39 Steps: Productions Meetings and Physical Play...

Good Evening,

…blog day 3...

Things are ramping up.

We had our production meeting yesterday which is run by the incomparable Production Manager for Perseverance Kathleen Harper.

Production meeting are invaluable in the process of creating a show. It’s a chance for all aspects of the production to come together and “check-in”. Make sure everyone is on the same page about who’s doing what, when things are do, and, most importantly to work out any problems that may  have come up and see how to “problem-solve” them.

Yesterday’s meeting went well. At this point, everyone is on track. The walls of the theatre are being painted, the costumes are being pulled, props are arriving in the rehearsal hall. Our biggest conversation centered around incorporating certain elements of the lighting into the set design and making sure that some of the “gags” we are looking at trying to create will come off as we’d like them to. There can be a pretty big difference between the design stage and what actually gets created. There are practical and budgetary concerns which come in to play in all the areas. And, of course, new ideas come up that may be inspired and better than the original. All these options and challenges are explored to help bring the magic alive. It’s a truly collaborative process and a great joy to be a part of.

Also wanted to share how fun rehearsal was last night. You will meet the actors soon through this blog, but here’s a sneak peak at some of the physical stuff we were doing last night.

We were playing around with physical space and how bodies could possibly interact. This may or may not be an image you see on stage in…37 days!

-Bostin Christopher, Director

First Rehearsal Thoughts and a Sneak Peek at the Set

Good evening,

...it’s blog day #2...

Our first rehearsal was amazing. First rehearsal gives everyone a chance to meet and share with the cast all the wonderful design work leading up to the beginning of rehearsal. It’s an exciting time and it was a joy, as the director, to see all these elements intermingling. It also got the actors excited to play and that’s always a joy to watch and be a part of.

We started with introductions and design presentations:

See more of the first rehearsal meet and greet photos are on thefacebook page: https://www.facebook.com/PerseveranceTheatre

We’ve assembled a fantastic team of designers:

Sheila Wyne – Set

Art Rotch – Lights

Val Snyder – Costumes

Riley Woodford – Sound

Kathleen Harper – Props

And holding us all together is our stage manager: Nikki Dawson

I’m thrilled to be working with all of them!

Now a little sneak peek at part of the set model:

This is part of the world where the show will come to life. Exciting stuff!

More in the coming days. I’m off to our weekly production meeting to get all these moving parts together and ready for opening night in…

38 days.

-Bostin Christopher, Director

39 Steps: Good Evening...

Welcome to Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps at Perseverance Theatre!

It’s the 33^rd Season at Perseverance Theatre and I have the honor of directing the first show. The 39 Steps is a theatrical romp based on a novel by John Buchan, adapted by Alfred Hitchcock for the 1935 film and adapted again by Patrick Barlow based on an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon. Whew!

It’s part homage to Hitchcock, part tribute to the Theatre and an all-around good time!

Of course, we’ve been working behind the scenes for many months – designing, casting and working toward bringing this wonderful adventure to life. In that time, I’ve been reading a wonderful blog that Ken Davenport, a New York Theatre Producer, has been doing for his Broadway revival of Godspell (http://www.godspellblog.com). It’s a wonderful behind the scenes look at how a show gets made that he started with 100 days to go until opening. I realized what a treat it would be to do that with our show and when I realized that our first rehearsal was exactly 39 days from Opening night (Sept. 23^rd), I didn’t see a way we couldn’t do it.

So, we will take you behind the scenes with a little something each day: set designs, costumes, who’s who on the team, marketing, etc. As much as we can, we will bring you on this ride with us. Enjoy the adventure and we will see you in…

39 Days!

Bostin Christopher, Director

Artistic Director Art Rotch's Musings on This Wonderful Life

Before getting involved in theatre, I was a student of history. As a young man I learned about my grandparents- who passed when I was young- from stories I heard, and in the case of my father’s family history which was well-documented, books I read.  Reading those books led to others and today, I still have a soft spot for plays that are set in the past, involve colorful characters, and tell us something about who we are. 

This Wonderful Life is set in the 1930s and 40s, the time of what Tom Brokaw dubbed ‘The Greatest Generation’. This  generation of Americans survived the great depression and then fought the Second World War. It was a time of ‘can do’ and the era of American exceptionalism. When my friend Ed Christian first looked at this part, he said George Bailey reminded him of his own father, also of that generation.

