernavaca, Mexico), York 24: The Capmaker’s Play, (Poculi Ludique Societas, Toronto), Trojan Women and Phedre, (Jerry Rojo Environmental Theatre, CT), Learned Ladies, and School for Scandal (Connecticut Repertory Theatre.)

His joy of collaboration is a true passion, directing premiere productions of Ernest Gaines, Luis Alfaro, Gloria Stingily, Savion Glover, Jared Choclat, Chuck Prophet, Felice Picano, Michael Golamco, and Kathyrn McCarty.

On stage, he has performed the title roles in Hamlet, Amadeus, and The Dresser (Connecticut Repertory Theatre), The Elephant Man and Uncle Vanya (Jerry Rojo Environmental Theatre, CT). Regional Shakespeare roles include: Don John in Much Ado About Nothing (Marin Shakespeare), and Troilus in Troilus and Cressida (Riverside Shakespeare, NY). In musical theatre, he has performed Georges in La Cage aux Folles, Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Preacher in Violet (Bay Area Musicals), Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar, and Tobias in Sweeney Todd (Connecticut Repertory Company).

(Editor’s note: His A Cajun Midsummer Night’s Dream at Novato Theater Company was unique, brilliant, amazing, and delightful.)

In educational theater, Clay David has served as professor and lecturer of theater at Loyola Marymount University, The University of Connecticut, Diablo Valley College, and was Chairman of Drama at Contra Costa College.

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

CD: I sang in church. In the Southern Gothic Cajun South, High Mass was about as close as you could get to the papacy. I was on the debate team in ninth grade and won a few national titles in dramatic interpretation and poetry reading. I was cast as Cornelius Hackle in Hello Dolly in tenth grade. That opened the door and connected the dots.

ASR: What was the first play you performed in or directed for a paying audience?

CD: Performance: Sparger in Kennedy’s Children, Robert Patrick; directing: Welcome to Andromeda, Ronald Melville Whyte

ASR: How many theater companies have you been involved with?

CD: I feel like I have been doing this since the earth cooled, so well over a 150.

ASR: Who has had the largest impact on your professional development in the theater?

CD: My brother was severely disabled, and I always carry his spirit with me. I always say hello to him in the wings. I know he is an angel looking over me.

ASR: What are some of your favorite dramas?

CD: The Dutchman, Amiri Baraka; The Dresser, Ronald Harwood; The Blacks, Jean Genet; The Maids, Jean Genet; America Hurrah, Jean-Claude van Itallie; The Visit, Friedrich Dürrenmatt; Suddenly Last Summer, Tennessee Williams; Woysek, Georg Büchner.

ASR: Musicals?

CD: Sweeney Todd, Blood Brothers, Jerry Springer the Opera, Cabaret. Kinky Boots.

ASR: Comedies?

CD: The Bald Soprano, Eugene Ionesco; Tartuffe, Moliere; The Importance of Being Ernest, Oscar Wilde; Private Lives, Noël Coward.

ASR: Which play would you most like to see put into deep freeze for 20 years?

CD: Hamilton.

ASR: Which rare gems would you like to see revived?

CD: The works of Enrico Cavacchioli, Rosso di San Secondo, Luigi Pirandello, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco. Theatre of the Grotesque and Theatre of the Absurd speak to our times, as we navigate the national discord, the bafflement, and bewilderment of the truth of our times.

ASR: What is Shakespeare’s most underrated play? Why?

CD: His plays have dimensions that are not explored or are diluted. Many times these works will be misdirected, or will politely just dance around the ideas of Hamlet asking his mother about the semen-stained sheets, or Ophelia singing pornographic songs when she is mad (who taught her the tunes?) or Richard ll’s historical and factual accuracy of his homosexuality.

ASR: Shakespeare’s most over-performed play?

CD: Hamlet. I wish more companies would produce Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II.

ASR: If you had to do a whole season performing technical work—sets, lights, projections, sound, props, costumes—which would it be and why?

CD: I was a theatre professor for 20 years and loved teaching design. I adore making properties. But most importantly, I love working with the actors who use each prop I design, ensuring that it is perfect for them and helps the character that they are creating.

ASR: How do you warm up before a performance?

CD: I drink a Red Bull, rock catatonically in my chair and suck on a cough drop.

ASR: How do you relax after?

CD: A large bowl of cereal and milk.

