Category Archives: Acting

Decky Does a Bronco Premieres in the USA: An Interview with Producer David Gow

The Modernist Beat sat down with actor-producer David Gow to discuss his upcoming production of  Decky Does a Broncoby Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell. This production is the American premiere of the piece that first toured Scotland in 2000. [NB: There is a character “David” in the play that Gow discusses.]

THE MODERNIST BEAT: David, if I’m not mistaken, you saw a production at the Edinburgh Fringe. What attracted you to Decky Does a Bronco? 

DAVID GOW: I first fell in love with this play because of the way it handles adolescence and innocence. Maxwell identifies childhood dynamics so accurately in his writing, and he knows exactly what to strip away from the kids when they grow up.

TMB: Why bring this play from Scotland to the United States? Does it translate to the American experience?

DG: I’m particularly excited about American audiences seeing it for two reasons. The first is I’m very proud we get to be the first ones. The second is because I think our culture in the United States doesn’t handle this subject matter as well as other countries do. 

The cast of Decky Does a Bronco. From front to back: David Gow, Kennedy Kanagawa, Misha Osherovich, Cody Robinson, and Graham Baker. Photo from the production.

TMB: What does it illuminate about the “coming-of-age” narrative that perhaps an American work would not?

DG: It can be an ugly, uncomfortable topic of conversation for people, and whenever that’s the case I love when theater throws it up on stage right in people’s faces. 

TMB: Over the course of the work, the characters of the play, five boys, grow into men. The same actors play those characters at both ages. What were the challenges in making that journey? How were rehearsals structured so that the cast could believably inhabit both realities?

DG: That’s been one of the most rewarding parts of this process. We’ve done a great deal of physical improv that has really helped define the relationships within the group, and those changing relationships have dictated a lot of the behavior that shifts as we become adults. In past performances they have different actors split the role, one playing the child one playing the adult. I greatly prefer what we are doing because we get to finish the characters arc and really sit in the changes of the characters. 

TMB: What insights do you think the play offers on childhood trauma (and how that trauma continues to haunt us into adulthood)?  Also, what does it try to convey about guilt and responsibility? 

DG: That’s the big question in this story, one that the narrator David is wrestling with out loud with the audience throughout the play.

TMB: In 1990, Tim O’Brien wrote a volume of interlinked short stories entitled The Things They Carried. It focused on a platoon of young soldiers during the Vietnam War whose every action was something they carried on life (assuming they survived). But the central incident in Deckyhappens when the characters are 9. How do you dramatize “carrying” that incident into adulthood? Is it possible to strip away the judgement and focus on the complexity of it all?

DG: There’s no question that all the boys carry the incident into adulthood and that it has an influencing power as to who they become. But through the help of David the characters are all really trying to focus on the overall picture and not the looming guilt they’ve carried for years. He asks questions that are trying to help him make sense of things – how do they all continue to go on with their lives as if nothing happened, how to they now process watching similar events on the news, ect. And while David is definitely still discovering this for himself as the play goes along, I think it does offer some relief to the characters and the audience. 

TMB: What should audiences be prepared for stepping into your space? What counts as (artistic) success for you?What do you need the audience to carry with it out of the theater?

DG: I hope audiences will experience three things: 

  1. How hilarious the kids’ antics together are. 
  2. How simple and pure Douglas Maxwell’s writing is 
  3. How brilliant and unique this form of storytelling is.

TMB: What about that set?

DG: We are building a swing set ON STAGE ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF A BUILDING AND WE DO STUNTS ON IT. That alone should be reason to see this show.

Decky Does a Broncofrom Starting 5 Productions plays from September 6 – September 21 at Royal Family Productions, 145 West 46thStreet, New York City. Ethan Neinaber directs. The cast includes: Graham Baker, Gow, Kennedy Kanawaga, Misha Osherovich, and Cody Robinson. For more information and tickets, please follow this link: https://www.deckydoesabronco.com

A Theatre of Contemplation

Usually the kind of theatre that captures my attention has a more political dimension, it has an earnest desire to convince its audience of something. The narrative propels one forward to a needed and decisive conclusion. Claire van Kampen’s Farinelli and The King is a not work of power, but of peace. It is not a construction of plot but of meditation. As 2017 gives way to 2018, this is exactly the kind of theatre we need.