In my family, it was my grandfather, Arthur Rotch, who lived during that time. He has a story of missing his generation’s war, though it gets a little goofy:

He served in ROTC during World War I and graduated in 1918. He spent the summer of 1918 trying to get overseas in time to serve, but a balky appendix kept him out of action till after the armistice. Family lore describes this young man trying as hard as he could to get assigned to a unit that would be sent into action as quickly as possible. Much later, he served in a naval reserve unit and told tales of escorting destroyers down the Quincy river before they headed into action – usually commanded by young captains who drove much too fast for close waters.  I heard most of these stories in my father’s voice, who passed them on with mix of humor and pride in my grandfathers’ stubborn commitment to serve as best he could, while still filtering in some of his regret that he had to stay home.

What my grandfather did was not as glorious as leading men over the wire in France, or commanding a destroyer in the pacific, but like George Bailey, he did what he could, and is remembered proudly by his family for it.

I thank Ed for his remark that reminded me of my family’s connection to Frank Capra’s characters and their time. Ed plays so many different characters so well tonight, as Terry Cramer describes in her director’s note later in the program, I’m sure you will see someone you love rendered in his performance. Maybe it will be Mary, or ZuZu, or Martini the bartender, or Uncle Billy. Like listening to my father tell the story of my family, you can sit back and hear Ed tell you this story of an iconic American family.

What Ed does tonight is one of the hardest, and most rewarding things for an actor: To tell an entire story himself, with no castmates to catch him if he drops a line, and no breaks while others are on stage. It is a remarkable theatrical achievement for one of our most stalwart company members. When I lose myself in the play, which happens every time I’ve seen it so far, I always at some moment remember my father’s voice. It is pitched differently from Ed’s, and the accent is northern, but I remember it because it was the voice that told me those stories of my grandfather.

May you remember your favorite storyteller and your favorite stories tonight, as you listen to one of Juneau’s most gifted tell you one of America’s best holiday tales.

Art Rotch

Artistic Director

A Note on This Wonderful Life from Director Terry Cramer

Welcome to the quirky world of This Wonderful Life, where versatile actor Ed Christian plays a guy who wants to tell us the entire story of the classic Frank Capra movie, It’s a Wonderful Life all by himself, and does. And Ed is so convincing that there are times when I’d swear there were several people from the Bailey family on stage at the once.

This production owes its genesis – its shape and heart – to the work that Tim Hyland and Ed did for last year’s performances at Thunder Mountain High School. Together Ed and Tim discovered the characters, the rhythm, and the technique essential to telling the story of the movie with one actor and a limited set. They brought the magic of this much-loved movie into being. For this year’s journey, Art asked if I would shepherd the play into being, and I was delighted at the chance to work with Ed on this project. Our task was to build on last year’s wonderful production, to bring the story to the more intimate, differently-shaped stage at Perseverance, and to take the opportunity to explore the play again.

Watching Ed work the characters with their signature postures – sitting back in the chair, his fingers in a steeple for Mr. Potter, and leaning forward, adjusting his legs and arms slightly, and there’s George Bailey, the vamp-ish flick of the blond hair of Violet Bick, the demure strength of Mary Hatch – has been instructional. It takes very little to transform from one character to the next and Ed makes it look easy, natural. But almost always, the turn of the head, the step forward or back, is so precisely choreographed that a variation – a look back instead of forward – leads to confusion. It’s a very precise dance for the actor. I am amazed at Ed’s understanding of how to put it together and how easy he makes it appear. 

As we’ve worked on this story of one person’s place in a community I’ve thought about George Rogers, who was a supportive, creative presence for Perseverance from the beginning of it’s life and who died earlier this fall. George appeared on stage in 9 or 10 productions, ranging from the crusty father in On Golden Pond, to the venal sheriff in Front Page, and to Firs, the aged family servant in Cherry Orchard. He brought a warm heart to all his roles, and to his life as well. He has left us richer for his presence in our lives.


Terry Cramer, Director

The Road Not Taken

George Bailey never got to live the life he wanted and wonders what would have happened if he had made different choices as a younger man. In This Wonderful Life -- opening December 3rd on the Mainstage -- George Bailey gets to travel the road not taken and see what his home town of Bedford Falls would be like if he had never been born.

What about you? Do you have a road not taken? At some point in life, did you flirt with leaving home for something new, something beyond the horizon, but then you never ended up going down that road? How would your life be different had you taken that path? Like George, how did things turn out by not taking it?

