Cape Cod Journal 07: The Dining Room

We've had two performances of The Dining Room so far, and will continue to play through the rest of the week. It's been lovely to see that the Monomoy crowd turns out for smaller shows just as much as they do for musicals. Being onstage with this piece has been a lovely experience so far. It is captivating in it's episodic nature, and the audience always seems to be right with us. I have to admit, I'll be very sad to see it close. I'm so proud of the all our accomplishments, and our director, Rich Cole, was an absolute joy to work with. We'll have to say goodbye to him soon as he's heading back to New York.
The reviews are around today, and I thought The Cape Cod Times captured the nature of the show quite nicely in theirs.
As true Monomoy Theatre fashion would have it, we had hardly begun dress rehearsals for The Dining Room before several of us were thrown into rehearsals of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, in which I am playing Elvira, the blithe spirit of Blithe Spirit. I'm really having a grand time rehearsing this part. She's such a vibrant, deviant, wildly funny, and wildly dangerous little ghost.
Well, I'd best be off. We began the morning with a rather strenuous, but productive and fun Blithe Spirit rehearsal, and now it's on to both a matinee and an evening performance of The Dining Room!

Cape Cod Journal 06

Some fellow company members and me all geared up for the Chatham, MA 4th of July parade! Photo by Lily Ferguson!

Cape Cod Journal 05

Just a quick update on life on the Cape.
Fiddler on the Roof continues splendidly. We are down to only four more performances and are sold out for every one. As I've mentioned in the past, the Cape community is highly supportive and excited about our theatre. It's wonderful to go out on stage and be greeted with such enthusiasm.
So, Fiddler on the Roof closes on Saturday, we begin rehearsals for Blithe Spirit on Monday, and A.R. Gurney's The Dining Room directed by Rich Cole is opening on Tuesday (oh my gosh, that's coming up quick). There's truly no time to stop and breathe at this place. It's just go, go, go, and I wouldn't have it any other way. The Dining Room is looking to be a really smart show. First produced in the early 1980s, The Dining Room is a series of intertwining scenes brought to life by a cast of usually six actors, but in our case eight actors. The scenes serve to display the "dying culture" of the North Eastern American WASP as they chronicle moments in the lives of the well-to-do throughout time. Each of these snippets of life takes place in the dining room, of course, and create a sometimes hilarious, sometimes satirical, and sometimes heartbreaking portrait. It's really a fun project for an actor as we pop in and out of the play as so many different characters. Each of us, at some point, plays a child, and all the women, at some point, play maids. My fellow cast members and I are having a good time covering this expansive range of characters. I, for example, jump into one scene as a neglected 1950s housewife throwing a birthday party for her little girl, Winkie, while contemplating an affair with, little party guest, Billy's father, and leap into my next scene as an elderly extremely senile grandmother at Thanksgiving dinner. Fun.
So things are good.

Cape Cod Journal 04: Fiddler on the Roof

Oh my goodness!
I have died and gone to heaven! Let me tell you, Chatham, Massachusetts may just be the closest thing to heaven on earth. It is just the most lovely beach town ever, and all I do here is theatre, theatre, theatre all the time.
On Tuesday night we opened Fiddler on the Roof here at the Monomoy Theatre. I'm just playing a small role, but I am so excited. The Cape Cod community really enjoys coming out to see the plays and we've been greeted with full houses and big smiles every night so far. We've even gotten our first reviews of the summer from The Cape Cod Times and The Cape Cod Chronicle. They certainly seemed to enjoy the show, The Cape Cod Times said, "the folks at Monomoy Theatre have staged a powerhouse musical that will be hard to match in the months ahead."
As for me, the theatre opening for the summer feels magical. The place has suddenly become so lively. We're doing two shows today, and there will be plays almost every night all summer. Just magical. Sitting in the courtyard yesterday evening waiting for my next entrance listening to the music leaking out from the theatre, and the sounds of a delighted audience I was brought back to my evenings spent working as a stage hand for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's greenshow. I was only a teenager, but I was so in love with the way you could hear the trumpets blow, and the actors begin, and especially the audience laugh echoing out from the Elizabethan stage. I think, theatre, when at its best, is the force that brings a community together, and it does that here at Monomoy. Magic.
We've already begun rehearsals for The Dining Room which is being directed by New Yorker, Rich Cole, and opens on July 6th. More details to follow!

Cape Cod Journal 03

We made it! Chatham is beautiful! I love it! It's so small and so New England. Had lunch at The Squire Tavern then went to the beach where they don't allow dogs all summer. How upsetting. It's really gorgeous here though. The theatre is on Main St. Chatham and we are all boarding in the two very old little houses next to it. Bunk beds, and broken dressers. Total actor housing, but I'm happy with my light house printed curtains! We'll be working so hard I imagine it will be rare that we notice how crammed in we are. Rehearsal starts tonight after dinner! Fiddler on the Roof is first!

Cape Cod Journal 02

We've done it! Finished one whole year of our Masters in Fine Arts in acting program at Ohio University, and it was rough, to say the least, but certainly fun as well. So now it's time for a true test of heroism; The Monomoy Theatre in Chatham. My classmate Nicole Tuthill and I drove all day long, from Athens, Ohio all the way past Baltimore, past Philadelphia, past New York City, to Stamford, Connecticut where we are staying the night in a cheap hotel before leaving early tomorrow morning for the theatre we are spending the next three months living in, eating in, celebrating in, and acting in. Boy, do we have our work cut out for us. I think I mentioned before that my major roles are, of course, being an ensemble member in The Dining Room, but also being Elvira in Blithe Spirit and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. In fact, I'm in everything but The Lion in Winter and The Cherry Orchard. It's going to be an extremely full summer!
The rest of our classmates should be arriving at various times tomorrow. The eight graduate students with the addition of one senior from OU are making up the main acting company at Monomoy, but of course there will be several more artists coming in as professionals and students from other schools to work with us as well!
Nicole and I had a fantastic day, though, despite all the driving. We met this great waitress at a diner in the middle of nowhere Maryland who was so excited about us going to Monomoy. She even told me that she had played Elvira twenty years ago. Which may or may not be true, although as Nicole pointed out, she did seem pretty sincere about it.
More driving tomorrow! Night!

Just a Note: Othello at PICT

The drive from Athens, Ohio to Pittsburgh takes about three and a half hours, but considering that I was getting to see Othello staged for the first time, it was worth it. Not to mention, my acting coach, Shelley Delaney who is playing Emilia, and graduates of the OU MFA in Acting program, Georgia Mallory Guy and Allison McLemore who are doing Bianca and Desdemona.
So a few of my classmates and I braved the three hours happily, embarasingly belting show tunes and folk songs much of the way. Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, or at least it is on a bright May afternoon! To be honest, just getting out of Athens made for a delightful day trip.
It was so exciting to see this masterful work of The Bard. It's truly one of my favorites, and the jealousy, deceit, sex and murder was so fun to see on stage. Also, it made me really proud to see the great work coming out of my program. Georgia Mallory Guy who played Claire in the recent production of Proof I was in, was a lovely Bianca. She was so strong and responsive every moment she was onstage. Allison McLemore, who I don't know personally, also did a fantastic job. Her Desdemona was wonderfully traditional in wilting flower Desdemona fashion.
I had never seen a Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre (PICT) production before either, and I really loved their space. They're location is perfect, its right by University of Pittsburgh which gives the whole neighborhood a very college town feel. Lots of little restaurants, gardens, and statues of dinosaurs. Yes, dinosaurs.
We had dinner at a little Mediterranean place with Shelley and Georgia, and then grabbed some Caribou Coffee and headed back home to Athens. Successful day.