Artistic Programs/Dramaturg Charles Haugland sat down recently with Artistic Director Peter DuBois in his South End home to discuss our upcoming 30th Anniversary Season. Over the course of the hour, Charles and Peter had a lively conversation about the season and their decision-making process behind each production.
Below, you'll find the first part of that conversation, in which Peter and Charles discuss the talented Mary Zimmerman and her acclaimed production of Candide, which kicks off our 30th Anniversary Season. Enjoy!
We'll be rolling out the rest of the conversation as we get closer to each production, so check back here for more of these behind-the-scenes scoops form our Artistic department!
The Huntington Theatre Company's CANDIDE plays September 10 thru October 16, 2011 only at the B.U. Theatre. Get tickets and information or call our Box Office at 617 266-0800.
Showing posts with label Charles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles. Show all posts
August 24, 2011
April 14, 2011
Now Accepting Applications for Huntington Playwriting Fellows Program
Huntington Theatre Company is now accepting applications for the 2011-2013 cohort of Huntington Playwriting Fellows (HPFs). Huntington Playwriting Fellows have a home at the Huntington with two-year residencies during which they participate in a writers’ collective with the artistic staff, attend Huntington productions and events, are eligible for readings and support through the Breaking Ground reading series, and receive a modest stipend. The HPF program is supported by the Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays.
The Huntington is interested in fostering artistic relationships with local playwrights at all stages of their careers, from emerging talents to established professionals. The HPF program provides a framework for an in-depth two-year artistic conversation and a long-term professional relationship. It also encourages conversation in the Boston playwriting community. Past participants are leaders of the local community whose plays have been produced on the Huntington’s stages and throughout the country.
“I love being a Huntington Playwriting Fellow,” says Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro. “There’s a forty-year age span in our small group and an exciting range of styles and subject matter. Our bi-weekly discussions, under the sharp and genial direction of Lisa Timmel and Charles Haugland, are lively, helpful, and fun. I’ve never worked harder.”
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| Jason Dirden and Nikkole Salter in HPF Lydia R. Diamond's Stick Fly |
Many past HPFs have been produced by the Huntington including Melinda Lopez (Sonia Flew), Ronan Noone (The Atheist, Brendan), Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly), Rebekah Maggor (Shakespeare’s Actresses in America), and Sinan Unel (The Cry of the Reed). Ryan Landry’s Psyched will be produced as part of 2011’s Emerging America Festival. The Huntington’s 2011-2012 Season will include The Luck of the Irish, a compelling play about the “ghost-buying” of houses in segregated neighborhoods by white families on behalf of black ones, by HPF Kirsten Greenidge and Before I Leave You, a love story for grownups set in Harvard Square, by HPF Alfaro.
Application information and residency guidelines can be found online at huntingtontheatre.org/HPF. Applications will be accepted through May 18, 2011.
May 26, 2010
Expanding the Idea of New Work - Part IV
Okay, it’s up to me to wrap up the conversation. I’m going to provide a quick summary, and then leave us with a few provocations and things I will be continuing to think about.
I take you as defining three categories. (Art Hennessey also theorized three categories when he did his exhaustive tally on his blog, though he defined the categories differently)
New:
Artists are actively doing developmental work during their HTC production, particularly of text. Playwright is in residence.
Contemporary:
Plays that we have no relationship to the development. Usually they are written in the last 20ish years, but more often in the last one or two. (This definition also means that sometimes a contemporary play can be the same distance from its premiere as a new play being developed in its second production.)
Classic:
Plays that are older or canonical (i.e., We think of FENCES as classic and PRELUDE as contemporary even though they are separated by only two years.)
These categories are not represented in our theatre haphazardly. As I discussed in my last post, we think of new work and classic work as different kinds of pleasure - active nostalgia versus active synthesis - that we try to balance. A season that we think will be both embraced and challenging to our audience includes both. (Challenging goes both ways; I think there are new work devotees, you included Lisa, who can find the idea of going to see and revisit classics “challenging” to your expectations and your taste.)
What is the breakdown of our new season then?
New: VENGEANCE IS THE LORD’S and SONS OF THE PROPHET
Contemporary: CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION and RUINED
Classic: BUS STOP, RICHARD III/COMEDY OF ERRORS, and EDUCATING RITA (Though I’m sure some would say RITA feels more contemporary than classic, it is from 1980, and has been so widely performed that I’d say it is canonical.)
