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    Interview: Leading Us Up The Spiral Path

    Playwright Andrew Sharpe on his new play, The Spiral Path

    For our latest podcast interview, we caught up with Andrew Sharpe, whose latest play, The Spiral Path, is days away from opening at The White Bear Theatre. But this won’t be its stage debut, that was at The Maltings Theatre earlier this year when it was well received. Enough so that it was picked up to come to one of London’s great Fringe Theatre venues.

    As well as telling us about the play, Andrew discusses the writing process, which for The Spiral Path, was evolving it from two short playlets into a full length play. He also tells us about being a more mature entrant into writing, having previously been a lawyer, and how joyful it is to see your play on the stage, having handed the script to a director and then being very hands-off.

    The Spiral Path

    Five characters, bereaved, betrayed, and befuddled by random acts of cruelty. Five interwoven tragedies cut together, a deeply personal examination of life, love and loss.

    Off the back of a very well received run at The Maltings Theatre, St Albans; KatAlyst & Mad Stallion Productions are delighted to bring this thought-provoking piece of new writing to a London audience at The White Bear Theatre.

    Inspired by the tragic number of cyclists killed in London every year, The Spiral Path weaves a suite of hilariously dysfunctional narratives, a family in chaos, a best friend betrayed, against a backdrop of deep and lasting grief of a bereavement, and the brutal repression of sexual identity.

    The Spiral Path comes to The White Bear Theatre between 22 and 26 March. Further information and bookings via the below link. More

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    ‘Hart Island’ Gives Voice to Stories That Might Otherwise Be Lost

    Tracy Weller’s new multimedia theater piece focuses on those buried in New York City’s potter’s field and the inmates who dug the graves there.What we know about Hart Island, one of the largest mass grave sites in the country, we know from fragments. Fragments of history, memory, testimony.Since the 1800s, this potter’s field in Long Island Sound has been the final resting place for the marginalized, the unidentified and the sick. New York City’s homeless with no next of kin, stillborn babies and victims of epidemics, including yellow fever, tuberculosis, AIDS and Covid-19, have all been buried at the 100-acre cemetery.Until just a few years ago, the city’s Department of Correction used to send inmates from Rikers Island each week to dig trenches and heave pine boxes for 50 cents an hour at the site, half a mile east of the Bronx. That all changed in 2019, after Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a bill to transfer jurisdiction to the Department of Parks and Recreation; penal control of Hart Island officially ended on July 1, 2021.Inmates digging trenches for mass graves at potter’s field on Hart Island as correction oficers keep watch.Department of CorrectionThe story of Hart Island is the story of over one million lives anonymized by time and misfortune. How do you tell the stories of something unknowable, or of someone whose existence may no longer even be a memory?Kristjan Thor and Tracy Weller have found a way in their multimedia production, “Hart Island.” Thor, the director, recounted the vision Weller shared for the play. She said, “‘There are so many stories that need rescuing,’ and I thought it was such a beautiful way to think of it,” he explained. “There are so many stories that could be lost. The aim is to both rescue and revitalize and give voice to those stories,” he said.Several years in the making, “Hart Island” was inspired by an investigation into the mass graves by The New York Times in 2016. After reading it, Weller said, she stood in her kitchen holding the paper in her hand, heart pounding. She said she felt “an imperative” to create a piece of theater that “meditates upon some aspect of this place and the experiences connected to it.”The result, a collaboration with the immersive theater company Mason Holdings, opened this week at the Gym at Judson in Manhattan. With mantra-like narration, distorted audio, flashing visuals and an earthy set, it explores the connections between humans and islands as it aims to animate the loved ones of the buried and the inmates who dug their graves. Nora Cole, seated in the foreground, and Weller, as the narrator, in a recording studio above the stage.Maria BaranovaA mulch-filled lot scattered with memorabilia (a video game controller, a frayed yellow cooler, a tattered life vest) sits center stage, flanked by two ladders that seem to reach up and away from the cemetery, somewhere beyond the graves. A cast of seven tells the story: The narrator (Weller) presents cold, clinical facts (one plot can hold 150 adult corpses — or 1,000 infants), and six somber archetypes provide piecemeal anecdotes — including one about a Rikers correctional officer rallying his detainees for a day trip, another about the nurse of an elderly patient who passed away with no family to bury her and a third about a mother whose newborn died three days after birth.Thor said he was struck that the island was relatively unknown, despite its proximity. “It’s a huge piece of humanity that’s sitting inside of our city that nobody knows about,” he said. “That feels like a tragedy to me.”As the city continues to bury victims of Covid-19, the island’s history holds a mirror to pandemic quandaries of late. How do we isolate the diseased? How do we isolate ourselves from the diseased?Above all, how do we go on?In spring 2020, as Covid-19 overwhelmed morgues, interments on Hart Island increased about fivefold to 120 per week from 25. As many as one in 10 people who died from the virus in New York City may be buried in the mass graves, according to one analysis.Reflecting on the past two years, Weller said, “We know death in a way that we didn’t before; we know isolation in a way that we didn’t before.” She added, “We need to know death. The more we look at death, the more we understand life.”David Samuel and Daniel Kublick digging trenches in the play.Maria BaranovaIt wasn’t until April 2020 that the city began hiring hazard-suit-clad contractors to replace the incarcerated workers. Until that point, inmates exposed to the virus at Rikers could have potentially been digging their own graves — a point that stuck with Weller.The play poses a range of questions, about the dead and the living: among them, why is death an event so many cannot afford? But the backbone of “Hart Island” is the narrator, an actress played by Weller who arrives at an audition for a voice-over job she knows nothing about. She puts on her best smooth jazz radio timbre and falteringly reads a script on the history of New York City’s islands with the precision of a PowerPoint presentation.“In the East River tidal strait where New York Upper Bay, the Long Island Sound and the Harlem River meet, the turbulent convergence of tidal forces is responsible for thousands of shipwrecks and sailor ghosts.”From a recording studio that looms over the set like a guard tower, she calls up dark accounts of Rikers Island (“a troubled place built on troubled land”); Roosevelt Island (“a place of sickness but not necessarily of healing”); Randalls and Wards Islands (“islands of undesirables”), and the accompanying histories of psychiatric compounds, smallpox outbreaks and juvenile correctional facilities. Images of hospitals and penitentiaries flash in succession behind the narration, each fact interspersed with the click of a camera shutter or the blare of a jail cell buzzing to release an inmate.Both the narrator and the audience are left with information overload and a feeling of “‘It’s just too much,’” Thor said.The tale of survival, of coping with being alone, is all too familiar. A haunting line of the narration cuts to the core: “No matter how we might try to bury the past, it somehow always revisits us.” More