ASR: If someone asked to be your apprentice and learn all that you know, what three things would you tell them are essential?

CD: Always think outside the box. Always take risks. The audience is the most important element of theatre.

ASR: What theater-related friendship means the most to you? Why?

CD: In that sacred moment when we come together on production we are all soulmates and family. I will always be present for my fellow actors and technicians on stage and backstage, a faithful steward. Whether it is cleaning the dressing rooms, fanning sweating dancers running offstage, picking up costumes after quick changes, or mending shoes in between scene changes, I feel that we are a family, a community with a mighty purpose, and I am there to serve.

…Theatre of the Absurd speaks to our times…

ASR: Do you have a “day job?”

CD: Yes. Corporate. Director, Senior Resource Group.

ASR: What are your interests outside of theater?

CD: Maintaining serenity during these troubling times.

ASR: Do you follow other arts—music, film, dance, painting/sculpture? Do you actively do any other arts apart from the theater?

CD: I am a designer and work closely with hospice and COVID patients, creating art that speaks to their needs and the needs of their families.

ASR: You discover a beautiful island on which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What are the first three rules you’d put into place?

CD: Our island is built on the doctrine of egalitarianism. Believe in reciprocity. Your mood should not dictate your manners.

ASR: You have the opportunity to create a 30-minute TV series. What’s it called and what’s the premise?

CD: Title: Sugarcane Burning. It would be about my disabled brother, raised by a fragile mother and a queer little brother in the mystic land of the bayou, Cajun South Louisiana.

ASR: If you were arrested with no explanation, your friends and family might assume you had done what?

CD: Been there and done that, darling. They’d think, “Hey, y’all, what is it this time?”

ASR: What three songs are included on the soundtrack to your life? And why each?

CD: “J’ai Passé Devant Ta Porte,” the Cajun song we sang as children. “I Believe,” because I love and resonate with a good hymn. “Beautiful Dreamer,” because I played it on the organ and sang it for my mother and brother when times were hard.

ASR: A fashion accessory you like better than others?

CD: Cufflinks.

ASR: Favorite quote from a movie or stage play?

CD: “ Most people’s lives, what are they but trails of debris—each day more debris, more debris . . . long, long trails of debris, with nothing to clean it all up but death.”—Suddenly Last Summer

-30-

ASR Executive Editor Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com.

Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

Our goal is not to subject you the reader to extended portentous sermons of the guest’s views on Russian translations of lesser-known Mamet flash drama (is there such a thing?)

Too often the people who guide and make theater in the Bay Area are behind the scenes — fast-moving denizens of the curtain lines who mumble into microphones while invariably (always excepting Carl Jordan’s beret collection…) dressed head-to-toe in black. These interviews allow you, the reader, to get to know these amazingly talented people a bit more, as…people.

Offering some personal and professional insights: with a heavy dash of humor, this is Aisle Seat Review’s Not So Random Question Time.

***

When describing the role of a dramaturg, Dr. Philippa Kelly says this: “Whatever can make a production deeper and richer and more ambiguous and interpretively challenging – that is the goal of my activities as a dramaturg.”

Since encountering Shakespeare at age fourteen, she’s become the first woman in history to prepare a public edition of King Lear and has published eleven books, including three on King Lear, one of the most recent being The King and I, which is a meditation on dispossession through the twin lenses of King Lear and Australian culture. In April 2020, with Amrita Ramanan as Associate Editor, Kelly published Diversity, Inclusion, and Representation in Contemporary Dramaturgy: Case Studies from the Field (Routledge).

She’s also educated students and audiences about Shakespeare in schools, prisons, and at the California Shakespeare Theater. As an Australian-American she has a unique perspective on how identity, social justice, and dramaturgy can be woven together throughout the creative process of theatre-making.

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

PK: I came to America as a Fulbright Scholar at UC Berkeley. Then I came back as a Rockefeller Scholar some years later. So I had trained to be, and was practicing as, a scholar/teacher.

Discovering dramaturgy made it all make sense – I would never go back to academe full-time. Dramaturgy makes knowledge live. Being Dramaturg for the California Shakespeare Theater has been the greatest professional joy of my life.

ASR: How many theater companies have you been involved with?