A couple of wrenches that I can throw in the works:
- Many audience members told me that they had never seen ALL MY SONS. How does that effect reception? Is it “new” if it is new to you (a belief held strongly by our marketing department)?
- A good chunk of our audience had seen the Boston workshop presentation of A LONG AND WINDING ROAD or the New Haven production of A CIVIL WAR CHRISTMAS. Does it matter that they aren’t “new” to them? (In both cases, they were substantially different from their earlier productions.)
- In Peter’s first season, four out of seven plays were new and in development during their production cycle, though our audience does not remember that season as being heavily focused on new work. Why? (One thought I have is that they were all period pieces, which I believe influences reception.)
May 3, 2010
HPF iPlays: Boston writers take on audio plays
Contributed by Charles Haugland
For the Emerging America Festival, we issued an audio play challenge to all the current and former members of the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program. In collaboration with the other participating organizations, we gave them a few restrictions and ideas.
The only non-negotiables were that we wanted:
- an audio “play”
- less than ten minutes
- performed in the playwright’s own voice
- designed to be listened to in the close vicinity of one of the three participating venues: the Calderwood Pavilion in the South End, the ART in Harvard Square, and the ICA at the Harbor
Seven playwrights took us up on the challenge. What has been fascinating about the process is how differently each playwright interpreted the challenge. Listening to all seven becomes a tasting menu of these playwrights’ voices, one where the site-specific restrictions of the challenge bring out each playwright’s unique spin and point of view. And, because it is recorded in the playwright's own voice, you get a chance to hear their work just the way they imagine it.
The plays went live yesterday. To listen, download them as podcasts at emergingamericafestival.org/podcasts.html OR listen to them the weekend of the festival (May 14-16, 2010) by calling 215.525.1043 where an audio menu will guide you. There are also podcasts from our partners at the ICA and (coming soon) the ART.
Here's a sneak peek at each of the HPFs' plays:
I AM NOT INVISIBLE (5:51) by Pat Gabridge (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen on the brick plaza in front of the BCA.
Maybe you should pay more attention to the people behind you in the supermarket. You might have ignored and pissed off the wrong man, someone who has chosen to creep closer. Much closer.
JILL AND DELILAH (6:59) by Kirsten Greenidge (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in Harvard Square, standing next to the Co-op.
Eavesdrop on a private conversation between sisters, and examine the space between checking out of your life and checking back in again.
Performed with actress Marvelyn McFarlane
TEA (7:12) by Martha Jane Kaufman (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen on the wooden steps behind the ICA, facing the harbor.
Slippage abounds between two very different "tea parties." Found text blurs the line between the dissenters and the terrorists, your patriotism and your ambivalence.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR GOOGLE (7:14) by John Kuntz (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen on the wooden steps behind the ICA, facing the harbor.
John Kuntz is talking directly to you. But, is that really John Kuntz? And, is that really you? And, what about the things he asks you to do...?
HELEN HANGS UP (10:14) by Ryan Landry (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in the Eagle, drinking at the bar.
A few cocktails (and this short monologue) will give you all the courage it takes to drunk dial your ex and let 'em have it!
HAL'S HAVEN (8:20) by Rebekah Maggor (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in the passageway adjacent to number 2 Arrow Street in Cambridge between Mt. Auburn Street and Massachusetts Avenue.
Your neighborhood changes when a nightclub moves in. One local grandmother takes a late night stand against ivy-league party kids and drunken professionals.
REAL TIME ENCOUNTER (2:45) by Ken Urban (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in the MBTA Station at Back Bay, Dartmouth entrance.
Wait patiently in the station to meet up with Pat. Or, at least he told you that was his name online.
Peter DuBois also gives an irreverent and epicurean walking tour of the South End, where he lives. Check it out, too:
WALKING TOUR (21:29) with Peter DuBois (Artistic Director of the Huntington Theatre Company)
Begin at the Calderwood Pavilion, hub for HTC Emerging America events
Join Peter DuBois for stories about his home turf from stores to parks to restaurants. Watch out for large birds and firefighters. And your waistline.
Comment on this post
For the Emerging America Festival, we issued an audio play challenge to all the current and former members of the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program. In collaboration with the other participating organizations, we gave them a few restrictions and ideas.