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    Margaret Atwood and Others Confront Grief in ‘The Nurse Antigone’

    A dramatic reading by Theater of War Productions will include the author and practicing nurses who have held the front line of the pandemic.It was a tragedy — an ancient Greek tragedy — that brought together three nurses on a Zoom call one night last week.Charlaine Lasse, 55, had rushed home to Bowie, Md., after a 12-hour shift at Johns Hopkins Hospital, propping open her laptop as soon as she got to her dining room table. Also on the call were Amy Smith, 52, a nurse practitioner at Northwell Health-GoHealth Urgent Care in New York who was winding down for the night, and Aliki Argiropoulos, 26, a registered nurse in Baltimore who was studying for an exam.After a few technical hiccups and brief introductions, they slipped into character, pretending to be elders in the city of Thebes.“Oh, Light of the Sun, / more beautiful and / radiant than any rays / that have ever graced / this seven-gated city!” Argiropoulos said, kicking things off.The three women were preparing for “The Nurse Antigone,” a dramatic reading of a translation of Sophocles’ “Antigone” that is to be presented on Zoom on Thursday by Theater of War Productions. It will include famous names like the actors Bill Camp (“The Queen’s Gambit,” “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night”) and Taylor Schilling (“Orange Is the New Black”). The nurses will make up the chorus, though they have no professional acting experience — a fact that they share with one other famous co-star: the author Margaret Atwood.Bryan Doerries, a founder of Theater of War Productions, said he wanted to present a play that specifically shined a light on the grief and anguish of nurses who have held the front line of the pandemic for the last two years. And “Antigone,” he added, touched on many of the themes that nurses around the world would be familiar with today. In the story, Antigone is determined to properly bury her brother — Polynices, the son of the former, disgraced king Oedipus — even though his burial has been forbidden by a decree from the new king, Creon. When she goes ahead and does what she thinks is right anyway, she is ordered to be buried alive.“It’s a play about not being able to live up to your own standards of care and about deferred grief, which I think is the moral injury of the pandemic,” Doerries explained. “It’s an injury that has been visited upon nurses, not just because they lost their own because of their profession, but because they were also proxy family members for people in isolation.”Clockwise from top left, Amy Smith, Charlaine Lasse and Aliki Argiropoulos.Theater of War ProductionsWhile most of the professional actors in this play have worked with Doerries on earlier projects, the addition of Atwood, who is portraying the blind prophet Tiresias, a character that pops up in several of Sophocles’ tragedies first as a man and then as a woman, was a fresh, last-minute addition. When the role opened up, Doerries said he turned to Atwood, who knows a thing or two about prophetic work. Her work, like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “just seems so prescient,” he said. “One could see a Gilead easily emerging from the current climate.”It wasn’t a hard sell. She responded to Doerries over email. “You want me to play an old, blind transgender prophet? That’s a dream come true!” he recalled her writing.“We have a great admiration for nurses, and you just say yes to these things,” Atwood said later, during a call from her home in Toronto. “It’s like giving blood — you don’t say, ‘Well, on the one hand … and on the other.’”The actors, both professional and nonprofessional, will not be wearing costumes (an attempt by Doerries to keep things unpolished and raw) — except for Atwood, who is the only one who needs some indicator that her character is blind. Days before the performance, she was contemplating a hooded cape that covered most of her face and possibly a pair of skeleton gloves.The reading, which will be performed virtually and is the first in a yearlong initiative of 12 performances in collaboration with different nursing organizations around the country, comes about two years after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. It’s a crisis that has left frontline medical workers so exhausted and traumatized that they are quitting their jobs in droves. And a recent survey of thousands of nurses by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses found that 66 percent considered leaving their posts because of their experiences during the pandemic.“Nurses talk about how in the beginning everybody was clapping and cheering and calling us heroes,” said Cynda Rushton, a leader in clinical ethics who teaches at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, who helped Doerries recruit nurses for the play. “But then as time has gone on and you think about the social unrest, the political divide, the anger that has developed in response to the pandemic, nurses — as the people who are closest to the patient — have been the recipient of that anger or that violence and frustration.”Theater of War Productions was founded in 2008 to take community-based performances of Greek tragedies to military bases, hospitals and other venues to help active service members and veterans, as well as their spouses and other military-adjacent workers, process and share war trauma. In the 14 years since its founding, the group has expanded its mission beyond military circles to other communities in crisis: the homeless, the incarcerated and survivors of addiction, abuse, natural disaster or racial violence.During the pandemic — as people across socioeconomic, racial and geographic lines were thrust into crisis, grief, isolation and sickness — Theater of War Productions pivoted to performances on Zoom, many exploring the “moral suffering of frontline health care workers,” Doerries said.Bryan Doerries, center bottom, with, clockwise from top left: Marjolaine Goldsmith, Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Nyasha Hatendi and Frankie Faison in a reading Sophocles’ works in 2021.Theater of War ProductionsIn May 2020, the group presented a virtual reading of “Oedipus the King,” starring Oscar Isaac as Oedipus, as well as Frances McDormand, John Turturro and Jeffrey Wright. More than 15,000 people tuned in that night, Doerries said.For that production, Doerries worked with Rushton to find professionals to act in the virtual productions and participate in the post-performance panels. But the pandemic series has mostly centered on physicians. After that first performance on Zoom, Rushton proposed focusing solely on nurses.“I just kept at it like a little chihuahua on your heels, saying, ‘Bryan, the nurses! The nurses!’ We have to find a way to give voice to that experience.”After the “Antigone” reading, which will be broadcast live to groups of gathered nurses across the country, the actors will be removed from the screen. Lasse, Smith and Argiropoulos will remain to participate in a discussion with three other nurses and to engage with the audience.Smith, who works in emergency medical care, had worked with Doerries in February as a panelist. Returning as an actor, she said, felt like an opportunity to finally process some of the emotions and themes that she and nurses across the world have been too busy to tackle. “A lot of us, especially in nursing, have to keep moving,” Smith said. “There’s no time to stop and say, ‘Hey, let’s reflect on what just happened.’”“Hopefully, the play is healing for people,” she said. More

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    Review: In ‘Book of Mountains & Seas,’ Puppets Embark on Mythic Quests