PK: Quite a lot: Cal Shakes, of course; and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; the Play On festival; the Aurora; Word for Word; the Berkeley Repertory Theater; A UC production of Midsummer, and another UC production, totally student-led, in which the theme was “Glitter Macbeth” in honor of the director’s fascination with Mariah Carey. The student playing Macbeth was an athlete who had never acted before, and I taught him to walk like a soldier by putting sandbags on his feet.

ASR: Does your company have a special focus, i.e., genre/historical period, contemporary, experimental, emerging playwrights, etc?

PK: The California Shakespeare Theater of course has Shakespeare as its core, with Shakespeare’s incredible capacity to lay bare, and make us stare into the heart of human paradox. But under Jon Moscone’s vision, we began doing two Shakespeares and two other classics (Shaw, Wilde, Chekhov) per season; and under the leadership of Eric Ting, the company has moved more into New Classics – with the idea that while Shakespeare is a touchstone, the two (Shakespeare and the creation of New Works) can feed each other.

I’d say there is not a single artist I’ve met from whom I didn’t learn something, even if I didn’t see it at the time.

ASR: Who has had the largest impact on your professional development in the theater?

PK: The greatest influence in my professional life has really been Professor Stephen Greenblatt. Way before I became a dramaturg, it was his work that taught me to think dramaturgically – how we live, with all of our paradox, in this human world. Another great influence has been Curt Tofteland of Shakespeare Behind Bars – the way in which Curt brings the words of Shakespeare to reach places for which there has been so much hurt but may have been little language.

And one of my dearest inspirations is set designer Annie Smart. She has the eye of a designer and the mind of a dramaturg. When I prepare my actor packets (I write a fresh, 20-page actor packet for every show), I send them to Annie, and she grades the draft from A+ to B-!!! I’ve also been inspired by Eric Ting (we have already adapted four plays together into one – that takes some trust!) and Joel Sass, an amazingly original director, who is so thorough that there is almost nothing for me to do!

There are so many artists who have inspired me – actress/director Joy Carlin (her famous comment: “Don’t worry darling – it’s only theater”), playwright Marcus Gardley, director Ian Belknap, musician/performer/writer Rinde Eckert, writer/actress Ellen McLaughlan, dramaturg Lue Douthit (she says “Theater is a journey from emotion to emotion.”).

I’d say there is not a single artist I’ve met from whom I didn’t learn something, even if I didn’t see it at the time. And theater historian Liz Schafer – we have known and worked together on and off for 20 years. If you are looking for a fascinating book of interviews with women directing Shakespeare, look for her 1997 book, MsDirecting Shakespeare.

I think my dearest, deepest, most combative artistic relationship is with my husband Paul Dresher. He is a composer, presenter, and producer. Sometimes in response to his critiques I want to throw him down the toilet – but I know that when I cool down I’ll be so grateful for the light he shines into my work with his brilliant mind.

ASR: Have the coronavirus crisis and ongoing social upheaval affected your company and your work?

PK: The virus has decimated theaters everywhere. Cal Shakes has been doing a huge amount of work with Black Lives Matter and anti-racist activism. As for myself, every week I record a 12-minute video in a series we call “Run the Canon.” (https://calshakes.org/cal-shakes-online/run-the-canon/)

By the end of the year, we will have recorded videos for every play in Shakespeare’s canon. And this coming Tuesday (July 28th) I’m interviewing supreme Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt, author of Will in the World, The Swerve, and Tyrant. This will be followed by a ten-week course on five Shakespeare plays, which I’ll run every week. (https://calshakes.org/learn/shakespeare-in-depth-with-philippa-kelly/)

ASR: What are some of your favorite dramas? Musicals? Comedies?

PK: Whenever I sit down with a box of tissues to watch The Sound of Music, my husband Paul says, “Oh, OK. I’ll sit upstairs and start filling out the divorce papers.”

ASR: What is Shakespeare’s most under-rated play? Why?

PK: I think The Comedy of Errors. I was about to work on it with the wonderful director Jessica Holt for Cal Shakes this season when Covid struck. It’s under-rated because people often see it as just a light comedy, but it is also a deep meditation on the mysteries of identity. Who are we? There’s so little time to find out. When we look at, or listen to, another person, we very often see what is inside our own heads rather than what is there in front of us. Look at how people saw Hilary Clinton – or didn’t see her. And so we got stuck with the orange nightmare. Misrecognition, mis-seeing, misunderstanding—these are key to the lightness and darkness of The Comedy of Errors.