Based on the historical record, Farinelli and the King tells of the famous castrato, who is brought from Covent Garden to the palace of the King of Spain. Only Farinelli’s voice can soothe King Philippe V’s troubled mind (he probably suffered from a bipolar disorder). By the play’s end, Farinelli, who has fallen in love with Queen Isabella, departs, and the King falls back into his old behavior. That’s it. That’s the plot. But that does not describe the show.

The title tells us much, and it is a play on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. For van Kampen’s the “King”is now the “I’. Philippe, much as we do, suffers from the crush of politics and the inevitable course of policy: war. Farinelli, as an embodiment of art (specifically music), offers escape, a positive alternative to a world moving toward chaos (the Seven Years’ War and the American and French Revolutions are in the not too distant future).

The governing idea here is that the magic of the theatre (not film magic transferred to the stage but honest-to-God theatrical magic) can offer sanctuary and solace. So we find ourselves at the intersection of the theatre, opera, music, and candlelight – especially candlelight. Originally performed at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse which can only be lit with means available in the seventeenth century, the strength of the piece relies on it being lit by candle and  utilizing technology only available in the Restoration. Indeed, I have a hard time imagining future productions of the work; the chances are high they will not understand this important aspect the alchemy. John Dove’s direction is as necessary to the proceedings as the script. [I am saddened that I did not get to see it the original run in London, but I did see Aidan Gillen do a reading of James Joyce’s “The Dead” in the Wanamaker, so I can only imagine the magic of Farinelli in that space.]

The role of Farinelli is shared by two performers. First, Sam Crane (who pops up in The Crown to dish the dirt on Jackie Kennedy) acts Farinelli when he is not performing, while (in my performance) Iestyn Davies becomes his voice when performing. During such moments, both Crane and Davies are on stage. I liked the split. It was simple, and it conveyed (much as Deaf West’s Spring Awakening did with the the teenagers) the division within Farinelli himself: his internal passion and longing and external hesitation and sense of self-doubt.

Anchoring it all is, of course, Mark Rylance as Philippe V. Rylance is one of my theatrical heroes, and having now seen him in Jerusalem, Twelfth Night, Richard III, Nice Fish as well as his recent television and film work, he continues his trajectory of brilliance. Though the performing the King, Rylance is in the interesting position of actually serving as the audience’s surrogate. As he becomes bewitched by the music (mostly Handel), he gives permission for the house to do the same. His (mostly) quiet performance is infectious. He builds the bridge to the music, which can only be felt and not explained. Melody Grove, whose Isabella is the prime mover and shaker in the play, rounds out the three leads and holds her own in matching wit against wit.

The script does not concern itself much beyond that. van Kampen, who is married to Rylance, skimps on the details of Farinelli’s harrowing childhood and his complex relationship with his brother. It hardly matters. One goes to Farinelli and the Kingto have the weight of the twenty-first century taken off the shoulders for a couple of hours and to find solace in beauty.

More information about the show can be found here: http://www.farinelliandthekingbroadway.com

Link

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/20/529146027/whos-afraid-of-a-diverse-cast

Link

http://www.playbill.com/article/annaleigh-ashford-stephen-adley-guirgis-nikki-m-james-set-for-shakespeare-in-the-park

Quick Thought about Fences

Much has already been written about Denzel Washington’s film adaptation of Fences, which has recently been released on blu-ray and streaming services. Washington took a little heat for his direction, but basically I think he did a fine job in his freshman effort behind the camera. He demonstrated a solid understanding of what a director does: strong craft, not much artistry, and little fuss. He got out of the way so that the play could be seen and heard.

Viola Davis rightly earned numerous plaudits in the role of Rose Maxson. She deserved an Oscar, but for Best Actress not Best Supporting Actress (a discussion for another time). Washington was necessarily volcanic as Troy, though I still cannot get the indelible impression James Earl Jones made in the Broadway premiere. Unsung in much of the criticism is Stephen McKinley Henderson. An excellent stage actor (he recently starred in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Between Riverside and Crazy), he added much to the role of Bono. Fences offers a number of three-hander scenes between Troy, Rose, and Bono, and Henderson more than held up his own end. He deserves great praise as well.

“To have that concentration to act well is like lugging things up staircases in your brain. I think that’s a thing people don’t understand. It is that exhausting. If you’re doing it well, if you’re concentrating the way you need to, if your will and your concentration and emotional and imagination and emotional life are all in tune, concentrated and working together in that role, that is just like lugging weights upstairs with your head…And I don’t think that should get any easier.” Philip Seymour Hoffman