    Huang Ruo and Basil Twist’s new choral-theater piece at St. Ann’s Warehouse borrows from traditional Chinese tales.The giant is immense and craggy-limbed, like some primordial creature hewed from the earth or forged from lava. His name is Kua Fu, and in Huang Ruo and Basil Twist’s new choral-theater piece “Book of Mountains & Seas” he is a puppet, towering above his team of puppeteers. When thirst strikes, he lies prostrate to lap up a whole river of white silk, which slips down his gullet and disappears.This is splendid puppetry, imbued with poignancy and the pulsing, drum-driven drama of mythic quest. A figure from Chinese legend, Kua Fu desires one thing above all, and he will chase it as far as he has to: He wants to capture the sun.We should be rooting against him, then, if we want the planet to survive. But at St. Ann’s Warehouse on Tuesday night, as “Book of Mountains & Seas” made its American premiere, I found myself solidly on Kua Fu’s side — and feeling consequently like I had aligned my sympathies with Thanos, the ultra-bad guy in Marvel’s “Avengers” movies, which also borrow from mythology to tap into something ancient in us.Originally scheduled for January at the now-postponed Prototype festival, “Book of Mountains & Seas” is the aesthetic opposite of that blockbuster film franchise — live and handmade, harnessing the power of music, puppetry and human gathering. With a dozen choral singers from the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, two percussionists and six puppeteers — excellent, all — the show retells four Chinese tales borrowed from “Shanhaijing,” a text that is often called in English “The Classic of Mountains and Seas.”If you’re not already versed in those legends, or fluent in Chinese, you may be lost if you don’t read up on them in advance. The physical program provides two pages of clear, concise synopses. Presented by St. Ann’s Warehouse and Beth Morrison Projects, the performance is sung half in Mandarin and half in a language of the composer-conductor-librettist Huang Ruo’s invention, without English supertitles. Projected Chinese titles give the full text of the stories, but the English text is much briefer — occasional plot updates that generally do the trick if you’ve absorbed those program notes.For non-Mandarin speakers, it makes for an impressionistic experience, your mind allowed to drift a bit as the vocal tones wash over you. Huang Ruo has said that the combination of song and percussion is as old as humankind, and certainly it feels that way in the first slender myth, about the birth of Pan Gu, who created the world: Out of the primal darkness come the voices, and softly lit faces, of the singers, with percussion sounding from both sides.Twist, the production’s director and designer, keeps the puppetry minimal in that opening scene, but the pieces he uses to make Pan Gu’s enormous visage — rice-paper lanterns; large, rough pieces of what look like driftwood or fossils or bones — recur throughout the evening. They are building blocks of this show’s world.The performance is sung half in Chinese and half in a language of the composer-conductor-librettist Huang Ruo’s invention.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe second myth, “The Spirit Bird,” is about a princess who drowns, transforms into a bird and becomes consumed with her attempt to get revenge on the ocean. But the puppetry — a silken bird, a silken sky that becomes a silken sea — is too simple in its repetition. When an undulating sea creature (made of those driftwood-like bits) swims by, the variety is welcome.This is also the one section of the show where the precision of Ayumu Poe Saegusa’s otherwise extraordinarily meticulous lighting gives way, allowing an errant shadow — of a singer, possibly? — to break the illusion of the ocean.The last two myths are where “Book of Mountains & Seas” gets exciting. That’s partly because they, unlike the others, have built-in drama There is no conflict in the creation of the world, and the fight between the princess and the sea feels nebulous. But “The Ten Suns” and “Kua Fu Chasing the Sun” have stakes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow is it that the 10 puppet suns — rice-paper lanterns bobbing high in the air on long, slender stalks — are quite so charming and mesmeric? Glowing cherry-red when they first appear one by one, they are a happy band of siblings who share the duty of lighting the planet. Their fatal error is to go out together one day, which wreaks disaster. Twist makes it a menacing confrontation, with the suns aggressively approaching the audience — the show’s one real echo of climate change. Yet when nine of the suns are killed to save the Earth (the program, too, gives this away), the music and the moment have a mournful beauty.The pièce de résistance, though, is the appearance of Kua Fu, the giant we see awakening in the final myth. Never would anyone confuse this stony-looking creature with the mammoth King Kong puppet we saw on Broadway, yet as Kua Fu looks around, getting his bearings, that’s exactly who he resembles.With propulsive, high-tension music to match his urgency, Kua Fu runs in place at center stage, as the sun, a rice-paper lantern, moves around him, out of his long arms’ reach. It is mysteriously gripping: this huge, wordless being so filled with longing for what he cannot and should not have; this giant who, if he keeps going, will drink all of the fresh water of the Earth.He fails in his quest, of course; the program tells you that as well. But here the projected English text, at least, hedges a bit. Because in the legend, when Kua Fu dies, forests of peach blossom trees grow from his walking stick.The puppet has no walking stick, and no puppet peach blossom trees grow. But wouldn’t they have been magnificent?Book of Mountains & SeasThrough March 20 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn; stannswarehouse.org. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. More

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    Interview: A Simple Question? Or Maybe Not So Simple?

    Who You Are and What You Do, Bread and Roses. 22 March – 2 April

    It’s easy to miss the Bread and Roses Theatre if you aren’t looking for it, tucked away as it is off the busier roads around Clapham. But for anyone who has had the pleasure of going, it is an absolute treat. This pub theatre is another amazing place to find fresh new work, brilliant new ideas and quite possibly the stars of the future. So we are always more than pleased to find time to catch up with them and find out what they are up to next.

    And right now, what they are up to is getting ready to bring us Who Are you and What You Do, a play that asks ‘are we defined by our actions, or the lessons we learn from them?’ Presented as a tableaux of interweaving stories about the social pressure to be happy all of the time, each night sees the play run in a different order.

    We caught up with the play’s writer, Hugh Dichmont (HD), director Tom Ward (TW) and producer from the in-house team at Bread and Roses, Natalie Chan (NC) to find out more.

    So what can you tell us about the play?

    NC: Who You Are and What You Do presents a tableaux of interweaving stories about the social pressure to be happy all of the time. There are stories about love, family relationships, the jobs that we do and the joys and pressures it gives us, conflict, resolving conflict, and how those different elements of our life insect.

    The play is made up of interweaving stories, which are played in a different order each night – doesn’t that risk affecting the flow of the whole evening?