ASR: Shakespeare’s most over-performed play?

PK: Midsummer – I’ve dramaturged it four times.

ASR: Who do you think is the most amazing Bay Area actor?

PK: Honestly there are so many. I revere them. But if I had to name one who did something I’ve never seen before, it would be Patty Gallagher. We had had Marcia Mason cast as Winnie in our 2009 production of Beckett’s Happy Days. Marcia left after ten days, Patty came in, and she played the most beautiful Winnie I could ever imagine. She had only ten days to prepare, and that role comprises almost the whole play, and it is full of non-sequiturs. Still today when I think of Patty’s Winnie, tears come to my eyes. I love that play so much. Her performance was pitch-perfect.

ASR: If someone asked to be your apprentice and learn all that you know, what three things would you tell them are essential?

PK: Hmm. Quite a question…

1: Ask “Why are we performing this play, at this time, for this audience, in this place?” You need to feel the pulse of the present moment and be incredibly specific in that feeling.

2: Be prepared to draw from a deep well of knowledge, but do not expect to share, or volunteer, the whole of that well unless you want the director to hit you over the head with a chair. [Editor’s Note: Oh, sooo very true! — KN]

3: Don’t feel that you have to know everything – you can look it up. It’s the thirst for knowledge that makes a great dramaturg.

ASR: What is the funniest screw-up you’ve seen onstage in a live performance?

PK: I saw a Romeo and Juliet at OSF where Romeo sent the knife flying and poor Juliet had to stab herself without it.

ASR: Do you have a “day job?”

PK: I am a writer and an educator. I run a community Shakespeare group; I run a theater appreciation group (you can contact me about either class –they run in separate terms all year long – on philippakellydresher@gmail.com); and I am proud to be Chair and Professor of English at the California Jazz Conservatory under the directorship of Susan Muscarella.

ASR: What are your interests outside of theater?

PK: I love to swim, read, walk my chihuahuas, and to sit in the Australian morning sun with my family or friends, drinking “flat whites.”

ASR: Do you follow other arts—music, film, dance, painting/sculpture? Do you actively do any other arts apart from theater?

PK: I follow music, of course – The Paul Dresher Ensemble! John Adams.

I love photographer Richard Misrach’s work.

ASR: What would be the worst “buy one get one free” sale of all time?

PK: A colonoscopy prep kit.

ASR: What would be the coolest animal to scale up to the size of a horse?

PK: An amoeba.

ASR: Theater people often pride themselves on “taking risks”—have you any interest in true risk taking, such as rock climbing, shark diving, bungee jumping, skydiving?

PK: My beloved brother died rock climbing, so I’m not too much into risky sports. But I do love looking at the works of friends of mine who are photographers (Richard Misrach, Debbie O’Grady), painters (Naomie Kremer), authors (Richard Zimler), musicians (Paul Dresher, John Adams) and being awed in the presence of this fact: that when artists make their work, the act is as risk-taking as that of any explorer who has forged ahead even though they might fall off the edge of the world.

ASR: Favorite quote from a movie or stage play?

PK: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” – NOT!!! Love means being ABLE to say you’re sorry!

Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

Our goal is not to subject you the reader to extended portentous sermons of the guest’s views on Russian translations of lesser-known Mamet flash drama (is there such a thing?)

Too often the people who guide and make theater in the Bay Area are behind the scenes — fast-moving denizens of the curtain lines who mumble into microphones while invariably (always excepting Carl Jordan’s beret collection…) dressed head-to-toe in black. These interviews allow you, the reader, to get to know these amazingly talented people a bit more, as…people.

Offering some personal and professional insights: with a heavy dash of humor, this is Aisle Seat Review’s Not So Random Question Time.

***

Aldo Billingslea is the Father William J. Rewak S. J., Professor of Theatre Arts at Santa Clara University. A member of Actors Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild, Billingslea has appeared in numerous theatrical productions in the Bay Area and across the country.

With Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company he gave an astounding powerful performance in Dry Powder, a production that won near-unanimous critical acclaim.

Billingslea resides in Santa Clara with Renee Billingslea, his visual-artist wife who also teaches at Santa Clara University, and Trinity, their daughter, who is captain of the Santa Clara Bronco rowing team.

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

AB: I thought it would help me get kissed by women. I was in 7th grade.