The only non-negotiables were that we wanted:
- an audio “play”
- less than ten minutes
- performed in the playwright’s own voice
- designed to be listened to in the close vicinity of one of the three participating venues: the Calderwood Pavilion in the South End, the ART in Harvard Square, and the ICA at the Harbor
Seven playwrights took us up on the challenge. What has been fascinating about the process is how differently each playwright interpreted the challenge. Listening to all seven becomes a tasting menu of these playwrights’ voices, one where the site-specific restrictions of the challenge bring out each playwright’s unique spin and point of view. And, because it is recorded in the playwright's own voice, you get a chance to hear their work just the way they imagine it.
The plays went live yesterday. To listen, download them as podcasts at emergingamericafestival.org/podcasts.html OR listen to them the weekend of the festival (May 14-16, 2010) by calling 215.525.1043 where an audio menu will guide you. There are also podcasts from our partners at the ICA and (coming soon) the ART.
Here's a sneak peek at each of the HPFs' plays:
I AM NOT INVISIBLE (5:51) by Pat Gabridge (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen on the brick plaza in front of the BCA.
Maybe you should pay more attention to the people behind you in the supermarket. You might have ignored and pissed off the wrong man, someone who has chosen to creep closer. Much closer.
JILL AND DELILAH (6:59) by Kirsten Greenidge (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in Harvard Square, standing next to the Co-op.
Eavesdrop on a private conversation between sisters, and examine the space between checking out of your life and checking back in again.
Performed with actress Marvelyn McFarlane
TEA (7:12) by Martha Jane Kaufman (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen on the wooden steps behind the ICA, facing the harbor.
Slippage abounds between two very different "tea parties." Found text blurs the line between the dissenters and the terrorists, your patriotism and your ambivalence.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR GOOGLE (7:14) by John Kuntz (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen on the wooden steps behind the ICA, facing the harbor.
John Kuntz is talking directly to you. But, is that really John Kuntz? And, is that really you? And, what about the things he asks you to do...?
HELEN HANGS UP (10:14) by Ryan Landry (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in the Eagle, drinking at the bar.
A few cocktails (and this short monologue) will give you all the courage it takes to drunk dial your ex and let 'em have it!
HAL'S HAVEN (8:20) by Rebekah Maggor (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in the passageway adjacent to number 2 Arrow Street in Cambridge between Mt. Auburn Street and Massachusetts Avenue.
Your neighborhood changes when a nightclub moves in. One local grandmother takes a late night stand against ivy-league party kids and drunken professionals.
REAL TIME ENCOUNTER (2:45) by Ken Urban (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in the MBTA Station at Back Bay, Dartmouth entrance.
Wait patiently in the station to meet up with Pat. Or, at least he told you that was his name online.
Peter DuBois also gives an irreverent and epicurean walking tour of the South End, where he lives. Check it out, too:
WALKING TOUR (21:29) with Peter DuBois (Artistic Director of the Huntington Theatre Company)
Begin at the Calderwood Pavilion, hub for HTC Emerging America events
Join Peter DuBois for stories about his home turf from stores to parks to restaurants. Watch out for large birds and firefighters. And your waistline.
Comment on this post
April 21, 2010
Expanding the Idea of New Work, Part II
Contributed by Charles Haugland, in response to Lisa Timmel's recent post.
I'm curious about your theory of the "Goldilocks Point," this balancing point between new work and old work that is different for every individual. I believe that it exists in the aggregate; our audience here has a balancing point for the number of new works/number of classics in our season. But, what I hear from individuals takes a different approach.
One woman tells me, "I think the Huntington should stick to the tried-and-true classics. It's what you're good at, and plays like ALL MY SONS are the ones I enjoy the most." Another says, "It's always the new plays that I think of as the Huntington's biggest successes - Melinda Lopez's SONIA FLEW or Lydia Diamond's play STICK FLY." What's remarkable to me is that neither is talking about balance. They're talking about which they prefer, and they are positioning this as a binary choice: those who like new work, those who like classics. But, is it a binary? Certainly, I don't think it is. Who are we as a theatre that sits between the two?
It gets me thinking about theatre and pleasure. And, as you say, new plays or old plays are not individually "important" for this time-based classification - whatever important means - but they do appeal to different parts of our minds and even to fundamentally different audiences.