    HD: For sure the actors have a challenge on their hands! But I love writing plays that do that… and the performers seem to love it too. Even without knowing about the switching order, I think our audience will see a stage of actors pushing themselves, excited to be discovering the play scene by scene. Hopefully it will be magic. They’re doing an incredible job. They will bring the flow, with their energy.

    We hope different audiences from different nights will take away different things, that all encourages reflection, empathy, and cohesion. 

    And how will you be deciding the running order each evening?

    TW: We have a system randomising it but still keeping it in order and one that the team can work with, come and join us for the show to find out more!

    The play is about that pressure to always be seen as happy; is social media going to play a big part in some of the stories?

    HD: This is a good question, come and see the show to find out!

    The play very much talks of the different versions of self we present, consciously or otherwise, depending on situations. Twitter or Facebook aren’t named, but this absolutely can be interpreted as an interpretation of online discourse. A play about 21st century happiness… what would it be without exploring technology?! This isn’t limited to The Internet, though. Social media, to some extent, is just a magnifier of what humans have been doing since the dawn of time. Let’s just say the script presents a near-future take on present day problems.

    The play was the winner of Bread and Roses Theatre’s 2019 Playwright Award, what was it that made it stand out?

    NC: As far as we know, we’ve never seen a script where scenes are written in a way like this one, where we can run the scenes in a different order and it presents a different, but equally brilliant experience for the audiences. We thought this was incredibly clever and fun, hence it stood out to us.

    Also the play was so different to the other winning plays and those from the previous playwriting awards.

    Do you feel the play answers any questions about our search for continuous happiness, or is it a case of holding the mirror up to our lives and making us think deeper about it?

    HD: The play definitely doesn’t offer solutions. It’s a piece full of characters who are simultaneously likeable and unlikeable; victims and complicit, a range of ages and backgrounds, from different walks of life. As ever with theatre, it is the grey stuff that powers the action- the messiness of being alive, relating to others, and coming to terms with your place in the world.

    And what is it that makes you happy?

    NC: For me, it’s the ability to find positives in most of the things we do that makes me happy. For example even if something (work or life) isn’t going so well, I remind myself what I’ve learnt from it. Of course – good theatre and making good theatre is definitely one.

    HD: It’s a cliche, but the pandemic has changed everything- In the last year I became a parent for the first time, then my own dad died. I wouldn’t say these events have changed my perspective on things… more that every day I’m a bit sadder and a bit happier than I was 12 months ago. Seeing my play on, after a two-and-a-half year wait, is definitely powering me through grey days!

    Thanks to Hugh, Tom and Natalie for their time to chat with us.

    Who Are You and What You Do plays at the Bread and Roses Theatre from 22 March to 2 April. Further information and bookings via the below link. More

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    Interview: Tackling Social Anxieties with Game Theatre

    Cherwell Theatre Company guide us through Sam & Zoe Vs Evermore

    When Cherwell Theatre Company got in touch about their latest show, Sam & Zoe Vs Evermore, it piqued our interest for a couple of reasons. Firstly, for what looked a rather interesting style of theatre, and secondly, as it appeared to be targeted at an age group that’s all too often overlooked in theatre.

    We had planned to sit down with them this week to chat about the show, but unfortunately they couldn’t quite fit the time in. However, they were good enough to provide their own little interview, where they tell us everything we could possibly hope to know.

    Tell us a bit about Cherwell Theatre Company

    Tristan Jackson-Pate (Writer/Director): I’ve been lucky to be Artistic Director for Cherwell Theatre Company (or CTC as we’re usually known) since 2015, but we were established back in 2004 as a creative home for young people in North Oxfordshire. Essentially, we create a safe environment where young people can be themselves, make new friends and make theatre in collaboration with professional artists. Over the years we’ve made shows in a range of quirky site-specific venues from a decommissioned nuclear bunker to a castle: we even have plans to create a show in an open air swimming pool in 2022! Our patron is Sir Trevor Nunn, one of the many professionals who support us in the belief that CTC creates access for all, regardless of background.

    And for this production you’ve partnered with Butterfingers?

    Tristan Jackson-Pate: Yes, we’ve initiated a new game theatre collective, Butterfingers, with my co-writers and actors Jess Lloyd-Jones and Krage Brown.

    Krage Brown (Actor/Writer): Having worked together previously and getting along so well the three of us really wanted to work on something new and fun together and thus Butterfingers was born! Sam & Zoe is the first show we’ve co-written and one we’re all incredibly proud of.

    Jess Lloyd-Jones (Actor/Writer): We came up with the name Butterfingers because we wanted our theatre to represent the idea that life can be beautifully messy and no one is perfect.

    Photo credit @ Rosy Addison
    Your show Sam & Zoe Vs Evermore opens in Cheltenham on 17 March, and tours through to 30 April. What’s it all about?