I did not get my first stage kiss until I was a sophomore in college. And then it was on the cheek.

ASR: How many theaters have you been involved with?

AB: Not including the theaters where I have acted, I’m currently on the board of the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre and the Marin Theatre Company. I’m an associate producer and ambassador for PlayGround. I’ve served on the board of Renegade Theatre and Playground and on the advisory board for Gritty City Youth Repertory Theatre. I have participated in the Artistic Director searches for Marin Theatre Company, the Aurora Theatre, and TheatreWorks. I’m over-involved.

ASR: What was your first paying theatrical gig?

AB: It was the Jones and Schmidt musical Celebration! I played Potemkin. It was summer of 1984 in a converted barn theater in the hill country of Texas, at a place called Mo Ranch.

ASR: Who has had the biggest influence on your career?

AB: There are a ton of people who contributed to the development of my professional career! Apart from my wife Renee, one of the most significant would be my college professor Dr. Barbara Means Fraser. She directed me a few times in college, encouraged me to audition for graduate school, and after I graduated with those degrees, encouraged me to go to Ashland. She then helped me work my way to Santa Clara University where I’ve been teaching for the last 22 years.

……theatrical Zoom work is new and creative!

ASR: How has the coronavirus shutdown affected you?

AB: I may actually be busier since the shutdown. Not commuting to theaters means the opportunity to work with more of them. Our Juneteenth Theatre Justice Project was created in collaboration with PlayGround, the Lorraine Hansberry, and Planet Earth Arts, and forty other Bay Area theatres, plus twenty more theatres across the country to read Vincent Terrell Durham’s Polar Bears, Black Boys, and the Prairie Fringed Orchid.

It was thrilling and led us to launch the Black Theater fundraiser, an initiative to fund black theaters around the country. They are hurting partly because of COVID-19 and because black theater isn’t properly funded. 

COVID-19 canceled several gigs for me, the most painful of which was Lauren Gunderson’s Book of Will at TheatreWorks, which would’ve allowed me to appear in the last play directed by Robert Kelley as artistic director and be on the stage again with Jim Carpenter, Jennifer Le Blanc, Francis Jue, Rebecca Dines, Mark Anderson Phillips, Jackson Davis and a host of other fabulous actors.

Jennifer Le Blanc and I were supposed to do another Othello at Pacific Repertory Theatre—we had done it at Marin Shakespeare in 2004—so after 16 years later I should be better. Jennifer and I were also supposed to do Death and the Maiden together, also at Pacific Rep. However, had I been engaged in those productions, I wouldn’t have been able to participate in the great collaboration for Polar Bears, Black Boys, and the Prairie Fringed Orchid, or participated in the black theater fund. So the Lord does work in mysterious ways!

ASR: What’s the worst aspect of the shutdown for you?

AB: Losing the immediacy of being in a theater, and relating to human beings without the separation of a screen. It is invaluable and sorely missed! However, this theatrical Zoom work is new and creative. It’s going to send us into a new realm and a new burst of exploration as people try to find ways to harvest the potential.

ASR: What are some of your favorite plays?

AB: Othello and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Give me August Wilson and William Shakespeare and I’d be good for a while. Also, I love Marcus Gardley’s Black Odyssey and Sarah Burgess’ Dry Powder, Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, and Lauren Gunderson’s Book of Will and I am so very very taken by Polar Bears, Black Boys, and the Prairie Fringed Orchid that I’m directing it at Santa Clara University this fall!

ASR: A favorite quote?

AB: “I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its power to inform about the human condition, and its power to heal.” – August Wilson

Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

Our goal is not to subject you the reader to extended portentous sermons of the guest’s views on Russian translations of lesser-known Mamet flash drama (is there such a thing?)

Too often the people who guide and make theater in the Bay Area are behind the scenes — fast-moving denizens of the curtain lines who mumble into microphones while invariably (always excepting Carl Jordan’s beret collection…) dressed head-to-toe in black. These interviews allow you, the reader, to get to know these amazingly talented people a bit more, as…people.

Offering some personal and professional insights: with a heavy dash of humor, this is Aisle Seat Review’s Not So Random Question Time.

***

Among a handful of Bay Area theater people with astoundingly deep credentials, George Maguire has enjoyed a 52-year professional career spanning Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theater, the National company of Nicholas Nickelby and more than thirty feature films.