We want to hear from YOU: Please share your story by clicking on the Comments link below. Selected entries will be posted in the Perseverance Theatre lobby throughout the run of This Wonderful Life.

A few thoughts on LEADING LADIES, scoundrels and Alaska:

Alaska is a place full of schemers and dreamers, including a cast of characters playing roles as varied as governor, warrior, missionary, scientist and prospector. We tolerate big ideas and audacious schemes, perhaps believing that there is room for these ideas up here somewhere. While success is never certain, our history is full of people who try, who launch a scheme because they can. They can try because Alaskans rarely say no to a dream. Instead of why? Alaskans tend to ask why not?

Perseverance Theatre is just such a dream, in fact: Why Not start a professional theatre in Alaska? Dreaming and scheming are basic building blocks of any theatrical enterprise, and Ken Ludwig’s protagonists in LEADING LADIES are two archetypical theatre dreamers, who want something many theatre artists sacrifice to chase their artistic ambitions: a romantic partner to share their lives with. Perseverance was founded by an Alaskan dreamer with a crazy scheme, Molly Smith, and all of us who have chased our theatrical dreams in Alaska with and after her, are cut from the same cloth as the Jack and Leo in LEADING LADIES.

Actors in many cultures and periods in history have been lumped into a category of socially undesirable people- as Reverend Duncan Woolly so fervently reminds us in the play. Actors lie for a living, they keep odd hours, their labor produces no tangible material goods, they are scoundrels. Many of us Alaskans have a greater tolerance of scoundrels because we have too many friends and associates that fit the bill to write them off lightly.

From Tom Sawyer and Lucille Ball to Bart Simpson and Bernie Madoff, American scoundrels are at their best when they have a daring, nearly impossible plan. Plans involving money are popular, since many of us suspect that people with lots of money don’t have any good idea what to do with it and probably came by it dishonestly anyway. Con men who separate these people from their money are a great group of American folk-heroes, living in the province of hustlers, sketchy salesmen and other hard-scrabble types. Tough economic times like ours which put the squeeze on us all tend to expose these shady types, and lift the curtain on their craziest, most desperate schemes.

In Leo Clark and Jack Gable, Ken Ludwig has created two Shakespearean actors who are down to their last nickel and resort to a classic con game. Desperate for some cash so they can keep acting, they decide to take advantage of a dying widow and cheat her legitimate heir out of a major inheritance. It is the same swindle that Duke and King try to pull off in HUCKELBERRY FINN, right down to the English accents and the phony, deaf-mute, long-lost relative. Ken Ludwig is a great comic writer, so Jack and Leo don’t reap the spoils so easily, and they caper through an escalating series of absurd plot twists and end up walking off with a very different prize than they set out after.

All the world is a stage, and each of us in our time play many parts. The art of making theatre is often called the art of telling lots of little lies in order to create one big truth. Leo and Jack show up at Aunt Florence’s intending to play the role of children and heirs. Hopelessly smitten when they meet Meg and Audrey, they instead shift to the roles of lovers. Like any great pair of actors presented with a challenge, they sell what they’ve got and commit to playing their new roles. Even though they make their suit by way of multiple hoaxes, dresses and wigs; what they come to at the end is honesty, and the roles they play are truly themselves.

In rehearsal, actors try to “Sell it”. “Selling“ a scene means to convince the audience you are the character portrayed by committing fully, believing in, the actions that you are going through on stage. In LEADING LADIES, Leo tells Jack that impersonating the long-lost Stephanie is the “Role of a Lifetime”.

What is flirting and offering romantic love but a great sales pitch? What a perfect way to describe falling in love. When he says “role of a lifetime”, Leo doesn’t realize that falling in love is what he and Jack are both about to do, but that is the nature of love and acting: sometimes, we improvise. Ludwig’s actors turned con men-turned lovers are like us: We all, on a deep and profound level, live by ‘selling’ our lives the way an actor ‘sells’ a scene. And what more apt description is there for the role of a romantic partner than “role of a lifetime”? In love, we are the goods we sell, we offer ourselves to our beloved to freely accept or reject. If we are committed and successful, we get to play the role of our lifetime with a great romantic partner.

As you go about playing the role of yourself in the story of your life, be sure to commit and sell yourself, may your adversity be overcome through the joy of knowing the people around you, and may you fall in love with your leading lady…or your leading man?

Enjoy the show,

Art Rotch,
Artistic Director