    Jess Lloyd-Jones: In our play Sam is depressed. His partner Zoe can’t reach him, so in a last-ditch attempt to ‘save’ him, she designs a game for them to play with the help of a willing audience.

    Krage Brown: The show is sort of like a theatrical game of ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ and incorporates interactive storytelling, physical theatre battles and puppetry.

    So what sparked the idea for Sam & Zoe?

    Tristan Jackson-Pate: The show was inspired by some of the young men we work with in CTC’s youth theatre, who are passionate about DnD but experience social anxiety. They have helped to develop the idea, through an Arts Council funded research and development process, which took place in March 2020, just before the lockdown commenced. Over a couple of weeks, we brought together young people from CTC and students at Banbury College with Pegasus Theatre, a professional creative team and a representative from CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably). They joined up with an award-winning game theatre dramaturg, who developed approaches to give our audiences agency with us, allowing them to influence the outcome of the story. 

    Krage Brown: We are avid gamers – video and physical – so getting the opportunity to develop a story set partly within a fantasy world is something we were very keen to dive into! Mixing the two worlds of theatre and gaming just sounded like it’d be fun for anyone and everyone!

    Jess Lloyd-Jones: Whenever I play fantasy games I always notice how the character I have created becomes really confident. During our R&D it was so wonderfully interesting seeing the young people become these proud and unapologetic characters also. I think sometimes it can be very challenging – especially as a young person – to always be open, and creating these characters can sometimes really encourage them to talk more openly. I think that concept really drove the further development of the show.

    What is game theatre?

    Krage Brown: Pretty much what you’d expect: merging physical or mental games within a stage show. A win-win combination!

    Jess Lloyd-Jones: I’d say it’s about agency and participation: that point when the audience stops being a viewer and becomes a player. The audience can decide whether to become a Mage, Rogue or Barbarian and during the show will play interactive games alongside Sam & Zoe.

    Tristan Jackson-Pate: Some of these are twists on well known ‘playground games’ like Grandmother’s footsteps, while others require the casting of spells, or solving Tolkein-esque riddles!

    Tell us about the characters, Sam & Zoe.

    Krage Brown: Sam is a fun, creative guy. He enjoys writing and drawing comics set within fantasy worlds inhabited by elves and orcs. Lately he’s been really struggling with his mental health and the ability to talk about it with others.

    Jess Lloyd-Jones: I would describe Zoe as a very lively, excitable and (slightly) controlling character, though she means well! The couple have been together for some time and she’s noticed Sam isn’t acting himself anymore and so immediately wants to ‘fix’ the problem by immersing him in the world he originally created. She also feels very comfortable playing an elf in the show. She believes she was one in a past life…

    What kind of an experience can the audience expect to have?

    Tristan Jackson-Pate: We keep the audience very involved throughout, but never in a pressured way – it’s absolutely not about making anyone feel uncomfortable. The audience form a party of DnD adventurers alongside Sam & Zoe, so they might play supporting roles, help create practical effects and make suggestions to influence story outcomes. Our aim is to create a sense of warmth and community as we tell the story together, and Jess and Krage are so charming and hilarious as Sam & Zoe that they always bring everyone along with them!

    Krage: Brown: We’ve partnered with the charity CALM for this production, to promote honest conversations around mental health. Each audience member will get a free comic book programme, which also signposts them to the charity’s mental health support services.

    Who would enjoy this production?

    Tristan Jackson-Pate: Of course, anyone with an interest in DnD, fantasy films and novels, but I’d say more broadly comedy fans, especially those who are looking to see something new and exciting at the theatre.

    Krage Brown: The show is aimed at ages 12+ so it’s pretty inclusive! I’d add that it’s also for anyone looking for a different night out – one that includes both watching some theatre but also joining in and being part of the fun.

    Jess Lloyd-Jones: I think if you love Lord of the Rings and fantasy gaming this is the show for you! I would love to say everyone should come but I’m realising that’s very greedy of me…

    Thanks to Tristan, Krage and Jess for their time to put this together.

    You can find a full list of dates on their website via the below link. More

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    Where Jerry Zaks Goes to Escape the ‘Pure Pleasure’ of the Theater