He was Artistic Director of Solano College Theater for eighteen years, directing fifty main stage plays and musicals and helming the school’s renown Actor Training Program.

A couple of years ago, Maguire joined the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle as an adjunct member and voraciously continues to see and critique as many theater and film productions as possible.

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

GM: I began in high school, first in Wilmington, Delaware in the chorus of both Brigadoon and Carousel where I had my first line: “Hey Nettie, ya burnin’ the lemonade?” Then we moved to Pittsburgh PA and it all ramped up quickly.

In one month, I played Freddy Eynesford Hill in My Fair Lady, graduated, went to prom, and got my AEA card at seventeen in Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera’s Top Banana with Phil Silvers, Mr. President with Vivian Blaine and the rest of the originals, Tovarich with Ginger Rogers, South Pacific with Georgio Tozzi and Elizabeth Allen (I met Richard Rogers when he came to see her in that show and then cast her in Do I Hear a Waltz?), and My Fair Lady in the ensemble. Quite a feat for a seventeen-year-old who couldn’t read a lick of music and knew only one audition song — yep, one — “On the Street Where You Live.”

The choreographer of our high-school My Fair Lady was a major pro who worked with John Kenley and suggested that I and two others should audition for Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. We all got in! I did the next five seasons, going from second tenor to baritone-bass. I returned twice to Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera—in 1979 as Asst. Director and actor, and in 1981 as Max in The Sound of Music opposite John Shuck and Maureen McGovern.

ASR: What was the first play you directed for a paying audience?

GM: The first play as a director was Matchmaker at my old high school where I returned for four years as a teacher.

ASR: How many theater companies have you been involved with?

GM: Hundreds. Literally.

ASR: When was your present company formed?

GM: I formed Solano College Theater (SCT) in 1990 with Managing Director Dave Leonard. I retired from it seven years ago.

ASR: Did you anticipate that it would become as successful as it has?

GM: I took the advice of one of my great mentors when I founded SCT —  Hire people who do what they do better than you can and then do what you do superbly. I hired actors and teachers like Nancy and Joy Carlin, Ken Sonkin, Bob Parsons, Julian Lopez Morillos, Carla Spindt, L. Peter Callender, and Sacramento’s Christine and Luther Hanson. Jon Tracy was a student then along with Johnny Moreno.

I brought in friends like Tom Hanks to do a major fundraiser. Writer José Rivera and Dave Leonard produced José ‘s first big hit House of Ramon Iglesia ( I had its initial readings at Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City.) I brought in guest lecturers like Meryl Shaw from ACT. It was a magical time.

I have an aversion to any play that must ask and answer at the first production meeting “What is your concept?”

ASR: Who has had the largest impact on your professional development in the theater?

GM: I’d have to say Vincent Dowling who was Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival. (He also mentored both Rivera and Hanks.) His testament to enormous insight is that all of us are still dear friends since 1978.

Then I would say Olympia Dukakis in the brief semester I had with her at NYU. She was brutally tough and honest and I had no clue until years later how influential she was. Whatever moments of truth I have had both on film and on stage, I owe to her.

ASR: What are some of your favorite plays? Musicals?

GM: Plays: Cherry Orchard, The Visit, Richard II, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Long Day’s Journey into Night, All My Sons, Angels in America. Musicals: Sweeney Todd, South Pacific, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Cabaret (I’ve directed all three versions), and, well, so many more.

Faves that I produced and directed at Solano College Theater: Equus, The Elephant Man, Distracted, Eurydice, among others. They are my children.

ASR: And your least favorites?

GM: Least fave? Long ago I recognized I had no real interest in directing Shakespeare and indeed have directed only Calarco’s Romeo and Juliet for New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC.)

Let others do it! I have an aversion to any play that must ask and answer at the first production meeting “What is your concept?”

I have done conceptual work: Sweeney Todd I set in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors for example; and Equus, in the ruins of the Parthenon, but direct Shakespeare? Not me. Although to be completely open, I have done maybe twenty-some Shakespeare roles as an actor.

I’m often challenged as a director by musicals that flopped. Seussical I resurrected and completely re-thought. I had a blast!!

ASR: Can you name a Bay Area actor who you think does amazing work?

GM: Has to be Jim Carpenter. So honest and real and kind!

ASR: Which theater friendships mean the most to you?