Classic plays are a kind of active nostalgia, a longing for home. We long for old stories, we long for the turn that we know is coming, we love the terrible (or joyful) anticipation of it. How do you long for a new play?
And yet I do, and I think you do, too. We feel it as a kind of empty space in ourselves, and not for just any new play, but to hear a play that tells a story we have never heard before, a story so specific that it feels as if it's the story of our own lives, a story we've tried to tell ourselves again and again but never had the words, the images, the mirror of experience to make sense of it. (Next season has both of these kinds of pleasure for me, including this second kind of pleasure in the just-announced-today three-play Annie Baker festival.)
Is it then a relatively recent idea that the pleasure of returning to a culturally familiar story or the pleasure of an entirely new story are best experienced if they walk hand-in-hand? That is probably the subject for another post. But, from the Greeks to the Elizabethans to commercial theatres of the 19th century, there have always been both "classic" and "new" work in the marketplace, often performed by the same actors under the same roof. Did those theatres think about the Goldilocks Point? I know we do.
Depending on where you sit, regional theaters have morphed over the last fifty years into either a flippant idea of "It matters to you to see these seven plays, because we're doing them" (if anyone ever believed that idea, it is dying along with subscription numbers) or a more earnest one: These plays matter to you, because this is an ongoing conversation. These plays matter to you, because they are part of a legacy that began and is ongoing.
- Charles
What do you think? Leave your thoughts here
One woman tells me, "I think the Huntington should stick to the tried-and-true classics. It's what you're good at, and plays like ALL MY SONS are the ones I enjoy the most." Another says, "It's always the new plays that I think of as the Huntington's biggest successes - Melinda Lopez's SONIA FLEW or Lydia Diamond's play STICK FLY." What's remarkable to me is that neither is talking about balance. They're talking about which they prefer, and they are positioning this as a binary choice: those who like new work, those who like classics. But, is it a binary? Certainly, I don't think it is. Who are we as a theatre that sits between the two?
It gets me thinking about theatre and pleasure. And, as you say, new plays or old plays are not individually "important" for this time-based classification - whatever important means - but they do appeal to different parts of our minds and even to fundamentally different audiences.
Classic plays are a kind of active nostalgia, a longing for home. We long for old stories, we long for the turn that we know is coming, we love the terrible (or joyful) anticipation of it. How do you long for a new play?
And yet I do, and I think you do, too. We feel it as a kind of empty space in ourselves, and not for just any new play, but to hear a play that tells a story we have never heard before, a story so specific that it feels as if it's the story of our own lives, a story we've tried to tell ourselves again and again but never had the words, the images, the mirror of experience to make sense of it. (Next season has both of these kinds of pleasure for me, including this second kind of pleasure in the just-announced-today three-play Annie Baker festival.)
Is it then a relatively recent idea that the pleasure of returning to a culturally familiar story or the pleasure of an entirely new story are best experienced if they walk hand-in-hand? That is probably the subject for another post. But, from the Greeks to the Elizabethans to commercial theatres of the 19th century, there have always been both "classic" and "new" work in the marketplace, often performed by the same actors under the same roof. Did those theatres think about the Goldilocks Point? I know we do.
Depending on where you sit, regional theaters have morphed over the last fifty years into either a flippant idea of "It matters to you to see these seven plays, because we're doing them" (if anyone ever believed that idea, it is dying along with subscription numbers) or a more earnest one: These plays matter to you, because this is an ongoing conversation. These plays matter to you, because they are part of a legacy that began and is ongoing.
- Charles
What do you think? Leave your thoughts here
September 12, 2009
Join the Conversation
Last night, at our first preview for Fences, we started something new.
I'm going to introduce Literary Associate Charles Haugland to tell you all about it:
Most nights this season at the Huntington you may hear a new announcement about an experiment we're trying: "After tonight's performance, there will be a post-show discussion".
Are you curious? Here's what we're thinking:
The Huntington makes theatre. People who know their Greek will tell you that the word that theatre came from meant place for seeing. Is that how this theatre works? Sure. When I buy a ticket, I am a spectator. We call those people onstage actors. Theatre's that thing that happens when we watch them.