    The director of ‘The Music Man’ pays more attention to the furnishings onstage than to those at home. But that suits him fine.Jerry Zaks has never been much for turning an apartment into a home.He likes things clean, and he likes things comfortable. But beyond those basics, his interest kind of stalls out. An actor turned four-time Tony Award-winning director, he’s too wrapped up in second-act curtains to ponder living room curtains.“I think most of my places have looked like the dorm when I was in college, because I’ve been too busy working and getting the work done,” said Mr. Zaks, 75, who most recently shepherded the Broadway revival of “The Music Man,” starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, and the musical adaptation of the film “Mrs. Doubtfire” (which resumes performances April 14 after a Covid-related hiatus). Among his two dozen other directing credits: “The House of Blue Leaves,” “Six Degrees of Separation,” the Steve Martin comedy “Meteor Shower” and the 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!”The celebrated Broadway director Jerry Zaks, whose current projects are “The Music Man” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” lives in a two-bedroom apartment  on the Upper West Side. Photographs, ephemera and Hirschfeld caricatures, including one of himself, hang in his kitchen.Katherine Marks for The New York Times“When I’m going home,” he continued, “I’m not escaping from anything except pure pleasure, which is the theater or my rehearsal room.”Jerry Zaks, 75Occupation: DirectorMaking the scene: “I’ve never paid a lot of attention to how my apartment looks. I’ve paid more attention to the set design of my show. I love participating in the creation of the world that is going to house the show I’m doing.”Since moving to New York in 1969 after graduate school, Mr. Zaks has lived uptown and down, in hovels and in storied buildings like the El Dorado, where the apartment he shared with his wife, the actress Jill Rose, and two daughters overlooked Central Park and was big enough that he could chalk up a constitutional — he is an obsessive walker — simply by striding from one end of the space to the other.Mr. Zaks has a unique copy of “Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports.” It contains a meticulously crafted gag entry written by a friend about one Jerry Zaks, “after Tiger Woods, the most exciting amateur golfer of the 1990s…”Katherine Marks for The New York TimesBut time marches on, and with the dissolution of his marriage, Mr. Zaks did, too. He moved to one rental near the El Dorado, then another, to stay in proximity to his children, now adults. In 2008, he found a more permanent perch, in the shape of a two-bedroom co-op with prewar details, on West End Avenue.At the time, Mr. Zaks was in Los Angeles directing episodic television, and his then girlfriend had taken up the apartment search, sending him photos and descriptions of appealing prospects.“When I came back to New York, I went once and took a look, and said, ‘Let’s do it,’” recalled Mr. Zaks, who commented very favorably on a renovation by the seller that combined the kitchen and dining room into one warm, open space.That same girlfriend helped Mr. Zaks outfit the apartment. “On stage, I want to know how I get in and out of the living room. I want to know how the couch relates to the table,” he said. “But for my own apartment, I didn’t really get involved. She would show me pictures, and I would say, ‘This looks good.’”A caramel-colored leather sofa and easy chair looked good to Mr. Zaks. So did an Arts-and-Crafts sideboard, a free-standing bookcase of similar style and a rectangular wood dining table.Among his favorite possessions: a travel bar set once owned by Zero Mostel.Katherine Marks for The New York Times“Some of the earliest work on ‘Hello, Dolly!,’ ‘Meteor Shower,’ ‘The Music Man’ and ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ was done around that table,” he said. “I don’t need an office. I just need a good