Profile: Bruce Sevy, Director of Heartbreak House

 Bruce Sevy, Associate Artistic Director of the Denver Center Theatre Company, is tackling one of George Bernard Shaw’s most unusual plays, the mysterious HEARTBREAK HOUSE. The brittle wit and clever ripostes are there, but there is also an air of rue about this piece. With World War I on the horizon, it is, on some levels, somber. See what Bruce has to say…

 
Denver Center: In what way does this play differ from Shaw’s other work?

Bruce Sevy: Heartbreak House is a sort of culmination of Shaw’s earlier work. Traces of Misalliance and Man And Superman (and other early pieces) are easily seen here. But I also detect Shaw breaking out of the usual structure and tone and  exploring some new theatrical ground.

DCPA: Set as it is in pre-World War I England, how is this play relevant  today?

BS: I’m not updating the play. I feel it is tied to the Edwardian period and the place in which it is set. However, I’ve chosen to move it up to 1916, with the war underway. As for relevance, we’re almost a century later, and still wondering—as the characters in the play do—what this new century will bring.

   The American Empire has supplanted the British Empire. Are we now in “decline”? The question is certainly discussed; war is still with us, as is anxiety for the future and an apocalyptic fear rumbling under a compulsively trivial and intellectually impoverished popular culture. The play does speak to us; that’s what excites me.

DCPA: What do you make, if anything, about the parallels between Heartbreak House and Masterpiece Theatre’s currently popular Downton Abbey?

BS: I think it’s great—and fortuitous for us—that Downton Abbey and War Horse are capturing the imagination of the American public. Heartbreak House gains resonance and depth when viewed in the context of England before, during and after World War I. I hope the audience has those images in mind as it watches this production, It’s an important lens through which to view the play.

    Of course, the manor house in Downton Abbey is much more formal and regimented than Shaw’s Shotover-Hushabye house. This household is looser, more imaginative and impulsive. All of the guests are thrown by the apparent lack of rules and schedules. Even the burglars don’t behave as expected! There are no plans for meals and not much of a plan for where invited guests will stay. The effect is disorienting—or delightful, depending on your point of view—and the source of quite a bit of comedy.

DCPA: Many parallels have been drawn between this play and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Do you buy that analogy?

BS: Shaw was a big fan of Chekhov and of The Cherry Orchard, and he did subtitle his play A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes. Some parallels can be found between Shaw’s burglar, Billy Dunn, and the tramp who shows up in The Cherry Orchard. Certainly the outdoor evening ruminations of Shaw’s characters in Act III have a Chekhovian feel.

   But the play remains pure—and wonderful—Shaw. Even he conceded the point after a successful performance in England in 1923, when he humorously addressed the audience at the curtain call: “This has been one of the most depressing evenings I have spent in the theatre. I imagined I had written a quiet, thoughtful, semi-tragic play after the manner of Chekhov. From your empty-headed laughter, I appear to have written a bedroom farce!” The audience applauded.

DCPA: Some people have called it an allegory. What do you call it?

BS: I like Shaw’s term, “Fantasia,” with all that the word implies musically and in terms of the compositional approach. I love the almost surreal aspects of some of the episodes and I hope to highlight them as a counterpoint to the seemingly realistic tone and nearly Feydeau-like, bedroom-comedy spirit of the early part of the script.

DCPA: Is this a play about the beginnings of the decomposition of society as Shaw knew it and almost certainly as we know it today?

BS: I think so. And while Shaw certainly reveals the businessman, Mangan, to be without ethics and hardly the bulwark of the country that he initially presents himself to be, Shaw spends the bulk of the play exposing the vacuous and wasted lives of the Bloomsbury-esque liberals at its center.

   Parallels really can be drawn between the state of our contemporary American public life and the state of England’s as represented here. The Mangans and the Utterwords are ascendant; the educated, creative, leisure class is infantilized and marginalized (or have they marginalized themselves?), while the ship of state sails into decline and pointless war. Familiar? What begins as nearly romantic comedy ends with a threat of apocalypse. Shaw wrote to a friend about this play: “All truly sacred truths are rich in comedy!”

DCPA: How prophetic would you say it was?

BS: I think it was incredibly prophetic for England. I hope it remains only a cautionary tale for our country.