GM: Our friendships are vital but they do not always continue post-production. Those from the Great Lakes era have lasted more than forty years, with two Oscars for one, and an Oscar nomination for the other.

What is true about this is that for all of us the person we met way back when is the treasure we love and success is measured by compassion, not by a resumé.

ASR: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to be your apprentice and learn all that you know?

GM: Hmm. Tricky. OK, here goes…

1. Be true to yourself, and enter the workspace always with an idea.

2. Always breathe before you answer a question.

3. Research! Research! Research!

ASR: What are your interests outside the theater?

GM: I am a major museum freak. I love them, having studied art when I spent a year in Germany at nineteen. Also, opera and symphony. In Germany, I heard Schwartzkopf sing Der Rosenkavalier, for example. I am not a big contemporary music person, probably due to my hearing impairment.

ASR: What would be the worst “buy one get one free” deal?

GM: A ticket to Dude, the Musical! I was there on opening night. Oy!

ASR: If you could create a 30-minute TV series what would it be?

GM: It would definitely be about Great Lakes days in a format like Schitz Creek.

ASR: Care to mention a favorite song?

GM: Having had health issues all my life — hearing impairment, Meniere’s Syndrome, etc, I resonate to “Being Alive.”

ASR: Theater people often pride themselves on “taking risks”—have you any interest in true risk-taking, such as rock climbing, shark diving, bungee jumping, skydiving?

GM: I would never parachute, climb a mountain, etc. Fuck, I’m 73! Walking on stage while having a vertigo attack is risk enough for me.

Aisle Seat Review and our readers are enjoying a new series of question-and-answer interviews with prominent Bay Area theater people.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio — she was a high school classmate of KQED’s Michael Krasny — Rita Abrams launched her career in 1970 when her novelty song “Mill Valley” stormed its way up the charts.

At a time of great social and political upheaval—not unlike today—the song was a breath of fresh air among nonstop sermons about war, racism, poverty, and environmental destruction. With its success, Abrams went from being a local grade-school teacher to instant fame, guest-starring on “Hollywood Squares” and dating prominent entertainers.

50 years later she is still going strong, continuing to pen some of the cleverest tunes ever created.

Recipient of two Emmy’s and multiple SFBATCC nominations and awards, Abrams is perhaps best known for her long-running Marin County spoof For Whom the Bridge Tolls (a collaboration with Stan Sinberg) and many musicals, including Pride and Prejudice, scheduled for May 2021 at Ross Valley Players. Among friends, she’s known as the quickest wit in the west.

ASR: How did you get started in theater?

RA: I wrote poems and songs all my life, starting with family musical sagas.

ASR: What was the first play you performed in or directed for a paying audience?

RA: My first paid performance was singing “Bell Bottom trousers, coat a navy blue” when I was three. The neighbors paid me ten cents apiece. As an adult, I made a musical out of a quirky little love triangle play written by a TV comedy writer friend which ran in a little SF theatre.

ASR: How many theater companies have you been involved with?

RA: My stage musicals have been produced by fifteen theatre companies. I’ve also composed for various children’s media and educational companies . . . maybe twenty-five companies altogether.

ASR: Who has had the largest impact on your professional development in the theater?

RA: My mother, who introduced me to the work of all the great musical theatre composers and lyricists, and many lesser known ones as well. The Cleveland public schools took us regularly to great theatre and concerts, and my parents took me to New York to see Broadway shows.

ASR: What are some of your favorite dramas?

RA: Intimidating question but I’ll try: Raisin in the Sun, Private Lives, Our Town, Fences, Bad Jews . . . and then there’s Shakespeare and too many more to mention.

ASR: Musicals? Comedies?

RA: All of Rogers & Hammerstein, Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, The Fantasticks, And the World Goes Round (Kander & Ebb Revue), Hamilton, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Lost in Yonkers, The Heidi Chronicles, The Sisters Rosensweig.

ASR: As hard as it may be to pick just one, can you name a Bay Area actor who you think does amazing work?

RA: George Maguire.

ASR: If someone asked to be your apprentice and learn all that you know, what three things would you tell them are essential?

RA: Regarding songwriting:

1. Write lyrics you can easily speak, as in conversation.

2. Build as the song progresses—Save the biggest, funniest, or most moving for last, and don’t be too repetitive or derivative. Keep introducing new ideas or twists.