kitchen table.”Mr. Zaks would like to be a minimalist, but not quite yet. In a corner of the kitchen, which is painted a nice shade of coral, a tall stack of scripts and research material related to “The Music Man” and “Mrs. Doubtfire” seems to be awaiting further instructions. “I haven’t thrown them out yet because I can’t,” he said.Covering the walls are framed notes and letters of appreciation from colleagues like Neil Simon and Harold Prince (“I loved him because he was the last person in show business to call me ‘kid,’” Mr. Zaks said). There are several Al Hirschfeld caricatures, including one of Mr. Zaks in 1980, when he appeared on Broadway in the musical revue “Tintypes,” as well as ephemera like a two-page spread from the script of Thornton Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker.” (The source material for “Hello, Dolly!,” it was a gift from the administrators of the playwright’s estate when Mr. Zaks’s “Dolly” revival opened.)The cache of show posters — “my little shrine to myself” — represents Mr. Zaks both as performer (fun fact: he was a replacement Kenickie in the original production of “Grease”) and director. “This is a partial display including my greatest successes and, well, let’s put it this way: You’ve got hits and you’ve got misses,” he said. “Hits are better, but you’d be a fool not to remember the misses, because you work just as hard on them.”All pretty impressive, but nothing has quite the resonance of a photograph of a 20-something Jerry Zaks posing with his parents and Zero Mostel. Mr. Zaks was playing Motel the tailor in a tent-theater summer tour of “Fiddler on the Roof”; Mr. Mostel was reprising his Tony-winning performance as Tevye, while taking on an additional role: rumbustious mentor to his young castmate.Meet Mr. Zaks’s friends Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony and George. Katherine Marks for The New York Times“When I was a junior at Dartmouth and declared I was going to be an actor, my parents were very disappointed — a waste of an Ivy League education and all that,” Mr. Zaks said. “They were afraid for me. They were Holocaust survivors, and there was a Nazi around every corner.”But of course, they came to see their son in action, and afterward, went backstage to meet Mr. Mostel. “For 20 minutes, they spoke Yiddish to Zero, tummeling back and forth,” he recalled. “And finally my father asked, ‘Is my son going to be all right in this farkakte business?’ And Zero answered, ‘He’s going to be more than all right.’ And then we took the picture.”“That was the beginning of my parents accepting what I was committed to,” added Mr. Zaks, who counts among his favorite opening-night gifts a travel cocktail bar set that once belonged to Mr. Mostel.A while back, he was returning from a favorite neighborhood spot, Silver Moon Bakery, when he ran into a fellow co-op resident, Melissa Gooding, who was out walking her dog. “She moved in shortly after I did, but we didn’t get to know each other closely until last year,” Mr. Zaks said.He now divides his time between their two apartments. On the mantel in Ms. Gooding’s apartment are Mr. Zaks’s four Tony statuettes, along with a Mr. Abbott award, a tribute named for the legendary man of the theater, George Abbott. On a wall in the hall is a framed photo snapped by the stage doorman at the Winter Garden Theatre, home of “The Music Man”: Mr. Zaks huddling with Ms. Foster and Mr. Jackman at the end of a performance.“It’s hard to talk about without getting emotional,” he said. “This is my everything.”“The relationship I have with my actors is the most precious thing I have outside of family,” he continued, “and it’s encapsulated in this one image.”Mr. Jackman and Ms. Foster had the photo blown up as a gift for Mr. Zaks. He may not care much about décor, but he knows what makes him feel at home.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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    ‘Man Cave’ Review: Things That Go Bump in the American Night