HEARTBREAK HOUSE plays The Space Theatre March 30 - April 29. For more information or to purchase tickets, contact us at 303.893.4100.

Chas Addams: The Man Behind the Family

The musical The Addams Family is inspired by the creations of the legendary American cartoonist Charles Addams, who lived from 1912 until 1988. In 1933, when he was just 21, his work was published in The New Yorker, and over the course of nearly six decades, he became one of the magazine’s most cherished contributors. 

Bizarre, macabre and weird are all words that have been used to describe Charles Addams’ cartoons. Yet adjectives such as charming, enchanting and tender can just as accurately be employed to depict the same body of work, as well as the man himself. His unique style and wonderfully crafted cartoons enabled his work to transcend such dichotomies for his millions of fans worldwide. 

Charles Addams is most widely known for his characters that came to be called The Addams Family, a group that evolved into multiple television shows, motion pictures and now this Broadway musical. Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Wednesday, Pugsley, Grandma and Lurch existed in various forms and aspects of Addams’ cartoons dating back to the 1930s but were not actually named by him until the early 1960s, when the television series was created. Surprisingly, The Addams Family characters appear in only a small number of the artist’s several thousand works. The majority of his cartoons are occupied by hundreds of other characters, but there is little doubt that those that come to life on this stage are his most beloved creations.

Over 15 books of his drawings have been published around the world, including the new collection, The Addams Family: An Evilution, the first complete history of The Addams Family, including more than 200 cartoons, many never previously published. The collection also includes Addams’ own incisive character descriptions (originally penned for the benefit of the television show producers) that remind us where these oddly lovable characters came from and, in doing so, offer a lasting tribute to one of America’s greatest humorists.

THE ADDAMS FAMILY plays Denver’s Buell Theatre June 19-July 1, 2012. Tickets: 303-893-4100

National Theatre Conservatory 2012 graduates reminisce

The National Theatre Conservatory, a Master of Fine Arts graduate acting school at The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, is currently presenting NTC Rep - two productions playing back-to-back in repertory through April 21, 2012. The selections? CHARLEY’S AUNT and FAHRENHEIT 451.

We asked some of the students to share their favorite memories of the three-year program as they gear up for these rigorous productions:

COURTNEY ESSER

I have particularly fond memories of our Movement Project.  I had never experienced anything like it before, and really haven’t done anything quite like it since.  The project was created entirely by our class (with the guidance of Mr. Bob Davidson, of course), so I really felt a sense of pride and ownership over the whole process.  It was marvelously collaborative, and everyday I had the opportunity to literally exercise new muscles.  Working on a trapeze is hard, awkward, and often uncontrollable.  But it becomes beautiful, and the integration of art and the physical is something I truly relish.  I hope to take the skills and passion that I gained from that project and our ongoing work here back to New York with me, where quite a few NTC alums have continued to embrace the awkward, uncontrollable, and eventually beautiful nature of trapeze and indeed, theatre.

MAURICE JONES

What a wonderful time it’s been here at the NTC, these last three years. I have been truly blessed to have this oportunity. A memory that will always remain indelible for me was my time during out callback weekend here in March of 2009. I was nervous, anxious, and out-of-breath due to the altitude. They gathered the 30 or so of us, lucky attendees in a room, and we embarked on an afternoon of nonstop artistic soul-bearing. I have NEVER experienced such an awe-inspiring display of gracious and willing talent. Everyone was phenomenaI! I remember thinking “I don’t stand a chance!” But how humbling it was, I thought, to be chosen to compete and share with these incredible artists. I was honored to not only witness that weekend’s work, but to also be a part of it. And for that, I will never forget it.

AMY KERSTEN

My time at the NTC has been full of many cherished moments. One of my favorites may have been the first.   The NTC has a callback weekend as the final step to making it into the 8 students who make the next year’s class.  You perform a monologue for a large group of intimidating faces. All the current students, the 30 callback guests, board members, artistic directors, faculty and more. I performed a monologue that is set in town hall style meeting, so instead of one person behind a desk I got to perform it for 50 plus people- and they laughed, a lot. It was an incredible feeling and made me feel like the NTC was meant to be for me.

I also remember feeling a great sense of accomplishment after Solo shakes. I was determined to pull off a trapeze stunt of flying off scaffolding in wedding dress on a trapeze. I had the vision so clear in my mind and it felt amazing to actually pull it off. Nothing beats flying through the air over the heads of audience members in a a big poofy skirt and with puffed sleeves.