But, when the staff talks around the office, Peter DuBois sometimes slips in this sentence: Theatre is a conversation. He says it pretty often, and it's a simple remark, so it can fly in one ear and out the other. But, the sentence sticks with me. How is theatre a conversation?
For me, it means at least two things. First, Peter is saying that watching is really active. Attention is palpable, and actors fight to get it and keep it. Are they focusing differently because I just coughed? When I laugh in a new place, does it change their rhythm? What if I react differently than they are expecting? One spectator changes a whole performance.
But more deeply, I think he's saying that people put stories onstage because they want to talk to the people that are offstage. He programs a play because he is compelled to share that story, to invite others to hear it, to talk with others about it. So when the idea was floated last spring to do discussions with the audience after the show, I said to Peter, We have to do this! Its exactly what you talk about! Theatre is a conversation.
We'll be doing six discussions a week during the run of FENCES, and the format will evolve all year long. Sometimes it will be Peter leading the discussion, sometimes its Lisa Timmel (who is the Director of New Work), sometimes it's me, sometimes it's one of the other theatre geeks who work for the Huntington. But, were not hosting the discussions so that we can tell you things -- what were most interested in is what you'll say to us and what you'll say to each other.
Conversation is not nearly as old a word as theatre - conversation only goes back about six hundred years - but it surprised me to learn today that it didn't originate from the idea of two people talking. The root actually comes from a word that means to live with. So, join us after a show, and live with the play the ideas it brings about, the feelings it brings up, the way it works on you for fifteen or twenty minutes longer.
See you there.
Charles Haugland
Last night about 70 patrons stayed afterwards and chatted with Lisa Timmel. Tonight is Charles' turn. The discussions will not take place after Saturday and Sunday evening shows, and when there are other regularly scheduled discussions scheduled (such as Sneak Previews, Humanities Forums, Actors Forum, Playwrights Forum, and Out and About Club).
Please join the conversation and comment on this post
I'm going to introduce Literary Associate Charles Haugland to tell you all about it:
Most nights this season at the Huntington you may hear a new announcement about an experiment we're trying: "After tonight's performance, there will be a post-show discussion".Are you curious? Here's what we're thinking:
The Huntington makes theatre. People who know their Greek will tell you that the word that theatre came from meant place for seeing. Is that how this theatre works? Sure. When I buy a ticket, I am a spectator. We call those people onstage actors. Theatre's that thing that happens when we watch them.
But, when the staff talks around the office, Peter DuBois sometimes slips in this sentence: Theatre is a conversation. He says it pretty often, and it's a simple remark, so it can fly in one ear and out the other. But, the sentence sticks with me. How is theatre a conversation?
For me, it means at least two things. First, Peter is saying that watching is really active. Attention is palpable, and actors fight to get it and keep it. Are they focusing differently because I just coughed? When I laugh in a new place, does it change their rhythm? What if I react differently than they are expecting? One spectator changes a whole performance.
But more deeply, I think he's saying that people put stories onstage because they want to talk to the people that are offstage. He programs a play because he is compelled to share that story, to invite others to hear it, to talk with others about it. So when the idea was floated last spring to do discussions with the audience after the show, I said to Peter, We have to do this! Its exactly what you talk about! Theatre is a conversation.
We'll be doing six discussions a week during the run of FENCES, and the format will evolve all year long. Sometimes it will be Peter leading the discussion, sometimes its Lisa Timmel (who is the Director of New Work), sometimes it's me, sometimes it's one of the other theatre geeks who work for the Huntington. But, were not hosting the discussions so that we can tell you things -- what were most interested in is what you'll say to us and what you'll say to each other.
Conversation is not nearly as old a word as theatre - conversation only goes back about six hundred years - but it surprised me to learn today that it didn't originate from the idea of two people talking. The root actually comes from a word that means to live with. So, join us after a show, and live with the play the ideas it brings about, the feelings it brings up, the way it works on you for fifteen or twenty minutes longer.
See you there.
Charles Haugland
Last night about 70 patrons stayed afterwards and chatted with Lisa Timmel. Tonight is Charles' turn. The discussions will not take place after Saturday and Sunday evening shows, and when there are other regularly scheduled discussions scheduled (such as Sneak Previews, Humanities Forums, Actors Forum, Playwrights Forum, and Out and About Club).
Please join the conversation and comment on this post
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