3. With comedy songs—never give away the punchline, especially in the title, and when possible, end with a surprise.

ASR: What theater-related friendship means the most to you? Why?

RA: Very tough question, as I love so many of the actors and musicians (and even a few collaborators) I’ve worked with. But when I asked a great bass player friend—Jack Prendergast—if he knew any conductor/synthesizer players for Just My TYPE, a 2018 Ross Valley Players musical, he surprised me by saying he could do the job. He worked so hard on all aspects of the music that he won my heart. We’re still together, and still working together on music.

ASR: What is the funniest screw-up you’ve seen on stage in a live performance?

RA: The wacky satirical musical revue about Marin County, For Whom the Bridge Tolls, that I co-created and produced with Stan Sinberg, from 1994 to 2005, was filled with unscripted goofs and gaffes. One night during the sketch, The Overpasses of Marin County (a parody of The Bridges of Madison County), Frank Brown, as photographer for “Dangerous Exits Magazine,” while passionately embracing Sharon Boucher as “Francesca,” caught her long black wig in his belt buckle, where it hung amid gales of laughter from the audience. For two actors who knew how to ham it up, this was their moment. The hilarity went on and on.

ASR: The most excruciating screw-up?

RA: When an actress in one of my shows forgot the lyrics to her solo, and sang the same verse twice in a row, she, a tough one, dismissed it as no big deal—but I was mortified, fearing the audience would think that was how I wrote the song!

ASR: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen a guest do at the theater?

RA: I was playing piano for a show at San Francisco’s Improv Comedy Club, when in the middle of a scene, a disheveled figure ambled up to the stage and started riffing. A rumble arose from the audience, turning to a roar as they realized who it was—Robin Williams!

ASR: Do you have a “day job?”

RA: Not one day job, but revolving freelance gigs—like B.C. (Before Covid) writing scripts for Gregangelo’s Velocity Entertainment shows, and I’m a longtime writer of greeting cards, which is fortunately pandemic-proof.

ASR: What are your interests outside of theater?

RA: All forms of entertainment: Scrabble, Zoom Fictionary, watching the horror unfolding on MSNBC, and now trying to plan some kind of virtual commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of our Miss Abrams & the Strawberry Point School Third Grade Class “Mill Valley” record release. And keeping in touch with family, like my daughter in LA.

When an actress in one of my shows forgot the lyrics to her solo, and sang the same verse twice in a row

ASR: Do you follow other arts—music, film, dance, painting/sculpture?

RA: Truthfully, while I’m interested in everything, I’m usually focused on my original music and theatre creations.

ASR: Do you actively do any other arts apart from theater?

RA: Just the artifice of pretending not to age.

ASR: You discover a beautiful island on which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What are the first three rules you’d put into place?

RA: 1. Enforced Social Distancing between Democrats and Republicans. 2. Twenty minutes of daily laugh therapy before rising. 3. No fitbits.

ASR: What would be the worst “buy one get one free” sale of all time?

RA: Canned tripe, or dinner with the current president. Not necessarily in that order.

ASR: You have the opportunity to create a 30-minute TV series. What’s it called and what’s the premise?

RA: “Where Have I Been All My Life?” features real senior citizens confessing their one big regret, and then, through the magic of technology, being able to reverse and redo it, for all the world to see.

ASR: If you were arrested with no explanation, your friends and family might assume you had done what?

RA: Been mistaken for someone more interesting.

ASR: A fashion accessory you like better than others?

RA: Sequined mask.

ASR: What would be the coolest animal to scale up to the size of a horse?

RA: A butterfly.

ASR: Theater people often pride themselves on “taking risks”—have you any interest in true risk taking, such as rock climbing, shark diving, bungee jumping, skydiving?

RA: Just reading the names gives me heart palpitations.

ASR: Favorite quote from a movie or stage play?

RA:

1. From Just My TYPE (book by Charlotte Jacobs & Michael Sally): “I can change him AFTER we get married.”

2. From For Whom the Bridge Tolls: “Between my mani-pedi, my Shiatsu massage, my Bickram Yoga, and my Zumba class…I have NO time for ME!!”

ASR: Theatrical event you are most looking forward to?

RA: The Ross Valley Players production of Josie Brown’s and my Pride and Prejudice Musical from May 13th to June 13th, 2021. Phoebe Moyer will direct the great lineup of talent already we’ve already cast.