MATT ZAMBRANO

When I think back over the past three years of happiness and heartbreak, there are many moments which stand out in my mind as unforgettable, for better or for worse.  One of my absolute favorite memories actually has less to do with me and more with one of my classmates.  Our 1st year, the third year students were in the middle of rehearsing thier Repertory shows (Tartuffe and Hamlet), when one of the actors accidentally got injured and had to sit the shows out.  With only a day before the show’s opening, the director asked my classmate Andrew Schwartz if he would step in and play the role of Hamlet in the last act.  Our class was right in the grips of our movement project, on top of classes 6 days a week and all the other trials and tribualtions of a theater grad school.  Not only did my friend and classmate step up to the task, he excelled in the performance. He flawlessly braved the boards, and made all of the NTC realize that we truly are a family.  I don’t know that I ever told him how proud I was of him that opening night, or how much I admired his courage. I think we all learned a little something about courage that night, and found the answer to the question was in fact: To Be.

See these students and their classmates in the NTC Rep’s 2012 productions of CHARLEY’S AUNT and FAHRENHEIT 451 playing through April 21, 2012. Tickets: 303.893.4100.

Off-Center Presents Luciann Lajoie’s First Play - DATE*

By Megan Quinn

Freelance Writer, Team-OFF Member (Off-Center’s External Committee)

What happens when one woman discovers online dating and becomes addicted to the rush?

The result is DATE*, the world premiere play presented by Off-Center @ the Jones. Incorporating real-life interviews with more than 100 people, Denver-based writer Luciann Lajoie weaves her own tales of the online dating world with those who have weathered disaster dates, finding the one and everything in between.

Lajoie’s one-woman performance is just one of the multimedia offerings from Off-Center, whose first season has so far included shows with improv based on movie moments, Johnny Cash cover bands and audience-powered butter-churning.

Curators Charlie Miller and Emily Tarquin call Off-Center “theater that feels like a night out.”

The Jones strives to incorporate audience participation and out-of-the-box performances to capture the next generation of audiences who like theater with a dose of the unexpected. Themed costumes, drag queen hostesses, live Twitter feeds and impromptu after-show dance parties are some of the ways Off-Center invites audience interaction before, during and after the show.

The Off-Center recipe also aims to compliment The Denver Center’s diverse theater and music offerings by acting as an entry point for new artists who might not otherwise show their work at the Denver Center Theatre Company. At the same time, The Jones targets adventurous, predominantly younger audiences who normally would not attend mainstage productions.

Shows such as a hip hop history dance show and a rowdy baseball game played entirely on a Wii set the tone for The Jones’ initial prototypes last year.

Miller and Tarquin have an eye for irreverent humor, diverse stories and fresh takes on traditional and pop culture.

DATE*, Lajoie’s first play, fits the bill.

After going on a marathon string of first dates, Lajoie admitted her online dating encounters had “hijacked her life.”   At first tempting and accessible with just a wireless connection, Lajoie soon discovered online dating was much more complicated than she originally thought.  The hilarious, perplexing and cringe-worthy occurrences led to the framework for DATE*’s script.  

Lajoie had her own stories to work with, but she also wanted to widen the conversation. So, tape recorder in hand, Lajoie interviewed over 100 people of every age, background and religion to see how their own online dates had fared.

Set to a soundtrack from local musician Ian Cooke, DATE* features Lajoie live onstage along with video projections of some of her best interviews. The stories feature people who have been fooled by Photoshop, intimidated by their first encounters and puzzled by dating rituals. Amid the ups and downs of dating life, DATE* asks audiences, “do you believe in love at first site?”

Audiences can share their own dating stories—from the horrific to the heartwarming— through Lajoie’s website or follow updates of her own story on Twitter @datetheplay.

Catch performances of DATE* 8pm, Fridays & Saturdays, April 20 - May 12. DATE* takes place at Off-Center @ The Jones, located on the edge of The Denver Center at the corner of Speer and Arapahoe.

DATE* is written and performed by Luciann Lajoie, with creative guidance by Allison Horsley, Ashlee Temple and Richard Thieriot. Curated by Charlie Miller and Emily Tarquin, directed by Ashlee Temple, and produced in partnership with LuciCo, LLC.