    John J. Caswell Jr.’s play is a political drama wrapped in the spooky pleasures of the horror genre.Late on a thundery monsoon evening in a well-appointed basement in Sedona, Ariz., the ghosts are restless. Or something is — thumping and scratching inside the walls of a congressman’s gated home, where Imaculada, the housekeeper, has been holding down the fort alone.When her friends Rosemary and Lupita show up unannounced, fleeing domestic danger, the noises don’t take long to creep them out.“You’re supposed to disclose your home’s paranormal status to guests upon arrival,” Rosemary chides, dryly.But this is just what she needs: a place rife with spirits that might be enlisted for vengeance on her live-in boyfriend, a police officer who has beaten her bloody yet again. On the internet she found “a little witchcraft” that she’s been wanting to try.“It’s called death walking,” she says. “Energy harnessing, engaging spirits in highly active spaces to do your bidding in exchange for eternal release from their own purgatory.”“Man Cave,” John J. Caswell Jr.’s new play at the Connelly Theater, is a political drama wrapped in the spooky pleasures of the horror genre, and it works on both levels. Its characters are Mexican American women on the economic fringes, and its concerns are theirs: work, love, heritage, survival; how to be safe, and feel at home, in their own country.Unfolding in the congressman’s man cave (designed by Adam Rigg), with its cowboy-movie posters and mounted elk head, the play is also a contemplation of what the United States was built on, what’s buried underneath — and which insistent, haunted voices it’s determined not to hear. (Lucrecia Briceno’s lighting is vital to the chilling of our spines.)Directed by Taylor Reynolds for the theater company Page 73, the show cultivates a scary mood even before it starts, thanks to Michael Costagliola’s supremely clever sound design, which thrums ominously as the audience settles in but cuts to an unnerving quiet in the opening scene. We are primed to be startled by the slightest noise, and so we are. And because the audience is expecting, even hoping, to be frightened, its attention has a tautness that’s sustained throughout the play.That’s helpful with a show that takes its time, as “Man Cave” does — sometimes to the point of bagginess — letting the friends bicker and snipe over the course of a fraught weekend. Why, Rosemary (Jacqueline Guillén) wants to know, is Imaculada “cleaning house for an overtly racist politician”? Is Imaculada (Annie Henk) right that something is trying to kill her? And where is her missing 20-something son?Why is Lupita (Claudia Acosta), Rosemary’s sober girlfriend — her tender romantic refuge from the abusive cop — suddenly drinking again? How gross is it, exactly, that Rosemary has brought a bag of the cop’s fingernail clippings for the spell she means to cast? What has drawn her to the spirit world, when that used to be her mother’s thing?Her mother, Consuelo (Socorro Santiago), an undocumented immigrant, raised Rosemary to assimilate. But when Consuelo arrives at the congressman’s house, she doesn’t need anyone to tell her its paranormal status. She has a supernatural sensitivity to the dead.“I can hear them screaming in my head,” she says.A program note explains that Caswell wrote “Man Cave” over the past five years — a time of immense social and political turmoil in the United States. If the play sometimes feels bloated, it may be from absorbing so much anger and anxiety from the air. But its shape also feels like an act of resistance to the constraints of theatrical convention.On a wall of the man cave, near the elk head, hangs a rack of vintage rifles, emblems of American cowboy culture. This isn’t Chekhov, though, and those guns never go off. They just stay in plain sight, silently menacing.Man CaveThrough April 2 at the Connelly Theater, Manhattan; page73.org. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More