Tickets are $16.

Off-Center @ the Jones is an offshoot of the Tony Award-winning Denver Center Theatre Company.

George Bernard Shaw on HEARTBREAK HOUSE: An imaginary interview

by Dan Sullivan for Applause program magazine

DS: How have you adjusted to the Great Beyond? You and Shakespeare must have wonderful conversations up there. I imagine you’ve buried the hatchet.

George Bernard Shaw (GBS): “Up there?” As you should have learned from Don Juan in Hell, all the interesting people are Down Here. This may explain why I’ve never run into Shakespeare. As for burying the hatchet—what hatchet? I honored Shakespeare’s magic as a wordsmith and fought for his plays to be presented as he had written them. But it was the artist-philosophers that interested me, and Shakespeare was no philosopher. The world to him was “a great stage of fools,” on which he was utterly bewildered.

   But are we here to discuss Shakespeare or Shaw? What can I tell you about Heartbreak House? 

DS: Explain its subtitle: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner. That sets us up for something brooding, something Chekhovian.

GBS: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themesis the complete phrase, and it describes the play exactly.

DS: How so?

GBS: Read my preface. “When Chekhov’s plays came to London, we stared and said, ‘How Russian.’ They did not strike me that way…

   “Heartbreak House is cultured, leisured Europe before the war. Not a shot has been fired but the guns are loaded. As Chekhov and Tolstoy knew, our enervation in that cultivated drawing room atmosphere was delivering the world over to the control of ignorant and soulless cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken it.”  

DS: “Now” meaning 1919. So, you turn Chekhov’s overheated drawing room into a drafty English country house captained by a half-demented old sea dog with a beard like Bernard Shaw’s. And a horde of people come down from London for the weekend…  

GBS: The same futile people as in Chekhov, cut to fit. Intelligent, cultured, obsessed with their careers and love affairs, refusing the drudgery of practical politics and community duties.

DS: And it all ends with a bomb. So: a dark, prophetic play that you didn’t put on stage until the war it predicted had ended. Why the delay?

GBS: Because when men are dying for their country is not the time to show their loved ones how they are being sacrificed to the blunders of boobies, the cupidity of capitalists, the ambition of conquerors, the electioneering of demagogues.

DS: And also because your early anti-war pamphlets had started a whispering campaign that you favored the Germans. It was a touchy period for you. 

GBS: Fortunately it was a very short war. But there would have been nothing surprising in its lasting 30 years.

DS: And by 1940 the bombs were dropping again. England’s finest hour…as regularly celebrated on “Masterpiece Theater.”

GBS: What is there to say except that war puts a strain on human nature that breaks down the better half of it and makes the worst half a diabolical virtue? Better for us that it broke us down altogether. Then the warlike way out of our difficulties would be barred to us and we should take greater care not to get into them.

DS: “Navigate!” seems to be Captain Shotover’s advice to his countrymen at the end of the play. But your preface— which I have read—suggests that Britain’s political leaders at the time could hardly read a map, although they could mount a horse. May I quote you?

GBS: Accurately, please.   

DS: “The barbarians were not only literally in the saddle, but on the front bench of the House of Commons, with nobody to connect their incredible ignorance of modern thought and political science but upstarts from the counting house who had spent their lives furnishing their pockets instead of their minds.”

GBS: Very good. 

DS: No wonder the Chekhov people didn’t want to get involved with them. Meanwhile common folk thought that public issues weren’t for them to discuss.

GBS: Or that it was all “spin,” as your generation puts it. In the language of 1919—if you can quote me, so can I— “The orators of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will. Thus our democracy moves in a vicious circle.”

DS: Rather than history, this sounds like the evening news. Have things improved since your day? Have we learned anything?

GBS: “We have all had a great jolt,” I said after the war. Now I’d say a series of great jolts—a chain reaction, if you will. They have not produced a better world. And yet you are far more conscious of your condition than we were, and far less disposed to submit to it.

DS: Just one more. My wife wants to know how you knew so much about women.

GBS: I have always assumed that a woman is a person exactly like myself and that is how the trick is done. Goodbye.

Dan Sullivan is director of the O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute; and teaches arts writing at the University of Minnesota.

HEARTBREAK HOUSE plays The Space Theatre through April 29. Tickets: 303.893.4100 or www.denvercenter.org.